(Moon Mind Temple) Buddhist teachings that end the vicious circle of negative habits | Zen stories for deep peace (Thich Nhat Hanh)
Showing posts with label zen. Show all posts
Showing posts with label zen. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 22, 2026
Friday, August 28, 2026
The three or four kinds of Buddhism
(The East Made Simple) Every major school (sect, tradition, yana or "vehicle") of Buddhism explained: What each one actually believes, teaches, and attempts to practice. The division is usually Theravada (10%) keeping as close as possible to the teachings of the historical Buddha (Siddhartha Gautama, Shakyamuni) versus all the others aligning with later interpretations, changes, watering down the message or changing it altogether to build a grand boat that calls itself the "Great Vehicle" or Mahayana (90%). But Vajrayana, a Himalayan (Bhutanese, Nepalese, Tibetan, Mongolian, Russian) school of Esoteric Buddhism, combining many occult Hindu practices (tantra, mantra, yoga, etc.) may also be distinguished or Japanese Zen (a combination of Taoism, Confucianism, Shinto, and Buddhism, but Japan prefers faith-based universalism, Nichiren Shōshū, like most of the rest of the world to pray and receive help from another-power to do all the heavy lifting to deliverance) even though all three are considered Mahayana sects.
Friday, August 21, 2026
Zen and the power to disappear (enso)
(DHARMA) The power of disappearing: What a Zen circle (enso) teaches us about silence
Thursday, August 20, 2026
Awakening means seeing through illusion
(ECHOES OF LOST KNOWLEDGE) Bodhidharma: "Awakening" means seeing through illusions (cleansing the heart/mind of the Three Poisons) | First Zen Patriarch from India
Tuesday, August 18, 2026
One practice that includes all others
(ECHOES OF LOST KNOWLEDGE) The ONE practice that changes everything | Zen awakening
Friday, August 14, 2026
The real meaning of Yin and Yang ☯️
(Flowing Void) What does the ying and yang actually mean? (Taoist philosophy explained)
Yin-Yang is NOT about balance
Yin Yang is much deeper than thought | I Ching, Yin-Yang, trigrams, Chinese philosophy
Today, let’s talk about the I Ching, not as magic, not as fortunetelling, but as one of humanity’s oldest attempts to understand change.
- 00:00 Intro
- 00:23 The idea of change: What and why?
- 00:58 Yin and Yang, symbols and meanings
- 02:51 The Four Stages
- 03:12 The 8 trigrams, with examples
- 06:44 The 64 hexagrams, with examples
- 09:25 Magic? Fortunetelling?
Whether learning Chinese for the first time or simply curious about the hidden stories in characters, this video will make viewers see Chinese in a whole new way.
👉 Remember to like 👍, comment 💬, and subscribe 🔔 for more fun explorations of Chinese characters. #IChing #YinYang #ChineseCulture Support my work via Paypal: paypal.me/JiayiWu83 Or via SUPER THANKS button under the video
Cobra Kai: Rayna's martial arts showdown
It's all "Hollywood" pretending, isn't it?
(SportsEye) They thought Mona Kimura was the scariest Japanese female mixed martial artist in the boxing ring, but they hadn't yet met Maria Suzuki
But can a girl ever win?
Rhonda Rousey vs. Floyd Mayweather?
Thursday, August 13, 2026
Bruce Lee Thai boxing with a woman
Bruce Lee challenged by Thai female kickboxer undefeated 1971 — Bangkok match
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| I can prevail with just one well placed strike. |
"Come to Bangkok. Fight me. Or admit you fear women."
Bruce Lee read the challenge. Hong Kong. Filming Fist of Fury. He never fought woman before, never fought a perfect record, but he refused to decline the offer.
"She's undefeated champion. She deserves respect. She deserves fight."
He accepted. "Bangkok. November 15. Traditional Muay Thai rules. Five rounds. No cameras. No publicity. Just two martial artists."
