 
Tales of Slot Machine Bodhisattvas

Mel C. Thompson

Copyright © January 2016, 2018, Mel C. Thompson

Mel C. Thompson Publishing

3559 Mount Diablo Boulevard, #112

Lafayette, California 94549

melcthompson@yahoo.com

Dedicated to:

Alan Watts, Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, Adi Da Samraj,

U. G. Krishnamurti, Werner Erhard and Joseph Smith Jr.

Cover Image And Interior Text Notes:

The cover image is a GIMP-adapted file from the collection of public domain photographs at the Wikipedia website. The cover-image layout and the interior text formatting were done with LibreOffice. Cambodian Buddhist castings and sculptures of the Hindu god Bramhá can be found not only in Southeast Asia, but also, serendipitously, at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas. It seems I am not the first Buddhist to import the Hindu gods into his faith, nor am I the first to assert that there may be just a touch of divinity in all our silliest illusions. As the first volume of these stories notes, we might vow to save all living beings, but we shouldn't vow to do it so quickly that we risk permanently ruining the beautiful illusions that Bramhá so shrewdly created. Yes, there is a reason that the best representations of Bramhá always include a smirk. (GIMP is an advanced, free, open-source image-processing software. LibreOffice is a full-featured, free, open-source office-suite software.)

Table of Contents

1. Shiva At The Door

Holier Than The World

Paradise

The Executioner

The Voidness School

A Question About Shiva

The Purpose of Life

The Avatar

Not Broke Yet

Awaiting The Messiah

The Three Precepts

A Zen Addict

Panhandlers

The Perfect Prayer

His Holiness

Shiva At The Door

Their Fatal Mistake

Breaking Out of Prison

Ashoka's True Love

The First Noble Truth

The Muse Confronts Mu Mu

Near-Earth Objects

The New-Age Psychic

Which God?

2. The Supreme Light of Mundane Existence

Neuro-Linguistic Programming

Islamophobia

I Am Shiva

Water-Truck Bodhisattva

3. Mara's Fame Factory

All My Life's Work

Which Writings Are False

The Divine Mother

The Great Non-Achievement

A Decent Donation

One More Requirement

The Secret History of The Sutras

Mara's Fame Factory

Delusional Emptiness

4. The High Mountain Seat of The Law

The High Mountain Seat of The Law

Finding The True Believers

Absolutely Not!

A Negative Religion

Restless Zen

The Reason For The Master's Silence

5. To The Lifeboats!

A Quick Meeting With The Master

A Short Discussion On Prayer

A Few More Notes On The Great Matter

A Dinner At The Monastery

A Short Time At The Lectern

The Ocean of Birth And Death

6. No Wei Ai Go's Fourteen Heresies

No Wei ai Go's Fourteen Heresies

7. An Excess of Opium

The Revolutionaries

The Test

Some Sayings of The Anti-Saints

No Markings of Greatness

The Way of The World

Lao Tsu's Failed Incarnation

This Very Day

8. Everything You Ever Wanted

Everything You Ever Wanted

Your High Standards

A Parasitic Existence

The Things You Are Asking For

Leaving Your Mark Upon The World

Half The Truth

No-Nonsense Rural Guy

Fu War And The Disillusioned Westerner

Eager To Please Gets A Date

9. Master of White Lies

The Smallest Candle Flame

Returning To The Scriptures

Fear

Master of White Lies Meets Radical Honesty

Uptight Zen Guy And Pure Land Preacher

Salvation

Trying To Send Lao Tsu To Hell

10. 108 Dusts

108 Dusts And Perpetually Dissatisfied Lover

All Living Beings

Trying Again To Save All Living Beings

A Literary Critic

Entering The Gateless Gate

The Great Patriarchs

11. The Slot Machine Bodhisattva

The Pure Light of No Teaching

Those Scriptures

Continual Bowing

The Slot Machine Bodhisattva

The Echo Park Buddha

The Name That Can Be Named

The Dreaded Fujikami Plays Humble

Dialogue of X And Y

Stray Dogs

Winterhorse

All The Things I Am Not Doing Now

That Last Commandment

The People And Cocaine

An Encounter At Throne #6024

Subject X

2016 Haiku

12. Selected Ancient Fragments From The Scrolls of To Fu

Selected Ancient Fragments From The Scrolls of To Fu

13. Every Labor Every Commenced

Zen Moon Poem

Social Duties

This Dimension

Every Labor Ever Commenced

14. The Third Diamond

Doctrines

A Wealthy Man

Jade Emperor 2017

Miss Emotionally Wholesome Meets Primordial Sensei

A Day In The Life of Aku no Ken no

The Shogun And The Old Celibate

An Idealistic Student Confronts Fujikami

Shoji Screen # 2

The Supreme Question

The Odessa Juggernaut

The Problem of The Precepts

A Short Holiday Play

Popular Buddhist Authority Meets Monk On Meds

The Circumstances Regarding Sensei's Eventual Retirement

The Third Diamond

Shallow Pleasures

Mountain Lions

Ask God For Anything

1. Shiva At The Door

Holier Than The World

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"Sir, I would like to join this monastery."

"Why?"

"Because the world is so corrupt."

"Do you think living here would make you holier than the world?"

"Yes, I think so."

"Then come back when you view the world as the Body of Buddha."

"If I viewed the world as the Body of Buddha, why would I want to live in a monastery?"

"I've been asking everyone here the same question. If you gain some insight on the matter, please let us know."

Paradise

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The Grand Mufti had grown irritable. Whenever he began to instruct his followers on spiritual matters, they would constantly interrupt him with entreaties to describe Paradise. Whenever anyone brought up the subject of Paradise, the Mufti would simply reach for his sword. This was the only way to silence the inquiries.

One day the Mufti came before the full assembly and called out, "Whoever loves God because he has promised us Paradise, raise your hands toward Heaven!"

A great roar came from the assembly as the over-whelming majority of people raised their hands, shouting for joy.

The Mufti shouted back, "Whoever would love God if there were no Paradise, raise your hands toward Heaven!"

Only five hands went up. The audience glowered at the five and they quickly put their hands back down.

The Mufti hollered, "Only the last five will go to Paradise!"

The Executioner

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A dynastic government had a long-standing requirement that executioners be Buddhists of unimpeachable character. A certain Tien Chan had recently been appointed executioner of a provincial city due to his excellent citizenship and letters of recommendation from his Buddhist minister.

Every day, before going to the prison to discharge his duties, Tien had two daily rituals. First he burned some incense and recited sutras at the crack of dawn. Then he diligently practiced chopping things in half with his broad sword.

When he arrived at work, he was told who was to be dispatched. Most often all that was called for was one swift swing of Tien's broad sword. As far as anyone could tell, there was no time for the condemned man to feel any pain.

"Another one to the Pure Land," Tien would say with a hardy smile.

One day, as Tien was visiting a local merchant, he was confronted by a college student who was training to be a politician.

"Has anyone told you how inconsistent you are? First you take a vow of non-killing in order to be a Buddhist, then you take a vow to execute anyone the Emperor tells you to. How can anyone be a good Buddhist executioner?"

"If you ever speak to the Emperor the way you're speaking to me," assured Tien Chan, "the government will have me personally resolve the paradox for you."

The Voidness School

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"I was reading in a Buddhist History book that there was a sect in China called The Voidness School. What did they teach?"

"They taught the insubstantiality of all forms."

"That's not much fun."

"Not for you."

"Why did they call their religion The Voidness School?"

"Because they saw the emptiness of all names."

"How may I seek Voidness?"

"Voidness is itself the extinction of all seeking."

"Are people happy when they reach the Void?"

"They are awakened."

"Have you personally experienced Voidness?"

"I experience it each time you visit me."

A Question About Shiva

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A distraught Zen student rushed into the Master's quarters without setting an appointment. Instead of beating him, the Master was extremely gracious and said, "Son, why don't you sit down and join me for some tea."

The student attempted to pretend he had regained his composure, but at last he blurted out, "Sensei, I am very perplexed about something. I keep turning it over and over in my mind and I can't make any sense of it."

"Is that so?" said the Master gently. "Well, why don't you tell me what's troubling you."

"I had a very uncomfortable conversation with a philosopher yesterday."

"What did he tell you?"

"He said that the god Shiva will destroy the world. Then he explained that Brahma would re-create it, Vishnu would sustain it, and finally Shiva would come along and destroy it again. He claims this pattern simply repeats itself for eternity."

"I'm afraid it's true," the Master said softly, "but don't go telling people or they'll turn it into a doctrine."

"Why would the gods do this to us?" inquired the student anxiously.

"They do it out of love."

"What! The gods arrange to have us destroyed over and over again for eternity! What kind of love is that?"

The Master replied, "Exactly the kind of love you need."

The Purpose of Life

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A visitor asked Sensei, "What is the purpose of life?"

Sensei replied, "Are you listening?"

The visitor said, "I don't think you heard my question."

Sensei replied, "I don't think you're listening."

The Avatar

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Quite a clamor was building around a certain Hindu priest in a neighboring province. His teachings and practices seemed indistinguishable from any other ordinary Brahmin, and he made no special claims for himself. He mostly tended to his small congregation, rarely issuing public statements and declining offers to go on speaking tours.

This state of affairs was common among the superstitious villagers. Once some simpleton got it into his head that this or that person was a Manifestation of God-On-Earth, there was no talking him out of it. Depending on the persuasiveness of the particular sycophant who began spreading these rumors, the buzz could spread far and wide through countless chatty villages in no time at all. An unsuspecting priest might find himself surrounded by ten thousand pilgrims, all seeking a personal blessing.

One day as the priest came back from his duties at the local shrine, he was besieged by a pack of reporters. "Sir, are you really an Avatar, a World Savior?" "Sir, Sir, can I have just a moment alone with you?" "They say your eyes glow like green lanterns in the dark. Can you show us tonight?"

Seeing instantly what had transpired, the Brahmin said, "I have no statement for you now. I am preparing to meet my family for dinner. Tomorrow night I shall address your most important questions at the town square."

By the next evening, thanks to stories in the regional newspapers, the town square had become jammed with some forty thousand people. The local government threw together a stage and rented out a public address system. The leaders of the community organized a festival to take place before the main event. The local people took the day off work and went to the town square to watch the dancers, storytellers, yogis and singers enact the great Hindu epics. Open-pit grills were improvised, and the smell of smoking vegetables and vats of tea filled the air. As the sun began to set, torches were lit and the intensity of the crowd grew to a fevered pitch.

The mayor of the town gave a long speech and introduced many dignitaries. Ceremonial awards were given out to schoolchildren and junior athletes. In a last-minute decision to carry the Avatar's address live, a national television network arrived and set up cameras.

Just after twilight the mayor introduced the Avatar himself. The diminutive Brahmin looked small on the large stage in front of the immense crowd. From one camera's angle he looked a bit hunched-over and frail.

