Good and humorous post. Practice is ultimately useless. No merely human endeavor can ultimately accomplish the spiritual task. Whatever is the product of human practice will be human ... all to human. The Christians are actually superior to the Buddhists in this regard. The Buddhists still think that with some magical Indian pose, they will change the universe. The good Christian knows that all human endeavors are ultimately doomed to failure. For the good Christian, God works through human failure. It is the suffering, the negativity, the constant loss and pain that ends in death, that is the true practice and the true work of God, the Golgotha of each of our lives ... and zafus and zabutons. You don't actually need to go to a temple to suffer. The essential practice as I understand it now, is suffering and pain and loss ... I suddenly understood that yesterday in a glimpse. The good Buddhists such as Kodo Sawaki understand this when they say: "winning is illuson; losing is satori" - and someone gave me this article, from some Tibetan guy, I quote:
"The aim of far too many teachings these days is to make people “feel good,” and even some Buddhist masters are beginning to sound like New Age apostles. Their talks are entirely devoted to validating the manifestation of ego and endorsing the “rightness” of our feelings, neither of which have anything to do with the teachings we find in the pith instructions. So if you are only concerned about feeling good, you are far better off having a full-body massage or listening to some uplifting or life-affirming music than receiving dharma teachings, which were definitely not designed to cheer you up. On the contrary, the dharma was devised specifically to expose your failings and make you feel awful."
( link : http://shambhalasun.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3987&Itemid=0 )
"some Tibetan guy" is actually DZONGSAR JAMYANG KHYENTSE, looking at some you tube videos of him, he's certainly a mixed bag ! :o() !
I would still say he's heterodox, though what he says is abig improvement on the usual crap, but the sense of human insufficiency comes from the displacement into us of infinity................:o)( !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! : o ) (
the point is infinity or god and the sense of that drives everything
as you say
"It is the suffering, the negativity, the constant loss and pain that ends in death, that is the true practice and the true work of God"
yeah, but the point of it all is god it/him/herself, the identity of that with ourselves which your "drunken" poem about the beach and moon and branches really was ................... ! :o)() ()
Brad said, "Shikantaza style meditation seems to me to be the ultimate way of truly letting go of the known."
http://hardcorezen.info/yukue-fumei/1803
I really wish I could find a Buddhist, Zen, or whatever center with intelligent people who are not dogmatic... It would help with me being a bit more social too... We would talk about diverse stuff and not just obsessively talk about how sitting is the best.
the problem is it's only one person in a generation who really understands, that is real understanding is so very rare that it's intrinsically lonely, that's why you have to read sa'di and not talk to him, though reading him, because he knows what he is on about and tells his stories so well is actually TALKING TO HIM !
yeah brad warner is sorta sad, he could have been so much more with a bit of sense and direction, but that's just how it is, it takes 100 or1000 brads for one sa'di to emerge ! :o()
You should check out the film Color of Paradise directed by Majid Majidi. I have a feeling you'd like it a lot because it feels poetic, much like Zerkalo.
If Iran's regime ever improves, you should visit Shiraz, Iran, where Sa'di lived most of his life, and other areas like Persepolis' ruins. Perhaps, my dad and I can take you around, and you can talk about Sa'di with him? He has his Gullistan and can also read it in the native language very well. A lot of intelligent Iranians, like my dad, read Sa'di and Shiraz, Iran is a great area to visit, except for the crazy regime. Most of the people are nice though and dislike the oppressive government.
interesting film, subtlely anti-regime I think ! paradoxically one of the reasons the regime is so difficult to remove is that they killed a fair portion of a whole generation of teenage boys in the human wave stupidity in the iran-iraq war !
these boys would have generated the needed changes as adults now, but of course are dead, killed by men living very comfortably off money from corruption and of course their children never fought !
i think the iran-iraq war was for the arab/persian world like world war one for europe, with some strong lessons about the futility and generation destroying nature of that sort of warfare and the loss of your best men who are removed from the breeding pool to leave the unhealthy to continue the species !
that's why hitler and the nazi's were so keen on eugenics and the killing of the unfit to breed, of course with the usual human contradictions they then managed to decimate another generation of their best men and hitler in particular by refusing to let his /the german troops retreat !
the germans learnt second time around, but what it took for that lesson to sink in !
i think the japanese learnt the first time in WW2 !
each man must realize that it can all disappear very quickly: the cat, the woman, the job, the front tire, the bed, the walls, the room; all our necessities including love, rest on foundations of sand - and any given cause, no matter how unrelated: the death of a boy in Hong Kong or a blizzard in Omaha ... can serve as your undoing. all your chinaware crashing to the kitchen floor, your girl will enter and you'll be standing, drunk, in the center of it and she'll ask: my god, what's the matter? and you'll answer: I don't know, I don't know ...
