Joe, Forgot my joke in the last post. It's not on topic at all, but I heard it recently and thought it a gem.
Q: How many Freudian psychoanalysts does it take to change a lightbulb? A: Two. One to change the lightbulb and one to hold the penis.. Arghh, I mean ladder! Mike ________________________________ From: Joe <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Tuesday, 31 July 2012, 20:48 Subject: [Zen] Re: Chan and zen Mike, Yow; definitely the clincher. There are some lovely statements by masters, or others just awakened, about the beauty of the world, calling it the Pure Land, and etc. Some I like in particular speak of the "moonlight" of Wisdom, and of the mountains and rivers of the great earth, "flowing like brocade". My teachers were patient with me when I told them about everything looking clean and brightly color-saturated, as if "wetted", and everything emitting light. Sometimes as if all is made of white candle wax, and as if Roses are made of eons old sleepy ashes. Blacks are definitely too black, and, as I walk about or stand still, shadows are more amazing than the chiaroscuro paintings of Italian renaissance old masters. The unity of things, all things participating and together essentially expounding the Dharma, is a very friendly phenomenon, and we are intimate with everything because we are one with that web, the jewel net of Indra. As I walked the streets of New York City while the soybean hung on my forehead, I could also see in people the places where their energy was blocked-up, where they were deformed internally and externally, and where they held tightness and tension in themselves. As a martial- artist, I could thus also see now exactly where they would be most vulnerable if I had to exert a defensive effort. At this point, I met a Tai Chi teacher, Master Da Liu, and became his student in that art, and never practiced the hard form again, which had been Tiger Paw k'ung fu. All of Hatha Yoga also made much more sense. ;-) Practice has had its ups and downs. I think this is good, because, for someone who has vowed to teach people, it's good for oneself to be a beginner (quite) a number of times over, and to find out what is valuable at different phases of life, or when certain physical or mental fixations as a householder are predominant distractions or obstacles, or simply must be borne and shared within one's practice-life. And then, to see the effects of practice on all this. I feel I've been re-born many times already Mike, in this one life. OK, how about a Joke: Hindu to Christian: "How many TIMES have you been born again?" Best, --Joe > mike brown <uerusuboyo@...> wrote: > > Kris, > > Well, ultimately, of course, you're quite right - there is nothing lacking > nor are there 'others' to convince [snip] > But then again, maybe that's just because I like bright and shiny things ; )
