the greatness of Gautam, why?

[Snoopy]

Originally Posted by Tariki

The Buddhist writer Stephen Batchelor amplifies this to a certain extent at the beginning of his book "Buddhism Without Beliefs", where he speaks of the Four Noble Truths as originally taught.................That "suffering" is to be understood, that its cause is to be let go of, that its end is to be realized, and that the path to that end is to be cultivated. Batchelor points out that the distinction that each truth requires being acted upon in its own particular way "has been relegated to the margins of specialist knowledge". That it is when such "truths" are known only as "propositions to be believed" that Buddhism becomes a "religion", amid all the other "religions".
I would say that these comments by Stephen Batchelor could be stretched to cover ALL Faiths............using a little imagination!

Hi,

Indeed. Practice is the key; living is the expression of the teaching. What use are words without practice? Just ink on a page. Responsibility for our own lives is required; not endless mulling over of texts.

s.

[chakraman]

the greatness of gautam, why?

because i say so, and i know everything about anything so ner

[Snoopy]

Originally Posted by chakraman

i know everything about anything so ner

Hi,

Well if you'd said so earlier then there wouldn't have been any need for all the other 80,000 posts on this forum. We could all just PM you!

s.

[Susma Rio Sep]

Originally Posted by Snoopy

Hi,

Indeed. Practice is the key; living is the expression of the teaching. What use are words without practice? Just ink on a page. Responsibility for our own lives is required; not endless mulling over of texts.

s.

...not endless mulling over of texts.

I think there are two ways we learn how to do an action or carry on a practice.

The first is by self-exploration and self-cultivation of the action and the practice. For example, if you leave a boy and a girl babies in the wilderness without any elders and they grow up, they will learn sex and acquire the practice. Same also with eating and possibly with wiping their posterior ends after bowel movement -- a topic for curiosity whether and when mankind developed the need for wiping one's cloaca magna -- or some non-human agent taught man.

The second is by instructions from others who invented or worked our an action and a practice. All these actions and practices are not what we might consider physiologically necessary for survival of the individual and of the race.


Now, all religious actions and practices, they are all invented by man; and hence they need the inventors' instructions in order to master them, that is to the approval and satisfaction of their inventors.

The big question is why not invent your own religious acts and practices, why learn them from others. Who is Gautama and who Jesus Christ and who Joseph Smith that others should choose to learn to perform acts and enact practices, which mankind consider to be within the domain called religion?

They all claimed to have arrived at some kind of enlightenment which they believed to be the one for the rest of mankind; otherwise mankind would miss the whatever they inculcated about mankind not missing, like nirvana, or heaven, or what else?

And how did they arrive at their kind of enlightenment? Using their heads I imagine, in particular their imagination, so that one day suddenly they came to the eureka moment and started preaching their religions.

No wonder there are as many religions even conflicting among themselves as there are guys who are genetically disposed to imagine whatever they can and want to imagine is the thing not to be missed now or in the future and even post this grave of the grave.

If you would be independent and be your own teacher and master and give the credit to yourself, fashion your own enlightenment and make a script of the acts and practices you have to devote your time and labor and energy to, in order to arrive at not missing whatever you have come to the conclusion that you must not miss in and with and by your life.

Animals outside of man know what they should not miss at all: stay alive until death and pass your genes to posterity. Luckily they are at least seemingly not plagued by regrets; otherwise if they should never give birth to their similars, and die not having passed their genes to their descendants they should mourn their missing what is important to themselves when they face death dawning upon them.

What is that said by a Roman thinker, correct me if I am wrong, a guy should love a woman and raise a child before departing from life. I will add, and write a book, even just a pamphlet.


Gautama has achieved greatness for succeeding in making a lot of folks follow his idea of what not to miss and how to not miss it, by thinking and acting the way he believes efficacious for you to not miss what he is convinced of himself, that man should not miss. What is that you should not miss according to Gautama? liberation from life, liberation from coming back to life again and again.

I absolutely disagree with his kind of not missing, it is a negative kind of not missing, in which case two negatives do not multiply nor divide, into any positive, they just add up to more negativity.

No, not my cup of tea, not at all. I gonna live until I die, I gonna live live live until I die, I gonna live live live live live live live...


