Sudden Awakening

Kung Fu panda rocks.

It made me remember that as excited as I get about India, I need to keep China in my thoughts. One of the books of mine that you have is the Diamond Sutra of Hui-Neng (I think thats how you spell it). It's from early on when Buddhism met Taoism, and Hui is thinking about how to notice that you're alive. At the time, there were all of these really strict schools with all kinds of hierarchy and bureaucracy (oh how times change, eh?) trying to get people to center themselves and find balance. And Hui is working somewhere nearby selling firewood and hears a monk reciting the Diamond Sutra, which is a story about Buddha. So he asks the monk what it's about, and the monk tells him that his teacher said that just by reciting the Diamond Sutra, you could see your true nature and become awakened. So Hui-Neng thinks about this, and realized that all sorts of simple little things could wake you up, and he starts the school of sudden enlightenment, and thus Zen is born.

Thats the first chapter of the book, the rest is some of Hui-Neng's teachings and some stories about him. Really good stuff, one of my favorite books.

And it was really nice to sit down with the Tao when we were at Tattered last time.

Dani and I caught a bit of Opera last night while I was ripping music, and they had people on talking about The Secret, and by that they mean, The Secret To Happiness (TM). It was banded Buddhism. Very weird. New-Agey stuff tends to be I suppose. Quasi-positive, but they just looked like people stumbling around in a wilderness without a map, when there's people who have mapped every twig and leaf in those same woods thousands of years ago. But they were discovering the same trees. They're pointed in the right direction, but they don't know where they're going. A lot of what they're interested in is Wish Fulfillment. And they have some practical advice: make wishes. Write them down. Look at them often. Keep them in a place you will see them. That's very good advice. But they don't know why it's good advice. They suspect, correctly, that it has to do with the world and your mind, but they misunderstand the casual nexus. Rather than seeing that, you know, being aware of your goals makes it easier to figure out how to accomplish them, they're just shocked at the sheer magic that if you write down what you want, sometimes you get it.
And what they arn't thinking about is how to wish carefully. Look before you leap, measure twice, cut once.
So much of getting what you want is about knowing the right sorts of things to want.
Hobbes had it right all along: