Fudo writes: You are still picking and choosing.... The reason you practice immediately ..as if your hair is on fire, is because this moment may indeed be your last. It does no good to become desperate, frantic and run around screaming with your hair on fire..but if you immediately address the problem in a calm and effective manner..the fire will be quickly dealt with, and the damage minimized. The same is true of death.
Thanks for the thoughtful post, Fudo. Let me do a little thinking out loud here to see if there's more realization I can squeeze out of this thread: 1) I sense that I am supposed to have an urgent-calm about each moment. As though my hair is on fire, but the best way to deal with it is with deliberate action. I would find such a living a blast, the ultimate game where it started even before I was read the rules. I like a good challenges, especially one that I can meet based on my own metal... Plus trying anything 100% is freeing because failure is then only failure and second guessing is only done for instructvieness in the game without any time-outs or caution flags to cry about defeats:) 2) This whole 'practice' as though your hairs on fire seems too decadent to be real. Just another egotistic challenge to waste years of my life trying to push the river. But, the more I practice, the more I seem to practice -- I am more an more aware when I find myself adrift in some stupid fog, so its possible I couldn't stop from eventually practing with my hair on fire 'cause it's the destination that seems to be pulling ME. So perhaps I don't have to set my hair on fire myself to spure me along, just recognize that just because my hair is starting to smolder, doesn't mean I going the wrong direction... 4) My biggest fear (today :) is that I don't appreciate life enough. That it will take cancer, old age, etc. to remind me of its preciousness. It seems if I could stomach death, then I would have a constant dragon over my shoulder scaring me into valueing what I have. But this dragon would have to be built, and its flames stoked. I would have to work to give it proper power, I'm afraid. Which is interesting isn't it? I've encountered a couple characters in fiction (such as Zorba the Greek) who laugh off death and say, "death can have me any time it wants (if it can catch me), meanwhile I got bigger fsih to fry." Perhaps I'm not that frightened after all of the impermanence and death of this joker, Rod, and only mad at myself for not caring more about it -- dissapointed in my laizze fairre fuck-it-then attitude -- and so I've conjured an image of a dragon that I figure I'm supposed to flesh out the details of its scariness. When all of it is motivated by my shame that I'm not frightened enough of the lizard of death, nor impressed enough by the gift of life. So maybe I'm struggling because I DON"T care that much about Life or Death, and all the struggle to demonizing death in order to appricate life is a big charade trying to impress the score-keepers of what a great life-liver I am... Phew... Just re-read it, glad to get it out of my system -- but not sure I believe a word of it :) Sorry if you weren't in "skim-mode" and this is self-masturbating drivel. Rod ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Would you Help a Child in need? It is easier than you think. Click Here to meet a Child you can help. http://us.click.yahoo.com/0Z9NuA/I_qJAA/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/
