That ambiguity was my intention! Though I do like the concept of the (metaphorical) death of the author.
It is normal! That's the point :)
There was no special connection to the truth in this koan. It was actually a little lame- just my brain pattern-matching. But pattern matching can do some odd things things. I won't reach enlightenment with this koan- I've already followed it as far as it will go. It was "where is your voice located." It's a very "if a tree falls in the forest" type of koan, but I learned just a little from following it in its expected loop.
Ah- thank you. In retrospect what seems like "the obvious thing" to me is not always so.
I'm glad you liked it :)
I always wondered why, at the before-Christmas battle, Hermione didn't give her wish to Sunshine to incentivize them to work together instead of defecting and turning traitor (that is to say- make the wish for sunshine and announce it before the battle.) I think it was the obvious course to unite the army, and it was the obvious Hermione thing to do. Did she fail to do this just because Dumbledore got to her first, or was this a true blind spot on her part?
It looks like it's difficult to wear with glasses. Do you have any ideas for adjustments that might make them fit better?
I had a related (and admittedly somewhat strange) experience to this. I had a dream in which I was given a koan and told to use it to seek enlightenment. When I woke up I wrote down the koan and decided to meditate on it. I gained some wisdom from it, but I also noticed that I was starting to feel empty. Not a peaceful one-ness kind of empty- just empty empty. I realized that if experienced anything like ego death in my present state, it would go very, very badly. It seems counterintuitive, but knew I had to find myself before I continued on the path- to find myself before I lost myself, if that makes any sense. It's as if in order to reach transcendence, there had to be something worth transcending.
If it helps anyone suffering from existential fear, I'm very glad I put it out here.
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After all of Mr. Humman's condescension toward Ms. Tessa, I couldn't help but think of this when I read the ending.
“The girl he had dragged along to the pub with him had grown to loathe him dearly over the last hour, and it would probably have been a great satisfaction to her to know that in a minute and a half or so he would suddenly evaporate into a whiff of hydrogen, ozone and carbon monoxide. However, when the moment came she would be too busy evaporating herself to notice it.”