"Good people of the Province," he started. "Perhaps I am, as you say, an Avatar. But let me make it clear to you what an Avatar is, according to my humble understanding. A Manifestation of God-On-Earth is one who takes human form and wields the power to save the world. This planet has been blessed with a long line of Divine Incarnations. Ramakrishna and Jesus Christ come immediately to mind. But note that the power to save the world is not the obligation to save the world. In fact, if we look around us, we can plainly see that after hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Divine Incarnations, not one has elected to save the world. Now I shall do it. I hereby declare that you shall all be transformed into Avatars hence-forth. Therefore, I command you to look to no other man or woman for salvation. You are salvation itself."

The forlorn crowd quickly disbanded and the reporters went home for good.

Not Broke Yet

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A prominent businessman began seeing our Abbot about a year ago due to a looming financial crisis.

"Sensei," he'd say, "I'm going broke. My business is going bankrupt."

"But your business is a corporation. Its bankruptcy is separate from yours," shot back the Abbot. "If you are not personally filing for bankruptcy, then you're not broke yet."

After sitting through a particularly arduous meditation session a few months later, the businessman tugged on the Abbot's arm and said, "I'm going to have to file for personal bankruptcy. They're foreclosing on my house. I think I've had it."

"But the bankruptcy Trustee will still let you keep several months' salary in the bank," replied the Mater, "so you'll have more than enough to pay rent and keep your car running."

About a week ago this same businessman made a personal appointment with our Abbot. He entered the Zendo just as the Abbot was cleaning the altar. The Abbot was in the act of dusting off a statue of Kannon Bodhisattva when the businessman fell to floor in front of the altar, reduced to tears by his financial condition.

"My bank account is now completely empty. My wife has left me. My family has lost faith in me and refuses to help."

Upon hearing this the Abbot produced a crisp, new thousand-dollar bill and put it in front of the supplicant's face and said, "You're not broke yet."

The businessman rose to his feet in consternation. "I can't take that kind of money from you. That may be your life savings for all I know. Besides, where does a Buddhist monk go to get a thousand dollars?"

"That's easy," chuckled the Abbot, "I've been stealing twenty dollars a week from your jacket for the last year."

Awaiting The Messiah

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The Rector was leaving his office to go home for the evening. As he passed by the front lawn of the Cathedral to go to his car, he noticed several members of his Episcopal congregation seated on blankets, eating out of picnic baskets and occasionally looking furtively at the horizon toward the sunset. Although he was very ecumenical in his outlook, he was surprised to see an odd collection of Jews and Muslims also seated on the lawn. A few had put up tents and were unrolling sleeping bags.

"May I ask," the Rector said curiously, "to whom do we owe the honor of such a grand interfaith gathering?"

The Sunday school teacher said with child-like enthusiasm, "Rabbi Ben Judah has predicted the Messiah would come tonight, some time after sunset. We heard it on his Prophecies of The Torah radio show."

The Rector arched his eyebrows, sat himself on the grass with his parishioners and their guests and said, "Then I suppose I have no choice but to wait with you. I had promised to take my wife out to dinner, but I'm sure she'll understand my canceling our dinner on account of the Messiah coming."

The sun set completely and the dark-blue twilight descended over the Cathedral grounds. A few of the parishioners broke out their guitars and taught some hymns to the visitors. Someone with a propane stove set up a marshmallow roast and a good time was had by all. One could hear a few of the teenagers popping open a beer can or two, but no one bothered to criticize them.

Around midnight the encampment became very quiet. The Rector used this opportunity to move near the propane stove so all present could see his face. "Friends, the Lord has just sent me a word."

"Speak it, Reverend," a few of the parishioners said.

"I've realized there might be a day even more important than the day the Messiah returns to Earth," proclaimed the Rector.

"What day is that?" the choir leader asked.

The Rector solemnly said, "The day we return to Earth."

The Three Precepts

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"I take up the way of not killing. I take up the way of not stealing. I take up the way of not speaking falsely."

It was a time of unrivaled chaos throughout the countryside. Two warlords were competing for control of the government. Law and order had broken down completely and murderous bandits roamed the highways. Monks were being slaughtered like lambs because it was well known among criminals that no good Buddhist would defend himself. In fact, each monk had taken a vow of not killing under any circumstances. This meant any group of traveling Zen students was an extremely soft target.

Since Sensei was a charismatic and sought-after lecturer, he was on the road much of the time. I had the dangerous honor of accompanying him. I was his scribe and recorded all of his talks. Inevitably we were cornered by a hulking, rogue Samurai with a long, thick sword that glistened in the sun as he waved it at our throats.

"Oh how I have been waiting for this moment, for another chance to dispatch you cowardly half-men with no honor. You fools — taking a vow not to defend yourselves. Who do you think you're kidding with your quivering pretense of holiness?"

There was no answer, at first.

"I see," continued the rogue Samurai, "so you don't deem me worthy of a response. That's typical of you religious hypocrites. What a pleasure it will be to put you out of your misery. We shall see where your Buddhas and Bodhisattvas are then."

Sensei listened very patiently with a tired and bored look on his face. I felt my heart pounding its way out of my chest. After the bandit concluded his speech, I thought the cutting was to begin. Sweat poured off my face, and the moment seemed to last forever.

"Is that all you have to say?" replied the master sullenly.

The Samurai grunted angrily and raised his sword high in the air. But before he could start his downswing, Sensei produced a small revolver, no larger than the palm of his hand, and emptied it into the torso of the bandit. The Samurai fell straight back and hit the ground with a sonorous thud, still tightly gripping his sword.

In shock, I shouted at Sensei, "What about the three precepts! Have you forgotten the first one! I can't believe I've wasted ten years following such a teacher! Where did you get that gun?"

"I got it from my Master," replied Sensei.

"What?" I asked, as I tried futilely to regain my composure.

"Like all good monks," said Sensei, "I took the three precepts in my initiation ceremony. But after the ceremony was done and the guests had all enjoyed a hearty meal, the Master approached me privately in a hallway behind the Zendo. He said, 'Listen, sometimes the precepts are impossible to follow.' Then he handed me this revolver and made me promise to tell no one of its existence."

"So you're telling me you and your master don't believe in the first precept!" I exclaimed.

"Maybe not," he whispered back. "And I'm not so sure about the other two either."

A Zen Addict

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Our Master was a petite woman with a beguiling face. At first many of the monks fell in love with her, but she soon put a stop to that.

"I hear that many of you seekers are continuing your practice of Zen in hopes of gaining certainty and validation. If you want certainty and validation, I suggest you take your sorry asses over to the Episcopal Church down the road. I hear Christians deal in that sort of thing."

Far from being insulted by our Master's remarks, I decided to take her advice. The Episcopal Priest was unorthodox in her approach. In order to promote her non-traditional views, she would host a different guest speaker each week, mostly other liberals of renown.

Upon receiving the weekly church program, I became very disturbed to see that next week's speaker was a widely-reviled radical theologian. In spite of his being hated by traditionalists, he always drew a large crowd. The progressives came to see him to have their rebellious ideas confirmed; and the orthodox types came to see him out of morbid curiosity. Either way, the cash-strapped church could restore its coffers by selling expensive tickets to see him preach.

The thing that most upset me was that he was a well-known drug addict. The list of illegal and dangerous substances he ingested on a daily basis was shocking to me. Why hadn't he been defrocked and laughed out of the ministry? Why was the minister debasing the congregation by inviting him in? The whole idea sickened me and so I went to see our Master in hopes of gaining some perspective on the matter.

"Sensei," I said anxiously, "the Episcopal minister you sent us to is having that drug-addict theologian come to speak at the church next week. This cannot be in accord with our teaching?"

"Has anyone ever said that Zen Buddhism cures drug addiction?" she snapped.

"No," I replied.

"Then it stands to reason there will be some Zen drug addicts. Probably there are some Christian drug addicts too. You should see what this man has to say."

More confused than ever, I dragged myself to the meeting. The high cost of the tickets did not help my mood any.

Much to the delight of everyone, the radical theologian was entertaining and funny. He seemed to grasp the whole of the religious quest, knew every pitfall along the way, and somehow took the edge off of what was a very uncertain time for many of us. I must confess the experience was absolutely transcendental.

But just as he was concluding his speech, the visiting speaker collapsed on stage, falling flat on his face. An off-duty physician rushed forward and tried to resuscitate him, but concluded, "There's no heartbeat. He's stopped breathing. You'd better call the coroner."

I was simply incensed at this turn of events, and I was angry at myself for being swept up in the mania of this man's charisma. I stepped forward and looked down at the dead man's body, then looked up at the resident minister.

"This is the karmic justice we deserve for bringing in this drug user to lead our service. What would an addict know about God?"

"I'll show you what!" she replied. Looking down at the physician, she ordered, "Doctor, roll the corpse over!"

As the body was turned over, the face of the speaker was revealed. The eyes were wide open and wild with ecstasy. The frozen smile was that of a man leaping with life. The bright overhead lights reflected the sweat that had been dripping from his brow.

The minister faced me and said, "In the deepest throes of addiction, even in the clutches of death itself, this man's face is glowing with the fire of the Holy Spirit. You will count yourself lucky if your life or your death are half as glorious."

Panhandlers

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"Both panhandling drug addicts and itinerant holy men often have shaggy hair and worn clothing, also they appear unemployed and are frequently seen begging for money. How can I tell which is the saint and which is the fraud?" wondered a visitor.

The Master said, "If you have the Eye of the Dharma, you can tell them apart from a mile away. If you don't have the Eye of the Dharma, you'll think you know that the monk is not a drug addict and that the panhandler is not a saint. Because all of your actions are scripted and not in tune with the Tao, you are led about by conventions and cannot make decisions in accord with cosmic awareness."

"What," inquired the visitor, "is the systematic way of daily discipline required to gain certain access to the Tao, so that we might logically proceed to know the truth without undue risk?"

"Such a way," asserted the Master, "has never existed in all the three worlds. To attempt to live in such a way, contrary to the great steam of the Universe, is likened unto an athlete trying to master the ocean by swimming in tsunamis. He is not forbidden to try, but we cannot pretend to be shocked at the outcome."

The Perfect Prayer

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One morning a Hassidic Rabbi was approached by an Elder of the congregation who asked, "Rabbi, what is the perfect prayer?"

The Rabbi turned to his desk, opened a drawer and pulled out an index card. "I have written these up for anyone who asks."

The Elder took the card and read it:

"Dear God, I renounce all previous requests for the health, prosperity, or long life, for myself, my family, or my friends. I further renounce all such future requests made on my behalf."

"I see," said the Elder, "so you're saying we should only ask for spiritual salvation."

"No," replied the Rabbi, "that would be an insult to God."

"How could that be?" inquired the Elder.

"Because," the Rabbi answered, "that would imply God hadn't already saved you."

