XPost: alt.philosophy.taoism, alt.buddha.short.fat.guy, alt.philosophy.zen   
   From: tanghuyen@gmail.com   
      
   On 11/9/2016 4:39 PM, brian mitchell wrote:   
      
   > The point was not too subtle; too useless. To have anything mean   
   > anything makes discourse pointless.   
      
   Oooohh, this is an whopper.  It is true, surely, that the   
   spiritual masters do want to declare something, their   
   respective path to the end-goal, be it awakening or   
   grace or whatever. It is also true that they are   
   inveterate eel-wrigglers who sleaze their way out of   
   what they say, relentlessly, so as to leave no stone   
   unturned (including stone tablets), to impress on   
   their students the relative nature of anything in   
   speech and thought, be it to their immediate students   
   in their physical presence or to remote students far   
   away in space, time, language, culture, custom, etc.   
   So, in effect, they intentionally try to turn things   
   upside down, including their own teaching, to make   
   anything mean anything, so that their students have   
   nothing to rely on -- imparting the unestablished   
   thought/mind, as if by bodily transmission, by mind   
   hits.   
      
   "When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a   
   scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to   
   mean – neither more nor less."   
      
   "The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make   
   words mean so many different things."   
      
   "The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to   
   be master – that's all."   
      
   Tang Huyen   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)