Susma

[Tariki]

susma,

I think in many ways you have good points to make. Certainly in my own investigation - and practice - of the "Buddhist Path" I have constantly felt the need to guard against what I have always spoken of as a "betrayal" of this world. To deny - in whatever way - the only world we have ever known for the sake of some imagined other...............well, I have always sought not to make this any sort of reality in my own life. And one must be on their guard! The "world-weary" have always beaten a path to the "religious" door and left their opinions in their wake!!

Yet like Christianity, Buddhism has many mansions. 84000 "dharma gates" are spoken of (perhaps its 84001, as I've never actually heard my own particular path, as I've experienced it, spoken of before!!) Anyway, 83,987 or whatever, there are many ways in which the original dharma/teaching has been appropriated by those who have investigated it and sought to apply in within their own life. To read of the life of Thich Nhat Hanh, for instance, is to read of a human being whose affirmation of life is profound. He sought not to "liberate himself from life" but came to understand true life, and then lived it...............for the benefit of others. And speaking personally, making absolutely no claim to "enlightenment" (whatever that might mean!) this in a way has been my own experience. Living life more fully, a deepening of experience. Certainly never a denial of life, except a denial of that which is eventually seen to be a denial of true life in itself!

As far as "thinking for oneself" or whatever, why not - using your own terminology - give a glance to the various "pamphlets" of others? In a deep sense I believe we are all "one" with each other. We can learn from each other and lean on each other. "No man is an island" as John Donne has said. Yes, in the end we have, by investigation, practice and application, to make any "teaching" (or call it the "experience of another", given voice by that person as an expression of love and concern for the welfare of others) our own. Yet often this will be initiated by the simple observation that another human being, by their speech and acts - or the record of them - have had something we can learn from.

Maybe we should all strive to be one who "doth cause a way to arise which has not arisen before". (In one sense, we all do, being unique individuals) Yet to learn from the experience of others is all part and parcel of living - well, at least it is to me.

Anyway, this is how I see it.

All the best!
Derek

[Susma Rio Sep]

Thanks, Derek, for your edifying message.

I confess myself notwithstanding my confident posture to be a man plagued with doubts.


Now what? life security attained, not fabulous wealth, but enough to stay around until retirement; and then the long wait for the departure train and most inconvenient train -- be there a more convenient way to leave without causing sorrows to others dear to oneself? for not departing as everyone is expected by civilization to do so, in prolonged helplessness and agony.


Only man among all animals that I know of think of religion or the life i.e. existence beyond the grave -- probably that is the curse of intelligence, the asking of what comes next vis-a-vis the animal instinct to continue to be alive or around in any way even as I said beyond this side of the grave.

Biology has taught us that the purpose of life is to stay alive and reproduce, but it does not tell us whether and what is the purpose it is designed to achieve as a means to another end beyond biology.

What do animals do when they are not into physiology?

The pet cat at home is the most Buddhist of animals that I have observed, and I have not observed many animals; it spends innumerable hours just looking like Buddha as portrayed in those giant statues of Buddha on his anatomically equipped seat -- with eyes almost closed completely and looking very calm, very serene, very indifferent or most profound, that one would imagine the guy or the cat is dozing off but pretending to be on red alert while keeping up a decoy of somnolence.

My pet dog is kept within the confines of our home and grounds, so it does not have any chance of going out to join other dogs; many are free-moving ones, specially those whose owners loved them at the beginning then their care got to be overly costly or time-demanding or simply too troublesome, so that their dogs come in and out of their homes as they will.

I ask my wife and kids when I see a dog going somewhere to all appearances, and dogs they can cross the streets better than cats, where is it going? And then I tell the wife and kids the following lines I read somewhere about invalids:

Invalids have places to go, things to do, people to see.


So also dogs.

Hahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

If invalids have places to go, things to do, and people to see, what more guys who are not invalids; and when they have nothing to occupy themselves to survive another day, or to get to eat the next meal, and then to work for the next meal, or produce the next baby and bring it up to do likewise, then they go into religion, or arts, or philosophy, or sports, or sciences, or message boards.

That is why I said earlier somewhere here that religion is big entertainment for mankind, that does not mean that it is without worth, understanding worth any way one prefers to understand the word.


By the way, animals outside of man don't do any religion, the kind that man does; why? Most probably they are smarter than us. Take the lowly cockroach, I understand this character been around millions of years before man made the biology scene, and it will still be around after the nuclear holocaust by which man will do himself in -- that is why animals are smarter than man.


Susma

[Tariki]

Susma,

Thanks, Derek, for your edifying message.