His Holiness

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Sensei had flagrantly violated the strictures that forbade Abbots from dating their students. This caused an uproar in the temples all over town. When confronted with the outrage over this matter, Sensei would say, "My only regret is that I didn't do it sooner."

One night as he was dining with his illicit consort, she said, "Sensei, I am rather irritated with the Tibetan Buddhist who attends our meditation class."

"Are you referring to the painfully serious one?" asked the Master.

"Yes," she said. "This person always refers to her Guru as: His Holiness."

"Pretty creepy, isn't it?" the Master said softly.

She smiled and asked, "What would you do if we started calling you His Holiness."

"I would rather drown in my own vomit than hear such a thing!" he proclaimed.

Shiva At The Door

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A Sanskrit scholar spotted the old Brahmin sipping tea in a downtown café.

"Hail, Guru!" barked the Sanskrit scholar.

"Must you call me that?" snapped the old Brahmin.

"What?" objected the Sanskrit scholar. "Now you don't like your job title?"

"I don't like your job title either," said the old Brahmin.

"Listen, old man," replied the Sanskrit scholar, "I have theological question."

"Couldn't you ask someone else?" replied the old Brahmin.

"If Shiva is the all-destroyer," said the Sanskrit scholar, "wouldn't we be better off to worship some other god?"

"But Shiva is also the rebirth of the world and the Absolute Reality beyond creation and destruction," replied the old Brahmin.

"Slick preaching, old man," chided the Sanskrit scholar. "But I just read that Shiva is also manifested in the man who murders."

"Perhaps the gods are a bit moody at times," acknowledged the old Brahmin.

"What if we suspect a murderer is at our front porch?" said the Sanskrit scholar. "Shall we seat him at our table and serve him dinner, since he's an incarnation of Shiva, or shall we insult Shiva by refusing to open the door?"

The old Brahmin stood up indignantly and left the café without answering the question.

The Sanskrit scholar walked to the door and shouted down the street at the old Brahmin, "Hail, Guru!"

Their Fatal Mistake

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A young woman in our town had died an unspeakably horrible death. Sensei was called to an ecumenical meeting to discuss how the community might come to terms with this tragedy.

The Southern Baptist Minister said, "Only the Bible could have saved this woman. Our failure to follow Christian scripture is to blame for this catastrophe."

The Fundamentalist Muslim Cleric retorted, "Had we made the Koran the law of the land, people would have thought twice before taking the liberties that led to this woman's untimely end."

An Orthodox Buddhist Priest noted, "All that's left to do is face the Law of Impermanence. Once we see the passing nature of all life, we need not grieve any longer."

The Religious Science Minister asserted, "These things come about because of negative thoughts. Had the woman simply claimed her Divine Right to Prosperity, nothing bad could have happened to her."

Sensei, who had been staring at his shoes the whole time, looked up and observed, "When I reflect on all that's been said here today, I realize our wounds can never be healed."

"That's a terrible thing to say!" countered the Religious Scientist. "Have some faith in life!"

"We have a profound responsibility to the community we serve," added the Southern Baptist Minister. "Everyone in this town looks to us for guidance."

"That," said Sensei, "is their fatal mistake."

Breaking Out of Prison

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"Sensei, I'm a sex addict."

"Who cares?"

"People see me with a different woman every week."

"They probably find that quite amusing."

"No, they don't. They see my whole spiritual life as a hypocritical joke."

"I like jokes. Can you tell me another?"

"Sensei, how did you finally learn to be faithful to your wife?"

"Who said I was faithful?"

"Everyone can plainly see that you wouldn't dare commit adultery."

"Darn, I must be losing my edge."

"Seriously, how were you finally able to settle down?"

"I lived every delusion to the fullest until the truly empty nature of every vice was exposed."

"How can I make myself see the truth in these matters?"

"You can't force yourself to see anything?"

"Sensei, how may I escape my illusions."

"The chances of breaking out of prison are remote. You must wait till the Warden lets you go."

"How can I get out of jail sooner?"

"I recall attending the parole hearing of a young Buddhist man who took to robbing banks. The Parole Board members asked him why his jail term should be reduced. He replied: Even if you let me out, you won't be setting me free. Wherever I go, I'll bring the prison with me."

Ashoka's True Love

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The majority of the monks at Ashoka's monastery were celibate. Ashoka never required them to take vows of chastity, but most of them preferred to avoid the controversy that surrounded other monks who'd been rumored to have love affairs. The fact that Ashoka did not make celibacy an actual requirement at his monastery came to the attention of the regional authorities. A delegation of three administrative monks and two officials of the prefecture came to the temple gate to discuss the matter.

The residents of the monastery greeted the delegation warmly. A vegetarian lunch was prepared and green tea was served. Everyone was seated in front of low-rise tables placed on thick mats. Several of Ashoka's highest ranking monks also seated themselves in a semicircle behind the delegation. Many formal gestures and bows ensued, followed by long conversations about the general state of affairs of their sect. Someone smuggled in a large sake bottle, and everyone smiled very solemnly as small cups of the intoxicant were passed around without comment. The delegation members disapproved, but decided to hold their tongues in an attempt to save their political capital for the main issue.

Toward the conclusion of the long evening, a somber tone of respectful severity came over the room. The high-ranking monks and the assistants to the delegates fidgeted with restraint in elated anticipation of the prospect of witnessing a high-level disagreement. The delegates possessed the official authority to give direct orders to Ashoka, but they were hoping to come to an amicable agreement as Ashoka's monastery was by far the largest and wealthiest in the entire sect.

As the tension in the room reached a crescendo, the leader of the delegation cleared his throat.

"Dear Revered Ashoka," he began hesitantly, "regretfully, I must interrupt this most cordial gathering with a bit of official business. I hope you will forgive us if the matters at hand are a bit awkward in nature."

"Awkward matters are a specialty of mine," quipped Ashoka. "Speak your mind plainly."

"How is it," the delegation leader ventured, "that you give your monks unfettered sexual license?"

"I neither grant nor revoke licenses," replied Ashoka.

Unable to hold back his righteous anger any longer, the delegation leader snapped, "Don't play word games with me! Our order is founded on discipline. If you have no intention of disciplining your monks, we will do it for you."

Ashoka, a man not known for exuding the virtue of self-effacing humility shot back, "You go back to headquarters and tell your superiors that no one disciplines us! Interfere with our monastery and you'll find my high-ranking monks will have your jobs after the next convention."

Seeing the truth of Ashoka's remarks, the delegation leader cleared his throat again and said, "If you will not prevent your students from certain sexual liberties, then perhaps you might explain to us what good could possibly come of monks engaging in romantic love."

Ashoka leaned back against some pillows, gazed out of an open window, heaved a heavy sigh and chuckled lightly. He said:

"There was once a monk named Mahabhakti who belonged to a priestly order that required absolute chastity. It then stood to reason that the monks in that monastery were known far-and-wide for their madcap sexual exploits and absurd debauchery.

"Mahabhakti was a bit more ordinary than his cohorts, having only one lover, to whom he was fully devoted. As for alcohol, he never touched a drop.

"At one point Mahabhakti began to get suspicious of his lover. She had asked him several times if he had been faithful to her. He eventually saw this ploy for what it was, a vain attempt to keep her own affair secret by creating a diversion. Her fraudulent cross-examinations were beyond silly because anyone who knew Mahabhakti at all was perfectly aware of his unwillingness to carry off even a small betrayal.

"His suspicions were confirmed when he followed his lover for several hours one evening. He observed her running excitedly into her other man's arms. She was clearly enthralled by her new lover. Her mannerisms lacked all the usual reserve and propriety that she displayed around Mahabhakti. Instead, she was like a schoolgirl who loved blindly and unconditionally. In all the years he had known her, he had never seen anything like this. Mahabhakti had to face the truth. She loved this new man more than she had ever loved him.

"For the next several days he avoided his lover, claiming that the Abbot was cracking down and not letting monks slip away in the evenings to conduct their romances. But, in truth, he was brooding for hours on end. His feelings ranged from extreme self-pity and suicidal grief to murderous rage and maddening jealousy.

"At his wits end, he confessed the whole matter to his Abbot, and the abbot said the following: I know the businessman your lover is running around with. He is a major donor to this temple. From what I can see, you should be wildly happy for her. He is a brilliant man. He knows all of the scriptures, travels the world adventurously and has managed to amass a fortune, all the while maintaining a most humble and generous demeanor. He is a gentleman and a scholar of the most noble sort. What better fortune could befall your beloved? If you truly love her, you will not interfere in the slightest way.

"This advice did not sit well with Mahabhakti. He poured through the holy books in order to find verses that condemned adulterers. He built an airtight case for his righteous indignation. At last he firmly resolved to call an end to the romance. He could never tolerate sharing his lover, nor could he accept being number two in her heart. Sensing what was about to take place, the Abbot called Mahabhakti to his study and said: If you end your relationship with your lover, you will be more of a scoundrel than she is, in spite of the fact that she is cheating and you are not. After all, she hasn't asked to end the relationship. She's not abandoning you, and yet you've set out to abandon her. She is hiding the truth from you because she has found the love of her life, and yet she still wants to spend her years with you, in spite of the fact that you're a world-class dullard. If you leave her, it will be due to your damnable grasping egotism and nothing else!

"Mahabhakti's head was spinning. He could not reconcile the Abbot's words with the feelings that were flooding his body. Inexplicably, he rushed from the temple and stumbled into a Kali shrine. He fell before the altar and began to ask the Goddess to save him from total confusion. Befuddled Hindu Priests looked on, not knowing why a strange monk was weeping before their altar.

"Undeterred by the unhappy stares of the Priests, Mahabhakti recounted the whole story of his relationship aloud as anxious parishioners paced around the back of the shrine, afraid to be seen near the altar with the pathetic creature that had invaded their temple.

"Then, to everyone's bewilderment, just as Mahabhakti had told the Goddess he was going to leave his lover, all of the candles in the temple went out. Suddenly a diaphanous image of the face of the Goddess appeared in the air above the altar. A single tear rolled down her cheek.

"The next day Mahabhakti went to see his lover as though nothing had ever happened. They went to their favorite eatery and went for a sunset walk in the Governor's public gardens. Toward the end of the evening Mahabhakti's lover noticed a fiery twinkle in his eye, the likes of which she had never seen before.

"She suspected he knew something. She said: I can't read your face. I hope you don't suspect I've done something wrong?

"He replied: Such a thought has never crossed my mind.

"Tormented by guilt, she began sobbing uncontrollably and fell into Mahabhakti's arms, saying: There's no one in my life but you. Please don't think I'm a wicked woman!

"Mahabhakti took her head into his hands and stared straight into her soaked eyes and said: Darling, what on earth are you talking about? Why the thought of you being wicked would never occur to me, not in a million years. Your virtue is the light of my life and it outshines the ten-thousand suns."

