XPost: alt.philosophy.zen, alt.society.liberalism, alt.society.kindness   
   XPost: talk.politics.theory   
   From: jack_foreigner@yahoo.com   
      
   Hollywood Lee wrote:   
   >   
   >   
   > You would have to ask a zennie.  From my perspective Bushido is to   
   > Buddhism what Rapture theology is to the Sermon on the Mount.   
   > Corruption hardly describes the foul stench.   
   >   
   > Banish all dualisms you don't like, such as good/evil, life/death and   
   > substitute in a strict code of obedience and mindless response and you   
   > got one mean killin machine, brutha.   
   >   
   > "In D. T. Suzuki's highly influential and praised Zen and Japanese   
   > Culture, published in 1959 by Princeton University, he wrote:   
   >   
   >      The sword is generally associated with killing, and most of us   
   > wonder how it can come into connection with Zen, which is a school of   
   > Buddhism teaching the gospel of love and mercy. The fact is that the art   
   > of swordsmanship distinguishes between the sword that kills and the   
   > sword that gives life. The one that is used by a technician cannot go   
   > any further than killing, for he never appeals to the sword unless he   
   > intends to kill. The case is altogether different with the one who is   
   > compelled to lift the sword. For it is really not he but the sword   
   > itself that does the killing. He had no desire to do harm to anybody,   
   > but the enemy appears and makes himself a victim. It is as though the   
   > sword performs automatically its function of justice, with is the   
   > function of mercy...the swordsman turns into an artist of the first grade,   
   > engaged in producing a work of genuine originality."   
   >   
   > F'n bullshit for the stupid and easily led.   
      
   How interesting!  Most fascinating.  Yes, it sounds like the ol' NRA   
   saw: guns don't kill people, people kill people (and lest you be   
   mistaken, let me say that I support a citizen's right to bear arms!).   
      
   I have been wondering whether Zen, too, has succumbed to the   
   ossification that attaches to any institution...can Zen have a blind   
   spot, too?  I think Suzuki was supposed to have been a roshi, a Zen   
   master, no?  An enlightened one...such simplistic, self-serving,   
   fanciful thinking on his part there...wow....   
      
   Then again, perhaps he was merely waxing poetic, and not being literal?   
    His remarks sound outrageous in the context of our discussions, but I   
   wonder as to the original context of those remarks...perhaps he was   
   winking and chuckling while saying that?   
      
   Anyway, in this world of cause-and-effect, of karma, we are most   
   impressed by magic, by violence, by the sudden penetrating disregard of   
   it all, of all consequences, of all cause-and-effect, rising, it would   
   seem, above the mundance, the sequential, the karmic...there seems a   
   violence at the heart of Zen, a noble violence, the violence of the   
   holy warrior.  I guess I both understand Suzuki while being shocked by   
   how silly his words sound -- and in that understanding between   
   dualisms, I laugh.  The language of God is laughter, and we are the   
   individual puns and punchlines.  Slapstick on a cosmic scale!  Joe,   
   Larry, and Curly, the Holy Trinitiy.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)