Editor's Page

Cover Card

      This is the card of consciousness. It shows a vast Buddha figure so expansive that he has taken his being beyond even the stars and above his head is the pure mind that some experience as a pure emptiness or the void. He represents the consciousness that is available to all who become a master of the mind and can use it as the servant it is meant to be.

      The person who draws this card has a gift of crystal clarity available to them that is detached, rooted in the deep stillness that lies in the core of their being. There is no desire to understand from the perspective of the material plane---the understanding they have now is existential, whole and in harmony with the pulse of life itself.

       This card corresponds to the Ace of Swords in the traditional decks. It is the card of the mental clarity you have when you zero in on your prime motive or central concern. For instance, at the time the Ace of Swords is drawn you might feel single minded and confidently focused enough that you will be able to cut through confusion caused by mixed messages.

Zen is not “understood” it is “lived.”…Truth is beyond all systematization of thought….Truth is dynamic. It is constantly being recreated and renewed. This is the reason for which all the great spiritual teachers have been---and should be---revolutionaries. Whether it be a Buddha, a Socrates, a Plotinus, a Jesus, or today, a Krishnamurti, it is in the presence of powerful individualities that we find ourselves, men profoundly alive and revolutionary. Their inspiration is a result of a total integration into the process of Life itself. The anti-traditionalism of the Zen masters or of a Krishnamurti should not astonish us unduly. We lose sight of the nature of the essential Reality of which the Sages are the mouthpieces. Such people are “dead to themselves.” Their comportment is entirely dictated by the Reality, which lives within them. If we wish to understand them it is indispensable for us to learn what this Reality is. The men [and women] who have realized themselves define it as an eternal presence, which escapes all our concepts of duration, time and causality. At its approach, this presence reveals itself endowed with an incomparable up-surging and creative intensity. It is truly from instant to instant that the Real reveals itself and is lived in the states of “Satori” or “Nirvana.” From the book, Living Zen by Robert Linssen

Editor's Notes

      Toni, Dr. Volkmann's article on the "insanity" of the war on drugs is good. Semantically speaking, though, I don't think a deliberate policy of cultural suppression and mass incarceration can be called "insanity". "Evil" would be a better word.
David Spero, RN