When Ashoka concluded the story, the room was silent. For some of the monks who had never known romantic love, this was all frightening and incomprehensible. For the monks who had known romantic love, this was too close to home to be amusing. Only one person was grinning, and that was the delegation leader.

He cleared his throat again and said, "That story is not a part of our traditional lore, nor have I read it in the books of any other school. Where did you get it from?"

"I made it up, of course," replied Ashoka defensively.

"Not so," insisted the delegation leader. "The story comes from your own life. Isn't it true that you were really the youthful Mahabhakti?"

Ashoka almost bent over as a wave of grief rolled through his chest. He quickly got his bearings and went back on the offensive, but it was too late, the delegation leader had already gotten the best of him.

Ashoka shook his fist and shouted, "What the hell would a shaved-headed, old functionary like you know about love?"

"Well," replied the delegation leader serenely, "I guess I know a little something now."

The First Noble Truth

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"Sensei, I have read many translations of Sakyamuni's Four Noble Truths. Some say the First Truth reads, 'Life is suffering,' while others others claim, 'Life contains suffering,' is a more accurate rendition."

"Are you resisting the first translation?"

"I'm afraid if I accept the view that life is suffering, I'll end up a negative person."

"I ran across the same problem when studying under the cruel and brutal Master Fujikami."

"What did he recommend?"

"He said the true interpretation was the one I was most afraid of. Then he proceeded to give me the phrase, 'Life is suffering,' as a koan."

"That seems harsh."

"Day after day I struggled, trying to throw some positive light on the phrase: Life is suffering."

"What was the outcome of your efforts?"

"I set out to merge with this pointedly unattractive saying. I chanted the phrase constantly and sang it to myself while doing chores. In my free time, I listened to songs about suffering, watched movies about suffering, read novels about suffering. At some point my heart opened up to suffering. A soulfulness descended upon me that I had never known before. I am still at a loss to explain it."

"The Buddha also said that suffering comes from clinging."

"Yes, and even worse suffering comes from clinging to not-clinging."

"Then we suffer when we have attachments and we suffer when we try to let go of those attachments. It seems like there's no way out."

"Not only is there no way out, but there's also no way in either."

The Muse Confronts Mu Mu

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Mu Mu spent his life writing terse love poems in the Chinese minimalist tradition. His muse, an obscure member of the sprawling royal family, had become incensed that he'd refused to make a spirited attempt to steal her from her moribund husband by making madcap love with her.

"My darling," Mu Mu said, "your husband spends too much time providing for your creature comforts and fulfilling your detailed social requirements to ever make a full-time job of adoring you. I, on the other hand, having never set foot in an employer's office, and having no status on the social registry, can freely spend weeks at a time telling the gods, and all of posterity, about the wondrous mysteries of your face.

"Anyone who attempted to usurp your husband's position would be accepting a romantic demotion. Furthermore, becoming acquainted, on a detailed level, with the betrayals, collusions, corruptions and compromises attendant to the maintenance of your royal status, would certainly disabuse me of any idealized notions I might have had of you and expose the extremely worldly and hard-hearted tactics that must comprise the bulk of your daily concerns.

"In not making love to you, I am able to return to my own quarters, day after day, and let my imagination construct you as a saint and a goddess. Therefore, my sweetness, ask yourself, when will I ever love you more than I do now?"

Near-Earth Objects

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Little Bikhu was a solid Zen Buddhist who lived a carefree life under the dubious and inconsistent guidance of the Master. He was, as old Linji would have said, "a simple monk with no concerns." And so it surprised the Master, who was well known to be a worrywart in spite of his sporadic and well-publicized bouts of heroic bravery, to see Little Bikhu approach him in a state of suppressed anxiety.

"Little Bikhu," said the Master, "you look perfectly overwrought today."

"I can't seem to calm down," replied Little Bikhu.

"Then we could be in for some trouble," replied the Master in a teasing tone, "since I'm always relying on you to calm me down."

"Master," continued Little Bikhu, "I was visiting an astronomer friend of mine and he gave me a bit of disturbing news. He says that there are so many asteroids out there that it's only a matter of time before one hits our planet and destroys all life on earth. Specifically, he says our city would be buried under a thousand-foot wall of water if one of those things ever lands in the Pacific."

"What is the earliest possible date at which we could expect to experience this calamity?" inquired the Master.

"Perhaps in as little as ten years from now," replied Little Bikhu.

"Hmm," mused the master, putting his hand on his chin. "You know that the Shin Buddhists believe they'll go straight to the Pure Land if the world is destroyed. And, we all know that our Muslim and Christian friends have very detailed notions of the heavens that await them."

"Yes Master," said Little Bikhu impatiently, "but we have no doctrine to lean on in such cases."

"Good point," admitted the Master. "Now you have me wondering, Little Bikhu," said the Master as he leaned forward and looked into Little Bikhu's eyes, "when the asteroid hits, just exactly who were you thinking might save us?"

As Little Bikhu pondered this question, he saw that the Master's face had begun that mysterious transformation. In spite of his mental illness, his excessive drinking and sexual irregularities, The Clear Light of The Bodhidharma Mind-Seal Transmission would, from time to time, beam straight through his face. No one could predict when this would happen, but when it did, a wide grin would come across anyone's face who saw it.

"I just figured out the answer to our question," announced Little Bikhu.

"What a relief," noted the Master sarcastically.

"When the asteroid hits," continued Little Bikhu, "the thousand-foot wall of water will be our savior."

"But," said the Master as he perversely smirked, "the millions of people being swept away in that deluge won't feel like they're being saved, will they, Little Bikhu?"

"No!" insisted Little Bikhu with feigned gravity, "they won't feel like that at all."

Little Bikhu got up to find them some sake.

The New-Age Psychic

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The Master was not feeling quite himself that morning and was refusing to come out to the Zendo to deliver his dharma talk. This annoyed the laymen students because they were, after all, the ones that paid the bills. One of them came into the Master's study and confronted him.

"Sensei, we're waiting out there for our dharma talk. Unlike you, we only have a few hours a week we can devote to this sort of thing, so we'd appreciate it if you could make your way out to the zendo. In case you didn't know it, some of us are strapped with worldly obligations. We can't hang around all day till you're in the mood to socialize."

"I'm sorry," said Sensei. "I'm just all out of sorts today. I can't seem to get a handle on what I'm doing here. It feels like something those western psychologists might call free-floating anxiety."

"Great," said the layman sarcastically. "I pay you to give me guidance and you end up asking me for help."

"Your wife," ventured the Master, "you said she regularly consulted a psychic. Is that still true?"

"Yes, I think so," replied the layman.

"If it wouldn't be too much trouble, could you arrange for that psychic woman to come and see me tonight?" asked the Master.

"Fine. I'll take care of it," snapped the layman.

"Now what are we going to do about today's dharma talk?"

*

The psychic arrived at the temple early in the evening. This was a respected fortune teller, and she brought a real crystal ball with her in which she actually saw things.

She was a bit apprehensive from the moment she walked in. She could tell, from her years of training, that this case was going to be trouble. Her instincts told her this was the kind of person her teachers had warned her about. At the metaphysical school they were simply called "incurables."

*

"I'm looking into the crystal ball, but I'm not seeing any images, only some strange text."

"What does the text say?"

"It says: no eye, no ear, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind, no seeing, no hearing, no smelling, no tasting, no touching, no thinking."

"That's just something from the Heart Sutra. We regularly chant it here."

"Seems rather negative to me."

"Negativity certainly enters into our practice from time to time."

"Never mind that. Let me look at my astrological computer."

"I don't see a computer anywhere."

"The whole application is loaded onto my smart phone."

"What does it say?"

"Each time a prediction comes up, it changes again. Somehow, the program is switching dates and times every few seconds."

"It seems like nothing stands still for long."

"Show me your hand."

"Gladly."

"What's this? There's no lines, not even finger-prints."

"My Master told me to leave this world without a trace."

"Okay, let's try the cards and see what turns up."

"I like cards."

"This is odd. The cards seem to have nothing printed on them. Tell me something, Sensei, are you afraid of intimacy?"

"What makes you think that?"

"No matter what I do, I can't get a reading on you. That's a sign of great loneliness. It's as if you don't let people close enough to see who you truly are."

"I am afraid I'm nobody in particular."

"Trust me, you are someone quite specifically."

"Someone worthy of love?"

"Maybe not, but you're going to have to learn to ask for it anyway."

"I would hate to come off as a needy person in front of others."

"My client's husband said you were so distraught that you didn't even deliver your lecture today. Is that true?"

"I'm afraid so."

"Sensei, I am going to give you some homework, and I'm not going to accept any excuses from you."

"Okay."

"Next Saturday you are to give your weekly talk as scheduled."

"I'm not sure what's left to say."

"For starters, you can tell them you're lonely and that you need their love."

"What sort of Zen Master would say something like that?"

"An authentic one."

Which God?

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The Sufi Grand Mufti had been a bit elusive, generally not making his whereabouts known to strangers. He would only accept new guests if they were introduced to him by someone he already knew. After religious services, he quickly exited the building out of a side door, got into a car and sped off to an undisclosed location.

Some Christian missionaries were having a difficult time trying to preach their gospel to the Grand Mufti. Whenever they looked for him, people would purposely misdirect them, knowing the Mufti would not welcome these intruders. Finally they hired a local man to spy out his location. Eventually they cornered him at the home of one of his students.

"Sir," began the most vocal of the missionaries, "we have come here to give you a great gift. We want you to experience the intimate relationship we have with the Creator. We know that all other faiths besides ours are false and hollow. Clearly your religion provides no real way to know God on a first name basis."

"What would you have me do?" replied the Mufti politely.

A second missionary chimed in, "We want you to ask Jesus into your heart so that you will walk with the Lord like a friend, just as we do."

"I regret to inform you," added the Mufti a bit firmly, "that I will not leave the Sufi order at this time."

The second missionary, becoming a bit more confrontational, put her hands on her hips and put her face forward and said, "Just who is your God anyway, Mr. Mufti?"

The Mufti, raised his head a bit higher and looked rather forcefully at the missionary group and said, "My God is The God That Is Not-God."

As the missionaries looked at each other incredulously, the first missionary asked with a wincing look of disapproval, "And exactly what do you mean by The God That Is Not-God?"

"The fact that you have to ask," concluded the Mufti, "means you have no personal knowledge of Him whatsoever."

2. The Supreme Light of Mundane Existence

Neuro-Linguistic Programming

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Personal Doubts was having a discussion with New Age Therapist Lady who suggested that his flaws were not real. She claimed that if he practiced Neuro-Linguistic Programming, he would surely see that the flaws were a creation of his own mind, and this would cause the shortcomings to disappear. Personal Doubts tried the program for several months but was unable to rid himself of his flaws. When Personal Doubts confronted New Age Therapy Lady with this unsatisfactory result, she told Personal Doubts that the program would have worked had he not implemented it in a flawed way.

