XPost: alt.buddha.short.fat.guy, alt.philosophy.taoism, alt.philosophy.zen   
   From: wudao@wuji.net   
      
   brian wrote:   
   > Tang wrote:   
   >   
   >>Of course, to wish for freedom does not make it so, and   
   >>it still takes long and hard work,   
      
   For some aspirants, there is a struggle.   
      
   >>with no guarantee of success,   
      
   For some, when they give up, they succeed.   
   Suddenly, everything is obvious to them.   
      
   They slap their foreheads with their palms, duh.   
   Others laugh and say, of course.   
      
   Eureka! A-ha!   
      
   >> but we can just be mindful, which means being   
   >>mindful of ourselves in our circumstances, whatever   
   >>they are or are not, and be one with them, which means   
   >>dropping all identifications with anything and anybody,   
   >>ourselves included.   
      
   Not all are able to drop all their identifications.   
   Some cling to a notion of being some body.   
   Or they are of some mind.   
      
   Some identify with being of no-mind,   
   or no-self, or with not-their-body.   
      
   >>If so, why do we need the context of   
   >>the circumstances of the moment in which the masters   
   >>uttered their words?   
      
   Some techniques work. Some people need a method. A dao.   
      
   Set and setting have been proven to be efficacious at times.   
      
   The Easter Experiment is such an example.   
      
   Nine out of ten students had an experience.   
      
   >> Why load ourselves up on it, just   
   >>when we try to unload everything and be free? Should   
   >>we not travel light? (All the usual disclaimers ...)   
   >   
   >Oh, right. So you won't be quoting Madame Guyon, or Fenelon, or   
   >Meister Eckhart, or Marcus Aurelius, or Kant, or Hegel, or any of   
   >those dead people speaking from their dead milieu? And, of course, you   
   >won't be trying to re-intuit anything those dead people intuited,   
   >since they must have been merely the creatures of their circumstances,   
   >which are never repeated. This is interesting news.   
      
   Sometimes Tang appears to be very confused.   
   This is one of those times.   
      
   At first, months ago, I thought he was pretending to be.   
   That no one could possibly quote what he quotes about  *that*   
   without knowing nor understanding a bit of  *that*   
   about which he quotes.   
      
   Then, when I pressed him on his disclaimers, he appeared   
   to be saying he did that as a kind of defense mechanism.   
   To provide him with an excuse, just in case.   
   A bit of a fear, in other words.   
   To let him off the hook.   
      
   Yet here, with all of his, "we" word being expressed, he   
   seems to actually be confused in various ways.   
      
   It is interesting news, to me.   
      
   Others, who have known him better, already knew.   
      
   It could well be, in all of his well being, as a well frog,   
   as well as being a sea turtle, he thinks of himself as being   
   more of a student than as having any insight of his own.   
      
   Perhaps he does not care to own his own shit.   
      
   So he pretends what he regurgitates are the words of others.   
   That way, he can hide among their words, and be free.   
      
   Vomit is better than feces, for some people.   
      
   They ruminate over their food for thought rather than pass it out   
   of some other hole in their digestive tracts.   
      
   Hide and seek, he may play, within his own self.   
   At times knowing. At times not knowing he knows.   
      
   - as we all dew, at times widths in time   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)