Muay Thai or Muaythai (Thai มวยไทย, RTGS muai thai) is sometimes referred to as Thai boxing, the Art of Eight Limbs [5], or the Science of Eight Limbs [6]. It is a Thai martial art and full-contact combat sport that uses stand-up striking, sweeps, and clinching techniques [7]. The name "Art of Eight Limbs" refers to the combined use of two fists, two elbows, two knees, and two shins [8].Muay Thai with boxer and farang - Muay Thai went international in the late 20th-21st century, when Westernized practitioners from Thailand began competing in kickboxing, mixed-rules matches, and matches under Muay Thai rules around the world. The professional league is governed by the Professional Boxing Association of Thailand, sanctioned by the Sports Authority of Thailand.
Muay Thai is related to martial art styles of India's cultural sphere: Musti-yuddha [9, 10], Muay Chaiya, Muay Boran, Muay Lao, Lethwei, Kun Khmer, Benjang [11], and Tomoi [12].Thai fighters wearing mongkhon - Muay Thai practitioners are known as Nak Muay. Western practitioners are sometimes called Nak Muay Farang, meaning "foreign boxer" [13].
- Muay Thai etymology: The Thai language term Muay Thai [14] that is a compound word made up of muay and Thai, the first derived from the Sanskrit root word [15] mavya [16], which means "to pull together," "to form into a single group or unit," or "unity" [16], defined as "to tie" [17] and "sport boxing" [18] in Thai. The alternative form of the Sanskrit word mavya is mavy (mavyati, Sanskrit मव्य् (मव्यति, lit. "to bind, to tie, to fasten") from its root term mav [19, 20] (Sanskrit मव). "Thai" comes from the word Tai [15], which means "free" [21] and "Tai-Kadai speakers " [Note 1]. More
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| Black implies white. White implies black. Swirling |
She cut her hair, wrapped her chest to bind her bosom, and nobody knew for three years. Then one sparring session at age 11, fighting a 16-year-old boy, he hit her too hard and split her lip. She attacked, knee to body, elbow to face.
The Boy went down. The coach discovered her secret, "You're a girl?" She expected to be banned. The coach smiled, "You fight better than any boy. Stay. Become a champion."
By age 25, she was a legend. Men refused to fight her. They were too scared. "What if I lose to a woman?" She laughed. "You will lose. Question is how long you last."
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| I am water, I am void, I pivot to evade strikes. |
The bell rang.
Somrak attacked, low kick. Bruce checked it. She threw a combination. He slipped. She threw an elbow. He ducked. He countered. A backfist grazed her cheek. This was a real fight, five rounds. Both gave everything they had.
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| I make martial arts films. |
By Round 5, both were bloody. Bruce's eyebrow was cut. Somrak lip was split. They were still fighting, still trading strikes, no defense, just pure warrior spirit. The bell rang.
Silence. Then both bowed simultaneously, smiling.
The referee raised both hands. It was a draw by unanimous decision. It had been 48 fights, and she was still undefeated. Both remained undefeated. Nobody lost. Both won.
They hugged, "You are a real martial artist," Somrak said. "Gender doesn't matter, only heart."
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| I wish I'd eaten better and lived. |
Bruce gave her a Wing Chun ring.
November 15, 1971, Bangkok, five rounds, one draw, two champions. One lesson: Respect transcends gender because heart determines warrior.
- BRUCE LEE ☯️ MANIA, 1971; Bruce Lee: The Hidden Legacy, Jan 17, 2026; CC Liu, Pfc. Sandoval, Crystal Q. (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly
Saturday, August 8, 2026
Zazen back home: Berkeley Zen Center
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BASIC ZAZEN INSTRUCTION Founder Sojun Mel Weitsman Roshi (berkeleyzencenter.org)
What were we expecting for a Dharma talk? Something more like (San Francisco Zen Center) "Beginner's Mind" by Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, archived Dharma talk, Nov. 11, 1965
WHAT HAPPENED?