Islamophobia

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I went to my guru and complained that I was suffering from Islamophobia.

"Exactly what are you afraid will happen?" he asked.

"I believe Islamic Extremists will take over the West," I replied in a panicked tone.

"Really, and how will they do this?" my guru wondered.

"First, of course, they'll employ Western technology to manufacture nuclear weapons," I asserted.

"So, in order to threaten the West with nuclear weapons, they'll need to become Western nuclear scientists," noted my guru.

"Yes, it will take years and involve thousands of people working night and day with the latest Western technologies," I hastily added.

"I see, so they will become extremely devoted to the cause of Western technology to compete with the West," noted my guru as he leaned back on his cushion and took a deep breath.

"Exactly, they'll stop at nothing to advance in their use of computers, smart phones and Western social media," I said, wiping my sweat-covered brow.

"So you're saying they might employ Western Technology better than Westerners do at some point, and could eventually make even more effective use of Western social media than Westerners do," mused my guru with a serene affect.

"Right, and then they'll spare no expense to convince the world of the righteousness of their agenda," I continued.

"But how will they convince the entire planet that they should rule over everyone?" inquired my guru with an uncertain expression.

"It's obvious," I replied, "they'll master all the latest publicity and propaganda techniques known to Madison Avenue and all the other hotbeds of Western advertising."

"So they'll finally get Western Marketing down better than Westerners do," observed my guru. "But then how will they finance this massive operation."

"Can't you see?" I fretfully proclaimed. "They're rapidly becoming experts at moving around hundreds of millions of dollars. Their fund-raising programs are the best in the world. Western Finance will be one of the cornerstones of their agenda. It'll all be about doing anything at all to amass incredible amounts of money."

"Wow," my guru said. "They could end up being more greedy and acquisitive that even we Westerners are if they keep this up."

"When you add all these things up," I concluded. "you've got to know that they're going to outperform us Westerners in ever major category of Western behavior."

"So in essence," summed up my guru, "you're saying that we Westerners could be taken over by Superior Westerners."

"But," my guru further wondered, "if the current Westerners are replaced by Superior Westerners, who will be left to take up the cause against the Westerners?"

I Am Shiva

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Sensei was Abbott of a fine new Zendo in South Los Angels, having been transferred from another due to certain "peculiarities of his teaching style." The Bishop put it that way instead of saying that Sensei had again gone mad and was ejected from yet another temple by the Board of Directors who'd had enough of his mental illnesses and his "irregular" sexual behavior. And when a local reporter of religious affairs noted the sudden and conspicuous absence of the well-known teacher, he confronted the Bishop and asked that he define the term, "sexual irregularities." The Bishop replied, "Even repeating a description of the acts Sensei had committed could endanger my own job."

For about two years Sensei, and his unofficial wife, taught, ministered to, and generally cared for, the Sangha in relative harmony. The monks were happy and the lay people were comfortable and complained little. To the dismay of all, one day, during a luncheon with his leading monks and various important dignitaries, Sensei announced he had converted to Hinduism.

"But you're a Buddhist," said the Abbot's Assistant. "You can't be a Brahmin."

"I have no choice," replied Sensei. "I have received the calling."

"But you know nothing of their ceremonies and have only a superficial knowledge of their scriptures and culture," contested the Abbot's Assistant. "How will you proceed to be recognized in such a capacity?"

To the horror and confusion of all concerned, Sensei further clarified the specifics of his newfound ministry. It seems he had decided to wander from temple to temple throughout the continent in order to make a summary appearance at every Hindu house of worship he could find. Thus he would, according to his theory, enlighten them all with the sheer presence of his being. The Board of Directors quickly threatened to dismiss Sensei, having not felt any "beams of Eternal Truth" emanating from Sensei. In fact, they had felt just the opposite.

In order to keep him from being defrocked altogether. The Abbot's Assistant and Sensei's unofficial wife convinced the Board of Directors to grant Sensei a sabbatical in which he might recover from his madness, which they believed to have been a result of Sensei again going off his medicine. They promised to pressure Sensei into returning to the psychiatrist and also to convince him to resume weekly talk therapy.

*

After some time Sensei had managed to book a speaking tour at various Hindu temples. When he requested to speak to their congregations, they were understandably suspicious, but in the interest of ecumenical harmony, they reluctantly went along with the plan. But much to the horror of everyone in attendance at each of the events, Sensei would pronounce the following:

"I am The One, The Eternal, Shiva in the flesh. I am The Creator, The Sustainer, and The Destroyer of the Cosmos, and I too am the Eternal Seed from which the Universe is reborn. It is I, and only I, and no other. My sole purpose in speaking with you today is so that you might know that a giant walks among you. To worship Me is to find The Spring of Life itself. To deny Me is to seal your own doom. There was none before Me. There will be none after Me."

Usually, in some thoughtful and patronizing way, the temple Presidents would find some pretext in which to cut the speech short, claiming that they had fallen behind schedule or that extra speakers were planned for that day and that the remaining time had to be reserved for them. If Sensei appeared not to be getting the hint and would not step aside easily, one or two of the healthier and larger congregants would firmly, but gently ease him to the side so that the service could proceed in an orderly fashion.

Some of the Priests would find themselves doing temple purification ceremonies in their spare time, after Sensei left, just to ward of the "demonic spirits."

Fortunately, and to the relief of his few remaining admirers back at the Zendo, Sensei had not been so unruly as to have made any legal problems for himself, nor had he caused such a scene that any shouting or violence broke out. His well-wishers at the Zendo looked at their calendars regularly, counting down the days till the end of this "tour," feeling that his mania would subside, and, with some fancy footwork, they might be able to talk the Board of Directors at the Zendo into letting him perform his regular duties again as Abbott.

*

At the end of one of his last speaking engagements, Sensei was confronted by a Hindu businessman who'd attended the event.

"Sensei, I insist that you be perfectly honest with me. You don't really believe all that nonsense about you being Shiva, do you?"

Sensei smiled slyly and looked the man in the eyes. He said nothing.

"I thought so," the man continued. "So what on earth is the meaning of this elaborate hoax?"

"Well," replied Sensei slowly and thoughtfully, "I won't be too offended if you all refuse to believe that I am Shiva, but I insist that each of you believe that you yourselves are Shiva."

Water-Truck Bodhisattva

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Hu Wen How drove a water truck every day in order to bring water to distant villages on the borders of China's most arid regions. The job was a simple one. The water truck was driven out to large cisterns that usually sat at the center of the villages. A giant hose emerged from the truck and a pump moved the water from the truck into the cistern. After that, villagers could come and fill their pails full of water in order to survive another hard day in that remote region.

The local administrators were less corrupt and more efficient than in most other provinces, so the water was trucked in from hundreds of miles away, each day, like clockwork and dispersed to the village cisterns. Thus, there was usually nothing very controversial or traumatic taking place in Hu Wen's life, nor in the lives of his coworkers. Instead of leading to happiness, this stable and rational state of affairs drove Hu Wen How and his coworkers to fits of deep boredom, and they all wondered how they might live more interesting lives.

Hu Wen How was disconcerted by the ordinary nature of his life and went to consult with the local Chan Master, The Supreme Light of Mundane Existence, known for his astuteness and sage-like clarity.

"You are rumored to often speak," began Hu Wen How, "about 'the vastness of the practice that goes on forever.' I am not sure what you mean by this, but it sounds more exciting than the routine rounds of my daily life. Can you tell me how to enter into such a practice?"

The Master replied, "Continue each day to drive your truck, delivering the water of life to the villagers. Do so under almost all conditions, whether you feel utterly uninspired or madly joyful. Deliver water as though you were bringing fresh lotuses to the thrones of Buddhas. Be unshakable in your mission. Even if the whole world should be stood on its head and time flow backwards — in all cases, you must continue your practice."

"I find this to be unsatisfactory," countered Hu Wen. "Such an attitude might be fine for a person of rigorous concentration and deep humility, but, as it stands, I am a distracted commoner in search of the typical glories sought by the unlettered."

"Even though you are obviously a man of inferior capacities," noted Supreme Light of Mundane Existence, "you are, in truth, a Bodhisattva, sent to save countless sentient beings while disguised as a simple underling. No matter what happens, you drive your water truck to the villagers and let the whole body of reality take care of the rest. In this manner, you will earn countless lifetimes in the Heaven of Brahmá and set your feet firmly on the road to Buddhahood."

Hu Wen shook his head in cynical disbelief and excused himself, and headed down the road to his home feeling dejected and without direction, disillusioned.

Upon arriving home, his badly-aging wife greeted him with bitter sarcasm, saying, "What did that half baked charlatan priest tell you to do about your trifling, little, inconsequential life?"

Hu Wen How stared at the floor, unable to face his wife's superior wit, and glumly replied, "He told me I am to continue driving my water truck no matter what may happen."

"Ha ha ha!" laughed his shrewish mate. "And I suppose he told you were some world savior in civil servant's clothing!"

"Yeah, yeah," admitted Hu Wen, "it was something along those lines."

"Well, I'll say you've got one thing going for you," conceded his grumpy wife, "you're more useful than that glorified parasite, that so-called Supreme Light of Mundane Existence."

"Perhaps so," conceded Hu Wen as he traipsed off to go to bed.

"What?" chided his wife, "not going out to the tea house to engage in caffeine-induced delusions of grandeur with your loser coworkers?"

Rather than reply, Hu Wen How shut his bedroom door and flopped onto the bed. Having lost some of their health and most of their sex drive, his wife and he had long ago agreed to sleep in separate beds. As the province was cold that time of year, the wife preferred to set up her bed in the living room near their primitive fire. They both drifted off to sleep without any hope of advancement in life.

*

Hu Wen How found himself waking up in a sleeping bag somewhere near a desert region in India. He had studied English for many years in grade school, and knew enough to ask where he was and what day of the week it was. (English is widely spoken in India. While Hindi was the language set up to unify the subcontinent with so many languages, the old colonial habits would not die, and thus was English the language of businessmen, travelers and government officials working across provincial borders.)

He was able to comprehend enough to find out it was now Friday. Since he'd gone to sleep on Tuesday, he could make no sense of where the time had gone or how he had ended up in a ragged sleeping bag in a hot desert.

His natural reaction was to panic, since he was either losing his mind and hallucinating all of this, or something had gone horribly wrong. Maybe he had been kidnapped and drugged and dumped here. Perhaps their home had been invaded and his wife dragged away. He had no way of knowing.

It was then that the voice of The Supreme Light of Mundane Existence came to him, "Even if the entire universe should be stood on its head, you are to continue your practice."

He assumed that he was having auditory hallucinations. But having no other plan of action, he decided to follow the advice of the disembodied voice until he could arrive at some other conclusion about what he should do. Hence, he began looking throughout the nearest parched village for a water truck.

