Signal and Noise
What is the signal, and what is the noise? What is reality, and what is the ploy? What is the sickness, and what is the well? What part is heaven, and what part is hell?
What can you know before being taught? What can you see before there is thought? What is the moon, and what is the sun? What hasn’t started, and what has begun?
What is so pure, and what is diluted? Who has the truth, and who is deluded? What is the root, and what is the tree? Can we be separate or one you and me?
Is there a path? Is there a way? To shuffle the clutter from here to away? Why is there earth, and why is there air? Everything wiped out with one solar flare.
What is religion, and what is the way? Why should we listen t’what you have to say? What is the seed, and what is the flower? How would it be different if you had the power?
What is the tree, and what is the leaf? To what do you point at as your source of belief? What is the food, and what is the waste? Would it still all exist if we had to be chaste?
Before you were born, long after you’re dead, What will they mean — these thoughts in your head?
From Zen and the Art of [nothing] by John Zdanowski & Jeff Abrams, Chapter 4.
See: People Are Like Sonar Systems · Signal vs Noise · All Poems