On Wed, Sep 30, 2009 at 1:16 AM, Andre Broersen <[email protected]>wrote:
> 'This is human life. We cannot lose sight of it. Weeds will flourish, > though > we hate them and wish them gone; I like my weeds. Even the hated starthistle is a beautiful being from a certain perspective... One year at the county fair, they had a special category in flower arrangement combining original artwork and a flower arrangement to complement. Lu, my wife, does mostly portraits of children and pets, and she had one of our cat where she made the eyes real starry... hmmm.... I could probably find it I think its on the web. yeah. Here<http://www.portraitsbylu.com/ART/china.jpg>. Anyway, I made a frame for it as a sort of box enclosure with barbed wire across the front and an arrangement of that hated weed, starthistles. Well the little stars went real well with the stars in the eyes of the kitty and the barbed wire across the whole was very effective and even though it won no prizes, the lady watching the building said it got more comment than any other display. One of my few forays into the arts world. I have a soft spot for starthistles ever since. They're nitrogen fixing you know. They grow most often where man has disturbed the soil, and they last till their task is done. > So the second truth is that dissatisfaction arises within us. > Well some of us. Like if we were raised as princes, pampered and protected for most of our life, then thrust into the truth of our mortality in a horrendous way, we might feel all life is suffering. But what of the pagan born to a creed outworn? Who lives and loves his life in its completeness and totality and dies happy in the sure knowledge of the sound of his grandchildren playing in his ears, and the idea of his spirit going back where it came from. Where is the dissatisfaction in his life? Is all life really only conceptualizable as "suffering"? Or is it so because of a conscious choice to view it thus? And seeing it as a choice, I have to ask how it makes my life more good, to see it as suffering. > 'The third truth is that we can realise the origin of our dissatisfaction, > and can thus put an end to its most profound and existential forms. > Oh. Maybe I just skipped a step is all... > > 'The fourth truth...offers us a means to experience just such a > realisation. > This realisation is sometimes called nirvana or enlightenment. A more > accurate description, however, might simply be freedom of mind'. > (Steve Hagan, Buddhism plain and simple" pp 18-19). > > The connections with the MoQ are fairly obvious. > > For what its worth. I looked up Hagen's book in the library yesterday, and it was checked in, but at the other cross-town branch. Freedom of mind. Hmm... Is it possible to have that AND a marriage? Marriage to a woman, I mean. (just kidding Lu, I'm on my lunch break and I'll get right back to work) Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
