Satori

by Don Winslow

Satori was the Zen Buddhist concept of a sudden awakening, a realization of life as it really is. It came not as a result of meditation or conscious thought, but could arrive in the wisp of a breeze, the crackle of a flame, the falling of a leaf.

Singleton was reminded of the old saying that “a liberal is a man who will not take his own side in an argument,”

But, like all traps—in Go or life itself—the way out is never back the way you came.

“Youth thinks it invents the world,” Nicholai said. “Maturity respects the world that it finds. I didn’t come to Saigon to change it or to disrespect its traditions, Monsieur Antonucci.”

“Extraordinary,” De Lhandes muttered, “by the pope’s wrinkled scrotum…”

“By the blue veins on Jane Russell’s sainted breasts,” De Lhandes enthused,