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| Why'd I come from the West? |
A group of seven meditators gathered Saturday morning at 8:40 am on Russell St. between MLK Jr. and Adeline at BZC. Zen Joe welcomed us into the Zendo for instruction, which is also online (Zoom). We were oriented on how to hold our hands, where to walk, where not to talk then got instruction on how to sit and hold ourselves erect. We got a short sit, walked out, came right back in for a full session of zazen.
After that, following last week's lay entrustment ceremony, Sue (Ju'en Soetsu), 83, gave a Dharma talk, with precious little Dharma and lots of pablum, ordinary chitchat, very down homey and a whole lot of air.
One was reminded of seeing Thich Nhat Hanh in one of his last visits to the Pasadena Auditorium, possibly his very last, articulating next to no words, just giving darshan, uncomfortably, with 5,000 or so onlookers hanging on his every exhale, singing songs, feeling so very in the moment, smiling, settling...until Thay finally made the point that "a flower is composed out of all non-cloud elements," an instruction meant to show [the impersonal nature of] emptiness (shunyata, anatta) that all we take to be so special about flowers is actually water from clouds, nourishment from mud and atmospheric gases, solar radiation, and so on. All that disparate stuff gives us flowers, just as the Five Aggregates give us living beings, who rarely if ever realize they are ultimately only that. One had to think, unless one had been inducted in the Zen cloud of not expecting anything, "Is that all there is, Cristina?"
Instead here, when Sue made some uber-generic observation, one of the helpers signed at the magnificence of the simplicity of her utterance. When we set up no expectations, it's hard to be disappointed. When we do, watch out. Some men in the audience of 40 tried to ask some deeper questions, Sue brushed them off as if she had been studying how to be a difficult Zen interviewee. "Yes," she answered to a multiple-choice question about the meaning of life. "Will you ever answer my question," the audience member persisted, "Yes."
"Will you do it now?" - "Don't worry about it," was her retort to the gleeful squeals of others in the know. Linda Roshi, the committee-selected BZC abbess of the last two years, gently nodded as if in approval. "What are we here but body, breath, and brain [mind]?" she asked rhetorically then quoted Woody Allen of all people, "Showing up is 80%."
More heads nodded, and all we could think was, "This is a 'Dharma' talk?" Someone was viewing it on Zoom, so maybe it's recorded for anyone to review. We asked Zen Joe afterward, "Was that a normal Dharma talk?" He shrugged his shoulders and answered, "Yeah, pretty typical."
What's shikantaza ("just sitting")?
(Zen Fields) What is Shikantaza 1 (6 minutes)
Maybe all she said was a big "Zen" lesson?
"Some say that to speak of the meaning of the coming from the West is already wrong."
"People these days all make unconcern an understanding. Some say, 'There is no delusion or enlightenment: it's not necessary to go on seeking. Even before the Buddha appeared in the world, before Bodhidharma ever came to this country, it could not have been otherwise. What's the use of the Buddha appearing in the world? What did the Patriarch still come from the West for?"
All such views -- what relevance do they have? You must have greatly penetrated and greatly awakened: then as before, mountains are mountains, rivers are rivers, in fact all the myriad things are perfectly manifest. Then for the first time you can be an unconcerned person." - Roshi Reddit
We think that if we were to ask Sue what she meant, she would rightly say to us, "Don't worry about it."
Zazen (sitting meditation) instruction
In-person Zazen instruction and beginner orientation
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| Why did Bodhidharma come? |
BZC shares how we meditate and also some details about how to move around in the zendo (meditation hall) and join services (bowing and chanting).
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| Zen Master Bodhidharma | Quizlet |
Online instruction is no longer offered live. Please check out the link to Sojun Roshi’s instruction. Or explore the Teachers Page to make an appointment for a one-on-one zazen instruction.
