what is wrong with a bamboo stick?..merle
The stick is usually of Pine, and sometimes of hardwood, tuned in thickness toward the tip to have a certain amount of "flex" when it strikes. A good stick must have a certain amount of flex. I tune mine incrementally while planing by hand with the block plane, or shaving with the spoke shave, and hitting a hard kapoc-stuffed zazen cushion placed on the floor in order to test for a good amount of flex, without making the taper too thin. My sticks are on four continents, from a Greenwich Village zendo in New York City aligned with the White Plum Sangha of Bernie Glassman and the Mountains and Rivers Sangha of the late John Daido Loori, to Melbourne, Australia, where a stick is in use at the zendo of a sangha aligned with the Diamond Sangha of the late Robert Aitken Roshi. Sticks are also in Europe, Mexico, and South America. Any zen student who is also a woodworker can learn to make a good stick. A good stick of the chan / zen kind is anything but symbolic. Nonetheless, I spare you 30 blows of the kyosaku / shiang-ban. ;-) --Joe --- In [email protected], Merle Lester <merlewiitpom@...> wrote: > > the stick is a symbol as is the carrot...merle