Sure enough, after wandering about dusty streets for about an hour, he found an unattended water tanker, similar to the one he drove in China. It was, in fact, made in China. He'd recognized the make and model from his childhood, causing him to further realize that he was some thirty or forty years in the past and no longer living in his own era.

Amused at the prospect of driving this archaic vehicle, he put his hands on his hips and looked up with a laugh. There was nothing to do but to see this hallucination on through to the end. So he climbed up and got on in and fired up the engine. Of course the key was just sitting there in the ignition. At first, the ancient vehicle spit out dust and smoke and made a terrific clatter, then after several coughing gasps, the machine roared into idle. A broad smile came across Hu Wen How's face.

There was nothing to do but to mindlessly follow the pattern of his daily life; and so he drove to the center of the village, extended the huge hose and filled their cistern full of water. The villagers stood on in awe, as many of them had been almost three days without water due to some strife in the provincial government which had interrupted the water supply.

By the time he reached the next small village, word had somehow magically spread there that a miraculous entity had materialized a water tanker and was saving the lives of villagers. By the time he got to the next enclave, the high priests and ordinary believers were all lining the roads, hailing him as a deity, an avatar, a savior, a bodhisattva. Many were chanting the names of various gods and holding up icons, while many others joined hands and sang hymns. Some threw down garlands, others tossed handfuls of powdered incense and spices over the vehicle as he slowed to try to comprehend the fuss being made over him. This hysterical display of what he thought was misplaced adulation happened in each village he went to.

He frankly thought they were mad, as he was simply, perhaps to seek security in such an odd situation, reverting to his habitual behavior as a common truck driver. He kept trying to convince himself that, anyhow, his appearance in India, his apparent time travel, and his hearing of the disembodied voice of the local Chan Master, were all hallucinations anyway.

*

The next morning he popped out of bed, surveyed his room and the living room and decided that his mysterious dream-escapades through time and space had been real. He felt energized, alive and excited about doing his job.

When he came into the living room again, he was wearing a fresh uniform and had even polished his shoes and was more smartly-groomed than usual.

"What's with that smirk on your face," his discontented wife asked. "You look like a brainwashed missionary. And why are you so cleaned up today? Are you up for some promotion you didn't tell me about?"

"No," replied Hu Wen How, "nothing special at all. It's just another working day. That's all. Oh yes, and there is the small matter of my having had a vision last night after talking with the Chan Master."

"You silly, old dog," said his wife in a cynical tone. "All that was just another dream you must have had, full of wishful thinking and cheap miracles. This isn't the first time you've come babbling about miracles after some wine-induced dreaming."

"I can prove I had a vision," snapped Hu Wen How.

"Give me one shred of evidence that you've experienced something divine," demanded his wife.

"Okay," confidently declared Hu Wen, "tonight when I get back home, we'll have hot sex for hours on end."

After this stunning pronouncement, he smiled and closed the front door behind him. His wife, who had not felt a tender touch in years, sat with her mouth hanging open, wondering if indeed her feckless husband might really prove to be some kind of unsung savior.

3. Mara's Fame Factory

All My Life's Work

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A parishioner approached the Dreaded Fujikami and said, "Please pardon my speaking out, revered teacher, but I must object. Your last sermon made it seem as if all of my life's work was in vain."

The Dreaded Fujikami, after a moment of silence, puffed out his chest, grimaced harshly and grunted, "What do you mean by: as if?"

Which Writings Are False

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A philosopher asked Sensei, "How do we know, for sure, which writings are false?"

Sensei replied, "If it's scripture, then you know it's certainly false. If it's not scripture, it's only probably false. If your wife is the author of the writing, you must always pretend it's true or be prepared for divorce. If your employer writes a book, try to find another job as quickly as possible."

The Divine Mother

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Before I left the house, I told her, "I am going across town to the shrine of The Divine Mother."

She replied, "Why would you waste all that time going across town and back when I'm already here?"

The Great Non-Achievement

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Disillusioned Layman asked Almost No Teaching: "For what reason did Shinran Shonin come into the world?"

Almost No Teaching replied, "To show that Buddhism was absolutely true and that no human being could ever practice Buddhism."

"How," asked Disillusioned Layman, "are we to proceed on the path with No Practice?"

Almost No Teaching said, "By faithfully Not Practicing it."

"But," objected Disillusioned Layman, "How can we achieve anything that way?"

"Perhaps," observed Almost No Teaching, "you are on the verge of The Great Non-Achievement at this very moment. Don't spoil it by doing anything."

A Decent Donation

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Sensei said: "I vow to save all sentient beings."

A student objected, "But last week you said all sentient beings were already saved."

"Correct," replied Sensei, "which is why today's service will mostly consist of sake drinking and sushi eating. And you could bow in gratitude, occasionally, or whatever, if you want to. But leave a decent donation, or you'll be in trouble next week."

One More Requirement

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Open-Hearted Cynic was smirking as he trudged across the great expanse of The Desert of Disillusionment, which was itself about as wide as the planet Earth. (This desert was located on an exoplanet about the size of Jupiter.) As he moved along at a laggardly pace, from time to time, persons of various races and cultures, and exiles from assorted space-time dimensions, passed by him scornfully.

Here and there a lost soul or two would confront him: "Why do you patronizingly judge each passerby as though he or she were utterly beneath you in every way?"

"That is not quite true," objected Open-Hearted Cynic. "While it is true that I judge each and every one of you, and usually in the most unflattering ways possible, it would be entirely misguided to conclude that I feel in any way above you. In fact, I have no evidence that the validity of my existence supersedes that of anyone else's."

"Well," would often come the retort, "Who gives you the right to set yourself up as judge?"

"I'm afraid," Open Hearted Cynic would reply, "no one gives me any rights but those I seize for myself over the objections of virtually everyone. Fortunately for me, I've been able to force from the hands of an unwilling galaxy, just about every right one would covet. Too bad for you that you must, apparently, ask permission before thinking or speaking your judgements."

During one of these unpleasant interludes, The Great Misanthrope interrupted: "You must be the one whom I'm told has gone about the galaxy proclaiming that I am not quite enlightened."

Open Hearted Cynic turned to him and said, "That's correct. I tell everyone: He's almost enlightened, but alas, he lacks only one credential."

"And what credential is that?" inquired The Great Misanthrope.

"Your great fault is that, like me, you go about the planets proclaiming: All living beings are thieves, liars and adulterers!"

"But," protested The Great Misanthrope, "if you yourself admit to doing the same thing, how is it that you hold yourself up as a paragon of enlightenment while abusing my sagely reputation? And anyway, I come in earnest to find out what your requirements are, what it will take for you to stop harming my reputation as an All-Seeing Master. I confess, I don't take such criticism well, and I insist on your blessing and a cessation to these hostilities."

"My only requirement is that you add a single qualifier to our proclamation, just a single word."

"This seems like an amazingly-easy request to adhere to. What is this single word?"

"I only ask," added Open Hearted Cynic, "whenever you are about to issue our usual denunciation that all living beings are thieves, liars and adulterers, that you add the word 'almost' to the beginning of the sentence."

"You mean I am merely to now say: Almost all living beings are thieves, liars and adulterers?"

"Right, because you must allow for the possibility that one being in a billion, encountered perhaps only once in many lifetimes, might not be a thief, liar or adulterer. There could be one exception."

"Given that by your own admission," noted The Great Misanthrope, "coming upon such an exception is a profound rarity, then it would seem to cost me nothing to merely add the symbolic preface 'almost' to my general proclamation, since, as you state clearly, coming upon such an exception is deeply unlikely."

"Good, I'm glad my request will not cause much inconvenience to you in your vast travels through the great expanse of endless dimension and beginningless time," agreed Open-Hearted Cynic.

"Very well, then," concluded The Great Misanthrope as he turned to go.

"But wait," called out Open-Hearted Cynic, "I'm afraid I've misinformed you just a bit. In truth, I realize I have just one more requirement for you to adhere to before you will have my full blessing."

Quite annoyed, The Great Misanthrope turned and said, "What is is now?"

"My only other requirement is that as you encounter each living being throughout all galaxies — that when you meet them —"

"Yes?" prodded the Great Misanthrope irritably. "Go on. Say it."

"I only ask, as you encounter each entity for the first time," said Open-Hearted Cynic meekly, "that you promise to entertain the notion that they might be that one exception."

The Secret History of The Sutras

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Compliant Believer approached Sister Dharma-stream with a question: "Why do you never miss a chance to discredit The Sutras and mock those who are diligently studying them?"

Sister Dharmastream replied: "Actually, it's okay to read The Sutras, or even become a scholar of Buddhist literature if you want to."

"Then why," pressed Compliant Believer, "do you always add phrases to your sermons like: back when I used to waste my time reading The Sutras, or: those poor folks chained to the treadmill of the soul-deadening Sutras, or: those half-Hindu pretenders clinging to the dust of The Sutras?"

Sister Dharmastream replied, "I speak this way because there is nothing the human ego craves more than to have a final authority to refer to in the form of a book which it is blasphemous to challenge. No one ever failed to attain the highest states of consciousness because they failed to read a book, but billions of people are permanently unable to attain a state of authentic being because they give up their whole selves to a book. It is in the nature of enlightenment, when and if it comes, to contradict every possible reference point previously clung to. It is permitted for people to read The Sutras, but only with the utmost suspicion and skepticism."

Compliant Believer further inquired, "If The Sutras are really so suspect, how is it that the spiritual community allowed them to be elevated to such a high degree? Could it really be that you are right to distrust The Sutras when so many great spiritual teachers defer to them? If so, how on earth could such a state of affairs have come about?"

"Are you deeply superstitious?" asked Sister Dharmastream. "If so, then I ask that you permit me to tell you a fairy tale which no logical person could believe, but persons who fall for any which legend might accept."

"You know me to be a superstitious man. It's in my nature. Every fiber of my being resonates with it. You know it's hopeless to try to get me to think scientifically," countered Compliant Believer.

"Great!" exclaimed Sister Dharmastream, "then I can tell you the true story of The Sutras: You see, Buddha had attained the state of No Belief Whatsoever, and by his example people began to enter the state of Freedom From All Doctrines. The demons of the ten directions had begun to panic, fearing that a cosmos of enlightened beings might very well destroy The Wheel of Samsara And Delusion by which the whole universe is kept going in its eternal rounds. So they went and complained to Brahmá, King of The Gods, The Creator of All Worlds."

"And in what way would Brahmá help them after they came to Him with such a tawdry concern? Would He not turn them away in utter contempt?" wondered Compliant Believer?

"Not at all," replied Sister Dharmastream. "You see, Brahmá, in His great wisdom, knew that without illusions, The Great Pretense would fail. People can be kept working around the clock for mad delusions, but not for ordinary and sensible things. Should the masses ever stop working like crazy, then the energy required to run your world, and every world Brahmá ever created, would be lost."

"How then did Brahmá intervene?" interjected Compliant Believer anxiously.