More about zazen instruction
A 45-minute video meditation instruction from BZC's late Founder Sojun Weitsman Roshi:
Sojun’s Roshi’s Sept. 2020 Zazen Instruction
- Abbot Hozan Alan Senauke 2020 essay: My Zazen
- Sojun Roshi: Dead or Alive? | Berkeley Zen Center
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| Hakuryu Sojun Roshi (Mel Weitsman) |
Thursday, August 6, 2026
Girl Fight: Japan's Buddhist beauty
(The Bandaid Battalion MMA)
(Boxing Game) Buddhism in Japan is covered below. But holy cow, it's the animated Chun-Li in real life! Doll Mona Kimura knocks out everyone because she kicks when she does her martial arts in the ring against opponents who walk right into her foot again and again.
Kimura started training in karate at age 4 and won seven consecutive JKJO All Japan Junior Karate Championships then started boxing in 4th grade [5, 6, 7]. In 2019 she won the JBC Junior Featherweight Championship... Does she love Bruce Lee or even know who he was? Is she into kung fu like the great [not an actual monastery-trained] Shaolin master Yi Long? She must at least know the who the great martial artists who preceded her are. More
Buddhism was first established in Japan in the 6th century CE [3, 4, 5]. Most of Japanese Buddhists belong to new schools of Buddhism that were established in the Kamakura period (1185–1333) [6]. During the Edo period (1603–1868), Buddhism was controlled by the feudal Shogunate.
The largest sects of Japanese Buddhism are Pure Land Buddhism with 22 million followers, followed by Nichiren Buddhism with 10 million believers, Shingon Buddhism with 5.4 million, Zen Buddhism with 5.3 million, Tendai Buddhism with 2.8 million, and about 700,000 for the six old schools established in the Nara period (710–794) [6]. More:
(Behind the Knockout) Mona Kimura, Dakota Ditcheva: finishes that put opponents in hospitals
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| Yi Long does it again using his kung fu skills |
Mona Kimura (Japanese 木村 萌那, Kimura Mona, born April 12, 2001) is a Japanese kickboxer and former amateur boxer who is currently signed to K-1. She represented Japan at 2022 IBA Women's World Boxing Championships [2, 3, 4].
Early career
Who, me, a pretty "girlie doll"? We'll see when we get in the ring.
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| Japanese Buddhist flag flys over Japan |
Buddhism in Japan
Edo (江戸, lit. "Bay-entrance," Romanized as Jedo, Yedo, Yeddo) is the former name of Tokyo. Under the Tokugawa shogunate, Edo developed into a major early-modern urban center with a population that is believed to have exceeded 1 million by the early 18th century — making it, by many estimates, the largest city in the world at the time. More: Edo (Edo period)Beautiful Buddhist Tokyo, Japan (Mt. Fuji) - Japanese Zen meditation with Chloe in Edo (1657)
The Buddhist beauty of ancient Japan
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| The Great Buddha (Amida, Amitabha) (Daibutsu) at Kōtoku-in, Kamakura, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan (National Treasure) Le Grand Bouddha du Kotoku-in (Kamakura, Japon) |
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| Daruma doll Indian Bodhidharma |
The Meiji period (1868–1912) saw a strong response against Buddhism, with persecution and a forced separation between Buddhism and the indigenous shapeshifter (kami) tradition called Shinto (Shinbutsu bunri).
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| Vowz Band 坊主バンド rock to spread Zen |
Japan at a Crossroads | BBC
Tuesday, July 28, 2026
How shall "I" become Nobody?
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| Did Zen folk, being Taoists, get it? |
- Avenged Sevenfold "Nobody" (official video)
- I went to a Buddhist retreat needing something to happen; nothing happened.
- My friend, a regular American woman into yoga, also went but not expecting anything, hoping for anything, "needing" anything; something happened.
- I asked, "How?! How is this happening? What did you do differently?"
- She claims she didn't "do" anything. She just sat. She just attended to the present moment with bare awareness, almost like that R.E.M. song, "Stand in the Place Where You Are." She didn't say that. She mentioned thinking about the song "Just Breathe" for inspiration sometimes.