Smoking outside during the blizzard Everything cold, see a cat running, struggling Looked at cat, forget myself and the chatter subsides
All of a sudden, 6 deer run with antlers An epiphany of Love Call my Beloved to come See A moment of seeing how existence is struggle, yet In the core of the Blizzard there is Light of Life
The Deer Family run away to the deforested woods, Beloved goes inside, Moment of reflection – The stray cat runs to the bowl
Pour him the rest of the Vital Essential Raw Food More happy for himself and the giving - than my own self
Back to my own struggle with the books - This is my struggle, the cold But to be a beacon light onto others, requires humility on my part, like Hui Neng who helped the fish*
* “The title ‘Hui Neng frees the fish’ is when monks would go to small ponds that would dry during a drought, scoop up fish, bring them to the river and let them out….”" http://www.selfdiscoveryportal.com/4othergraphics/HuiNeng2.jpg
sepehr, the deer poem is very good and way ahead of anything in manga, you are doing yourself a disservice by promoting what is inferior to your own efforts ! :o()
Good and humorous post. Practice is ultimately useless. No merely human endeavor can ultimately accomplish the spiritual task. Whatever is the product of human practice will be human ... all to human. The Christians are actually superior to the Buddhists in this regard. The Buddhists still think that with some magical Indian pose, they will change the universe. The good Christian knows that all human endeavors are ultimately doomed to failure. For the good Christian, God works through human failure. It is the suffering, the negativity, the constant loss and pain that ends in death, that is the true practice and the true work of God, the Golgotha of each of our lives ... and zafus and zabutons. You don't actually need to go to a temple to suffer. The essential practice as I understand it now, is suffering and pain and loss ... I suddenly understood that yesterday in a glimpse. The good Buddhists such as Kodo Sawaki understand this when they say: "winning is illuson; losing is satori" - and someone gave me this article, from some Tibetan guy, I quote:
ReplyDelete"The aim of far too many teachings these days is to make people “feel good,” and even some Buddhist masters are beginning to sound like New Age apostles. Their talks are entirely devoted to validating the manifestation of ego and endorsing the “rightness” of our feelings, neither of which have anything to do with the teachings we find in the pith instructions. So if you are only concerned about feeling good, you are far better off having a full-body massage or listening to some uplifting or life-affirming music than receiving dharma teachings, which were definitely not designed to cheer you up. On the contrary, the dharma was devised specifically to expose your failings and make you feel awful."
( link : http://shambhalasun.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3987&Itemid=0 )
good post !
Delete"some Tibetan guy" is actually DZONGSAR JAMYANG KHYENTSE, looking at some you tube videos of him, he's certainly a mixed bag ! :o() !
I would still say he's heterodox, though what he says is abig improvement on the usual crap, but the sense of human insufficiency comes from the displacement into us of infinity................:o)( !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! : o ) (
the point is infinity or god and the sense of that drives everything
as you say
"It is the suffering, the negativity, the constant loss and pain that ends in death, that is the true practice and the true work of God"
yeah, but the point of it all is god it/him/herself, the identity of that with ourselves which your "drunken" poem about the beach and moon and branches really was ................... ! :o)() ()
Check out this bullshit, Andrew:
ReplyDeleteBrad said, "Shikantaza style meditation seems to me to be the ultimate way of truly letting go of the known."
http://hardcorezen.info/yukue-fumei/1803
I really wish I could find a Buddhist, Zen, or whatever center with intelligent people who are not dogmatic... It would help with me being a bit more social too... We would talk about diverse stuff and not just obsessively talk about how sitting is the best.
the problem is it's only one person in a generation who really understands, that is real understanding is so very rare that it's intrinsically lonely, that's why you have to read sa'di and not talk to him, though reading him, because he knows what he is on about and tells his stories so well is actually TALKING TO HIM !
