WEBVTT

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This poem is titled "The Bowl."

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You can think of any kitchen
bowl, that would be fine.

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If you happen to think of
the begging bowl carried

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by Buddhist monks in
traditional cultures,

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where they go from
household to household

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and if their practice and
contribution to the community

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is not found worthy, nobody
puts any rice in their bowl

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and they go hungry.

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There's also a small reference
to a Les Blank film about

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Werner Erhard that some
of you might recognize,

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and don't worry if you don't.

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"The Bowl."

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"If meat is put into
the bowl, meat is eaten.

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If rice is put into the
bowl, it may be cooked.

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If a shoe is put into the
bowl, the leather is chewed

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and chewed over, a sentence
that cannot be taken

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in or forgotten.

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A day, if a day could feel,
must feel like a bowl.

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Wars, loves, trucks, betrayals,
kindness, it eats them.

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Then the next day comes,
spotless and hungry.

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The bowl cannot be thrown away.

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It cannot be broken.

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It is calm,
uneclipsable, rindless,

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and, big though it seems, fits
exactly in two human hands.

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Hands with ten fingers,
fifty-four bones,

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capacities strange to
us almost past measure.

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Scented-- as the
curve of the bowl is--

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with cardamom, star anise,
long pepper, cinnamon, hyssop."

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