Kitano Gempo, abbot of Eihei temple, was ninety-two years old when he passed away in the year 1933. He endeavored his whole life not to be attached to anything. As a wandering mendicant when he was twenty he happened to meet a traveler who smoked tobacco. As they walked together down a mountain road, they stopped under a tree to rest. The traveler offered Kitano a smoke, which he accepted, as he was very hungry at the time.
Category: buddhism
This category is about everything Buddha and Buddhism, which teaches that:
1) everything is marked by impermanence, to believe in any permanence is to suffer, and the the ultimate cause of suffering is the rejection of the non-permanent self.
2) Enlightenment (contentment) can be found through the understanding of the true nature of existence (trilaksana) as stated here, and by living in accordance to such an understanding.
melting glaciers
nothing can stop you now
nothing had stopped you before
your push towards the sea
towards some lower position
to a natural state called “rest”
that is your unrest
but no one noticed
life death existence non
they are all the same thing
indifferent before now ever
Enlightenment is not a state of mind
After a lecture a young man asked Suzuki Roshi what he thought about LSD. All he said was, “Enlightenment is not a state of mind.”
From Zen is Right Here
Everything is an opportunity …
everything is
an opportunity to
show me the way
to enlightenment.
No love
Love does not exist just as hate does not. If it exists then Buddhism would mean nothing. The question is therefore one of what truly exists – love, hate, Buddhism, nothing – or to be more accurate what does it mean for some thing to exist. Such is the irony … and mystery.
EPA used to stand for compassion
This morning I opened the newspaper and saw “EPA” on the front page headlines. “Oh, great!” I thought … until I read it stood for economic partnership agreement.
It used to stand for Environmental Protection Agency.
How times have changed … or regressed.
Shrinkflation
We are such masters at deception and self-delusion.
Until now there wasn’t a word for this trick – shrinkflation – of making things smaller while selling it to you at the same price as before. We knew about it as manufacturers (they all do it). And as consumers we notice it but forget about it seconds later.
This is why I dislike economics because it is dishonest in its methods.
I’ve said similar things about money and value before. It is easy to pull wool over the consumers eyes with visual trickery.
(Zen in) the art of serving coffee #1
If I were the owner of a coffee shop the first thing I would watch in a customer is which hand he or she uses to drink the complementary water served, and then serve the coffee with the cup handle placed towards the “handed-ness” of that customer.
This is nothing more than Mindfulness on the part of the coffee master.
Meaning
You know, nothing really has meaning.
What I mean by this is that within context things make sense. But what if you expand or contract the context? The meaning changes. So this in itself is an indication of the inherent instability of meaning.
So meaning is contextual. It is empty of any independent “substance”. Nothing new about this. Socrates said something similar about words in Cratylus. As did Buddha. And so the jump to this conclusion is not hard to reach.
Keep Calm. Meditate.
I should take this – my own advice – to heart.
Happy New Year, everyone.
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