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Harry! My old friend!
I've had a first edition hardback copy of The Zen Teachings Of Huang Po since 1981. Of all my books on Zen, I perhaps treasure it the most. It was one of the reasons that, in 1982, I was able to achieve the mental clarity to achieve my first degree in Religious Studies with Distinction.
Now I think I understand the nature of our problem. You're a Zen guy, and I'm a Vajrayana guy. In the interest of NOT continuing this discussion, I'd like to thank you for your advice and wish you great success with your practice!
In the Dharma,
Chris
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Chris Moran wrote:
Mujitsu wrote:
In the early eighties, I studied Javanese Gamelan under Lou Harrison.
Ken, This statement brings to light that few of us know much about you and your life's work. Do you have an online bio hiding somewhere?
Sorry to clog this thread with personal crap. I'm out of my league around these articulate zen minds.
Chris, I've been at this since '87. In shakuhachi years, that's a drop in the bucket. My gut tells me the right thing to do would be to wait another ten or fifteen years before writing a bio. However, I do like the seaweed angle. Perhaps I'll cheat and write up something soon.
Cheers,
Ken
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Harazda wrote:
Now I think I understand the nature of our problem. You're a Zen guy, and I'm a Vajrayana guy. In the interest of NOT continuing this discussion, I'd like to thank you for your advice and wish you great success with your practice!
Chris
Glad you guys kissed and made up. This is the kind of sectarian stuff that makes me just want to blow the shakuhachi. My wife is Theravada (lifelong Buddhist from Sri Lanka). I blow shakuhachi. We get along just fine and never argue about Buddhism.
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Really interesting topic Harry!
BUT! I truly think you should open anohter thread on the subject so that we can make this a cleaner forum and discuss this important topic with a fresh start. If I am not mistaken the original thread title was Zazen and Suizen. I did not see much Suizen and much zazen being discussed here. Again this is the Zen part of the forum so please try to be a bit more serious and post relevant info to Zen/Buddhism/Shakuhachi please post here and try to not take the thread totally out of context as I have seen too many times. Am I being too severe I think not. Just trying to raise the level of exchange from pointless wanderings and trying to pose as Fuke or some great Zen monk but writing senseles stuff to meaningfull discussions and sharing of Zen/Buddhism/Shakuhachi relevant information. If you want to babble etc.. there is the Misc part of the forum for this I truly think that because this is called the Zen part of the forum that it implies "Hey we can write about anything since it is all Zen anyway "
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Yeah Sebastien, threads often get derailed here, not only in the Zen forum. That's the conversational nature of internet discourse. It's natural.
Maybe Harry can start a new thread prefacing it by saying something like, "discussions in another thread reminded me of an interesting book I read recently" and then go on from there.
I think his ideas about Zen masters and their involvement in the war is relevant because those men are professional Zennists and put their ideas out to the West in a big way.
This kind of arguing is a carry over from conventional Western religious thought. You can take the Westerner out of Fundamentalism but you can't take the fundamentalism out of the Westerner. My wife as I mentioned is a lifelong Buddhist. She calls Westerners with the fervor and intolerance of the converted "Born Again Buddhists".
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Tairaku,
I think your wife has a very good point, but, that's not to say that 'friction' is unknown between Buddhist schools in the East. There has been/ are some very edgy relationships in Tibetan and Japanese traditions, and a strange strain of Buddhist fundamentalism in Shri lanka for example.
http://www.tamilnation.org/tamileelam/f … /index.htm
Regards,
Harry.
Last edited by Harry (2007-06-13 12:48:20)
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Harry wrote:
Tairaku,
I think your wife has a very good point, but, that's not to say that 'friction' is unknown between Buddhist schools in the East. There has been/ are some very edgy relationships in Tibetan and Japanese traditions, and a strange strain of Buddhist fundamentalism in Shri lanka for example.
http://www.tamilnation.org/tamileelam/f … /index.htm
Regards,
Harry.
She's talking about the irony of how these hippies and other "seekers" convert to Buddhism and then drag all their cultural baggage into it. Of course Sri Lankan Buddhism is strange. Last time I was there I found a Zen temple in Nuwara Eliya which was obviously Japanese. I visited the Abbot. He was a Sri Lankan who studied in Japan for many years and came back and built this beautiful temple by himself. He had been back in Sri Lanka for 18 years and still not gained any converts from Theravada. It was a lonely pursuit. People in that part of the world do not have open minds.
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Mujitsu wrote:
Sorry to clog this thread with personal crap. I'm out of my league around these articulate zen minds.
Chris, I've been at this since '87. In shakuhachi years, that's a drop in the bucket. My gut tells me the right thing to do would be to wait another ten or fifteen years before writing a bio. However, I do like the seaweed angle. Perhaps I'll cheat and write up something soon.
Let me make the argument that if you were studying with Lou Harrison in the early 80s that is an important part of a musical biography, as are many other people, places, things that have contributed to your total experience.
I also wouldn't call 20 years of making an instrument a drop in the bucket. You have become a part of shakuhachi history whether you like it or not.
With the development of the Taimu --along with Brian (so there, Ken, I'll let you off the hook halfway)-- I think your place in the history of the "Great Western Shakuhachi Transmission" has already been created.
History really doesn't require a person's permission to be part of it. So there.
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Harry wrote:
Tairaku,
I think your wife has a very good point, but, that's not to say that 'friction' is unknown between Buddhist schools in the East. There has been/ are some very edgy relationships in Tibetan and Japanese traditions, and a strange strain of Buddhist fundamentalism in Shri lanka for example.
http://www.tamilnation.org/tamileelam/f … /index.htm
Regards,
Harry.
Hi Harry,
I looked at your post again and checked the link. I really hope you're not getting most of your information from a source like that. The Tamil Tigers are terrorists pure and simple. They are the people who originated the charming method of "suicide bombing" which has become quite the fad among hip third world teenagers. Also some of the worst offenders regarding the use of child soldiers. It is true that there is a strain of Buddhist fundamentalism. That was an outgrowth of the independence from Britain of Ceylon, now Sri Lanka. But as stupid as some of that fundamentalism might be it does not compare in any way to the terrorism of the Tigers.
BR
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Brian,
I get my information from everywhere, and I'm very inclusive in my use of the term 'terrorist'; 'terrorism' if it is to be based in the experience of human suffering is what the muscle of 'The West' is honed on; freedom to consume propped up on the misery, and terror, of others.
That site is definitely, and quite obviously, pro-Tamil, and pro-terrorism; their view on Buddhism in the situation, in many ways, will create the reality of the situation much more quickly than any academic study that I could quote. I think it shows the extremities of the situation quite well, and it doesn't strike me as the sort of subtle propaganda that intelligent people should be concerned about, but then, neither does the Bush/ Blair war machine crap and look what they got people to swallow... so maybe you have a point!
There was a line from a song written in the 70s by one of the Irish hunger strikers that went something like:
"How can you call me a terrorist while you look down the barrel of your gun?"
It seems the 'high moral ground' is the first prize sought in every instance of gross inhumanity; the 'high moral ground' generally proves to be very relative and a bit of a marshy moral quagmire.
Regards,
Harry.
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LOL now we're really getting "Off Topic". I hope Sebastien doesn't hit me with his "Zen Stick".
All I know is last time I was in Sri Lanka a Tamil bomb went off about 200 meters from me, whereas the Sinhalese mainly made salmon cutlets and egg hoppers and fed me.
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