"Brahmá," continued Sister Dharmastream, "ordered that the rapid rate of spiritual progress be slowed by thousands of years. He did not order this out of hostility toward enlightenment, but only because He knew too much enlightenment arriving into the universe too quickly would evaporate the very energy which is the fabric of the universe. So He ordered the demons to take the form of human beings who each claimed to be alive and present when each of the Buddhas, each of the gurus, and each of the prophets were living. Then they would write books claiming to have something like infallibility. Furthermore, each of The Sutras would contradict every other Sutra, and all other scriptures of all religions would contradict each other. These demons, disguised as human men, would get The Sutras and the holy scriptures of all religions placed at the very center of their respective faiths. Humans, now being unable to think for themselves, would be bound not to the search for the ultimate truth, but rather to the search for the ultimate truth as filtered through the lens of the scriptures. The process of disentangling this mess would create a several-thousand-year buffer between human beings and the truth. And, in this way, the cosmos, as Brahmá created it, could keep on functioning."

"But wait!" protested Compliant Believer, "then wouldn't the cosmos end once all those ancient scriptures got debunked?"

"No, no," said Sister Dharmastream with a reassuring voice. "Brahmá knew that by the time the old scriptures got debunked, a thousand new scriptures would have arisen to take their place. In truth, the demons never stop writing scriptures. By the time enough centuries lapse to reveal the falsity of the old books, a whole crop of new books arises, and thus is the structure of the universe kept ever safe."

Mara's Fame Factory

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Mara was taking a break from her duties as overseer of the Lust For Fame facility. The Lust For Fame facility was located in dimension #3849. It was unlikely her work would be disturbed by the prying eyes of human beings, since humans were still struggling, after thousands of years, with getting at the 4th dimension. It was in this facility she managed the production of the Fame Chip that motivates sentient beings migrating from lifetime to lifetime. (This facility also produced the Local Popularity Through Humility Chip. This one, in fact, was their most successful product, because it allowed people to believe they were almost Buddhas even as they clung to others' opinions about them as if their lives depended on it. In terms of generating tons of additional karma, it was tops, and the Standard Fame Chip could not compete with it.)

As she sat about listlessly, in stepped Buddha #300,227,494. To protest his utter lack of uniqueness, he had been lately walking about the three worlds wearing standard blue-jeans and a white tee-shirt with the number 300,227,494 printed on it. Mara looked at him silently, glanced out of a window and then opened up her expression, indicating she was ready to hear whatever the Buddha had to say.

The Buddha confided, "I'm a bit jealous of the fact that there are countless Buddhas, more Buddhas than atoms in a trillion universes, but, so far, only one Mara that I can find. Everyone who's ever touched The Sutras remembers Mara, but who remembers the three-hundred-millionth Buddha?"

Mara chuckled, "But you, more than anyone, would know that all Buddhas in all realms are, in fact, of one substance, and so, being absolutely one with them, how could you, in any way, be less than any of them?"

"Yes, yes," said the Buddha impatiently, "we've all known that for one-hundred million eons. Frankly, I'm bored with it."

"Poor dear," sympathized Mara. "It's an unfortunate side-effect of being a Buddha . . . the boredom . . . the non-uniqueness of it."

Just then Sensei, who had himself tired of sitting around a penthouse apartment in Los Angeles snorting cocaine with actresses, and whose boredom was now leading him back to the enlightenment he had fled, happened to stumble in to mooch some of Mara's trademark #3849 Dimension Sake: "Ah! So the joke is on us, I see!"

Buddha #300,227,494 nodded in a fraternal way to Sensei and added, "Is it not lamentable that The Absolute Void of The Patriarchs, the satanic under-worlds of the torturers of Hell, The Heaven of All Pleasures of Brahmá, and old-fashioned Planet-Earth-style craving and debasement are all one identical state?"

Sensei nodded gravely in compassionate assent and added by way of consolation, "Oh well! But you've come to the right place! I mean, if you need back into the game of egotistical absurdity and juvenile clinging, you couldn't have picked a better person to consult."

Mara furrowed her eyebrows and with an affectionate scold in her voice said, "I don't like the tone of that. If I'm not mistaken, I'd say you were not treating me with proper reverence."

"What the heck?" Mara added, "since Sensei has just abandoned another temp job, I could switch you into that pathetic Hollywood soul-trap he was working just moments ago. And I wouldn't be averse to giving you six or seven lifetimes at that gig, if that would pull you out of your depression. But, unlike Sensei, you'd really have to live out those whole lives. For reasons Brahmá will not tell me, only Sensei is allowed to know he's living a charade of a life, and only he is allowed to abandon lives and lifestyles at will, as though he were some kind of 1970s high-school drop-out."

A moment later Buddha #300,227,494 found himself full of hormones that made virtually every interaction feel fraught with peril, fortune and exhilarating uncertainty. (He had also forgotten he had ever been a Buddha, and would not remember that for the rest of this incarnation, and a few more incarnations on top of that. The rules also stipulated that he was also not to remember any of his acquaintances from any previous lives, including those acquaintances he'd just been sitting with.)

A brash-looking woman in a form-fitting red dress which must have cost $20,000 (a dress more notable for the material it didn't have than the material it did), swayed over to him. She was a bit too old to be at such a gathering, and her own career had faded notably, but not so much that she could not earn a living or charm people.

She came over, put her hand around his waist and confessed, "Sorry, honey, I'm drunk. I know it's not classy, but I'll be honest with you. I'm bored as heck with most of the men here, and I don't think I've met you yet. You must be famous in Europe or something."

"Oh yes, very," he replied, "but I'm only starting my first US television show, so people will know who I am soon enough. But enough shop talk. We have just got to get you out of here. You look like you could use a comfortable seat in a Lamborghini, for starters."

"Hey, mister," she slurred, "don't be so rude. We haven't even had a pretend conversation yet. It's the American rules, buddy," she laughed out as she hung on his neck. "No getting naked with someone before pretending to fall in love with them. You look Norwegian. Yeah, an Oslo playboy, no doubt."

"We're both rich, both famous, both charming and good-looking. What more is there to know?" he naively protested.

"I never go home with strangers," she insisted as she clutched at him even harder. (At this he looked a bit crestfallen.) "But I do go home with total strangers. Total strangers are way more interesting than regular strangers."

He was again smiling and said in a most friendly and sincere way, "I've got to know your name."

"My name?" she burped as she gathered forward momentum toward the valet station. "I guess you don't watch American reruns too much or you would know. Anyway, my name's Mara, not that it matters."

Delusional Emptiness

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Afookinara was lounging about on a park bench half asleep when he was startled out of his stupor by a small group of people walking by.

One of them said, "Get up, you unsociable bum and come to the festival along with everyone else."

Wiping his eyes and finally sitting upright, Afookinara shook his head and inquired, "Is there free food there?"

"No!" one of the women in the group sharply replied. "The women of the village are tired of cooking all day for you when you've not fallen in love with one of them yet."

Looking out at the horizon reflectively, Afookinara mused, "Inexcusable. I should indeed be deeply ashamed. Tell me, is there any free alcohol to be had at the festival?"

"No!" exclaimed one of the businessmen in the group. "The employment agency is tired of you showing up each year at their booth and drinking yourself silly when, after all, you don't ever show up at their offices to ask for work."

"The loathsome dishonor of it," commented Afookinara. "My lack of ambition is simply unjustiable. By the way, will there be any free love to be had at the fair?"

"Not hardly," responded the geisha in the group. "We maidens have had it with giving you sympathy sex only to find out you've gone asexual again. We haven't seen you at the brothel for six months. What on earth is the matter with you?"

Afookinara's expression turned grave and he looked at the ground as if about to weep with remorse, and then added, "Utterly unforgivable. By the way, would it be unbearably callous to ask if there might be any free travel to be gained by attending?"

"I'm afraid not," said the leader of the group. "I know the man at the carriage company. He goes to the fair every year, but he's told me himself that he and his workers are fed up with carting you all over the country only to have you come back and tell everyone that all the most prized destinations are completely overrated and not so remarkable after all."

"Ah well, then," concluded Afookinara, "then instead of going to the festival, I shall have to go to the temple immediately."

The geisha chimed in: "That's a pathetic thing to do. There is nothing there but delusional emptiness."

"Maybe so," remarked Afookinara, "However, at the temple I can get to the delusional emptiness right away, whereas at the festival, it takes three or four hours for it to set in."

4. The High Mountain Seat of The Law

The High Mountain Seat of The Law

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Worn Out Sandals was on another intercontinental excursion. He was determined to find Salvation in this very life and was prepared to go to any length to attain it.

His first stop was at the home of World Famous Televangelist. He was to meet both him and his best friend Miracle-Working Faith Healer.

World Famous Televangelist came to the door and embraced Worn Out Sandals. Worn Out Sandals felt a jolt of energy pass through his body.

He was led down a long corridor past many opulently decorated rooms. They finally settled on a circular red couch in the middle of a two-story atrium. The rain was pounding down on the glass and the sky rumbled here and there. A waiter and a busboy were constantly coming and going, attending to the needs of the host and his distinguished guests.

Before he could sit down, the waitress approached and insisted he order a drink. Worn Out Sandals noticed several half-empty glasses of scotch on the table and, not wanting to be sanctimonious or contrary, ordered two margaritas right off.

Since they all regarded themselves as fine gentlemen, they engaged in a certain amount of small-talk and inquired about each other's health. They discussed current events for a while as the full effect of their beverages came over them.

Only after this sociable glow of companionship and alcoholic bliss had been established would it be proper to get down to the hard business at hand.

Impressed by the restraint Worn Out Sandals was showing, World Famous Televangelist winked at him and turned authoritatively to the other guest. "As you know, our visitor today has come here on a very specific mission. He wants to find Salvation. I asked you here because I believe you are in a unique position to get right to the core of the problem."

Miracle Working Faith Healer closed his eyes for a moment, as though gathering all his strength, then opened his eyes. His aspect became almost transparent. It was as though the man that had been there was gone and was replaced by a glowing angel. His face and his hands appeared to be lit up, as though an electric current was flowing through filaments beneath his flesh.

"You must know," he said, smiling broadly and with invincible self-confidence, "that God has promised us healing powers beyond our wildest dreams. Any one of us can call on the power of the Holy Spirit to cleanse us of any impurities or illnesses."

Worn Out Sandals felt a wave of warmth roll over him. He stared incredulously at Miracle Working Faith Healer who said, "Ah, so you are already feeling the glory of an event which was already known to Our Father since before the world began."

Worn Out Sandals instinctively tried to wiggle his three paralyzed toes. Suddenly, he realized he could move them. He thought to himself, "But this isn't possible, because the tendons above them were destroyed in a motorcycle accident."

