Zen practitioners eventually come to question the purpose of their practice and most conclude that zazen is pointless which does not seem to curtail their time on the zafu; paradoxically, purposeless or empty practice tends to deepen samadhi.

Harmic, charmic, disarmic—as for the silliness of the verse, I do not desire to exclude humor from poetry. Word play is an integral and a joyfully unavoidable aspect of literature.

Photo taken on the grounds of the Kameyama Castle ruins.