The Shooters

The people
who get pushed
unbearably hard
by life,
can sometimes go
on a shooting rampage,
and they
are not monsters,
but people
whose suffering
has turned into
an intense hatred
of life,
and they are victims
killing victims,
of a life
which is as brutal
sometimes,
as God.

Hip Zen

When I discovered
John Cage and Jack Kerouac,
as a kid,
I was so impressed
that I wanted to follow
in their footsteps
and become an artist
like they were,
so since
they were such hip guys
who were into Zen,
I thought Zen must be
the hip religion
that I must study
in order to be
a hip artist,
and I was going to say
that it didn't work out
that way at all,
but then I thought
that actually
I am some kind
of hip artist
like they were,
just on a very small scale.

Sayings

Here is a list
of sayings,
designed to help you
to keep from drowning
in this world,
and none of them
are true,
they are just things
that we say,
1. It's all good
2. It's neither good nor bad
3. It's a good/bad thing
4. Life is suffering
5. Everything good is bad and everything bad is good
6. Life sucks and then you die
so these sayings
are little bits 
of philosophy,
to help you realize
that you can't really
say anything.

The Kind Of Painting That I Like

I like 
paintings
that look like
a monkey could do them,
and I tend to not like
paintings that look like
they were done
by a skilled, professional
artist,
who has studied
the art of painting
for a long time,
and has great skill
in presenting
works that look like
something real,
no, I like like an artist
who just slops some paint
on a canvas
and calls it art,
and I know
that I am in
the minority on this,
but that's OK
with me.

Zen Is Like This

Zen is like
a plant,
and the flower
is motion,
fullness, sound,
thinking,
and life as we see it,
but the root of the plant
is stillness,
emptiness, silence,
not-thinking,
and the nothingness
of existence
as some of us
perceive it,
so I delight
in the flower,
and only perceive
the root
occasionally,
because it is buried
and hidden
from our ordinary mind.

About Inspirational Thoughts

I tend
to sit in a chair,
thinking,
and I like
to receive
inspirational thoughts,
which are thoughts
that will get me out
of the chair,
to go about
doing something
that I like,
and I get them
from the mind
and I have to decide
if the thoughts
are what I
Really Want To Do,
so these thoughts
are soaking in desire,
and Buddha said
that desire
causes suffering,
but inspiration
is just what
the doctor ordered
for me,
so these thoughts
are negatives
if you get too many,
or if you don't get enough,
but are a great joy
if you get
just the right ones,
so in the West
most people
think they come
from God,
but Buddhists tend to believe
that they come from
the original mind,
the empty source,
but I don't know,
I'm just
a no-nothing.

Is A Dog Buddha?

There is talk going around
that animals
are more like Buddhas
than humans,
which I think
is a dangerous teaching,
and it comes
from this insistence
on being
in the second stage
of Zen,
which is the not thinking stage,
or no mind,
so some people think
that animals
have perfect no minds,
and are therefore
more advanced
than humans,
spiritually,
but I think
that animals
have only
the ancient, reptilian mind,
and mammals have
the feeling mind,
but they don't have
the higher consciousness
that mankind has,
so animals
have no idea
about morality
or meditation
and therefore
aren't Buddhas,
they are brainless idiots,
like some of us
are seeming
to becoming
if we believe
that dogs are Buddhas.