Deleteyeah brad warner is sorta sad, he could have been so much more with a bit of sense and direction, but that's just how it is, it takes 100 or1000 brads for one sa'di to emerge ! :o()
You should check out the film Color of Paradise directed by Majid Majidi. I have a feeling you'd like it a lot because it feels poetic, much like Zerkalo.
DeleteIf Iran's regime ever improves, you should visit Shiraz, Iran, where Sa'di lived most of his life, and other areas like Persepolis' ruins. Perhaps, my dad and I can take you around, and you can talk about Sa'di with him? He has his Gullistan and can also read it in the native language very well. A lot of intelligent Iranians, like my dad, read Sa'di and Shiraz, Iran is a great area to visit, except for the crazy regime. Most of the people are nice though and dislike the oppressive government.
interesting film, subtlely anti-regime I think !
Deleteparadoxically one of the reasons the regime is so difficult to remove is that they killed a fair portion of a whole generation of teenage boys in the human wave stupidity in the iran-iraq war !
these boys would have generated the needed changes as adults now, but of course are dead, killed by men living very comfortably off money from corruption and of course their children never fought !
i think the iran-iraq war was for the arab/persian world like world war one for europe, with some strong lessons about the futility and generation destroying nature of that sort of warfare and the loss of your best men who are removed from the breeding pool to leave the unhealthy to continue the species !
that's why hitler and the nazi's were so keen on eugenics and the killing of the unfit to breed, of course with the usual human contradictions they then managed to decimate another generation of their best men and hitler in particular by refusing to let his /the german troops retreat !
the germans learnt second time around, but what it took for that lesson to sink in !
i think the japanese learnt the first time in WW2 !
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI like this poem by Bukowski a lot.
ReplyDeletePULL A STRING, A PUPPET MOVES by Charles Bukowski
each man must realize
that it can all disappear very
quickly:
the cat, the woman, the job,
the front tire,
the bed, the walls, the
room; all our necessities
including love,
rest on foundations of sand -
and any given cause,
no matter how unrelated:
the death of a boy in Hong Kong
or a blizzard in Omaha ...
can serve as your undoing.
all your chinaware crashing to the
kitchen floor, your girl will enter
and you'll be standing, drunk,
in the center of it and she'll ask:
my god, what's the matter?
and you'll answer: I don't know,
I don't know ...
Smoking outside during the blizzard
ReplyDeleteEverything cold, see a cat running, struggling
Looked at cat, forget myself and the chatter subsides
All of a sudden, 6 deer run
with antlers
An epiphany of Love
Call my Beloved to come See
A moment of seeing how existence is struggle, yet
In the core of the Blizzard there is Light of Life
The Deer Family run away to the deforested woods,
Beloved goes inside,
Moment of reflection –
The stray cat runs to the bowl
Pour him the rest of the Vital Essential Raw Food
More happy for himself and the giving -
than my own self
Back to my own struggle with the books -
This is my struggle, the cold
But to be a beacon light onto others,
requires humility on my part, like Hui Neng who helped the fish*
* “The title ‘Hui Neng frees the fish’ is when monks would go to small ponds that would dry during a drought, scoop up fish, bring them to the river and let them out….”" http://www.selfdiscoveryportal.com/4othergraphics/HuiNeng2.jpg
yeah, I liked that ! :o)
DeleteAlso, check out this manga, Andrew. It's not like other sequential art. I'm interested in your opinion of it. Read a bit before giving your opinion:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.anymanga.com/walking-man/001/001/
Thanks.
This comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteI read a fair portion including chapter 18 !
Deleteit's sorta partial, dulled, no bite and too suburban !
the theme is similar to following the peach blossom stream by wang wei, but just doesn't cut it by a million miles whereas wang wei is all there !
http://www.chinese-poems.com/peach.html
one of the universe's most profound poems ! YAY ! :o)(
Like always you give me something better, lol.
DeleteDefinitely great stuff. Makes me wish I knew Chinese like my friend. He spent 4 years to get very proficient at it though.
He's been reading Wang Wei like crazy lately.
What do you think of this one?
Deletehttp://mangafox.me/manga/little_forest/v01/c001/4.html
It's a greener version of the other one I sent. It's set in a rural area.
very long winded jam making instructions ! dense = intense, manga is way too dilute for me ! :o) ( )
Deletesepehr, the deer poem is very good and way ahead of anything in manga, you are doing yourself a disservice by promoting what is inferior to your own efforts ! :o()
Delete