May 1st ~ Truth, the real God–the real God, not the God that man has made–does not want a mind that has been destroyed, petty, shallow, narrow, limited. It needs a healthy mind to appreciate it; it needs a rich mind–rich, not with knowledge but with innocence–a mind upon which there has never been a scratch of experience, a mind that is free from time. The gods that you have invented for your own comforts accept torture; they accept a mind that is being made dull. But the real thing does not want it, it wants a total, complete human being whose heart is full, rich, clear, capable of intense feeling, capable of seeing the beauty of a tree, the smile of a child, and the agony of a woman who has never had a full meal.
You have to have this extraordinary feeling, this sensitivity to everything–to the animal, to the cat that walks across the wall, to the squalor, the dirt, the filth of human beings in poverty, in despair. You have to be sensitive–which is to feel intensely, not in any particular direction, which is not an emotion which comes and goes, but which is to be sensitive with your nerves, with your eyes, with your body, with your ears, with your voice. You have to be sensitive completely all the time. Unless you are so completely sensitive, there is no intelligence. Intelligence comes with sensitivity and observation.
March 29th, 2020 ~ The current situation with Covid-19 and being advised to stay home, is as many are saying surreal. The death of war has been over there in other countries apart from us. They are calling this a war against a virus. So it is close to home. As Albert Low mentions in a chapter titled Center and Periphery in the book Zen & Creative Management, the closer tragedy comes to us, the more we feel it. Over there in another country makes it harder to feel. When it is a family member or someone in our town or county, we feel it. What K is saying is that all of this doesn’t matter. We feel over there like it is here. He has said we stop loving an individual and love the whole world. Can we feel what is happening in Italy like it is here in our hometown? Sooner rather than later, here could be like Italy. War is still happening in the Middle East. More will follow.