(Zenith Zen) The Zen Buddhist story that will change how you spend the next 60 seconds of your life
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| Buddhism, Taoism say: "Be here now." |
He may have been onto me because just as he started to drift off, he would rouse himself with some coughing or clearing his throat. I had to wait, pretending to be interested in what he had on, some old timey British movie from the 60s. Half aware, he kept an eye on me. And it seemed every time I made a move to change the channel, he would snap back to consciousness. I had to sit there looking all innocent, watching whatever he had on, until I became mesmerized by what it was.
This remarkable movie was funny and grew increasingly funny as the viewer realized what was happening. I immediately wished for a way to send it back to the beginning so I could see how it unfolded from the start. But there was no way. One could only enjoy as little as one had left of it. I didn't even know if I had missed half of it, 90% of it, or how much was left. But it kept getting funnier and funnier.
The set up was a Faustian bargain between a nobody up against a brilliant and angelic Beelzebub. The first had apparently sold his soul for seven wishes, and the latter was tricking him into quickly using them up. All the schlub wanted was the love of an unattainable beauty he worked with.
And that was enough for the Devil. All he had to do was trick the schlub into picking yet another foolish strategy for attaining his goal and then pull the rug out from under him by giving him what he literally asked for and never the spirit of what he wished. The Devil used the beauty as the bait, and the man kept biting...until, seemingly out of nowhere, he grew a backbone and chose to stop.
"What do you mean 'stop'?" the Devil demanded. "You're too smart for me, I can't get what I wish for, so I'm not going to use up any more wishes." The Devil never heard of such a thing. If the man doesn't use all seven wishes, well, the deal's off. He never gets his soul. The man had inadvertently found a gaping loophole in the blood pact bargain.
Beelzebub was too smart to accept no for an answer, so he seduced the man with friendly talk and an offer to use his place to rest himself, in the meanwhile sending in Lust (played by Raquel Welch) to seduce and confuse him. Then Vanity, all the Seven Deadly Sins at his disposal. The man was soon turned around and continued to wish.
During that brief period of friendship, Beelzebub let the man tag along during his busy day doing mischief and mayhem. As part of those escapades, they found themselves up a telephone pole cutting wires and making prank calls to a woman whose husband was cheating on her, breaking the bad news to get the philanderer in trouble with his wife.
The man, already put off by his own bargain gone bad, felt disgusted at the Devil's behavior. "How can you live with yourself, doing all these petty bad deeds, hurting people?" the man said judgmentally.
The Devil answered that it was his job. Anyway, it was just mischief. But he was hurt and he got the man back with one of the many zingers in this super-clever film. Who knows how this fantastic piece of comic morality tale came to be on American TV, which is usually filled with tripe and cotton candy. This was a truffle by comparison.
The Devil says to the man, "In the words of the great philosopher Lee Kwai Kwak, imagine you were walking along when a tiger jumped out and began to chase you. You run away but come to the edge of a cliff. Looking over, you notice the tiger's mate chomping her jaws waiting for you to fall. You turn around to go the other way, but there's the male tiger chomping its jaws about to eat you. What would you do?" The man's answer?
He exclaims, "What a stupid question! I wouldn't get myself into such a mess in the first place!"
"Oh, no, not you. You're far better off! Here you are halfway up a pole in Berkshire, half your wishes gone and no idea how to get down. You have nothing to learn from Lee Kwai Kwak and his tigers."
The man is nonplussed, realizing he should have paid attention about what to do in such a hopeless situation. Now, not having listened, he's on the edge of ruin.
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| Bedazzled (1967 film) |
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| Vidiots, the world's greatest video store |
Vidiots of Santa Monica (now reborn in Eagle Rock) had it! More than that I appeared it. Imagine loving a film so much that you get yourself in it. How? One can't go back in time and change the same timeline. No, but one can appear in the sequel then get cut out of it as the numb director chops the climactic scene, the funniest scene, and replaces it with a nonsensical gag. That's Hollywood for ya, every sequel a waste of time money grab.
Seeing it from the beginning, it was even funnier and more a work of genius than I could have realized and better than I remembered. Every Christian should consider it a must-see to question assumptions about their faith. Every atheist who knows a thing or two about what the Church teaches should see it to see those assumptions skewered. Every Buddhist might way to pay attention when the Trickster begins to explain the Zen parable of the tigers and the strawberries. Will anyone listen? Who knows? One can lead a vidiot to videotape, but one cannot make anyone get it.
- The Tigers & The Strawberry | Embrace Mindfulness
- Zen story: Tigers and a Strawberry (Graceguts)
- Zenith Zen (video); Eds., Wisdom Quarterly
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