Ikkyu

I came across this poem by Ikkyu, a 15th century Zen priest, yesterday, and thought it was intriguing and decided to share it.

For ten days in this temple my mind's been in turmoil.
My feet are entangled in endless red strings.
If some day you get around to looking for me,
Try the fish shop, the wine parlour, or the brothel.

That's it. (As a note, the priests were forbidden to eat meat or drink wine, and presumably to frequent brothels.)

Here's a statistic I came across tonight in Time magazine: 32,155 Japanese people committed suicide in 2006, a 1.2 % drop from 2005. That shocked me. That's about 1 suicide every 16 minutes. And, that's only Japanese people, not total suicides in the world in a year.

The times that I want to die the most are the times when I feel tired. Not tired as in, "Wow, I need to go to sleep because I can't keep my eyes open" tired, but an incredible weariness of life, and wanting that to be over. Not suffering itself, but weariness from the presence of suffering.