Well, I suppose there is a first for everything! "Edifying" is often not the first word that comes to mind when others speak of my posts...........

I confess myself notwithstanding my confident posture to be a man plagued with doubts.

Me too................though I lack also the "confident posture".

Anyway, thanks for your reply. Yes, we are animals, and perhaps we do "think too much". That would seem to be one of the main problems, irrespective of exactly what we do our thinking about! The thought of our mortality certainly seems one of the main impetuses for the origins of "religion". Are the other animals "smarter than us"? Perhaps intellect as such doesn't really come into it. They certainly seem happier than most humans I know..............unless being led into the slaughterhouse, at which time they do seem to sense some sort of hint of their own mortality judging by some of the pictures I've seen........Maybe "religion" can be seen as some sort of attempt by ourselves to regain the state of "innocence" that the other animals see m to know. Yet some argue it would not be a "return" as such, but a forward move through "awareness" and genuine choice....which some, again, would argue "adds" something to the final state that was not originally there.

As the words of the song "The Pilgrim" go........

"From the rocking of the cradle to the rolling of the hearse,
The going up was worth the coming down"

Speaking personally, having nursed my own mother for three years as she deteriorated with alzheimers, I have been given cause to wonder. Yet I plough on. Hooked I suppose, now the journey "back to paradise" has started. I think it was a Tibetan "master" who once said that once we begin our path to "liberation", there must be no turning back..........or else, I suppose, to now grab at a Gospel phrase, we shall become like "pigs returning to our own vomit".

It does seem possible to gain liberation, or "the freedom of the children of God". You speak of the representations of the Buddha. I have always loved the description given by the Christian monk Thomas Merton when visiting the various statues at Gal Vihara in Ceylon.........................."I am able to approach the Buddhas barefoot and undisturbed, my feet in wet grass, wet sand. Then the silence of the extraodinary faces. The great smiles. Huge and yet subtle. Filled with every possibility, questioning nothing, knowing everything, rejecting nothing, the peace not of emotional resignation but of sunyata , that has seen through every question without trying to discredit anyone or anything - without refutation - without establishing some other argument. For the doctrinaire, the mind that needs well-established positions, such peace, such silence, can be frightening.........................Looking at these figures I was suddenly, almost forcibly, jerked clean out of the habitual, half-tired vision of things, and an inner clearness, clarity, as if exploding from the rocks themselves, became evident and obvious...............The thing about all this is that there is no puzzle, no problem, and really no 'mystery'. All problems are resolved and everything is clear, simply because what matters is clear. The rock, all matter, all life, is charged with dharmakaya - everything is emptiness and everything is compassion...................."

Well, such is the "return" to paradise. (According to T S Eliot, a "condition of complete simplicity, costing not less than everything")

Well, as I said, I'm hooked!

And here, from the pen of Billy Collins, is another version of "emptiness"........."Shovelling Snow with Buddha"

In the usual iconography of the temple or the local Wok
you would never see him doing such a thing,
tossing the dry snow over a mountain
of his bare, round shoulder,
his hair tied in a knot,
a model of concentration.

Sitting is more his speed, if that is the word
for what he does, or does not do.

Even the season is wrong for him.
In all his manifestations, is it not warm or slightly humid?
Is this not implied by his serene expression,
that smile so wide it wraps itself around the waist of the universe?

But here we are, working our way down the driveway,
one shovelful at a time.
We toss the light powder into the clear air.
We feel the cold mist on our faces.
And with every heave we disappear
and become lost to each other
in these sudden clouds of our own making,
these fountain-bursts of snow.

This is so much better than a sermon in church,
I say out loud, but Buddha keeps on shoveling.
This is the true religion, the religion of snow,
and sunlight and winter geese barking in the sky,
I say, but he is too busy to hear me.

He has thrown himself into shoveling snow
as if it were the purpose of existence,
as if the sign of a perfect life were a clear driveway
you could back the car down easily
and drive off into the vanities of the world
with a broken heater fan and a song on the radio.

All morning long we work side by side,
me with my commentary
and he inside his generous pocket of silence,
until the hour is nearly noon
and the snow is piled high all around us;
then, I hear him speak.

After this, he asks,
can we go inside and play cards?

Certainly, I reply, and I will heat some milk
and bring cups of hot chocolate to the table
while you shuffle the deck.
and our boots stand dripping by the door.

Aaah, says the Buddha, lifting his eyes
and leaning for a moment on his shovel
before he drives the thin blade again
deep into the glittering white snow.