- I asked, "You're thinking about music?"
- She answered, "No, but intrusive thoughts come and go. Sometimes by habit I engage them before mindfully-remembering and then letting them go, letting them cross like clouds in a vast open sky." And she mentioned visualizing the in-and-out breath as steam in a steam room or a small whirligig (windspinner) at her nose turning as the breath moved.
- I asked, "You spend your time visualizing?"
- She answered, "No, but sometimes to focus, I imagine some indicator of the breath just to help get focused."
- I asked, "How do you stay energized and focused for so many hours of the retreat schedule day?"
- She surprised by answering that she used a little peppermint under her nose.
- I asked, "You spend your time huffing essential oils?"
- She answered, "No but it's a nice pick me up in the morning, and it's good to feel a chill on the spot above the lip where I place my calm attention."
- I started to see the pattern. Everything I asked and conceived was about getting and gaining.
- And everything she answered was about letting go, relaxing, and staying aware without "thinking" (i.e., ruminating, perseverating, proliferating, drifting away on a tide of discursive thinking).
- A Buddhist retreat, like a Christian church service, is not somewhere to go to gain. It is a place to go to lay down the burden and let go a little, release, share, give, abandon, listen, allow with radical acceptance of what is. Imagine only ever going to church (mass, temple, the sabbath ritual) with a laundry list of wishes for the God. How well was that ever going to work? But a person with a purer heart goes just to receive the Word or the Spirit or advice embedded in the sermon to give more donations to the church or whatever nonsense most sermons are on nowadays. Surely that purer person would get more out of the experience than the person with the list treating the God of that church like a restaurant, ATM, or the lap of Saint Santa Claus (Nicholas).
- So let us follow in the example of the woman who "succeeded" in getting what everybody else on that retreat was after. About three other women got it, too, including Buddhist meditation teachers Shaila Catherine (Wisdom Wide and Deep: Jhana and Insight) and Dr. Nikki (The Persian Buddhist: Dr. Nikki).
- Oddly, strangely (coincidentally?), these three women are all from California, but the long retreat was on the east coast at IMS with a rare enlightened master. I do not now recall if there was a male among the very small group of retreatants/meditators who "succeeded" in getting somewhere very deep with their meditation. But it was impossible to overlook the fact that even if there were, it was still 75% women who succeeded. So I asked her about this.
- She answered, "I did notice, and I asked the Teacher, and he explained, 'It's easier for women.'"
- I asked, "Why in the world would it be easier for women? Surely, they have it harder than men in this world, which after all we are told is 'a man's world.'"
- She agreed, and she mentioned that she asked him the same question, and the great master, a successful scholar-practitioner not teaching only from theory but having a great deal of direct practical personal experience with the historical Buddha's Path, answered. He explained that it is how women are (by nature at this time) and how they are treated now (by injustice). Their way, as anyone can see in terms of American sex-role stereotyping and gender asymmetries (that they are treated less than, overlooked, underestimated, ignored, disregarded, and all that) actually gives them an advantage in meditation and spiritual progress.
- I said, "Why? Why would that be?"
- She answered, as it came right back around to slap me in the face and punch me in the gut, that it is because women, generally, are NOT striving, struggling, needing, demanding, insisting, interfering, pushing, muscling, and all the "wrong" (disadvantageous, self-defeating, dysfunctional) things we men generally do.
- I asked, "Well, isn't everyone there -- having paid and taken time off work and putting in all those hours of silence, getting up early, eating only in the morning, detoxing from technology, giving up their cell phones, social media, and email accounts -- doing EXACTLY that?!
- She answered, "Yes, except for the four of us, for some reason. It's not like we knew each other or knew what the others were doing. We were each just minding our business, not socializing, not looking around, not taking walks, not arguing, not demanding, not all of that stuff that everyone else [being American] were in the habit of doing."
- I said, "Oh, I see! It's exactly all that grasping, needing, struggling, striving, and kicking @$$ that is getting in everyone's (well nearly everyone's) way!
