Wisdom

I love searching for wisdom, which like the Spirit and the wind, blows where she will. I go through phases of reading Hasidic stories or Zen koans or Native American legends. Lately I have been paying particular attention to Zen.

I ran across a story about a Zen monk who became delusional. In his old age, he came to believe that he had fallen in love with the moon, and he wanted to possess the moon more than anything else. One night when he was out for a walk, he glanced into a puddle of clear water and saw the moon there. He went home to get a bottle, returned to the puddle and filled the bottle with all the water he could scoop up.

But when he got home and poured the water into another container, the moon was not there.

Not to be pedantic and obvious, but that sounds a bit like most of my shopping trips ...