Anyway, perhaps I have gone on enough!

[Susma Rio Sep]

Susma,

Thanks, Derek, for your edifying message.

Well, I suppose there is a first for everything! "Edifying" is often not the first word that comes to mind when others speak of my posts...........

I like that. It's not everyone literate in English who knows the meaning of the word edify, unless he has been exposed to spiritual literature of the New Testament type. Tell him to think edifice.


What is the nearest term in Buddhist literature to the Christian term, edify?

Ask Vaj here, he says that I have been an earlier and now much better guy at tearing down than building up; certainly if he uses the term, edify, my writings here are absolutely not designed for edification, more for demolition if anything at all. Hahaha.


Let's move to another thought, relevant to the greatness of Buddha or the Gautama.

You must have been some kind of Buddhist enthusiast for a good time. Tell me have you experienced any kind of visitation from the Gautama or any visitation from the domain beyond the senses?

What is a visitation? I take that word in our present context to refer to any kind of feeling or flash of light by which you find yourself so sure even though you cannot analytically break it down to scientific if that be scientific psychology and physiology.


Thanks for a delightful and edifying exchange.

Susma

[Tariki]

Susma,

Thanks for your post. Not so much for your explicit questions, as I am never at my best when seeking to answer such things! My "enthusiasms" are many, not just "Buddhist", but I have found great guidance at times within the various Dharma teachings. Anyway, you ask about "visitations", "flashes of light", even of becoming "sure".

I would just say that, though I would love to be "shovelling snow with Buddha", I think if he DID turn up in my own back garden I would question my sanity rather than see such a "visitation" as any sign of grace!

Although not a great lover of Zen (as a path for myself) - especially in its "western" manifestations - I do share its rejection of any form of resting in particular "states", or of being particularly concerned about them. This attitude is also born of my interest in the Christian mystical tradition of the "via negativa" , more a way of letting go, of "unknowing", than of any clinging to any particular experience. "Faith" is seen/understood as the "death of understanding", not as any particular affirmation of doctrine - certainly not a grasping at "belief", however defined. (The Christian mystic Meister Eckhart speaks of God in the following terms............"Nothing that knowledge can grasp or desire can want, is God. When knowledge and desire end, there is darkness. And there God shines" - this gives a "taste" of its "way" - or Non way! - to "God")

My own actual path is Pure Land. Just to say the nembutsu - "Namu Amida Butsu", trusting in the infinite grace/compassion of Reality-as-is, asking no questions! (Or in technical terms, the way of "no-calculation", where "true working is no-working") Once again, in Christian terms, Thomas Merton has spoken of this...........

"We should avoid forms of spirituality and piety that make us too aware of ourselves and of our precious interior lives and inner experiences......The great thing is to be free in the forgetfulness of self".

Or, as a Thai Buddhist teacher has said, "nothing should be clung to as "I", "me" or "mine".

Sorry, I seem to be getting caught up in various quotes. The reality is that I just plough on with my life and its various worries and doubts and niggling anxieties. No particular evidence of "spirituality".

To look too close is perhaps to miss it. Yet the reality of "grace" in some sense does seem to manifest. As Merton has said............all "paradox and contradiction". A bit of a mess really!!

[Susma Rio Sep]

In another forum they will certainly call me a troll or whatever is detestable in online message boards for guys who disrupt the uniform and soothing chanting of the devout though variant members of the spiritual congregation.

The Internet Infidels forum where I could say that it was my home until I got booted out on a most broad of offense, viz., transgressing board rules which I had promised to abide by -- the powers there, at most only two admins make up an adequate number to throw out a member, most probably could not come to a consensus exactly what specific ground to throw me out on, so they settled on the most vague and overly extensive fault, transgressing board rules which I had promised to keep.

Even an ignoramus is aware that no one is ever punished unless on kangaroo justice, for such a broad and amorphous kind of offense, as transgressing board rules which I had promised to abide by, seems like for conduct unbecoming of an officer and a gentleman in the military, but then the military is not supposed to think but to act like programmed robots.

I was going to say, that the Internet Infidels notwithstanding that like any human society it has its share of servants who thrill to throw out people if for nothing but to sate their dislike for them on their own personalistic antagonism, this infidels forum does not allow any member to call any other a troll or a liar or any similar epithets that attack the person, assailing his moral integrity instead of his ideas.

