Flowers Fade

Tomorrow's rose isn't beautiful yet, and last week's rose, though once beautiful, no longer is.

Soon, it will not even be a rose.

The ingredients are all set out on the table.  It is not yet a good tasting soup.  In the refrigerator I find a container of the soup I made 2+ weeks ago.  It is no longer a good tasting soup.

Soon, it will not even be soup.

I had occasion recently to revisit the issue of teacher scandal in Zen, and I have begun to wonder if even sanctioned insight and teaching authority doesn't have a limited shelf life.  When causes and conditions are right, the teacher appears; when causes and conditions are no longer right, the teacher disappears, even if there's a document of transmission, a hossu and all the rest that somehow linger on. 

I don't know.

Every kind of take on "real" or "true" teaching authority as well as every suggestion for a way forward has hit my eardrums over the last year or so, from

"Humpty Dumpty was never whole" to
"Humpty Dumpty had a blind spot for wall edges" to
"We are all Humpty Dumpty" to
"Give Humpty Dumpty time, and the cracks will mend" to
"Humpty Dumpty can fry on the pavement" to
"Who put Humpty Dumpty on the wall to begin with?" to
"Who's to say Humpty Dumpty is even broken?" to
"Humpty Dumpty was such a good egg, he can't be broken!"

None of these are satisfactory, yet none of these are completely off the mark, either.

This issue gives me a headache in the worst possible way.  It pushes just about all of my pushable buttons. 

Homage to all Buddhas in the ten directions for giving me the boon of such wonderful teaching!