YEARNING EYES

You know how it is when you saw some hungry monkeys along the road while you were going down the mountain a few mornings ago, the day after seeing the new mushroom buds emerging from your shiitake logs, even harvesting a couple of the bigger ones before the monkeys got them, then looking at the same logs on your next morning off and seeing every single bud (and the surrounding bark) bitten away by obviously monkey teeth: you get a little anxious about your mushrooms.

So it is that each morning thereafter you look out the big kitchen window at around sunrise to check if any new mushrooms are emerging and each time you do, you see a big mushroom or two, but when later you go out to get them there aren't any, and you find out that it was only blendings of light, shadow and coloration that your hungry mind had eagerly transformed into what it desired. At which point you realize that your yearnings have always played such tricks on your mind, yearnings of whatever kind. You see what you desire, more than you see what is there. Each specific instance has its own particulars so you can't generalize much, other than to say that, transcendently speaking, yearning eyes are not reliable guides.

Damn I learn a lot from those monkeys.