So, for what I am going to say now, please don't curse me, because it is an opinion which in a free society anyone has an inborn right for being begotten of human progenitors to express. [Forgive the long sentences; I was just reading Boswell's preliminary pages to his Life of Johnson, and I guess I got infected or enriched by that kind of writing.]


I must salute Gautama for the greatness of the man can be seen in that among so many already in the market of spirituality hawkers in his time and clime, he survived and flourished so that today his followers will always be illumined by the sun however long and far it travels. [More 'Boswellisms'.]

But it is not impossible or at least not most improbable for people to come to a spirituality when the human milieu is already rife with ideas about existence beyond time and the senses, and practices to come to this mode of existence and pass into it. Such was the locale of Gautama's birth and ministry, in the Indian continental shoulder of what we call now Nepal.


I invite everyone to think of Tarzan, the legendary ape-man, actually in the story by adventures author Burroughs, a human baby lost in the dark jungle of Africa and brought up by simians; how is such a human abandoned or given up for irretrievably 'desaparecido', how is such a human ever going to get any spirituality when he exists in an environment bereft of all kinds of mystical heirlooms accreting in the millennial progress of civilization and culture outside dark Africa?


Susma

[Tariki]

Susma,

Yes, "wear your ASBO with pride"!! I well remember my own - indulged - sense of "martyrdom" when three posts of mine were removed abruptly from the Beliefnet Christian Forums. (In my own defence, this was not because they were offensive in any way, shape or form, but because, as a self-professed "Buddhist" I was not allowed by the rules to post on that particular Forum. Fair do's I suppose)

Though I sympathise in many ways with those who are banned for whatever reason from a particular forum, I have to say that from my own experience on the old "Tricycle" Buddhist forums, the moderators do a needed job. On the Tricycle forums, which seemed to lack any attempt at moderation/censure, there were those registered under multiple names arguing with each other, even to the point of suffering apparent martyrdom at their own hands!! (If it be asked just how this was known, I would only say that any semi-perceptive person would see what was totally obvious) Flaming was rife, to the point where many sent personal emails to me saying they were actually afraid to post at all, so merely came as guests. (This after I posted a thread saying "Come on in, the waters lovely!!") Anyway, eventually the Tricycle Forums folded - perhaps in part because of the anarchy...............though an overworked server seemed also to be involved.

Anyway, getting back to "greatness" or whatever, and whether or not such a word can be attributed to Gautama or not................To a certain extent I have no issues over this. Attribute what you like - or not - to anybody. I would just say that to my own observations, those who are truly "great" seek not to be served - or adored - but to serve.

Having said that, and reflecting further on Tarzan, I would just offer the words of Marcel Proust, who said "The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands, but in seeing with new eyes". Is there ever any total "originality" in this world? The Jewish writer Leo Baeck, in his book "The Essence of Judaism" makes the same point concerning the "originality" of the Jewish people................"Israel's originality consists neither in an innovation of spiritual elements nor in a complete lack of connection with any past. Its unique originality lies in its power to struggle for that individuality of spirit by which it brings to life the given material. Independence manifests itself not so much in the germination of an idea as in the power to take an already existent idea and make it productive"

Once again, speaking personally, I will seek to learn from any who I begin to respect for whatever reason. To consider them "great" or not seems beside the point. I do not live in a vacuum, nor in a jungle!!

Just to finish, a little story, which I have often related before in various contexts. It seems to have infinite meanings and significance......

"A newly enlightened Westerner was walking through the Zendo with an old Zen master who only spoke broken English. At each of the images of the Buddha the old master bowed deeply, even prostrating himself. Eventually the Westerner turned to the old master with a look of deep disdain and said......"I say, don't you think you and I are a bit above this sort of thing now? Speaking for myself, I think I would just as soon spit at these statues as bow to them". To which the old master replied...."OK. You spit. I bow" "

[Snoopy]

Originally Posted by Tariki

Anyway, eventually the Tricycle Forums folded - perhaps in part because of the anarchy...............though an overworked server seemed also to be involved.

Hi,

Anarchy expunged, the Tricycle Forums are with us once more. They do not seem to be the most active ones on the internet at present, but I thought I'd let you know...

s.

Tricycle Forums

[Tariki]

Originally Posted by Snoopy

Hi,

Anarchy expunged, the Tricycle Forums are with us once more. They do not seem to be the most active ones on the internet at present, but I thought I'd let you know...

s.