- She answered, "It would seem so."
- Then I realized I was pushing her for these answers, and she was kind enough, because we had known each other for so long and been such friends, and because I encouraged her and made sure she got to this retreat, that she tolerated this interrogation of sorts. I was startled by what she was saying, and she was saying precious little unless I pushed. I realized anyone with common sense and common decency would never push like this or ask pointed questions. But this is how I pressed that very teacher to answered and explain things, which he did as he kindly inquired about my practice and how I was doing and why I was so worried or interested in what anybody else was doing. (I didn't have enough sense to trust in him that when I was ready, I would learn all these things directly and not need to be so bullheaded in asking). But because I had not made progress, I'd been left to wonder what I was doing wrong, aside from everything. It was only my luck, my precious good karma, that I had the good fortune of knowing more than one person who had done it right (or was currently doing it "right" in the sense of the eight path factors of "right mindfulness, right effort, and so on) that I could see by comparison where I veered off. I already knew about my veering off. What I needed to know, for myself and Wisdom Quarterly readers was, What's the right road, the right path, the right practice? Now I was getting a dose of it. I had only been "a little" off but that little had grown to a complete derailing and going off the road, as a boat traveling a long distance -- with course correcting along the way -- would end up way off track like a wayward Columbus. I was stressed out in asking all these things.
- She answered without stress, gently smiling at my silliness, manliness, foolishness, and blindness.
- But there is an extraordinary thing I realized/remembered as I was talking to her about these things (Dhamma), these matters so rare in the universe that only someone with a real kalyana-mitta can ever hope to hear, and it came when I formulated a preface to a question like a lawyer would, establishing common ground, being on the same page. I wanted to ask her about her level of attainment and that of the others. But to do so, I needed to establish that she was ahead of all the others on the retreat, or was it the case that the elder and much more experienced meditator and teacher Shaila Catherine was ahead, and where was Nikki Mighafori in the ranking, and for that matter, at what level was the teacher?
- She answered no answer, just a perplexed look, a series of sounds and utterances that gave me to believe we were not sharing common ground and not on the same page.
- I pushed, "Look, regular people are 'uninstructed ordinary worldlings,' right?"
- She answered, "Okay?" as if confused by my very lowest common denominator question.
- And I kept pushing, and any Aryan (any "noble" disciple, any attained person of whatever ever rank, stage, or level) is greater than that, right?
- She answered more perplexed, "Okay??"
- I pushed to the point of breaking, "What? You won't give me that? There are ordinary people and there are attained people, and they're not the same because of a 'change-of-lineage' (gotrabhu), riiiiight? The Buddha said as much! It's foundational to the whole Teaching in this school of Buddhism. This is not hard. This is not a trick question..."
- She responded, "And why are you asking?"
- I, exasperated, kept pushing through, as if I were doing a set of heavy weights at the gym and just needed to get a certain number of reps in even if it hurt, "I'm trying to establish that there's a difference. There are ordinary people there and extraordinary. And among the latter group, there are gradients..."
- She looked puzzled, dismissive, not catching on, "Okay???"
- I barked, "Well, come on! There's that, right? And this is when she blew my mind. Did you, dear reader, know that enlightened people (in the specific Buddhist sense of the word bodhi and not what other traditions, religions, or systems think or mean when they use the exact same word) DO NOT THINK OF THEMSELVES as better than anyone? Sure, you did. Anyone can figure that out. They know there's no ego; they go lording it around over anyone's head. BUT, did you know, enlightened people (of whatever stage or level) DO NOT THINK OF THEMSELVES as worse than anyone? Sure, come on, that can be deduced by anyone who gives it a little thought. "Saints" (Aryans, the noble ones) are nice. Here's the mindblower: Reader, did you know that enlightened people DO NOT THINK OF THEMSELVES as equal to anyone? 🤯 (See the Pali canon sutta "With Khema" AN 6.49: Khema Sutta—translated by Bhikkhu Sujato for suttacentral.net) And this is what was happening here. We were getting snagged and tangled up on the very first presupposition of stages and levels. It's not that she didn't know or had forgotten that there were levels, but what had happened is that she had DIRECTLY REALIZED that in reality she is no better, no worse, and not equal to others. These Aryans just don't think that way. It doesn't occur to them. They don't frame things that way anymore. And they may not even remember ever having done so, or so it would seem as I tried to remind her that this is how the whole world thought, including the Buddha, if we can deduce this from his teaching that there were levels of attainment and therefore it is possible to designate someone as higher, lower, or equal to someone else, anyone else.
