Grasping This Beautiful Moon

A Zen Master lived the simplest kind of life in a little hut at the foot of a mountain. One evening, while he was away, a thief sneaked into the hut only to find there was nothing in it to steal. The Zen Master returned and found him. “You have come a long way to visit me,” he told the prowler, “and you should not return empty handed. Please take my clothes as a gift.” The thief was bewildered, but he took the clothes and ran away. The Master sat naked, watching the moon. “Poor fellow,” he mused, ” I wish I could give him this beautiful moon.” — from… Read More

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Japanese in the times of Novel Coronavirus

So Shakespeare wrote King Lear during the plague, did he? Who did the cooking and dishwashing and cleaning while this mighty man was dipping his quill in the ink? I’m not going to lie. My studying stopped a month ago. Mentally, I couldn’t handle work, and isolation, and general life, and studying Japanese. The most I’ve done is write some moments on HelloTalk. But last night, I had a thought. “If you don’t care, why are you bothering?” This seems like a stupid thought, but it reminded me: I began studying Japanese because I loved its culture I began studying Japanese because I wanted to travel around and not starve… Read More

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