I read a very good dragon story today, I collect teddy bears- not sure what I'd have done if I'd have met a grizzley on the bird trail...
Here is the story, I hope it was okay to post here, it is from Rev. Fudo's site. Saturday, May 15, 2004 A transcript of a lecture never given, by a person unauthorized to teach There is an old zen story, one of Dogen's favorites it seems...he reffered to it often in his writings...that goes something like this: Once, there was a man who loved dragons. He collected dragons carved in stone.dragons made of wax, pictures of dragons,plates with dragons painted on them ,pictures of dragons, and anything else he could find that related to dragons. This man spoke,thought and dreamed of dragons,one could say he ate, drank, and slept dragons. One day a real dragon heard of this man's love of dragons. the dragon thought to himself,"if this man loves dragons so much I should stop by and visit him". So one day when the man was polishing his dragon collection a shadow fell across his house....the man went outside to see what had caused this sudden darkness.....when he looked up into the sky he saw this huge smelly fire breathing monster descending on his house. The man ran away and never looked back. We all have fantasies about the way we would like things to be...we all create dragon collections, we imagine what our life will be like.. we think we know what zen is, what the catholic church is, what meditation is, what our wife, our child is like, we create these imaginary dragon collections, and as long as we are far enough away from our dragons we can make our collection into anything we like. When confronted with the real dragon of Christianity we run away...and make a collection of Buddhist beliefs... when the reality of our wife arises we can run away and create an new dragon collection somewhere else .....we can fall in love with the distant image of Miss September. If our husband is not the dragon we thought him to be..why there are paperback books galore we can collect...full of images of that romantic bastard we thought we married. It does not matter what the dragon collection is that we accumulate,whether we think Buddhism is this pure and holy safe resting place, or whether we think meditation is this holy grail of sitting forever in oneness...sooner or later the real dragon will arrive. We can run from the nasty infighting of the baptist's trying to decide whether women can be ordained right into that Shangra La of Tibetan Buddhism...and as long as the dragon stays in Tibet...we can pretend the nasty infighting over the recognition of Tulkus does not exist....we can run from the corruption and decay of the Catholic Church straight toward Zen , and as long as Zen is in Japan ...well its corruption and decay are also not seen in the shining dragons we polish on our shelves. My friends, life is a real dragon. Full of beauty and ugliness, full of joy and of sorrow, and wherever there is life there is shit galore. When we meet the reality of sitting in meditation we find we are tired sometimes , we are scattered sometimes, sometimes we can see for a fleeting moment the oneness of all things then in an instant it is gone again. When we meet the dragon of Buddhist practice..sometimes the pieces do not fall all together in the nice order we thought we would see...sometimes like my personal experience a beautiful little girl shatters the idea of long years of practice in a monastery. Sometimes there are children, sick parents,depressed partners, sleepy eyes aching joints and just plain no time. These are the real dragons of Buddhist practice. The true test of a person of zen, is not how long they can sit. nor how long they do sit. Or even how great a collection of the dragons of nice Zen thoughts, or nice Zen ideas, of moments of knowing they are Buddhas,or even of good deeds you have. The true test of a person of zen is just this ......When the true dragon arrives....what do you do??? What then should one do when a true dragon appears on their doorstep??? When I was in the monastery I heard that monks were sometimes called dragons of zen. and some of the old hoary dragons were greatly feared by the clouds and water monks (novices). When one of these old dragons appeared they were greeted like anyone else...hands together in greeting, a bow, and room was made in the monastery for them to sleep, they were offered refreshing drink and food for sustenance and were made welcome for the time they chose to stay......and when they left they were given good wishes for their health, money for travel, and were sent off with another bow in thanks for the lessons learned while they were here. Now this is not to say that caring for these old dragons was easy or that there was not a great disturbance in the routine of the monastery while there were there..sometimes time honored rules that we all had to follow were thrown out the window to adjust to this new dragon in our midst. The simple fact was ...no matter the rules......the expectations..the inconvenience...the dragon was here and had to be dealt with and it was our job as monks to see that it was dealt with in the appropriate manner. We stumbled, we got angry, we were confused, we made mistakes, but hopefully...with practice...we eventually developed some finesse at dragon handling. This I think is how the ancestors of old thought true dragons should be treated. So my friends, feel free to show us your dragon collections....and we will watch to see what you do when the true dragon arrives. That is after all the only thing that really matters. I will leave you with this ..hope... this wish .....this recommendation from Dogen Zenji: "Please honored followers of zen, long accustomed to groping for the elephant, Do not be afraid of the real dragon." Be Well Fudo ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> What would our lives be like without music, dance, and theater? Donate or volunteer in the arts today at Network for Good! http://us.click.yahoo.com/WwRTUD/SOnJAA/i1hLAA/S27xlB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> Noble Eightfold Path: Right View, Right Intention, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, Right Concentration, Right Livelihood Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZenForum/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