- She just looked at, as if remembering, then came back to herself, "And????" leading me to make my point, whatever my point was originally going to be. I didn't remember, and there was no sense in asking if we could not agree on that much for starters. This was a nonstarter.
- "Wow," I thought, the things in the ancient sacred texts are really true: Aryans are this way or that, whether it makes sense to us or not, whether it fits our frames, whether we agree or would have it otherwise. Buddhism (the Buddha Dharma), what the Buddha taught, was not "hammered out by mere reasoning." The Buddha directly saw these things, knew these things, taught a path-and-practice for others to be able to DIRECTLY know and see these things. I bowed to her and left it at that for the moment. There are some things we are not meant to know before we are ready to know it. And all of this, it seems, was none of my business. It would become my business when I directly experienced these things and became one who knows-and-sees. This is a teaching for the wise, after all, not for those sunk in worldliness, distraction, delusion, resentment, aversion, fear, greediness, selfishness, self-centeredness, or all manner of wrong view arising from ignorance, delusion, and holding views.
- And now I realize that one way to talk about all this might be through the Taoist video at the top of this article. Maybe on this path we are becoming what we always were and have been -- nobody. Certainly, nobody special. Not better, not worse, not equal. The worldly mind will completely reject this out of hand. It's preposterous! This is a patriarchy founded on a hierarchy as taught by the oligarchy and a lineage of worldly rulers all the way up to the first heaven. And we must submit to them because that's the way God wants it. 🙄 That's ludicrous and preposterous, but it just might be closer to the truth than the way we've been carrying on here in the world IF "the God" we are talking about is the Monad (the One in Gnosticism, the Brahman not Brahma in Buddhism, possibly even the Tao in Taoism). That GOD doesn't want or not want, doesn't look on needing it to be one way or another. In that sense, there is just being. We can just be (though technically there is no "being," only becoming, this ceaseless impersonal process of radical impermanence as everything falls apart and rebuilds all the time, marked by three universal characteristics the Buddha taught again and again, implicitly and explicitly: All things are radically impermanent, utter unable to ever fulfill us, and impersonal whether we imagine there to be a stable "self" or not. That's reality. Here we are over here never really in touch with what's real due to all the distractions, talking, ruminating, thinking, and everything else coming at us all at once. If we slow down, let things be, allow, accept, welcome experience as it is without needing to change or "improve" it, we can quite possibly make quick progress to the end of all suffering and the arising of liberating-insight, the wisdom that has gone beyond, that which we set as our goal when setting off on a spiritual path. So "be nobody." After all, that's what really are already, and the sooner we get right with it, the happier we are likely to be so we can see things sa they really are and always have been.
Tuesday, July 21, 2026
Western boxing vs. Eastern martial arts
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| Another one bites the mat (Yi Long Shaolin) |
Buddhist Shaolin kung fu warrior monks
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| Shaolin Buddhist temple Zen (Chan) monks demonstrate wonders of Shaolin kung fu |
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| Shaolin Goddess of Compassion |
It can't be real! Training's way too hard!
Kill 'em All and Fight Til Death
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| Call me a Pollack, and I kill you. |
Decision: Train at home on monitor
- Boxing Game; BBC Sacred Wonders; Pfc. Sandoval, CC Liu, Seth Auberon, Dhr. Seven (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly
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