linky cleanup
Sep. 4th, 2006 10:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jazzfishBroken Koans, via ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
baranoouji long ago. A sample:
One afternoon a student said "Roshi, I don't really understand what's going on. I mean, we sit in zazen and we gassho to each other and everything, and Felicia got enlightened when the bottom fell out of her water-bucket, and Todd got enlightened when you popped him one with your staff, and people work on koans and get enlightened, but I've been doing this for two years now, and the koans don't make any sense, and I don't feel enlightened at all! Can you just tell me what's going on?"
"Well you see," Roshi replied, "for most people, and especially for most educated people like you and I, what we perceive and experience is heavily mediated, through language and concepts that are deeply ingrained in our ways of thinking and feeling. Our objective here is to induce in ourselves and in each other a psychological state that involves the unmediated experience of the world, because we believe that that state has certain desirable properties. It's impossible in general to reach that state through any particular form or method, since forms and methods are themselves examples of the mediators that we are trying to avoid. So we employ a variety of ad hoc means, some linguistic like koans and some non-linguistic like zazen, in hopes that for any given student one or more of our methods will, in whatever way, engender the condition of non-mediated experience that is our goal. And since even thinking in terms of mediators and goals tends to reinforce our undesirable dependency on concepts, we actively discourage exactly this kind of analytical discourse."
And the student was enlightened.
David Morgan-Mar handles a recent loss quite well.
From Making Light, the music video for Total Eclipse of the Heart. Two things go through my mind as I watch this: first, that as a commenter on ML says, you can never have too many pirouetting ninjas; second, that this was Crys Doty's absolute favorite song in college. "It's a good thing that acid and MTV came along in different decades." --Scraps DeSelby
From the same, Marina's vacation photos, which made me say Oh my God.
pnh has made several posts about Harlan Ellison's recent bit of dumbassery (point #3 in the first linked post). The comments, of course, are also well worth the reading.
baranoouji long ago. A sample:One afternoon a student said "Roshi, I don't really understand what's going on. I mean, we sit in zazen and we gassho to each other and everything, and Felicia got enlightened when the bottom fell out of her water-bucket, and Todd got enlightened when you popped him one with your staff, and people work on koans and get enlightened, but I've been doing this for two years now, and the koans don't make any sense, and I don't feel enlightened at all! Can you just tell me what's going on?"
"Well you see," Roshi replied, "for most people, and especially for most educated people like you and I, what we perceive and experience is heavily mediated, through language and concepts that are deeply ingrained in our ways of thinking and feeling. Our objective here is to induce in ourselves and in each other a psychological state that involves the unmediated experience of the world, because we believe that that state has certain desirable properties. It's impossible in general to reach that state through any particular form or method, since forms and methods are themselves examples of the mediators that we are trying to avoid. So we employ a variety of ad hoc means, some linguistic like koans and some non-linguistic like zazen, in hopes that for any given student one or more of our methods will, in whatever way, engender the condition of non-mediated experience that is our goal. And since even thinking in terms of mediators and goals tends to reinforce our undesirable dependency on concepts, we actively discourage exactly this kind of analytical discourse."
And the student was enlightened.
David Morgan-Mar handles a recent loss quite well.
From Making Light, the music video for Total Eclipse of the Heart. Two things go through my mind as I watch this: first, that as a commenter on ML says, you can never have too many pirouetting ninjas; second, that this was Crys Doty's absolute favorite song in college. "It's a good thing that acid and MTV came along in different decades." --Scraps DeSelby
From the same, Marina's vacation photos, which made me say Oh my God.
pnh has made several posts about Harlan Ellison's recent bit of dumbassery (point #3 in the first linked post). The comments, of course, are also well worth the reading.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-05 07:37 am (UTC)Heh.
Thanks for the HE roundup.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-07 12:56 am (UTC)Quite welcome. I keep being shocked that These Kinds Of Things still happen.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-05 08:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-05 08:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-07 01:07 am (UTC)I read a few of the comments; TNH also has an interesting analysis ("There is sexual tension present. It's all between the boys." "Note: he may be a were-pigeon.") and amusing commentary thereafter. (Including, oh my ghod, the album cover. "Turn around, Bright Ears.")
no subject
Date: 2006-09-07 12:21 am (UTC)The Core of the Teachings
We were enclosed in a wall made of one thousand wooden planks. One day our Teacher walked over, tore loose the 637th plank, and used it to smash down the wall. Then he went to lunch.
We were amazed! We took the 637th plank and stood it back up on end. "The 637th plank is the core of the Teachings!", we said, and we looked upon it in wonder and awe.
Now some of us are saying "No, no, it's not the plank itself that's important, it's the way that the Teacher held it. The Grip is the core of the Teachings!".
But the Teacher is still at lunch, so we can't ask him.