A Prayer I’ve Written

This post was also meant to be posted quite a long time ago. I felt there was meaning in the order of the posts, It is what Kalo would have called, justly, I am certain, - their rhythm. I am just saying I knew I was going to post this post here after the last one which has been delayed for so long, - and consequently this one is being written and published only now.


Since it has been so much time, I don’t so much remember what I was going to write here. The prayer itself I had, both English and Hebrew, but it has been in January 2011 that I wrote it, and it has been since 2012 that I wanted to write this post, so as for the circumstances or the intended content of the post, I don’t remember so much.

Perhaps it is of no meaning. Generally from an e-mail message I sent it tells I wrote it following a post Brad Warner wrote on HCZ. I don’t think I was going to mention this here but anyway. I sent it by e-mail (the message I mentioned above) to Gustav Ericsson. Later I translated it to Hebrew - which grew subsequently somewhat longer. - I sent this too to Nissim Amon, and asked him to pass it over also to Gil Alon. Gustav, Nissim and Gil are Dharma successors of Nishijima Roshi, as of course Brad is too. That is they received Dharma transmission from him. (It is totally irrelevant to this post but I have recently understood - reading Shobogenzo Shisho, - that Dharma transmission meant totally different at the time Master Dogen lived. I don’t know when was the change.) This is about all I have to say. I am mentioning the e-mail messages since I never made public of this else than that.

Anyway, obviously what matters is the prayer itself, in this post. So here it is, as I’ve written it in English:

        “You within which space and time dwell, grant me with that which may be considered most fortunate for my true existence, - not for that which I deludedly imagine myself to be”.

Explanations will not be supplied. - Anyway, as I said later I translated it to Hebrew. It is not literally the same. I intended to copy the spirit and it happened that with the change of language it became right to be written somewhat differently. If you don’t speak Hebrew you doubtly need be concerned. The Hebrew version is as follows:

        ”אבי המרחב והזמן אשר בו הם שוכנים, - הענק לי, אם תחפץ ואם תראה לנכון, - את המיטיב עם שהנני לאמיתו של דבר, הלכה למעשה, כאמת שלא נודעה לעולם בלתי אם לעצמה, - תחת עם המצטייר בעיני ראייתו החלקית והמוטעית של שמדמה אני את עצמי להיות כהוויתי אני.

      קרי - לא דבר שהוא. זולתי שיבוא לידיי ממילא. כטבע הממשות בעולם האשליה.“.

That is it.

Actually as far as I remember the post was to be called “Two Prayers I’ve Written", but I cannot see what might have been a second one. I think there was another one but no reasonable possibility seems to exist. It doesn’t seem this could be just because of the translation. If I ever remember I might revise.

So far.

(Written on a “Word” and copied off to the blog later. Not written directly on the blog.)