Zen is all about creating the ball of Great Doubt. Like a hairball, Great Doubt is a question that questions the assumptions of who you think you are. Rather than a hairball, it is likened to a hot iron ball that is caught in your throat. You can’t cough it up and you can’t swallow it. Or, if you like rats, it’s a rat in a bamboo shoot that can’t go forward or backward. But I like hairball since we have a cat.

When a Zen master was asked what enlightenment was, he said: everyday mind. And this is the joy of my writing on FB for it is here that I can share my mundane retired life as metaphors that point beyond my mundane everyday life. In this way the particular is the universal, and the universal is my particular everyday life. I give you the finger that points to the transcendent One. If you focus on the finger you miss the point.