Tricycle Forums

Snoopy,

Thanks! Yes, I had heard...................via a poster known as "fattedcalf" after a brief exchange of PM's on the E-Sangha Boards. I took a peep, but have not registered as yet. Love all the info on Stephen Batchelor, also loved seeing Jeff Wilson's ugly mug again! (My apologies Jeff!) It was Jeff who introduced me to Pure Land Buddhism........

All the best
Derek

[Susma Rio Sep]

"A newly enlightened Westerner was walking through the Zendo with an old Zen master who only spoke broken English. At each of the images of the Buddha the old master bowed deeply, even prostrating himself. Eventually the Westerner turned to the old master with a look of deep disdain and said......"I say, don't you think you and I are a bit above this sort of thing now? Speaking for myself, I think I would just as soon spit at these statues as bow to them". To which the old master replied...."OK. You spit. I bow" " -- Tariki

At the risk of sounding hypocritical, I do feel qualms of conscience for exhibiting as Vaj here tells me a knack for attempts at demolishing Buddhism. I think that is attributing too much to me; just the same I do feel guilty, and at times fearful; because some Buddhist zealots might seek me out and leave some physical souvenirs on my person if not even irreversible termination. What was that about death and mayhem within the inner circle of the Dalai Lama? witnessing to the fact that Buddhist monks are not above inter-sectarian violence on a murderous scale.

Not to flatter myself too much, the vice of self-vainglory; I am just a lowly critic in one or a few online boards in the vast ocean of the net.

What I am truly most inquisitive about is not the doctrines and observances of Buddhism but the phenomenon of Westerners brought up in the tradition of democracy, skepticism, independence, anti-authoritarianism, and science/technology, yes most important, critical thinking, taking up with Buddhism.

That is why I also find it over-reacting on the part of Western converts to Buddhism to try to strip Buddhism of its superstitious elements supposedly alien to the pure genuinely authentic mind and heart of the Gautama, like for example showing almost deific reverence to statues of Buddha.

So, I have a good laugh to read that the smart traditional Eastern Buddhist tells his Western colleague to just spit if he feels like it, but he himself the traditional Buddhist from the Far East will continue to bow before the statues of the master.

I will just add: the Eastern Buddhist should cordially request the Western one to for the sake of aesthetics and hygiene. to clean up after the spitting; because "We would not want to leave a bad impression to non-Buddhists that we Buddhists are careless in regard to neatness and sanitation with our iconographic images and monuments.


About my qualms of conscience in criticizing Buddhism, no I have no remedy to that kind of a bad mental state, it is like feeling a chill when I have to go downstairs in the darkness after watching a ghost movie; but Buddhism is not a ghost movie, that is why I have to think of a solution to my sense of guilt in criticizing Buddhism.

What do the Buddhist users here say about that? Should I stop altogether my criticism of Buddhism, and instead take up something less bothersome to one's conscience like what? like criticizing the brutality of violent sports like boxing and bullfight and cockfight and dogfight (also the aerial dogfight)?

What about it being a service to Buddhism, just like every criticism to any art or technology or science is a service to artists, technologists, scientists to do better?



Susma

[Tariki]

Susma,

Once again we have various points of agreement. The Dalai Lama himself has advised deep caution before "switching" faiths, implying that many Westerners should remain with Christian/Western insights and values rather than seeking to clothe themselves with "exotic" eastern ideas. Is it the "exotic" that is the draw? And one of the foundation stones of Thomas Merton's life (the Christian Trappist monk, and one of my own mentors and guides) was his meeting with the Hindu Bramachari, who at a time in Merton's life prior to his conversion when he was interested in the Eastern religions, nevertheless advised him to seek out some of the many Christian spiritual classics. This he did, and it was only many years later that Merton truly began to integrate in a profound way some of the understandings and insights of Buddhism.

Often we just find what we are looking for and see who we already are, not what is there. There is no genuine transformation. This is not an accusation, more a recognition of my own "journey". (Merton has said that "we need to travel where God is leading us...................and that for this very reason we do not know the way". Understanding and assimilating those words is a journey in itself!)

As far as spitting - or not - is concerned, thank you for your reaction to the story. As I said, the story has "infinite meanings and significance". I can understand, as given within the context of this thread, why you have responded to it in the way that you have and given your own reaction/reading. Context IS everything and you are entitled to see it in the way you have.

If I sought to articulate its meaning for me I would become entangled in words........................not being "enlightened" myself!