Miracle Working Faith Healer chuckled. Being a bit of an empath, he'd already sensed what had happened and said, "You have no idea what kind of forces we're dealing with here. It's no accident we are both wealthy and have beautiful wives and perfect health. You see, in God, all things are possible. These are the very promises of the Scripture."

After standing up quite carefully, and looking about him a bit, Worn Out Sandals said, "I'm afraid I have to go home and think about what I've seen here."

"That's okay," said World Famous Televangelist. "The grace of God is not an easy thing for any man to accept. You've seen the possibilities for yourself. That's enough for one day."

As the others stood up to bid farewell to him, Worn Out Sandals embraced both men warmly and excused himself.

A few days later Worn Out Sandals noticed that only one of the three toes that were healed was still working. The other two had gone back to their formerly paralytic state. Still, there was no denying that the one toe had been healed.

The healing of the toe slowly began to fade in significance. Eventually he realized that he did not feel saved at all. Of course there was never any guarantee that the god who heals toes is also the god that saves souls. He wandered about Los Angeles feeling empty.

*

He noticed a towering neon sign that said, "Jesus Saves." In this same neighborhood he also located a mosque and several other temples. He decided to spend the afternoon wandering the area.

Most of the temples were simply locked shut because it was a weekday afternoon. One could only suppose that salvation could only be found there a couple of days per week, and our protagonist felt he needed Salvation every day.

He returned to these locked temples and shrines and churches on a Sunday and said to the ministers there, "Why were you not here to assist me when I came to your facility during the week?"

The ministers all replied, "We keep the church locked due to high crime rates in the neighborhood."

"Could you not," asked Worn Out Sandals, "simply be there yourself to guard the church and to assist those coming to you with spiritual needs?"

In each case the ministers would come up with elaborate excuses as to why no minister, attendant or staffer of any kind could be on duty during the week. Worn Out Sandals concluded that these faiths must not exercise a very compelling influence on their congregants, if not one person, including the minister, ever felt like being there, except on Sunday. Salvation, if it were to be found, was probably not anywhere near these buildings.

One day he ended up at The Shrine of The One Certain Truth. It happened to be open that day, although it turns out that this was only due to the fact that the minister had to inspect the progress of a remodeling project going on there.

The minister said to Worn Out Sandals, "What you need is to be set free by the truth, to know for certain that the way you are embarking upon is the only way."

"Well," replied Worn Out Sandals, "I don't care if there are six ways to Heaven or fifty ways to Salvation. I simply wish to find one that works for me."

"You can only be saved," countered the minister, "by admitting to The God Who Is Better Than Other Gods that you are a sinner."

"Hmm," replied Worn Out Sandals, "are you saying that Salvation offered by inferior gods is not real salvation?"

"No!" exclaimed the minister, "I'm saying ours is the one and only true God and the others are false gods."

"Well, anyway," noted Worn Out Sandals, "I don't feel like much of a sinner, so it would be a lie if I repented of things I don't believe I've done wrong."

The minister pointed a pale, white finger to the ground and said, "Just one single sin dooms you to Hell for eternity. Think about that, my friend."

Worn Out Sandals scratched his head and his forehead wrinkled. "Can I be honest with you?" he asked. (The minister nodded in the affirmative.) "You seem really uptight. Frankly," asserted Worn Out Sandals, "what I think you need is some solidly potent Mendocino gold."

At first the minister was offended by such a suggestion. But within ten minutes or so of this offering, both the minister and Worn Out Sandals were out in the empty courtyard of the church puffing away on some marijuana.

As Worn Out Sandals was leaving, he hugged the minister and said, "Dude, you really need to get laid or something. Here's a number to a certain massage parlor where the ladies are, shall we say, extremely compassionate."

The minister scowled and snatched the card from Worn Out Sandals' hand.

*

Worn Out Sandals went to a few mosques, however the imams there were more concerned about the supremacy of their deity than any other topic. They also spent much time discussing the corruption of an entity they called "The West." They, like the Christian ministers and rabbinical scholars he had spoken too, talked of the grave matter of sinfulness, implying that Worn Out Sandals, although they did not know him, must be guilty of such terrible sins as to have attracted upon himself God's wrath. When he made it clear that he did not feel any need to be saved from his sins, but only from his suffering, the clerics seemed to lose interest in the conversation.

They again asserted their belief in a mystical and monolithic demon called "The West." This massive demon called "The West" had apparently wounded them in so many ways that they dedicated much of their lives trying to discredit it, making war against it, and generally wearing their nerves thin over it.

Since Worn Out Sandals had never seen, nor knew where to locate, this mighty entity called "The West," he became rather confused about the topic and excused himself to reconsider the matter. Before leaving he did note to an Imam, "If you ever find this entity, 'The West,' be sure to let me know. I'd really like to see it."

However, the discussions with the imams were not entirely without effect. In fact, the next day, Worn Out Sandals wandered all about Southern California hoping to catch a trace of the magical and all-powerful, evil entity called "The West." Sadly, after days of trudging about and looking everywhere, he could locate no sign of any such being. It would be hard to attain salvation through one's opposition to "The West" if no one even knew where "The West" was.

Further adding to these complications was the fact that several other faiths he had encountered believed that salvation resided in heavens that were said to be in "The West;" so one could not tell whether Salvation or damnation came from "The West."

He concluded that "The West," whatever it might be, could not be in Los Angeles, since it had virtually all of the same qualities he saw in cities in the eastern parts of the world. Wherever he went in the world, there were cars, cell phones, houses, factories, office buildings and the like. "The West" could not be an abstraction for materialism, since, whether he was in European, Middle-Eastern, Asian, or African countries, they were all filled to the point of bursting with materialistic people.

He searched world history to see if "The West" was an abstraction for imperialism, as many of his politically-correct friends had claimed. However, imperialism seemed to, at various times, come alternately from China, Japan, India, Turkey, France, England, Russia, and The United States, and many other countries. There was no "The West" from which imperialism always came.

It left him dumbfounded, to imagine hundreds of millions of people, of various political and religious orientations, all fighting about this concept of "The West." He just could not imagine his personal liberation from suffering would come from ardently opposing or supporting a thing called "The West," about which no one could even come up with a satisfactory definition.

*

After many years wandering lost among various political, religious and psychological schools of thought, Worn Out Sandals found himself at the gate of The Monkey Mind Monastery.

The gate was a formidable structure of lattice boards and wrought iron designs. Surrounding the gate were stone walls with copper plates. The copper plates were bolted to the stone and inset. Emerging from these plates were carved scenes depicting The Ten Bulls.

In the center of the door was a steel plate with a large knocker. Since the monastery buildings were set back from the fence, Worn Out Sandals knocked very hard, hoping someone inside would hear him.

He expected a fierce-looking man to approach him, but the gate was opened by a thin, little woman who appeared to be approximately the age of his grandmother.

"Yes, honey," she looked up and said kindly, "what can we do for you?"

"I am here to speak with the master," replied Worn Out Sandals.

"Good God, what on earth for?" asked the lady with a look of concern.

"Well, he is a teacher, is he not?" countered Worn Out Sandals.

"Hmm," pondered the old lady, "you'd have to ask his students about that, since they're the ones always saying: When are we going to get a real Zen Master around here?"

"If you don't mind —" said Worn Out Sandals, "it's still January, and in case you haven't noticed, it's about to rain again. I'm just looking for a little peace of mind and I needed to talk to someone."

"Oh dear, dear, dear," said the old lady as she shook her head. "so it's come to that, has it? Well, in that case, I suppose you ought to come right in."

A monk in the courtyard overheard this short interaction and quickly rushed in to tell Master Beating Stick that a stranger had come for a consultation.

Master Beating Stick stood there, a bit bewildered, since he thought that most every seeker for dozens of miles around had already been warned about his monastery. Then, as if an old instinct had come to life in him, he roared out, "Lackey!"

Lackey waddled into to room and said, "What!"

Master Beating Stick said, "Get me my best robe, and set up The Throne Room of The High Mountain Seat of The Law. And do it quick! There's a visitor."

Lackey went into a haze. He had not done anything quickly in years, and besides, his master was already quite discredited and people only took orders from him because he would beat them if they disobeyed him.

"You're not serious, are you?" asked Lackey. "We've not put on that pretense around here for years. The only reason you're still here is because the current Board of Directors of the temple hasn't died off yet. You're not saying that an earnest seeker of the Dharma is now coming to you, are you?"

"That is absolutely it, my son. And," replied Master Beating Stick, "since I've not been fired yet, you are supposed to be my servant. Now get some of the others and throw that Throne Room together. You hear me!"

Lackey ran from the room laughing. Of course he hated having to honor his master in such a way, but he was sure the whole exercise would result in some story or other that they could later use to mock their annoying teacher with. He grabbed a couple of junior monks, and they all ran toward the now-dusty Throne Room.

The old lady invited Worn Out Sandals to come in for a bit of tea. She asked Worn Out Sandals very perfunctory questions about his daily affairs as they both sipped tea together.

The rain had just started back up when Lackey appeared in the doorway, a bit out of breath and a bit nervous. "My lady," he said to the old woman, as he panted, "Master Beating Stick will see the guest now in The Throne Room of The High Mountain Seat of The Law."

"But you can't take a guest in there yet," said the old woman as she tilted her head sideways. "That place has got to have a half-decade of dust all over it."

"My lady," said Lackey, "we just now gave the place as good a dusting as we could in a few short moments. It's not perfect looking, but it will do in a pinch."

"Yes," smiled the old lady, "and we are in a pinch, aren't we?"

She turned to Worn Out Sandals and said, "Well, I guess we'd better get in there. I know I wouldn't miss this for the world."

*

The Throne Room was spectacular. The founders of this particular temple had set it up for famous teachers from Japan, China or India to come and speak to the congregation. Their idea was an ambitious one, to create a reception room for dignitaries that no other temple in California would match for decades to come. Not only did their prediction turn out to be correct, but, since funds were scarce in most temples and organized Buddhism had become rather stultified in that area, it would be many more decades before any religious group in the area would even attempt to build a rival facility of such ornateness. Thus, it was a sad thing, when Master Beating Stick was discredited and nearly defrocked, to see The Throne Room fall into total disuse.

The room itself was twenty-five feet high. Within were old Buddha statues and Bodhisattva statues that had been imported from China, India and Japan. Most of these were hand-carved and were themselves worth a fortune. The throne itself was made of solid marble and draped over it were costly fabrics of dozens of colors. Before the throne were layer upon layer of hand-woven rugs. Candle lanterns shaped like lotus flowers hung from the ceiling by the dozens, and all of these had been lit in a matter of minutes by the ad hoc crew assigned to bring the forgotten room to life.

As one entered the rectangular room, one passed carved columns with dragons and demons and emperors snaking their way to the roof. Clouds of incense were already pouring out of the massive, iron incense burner in the center of the room. Several of the monks who sat near the front, just for fun, had thrown on their ceremonial red and yellow robes to show off their seniority. Newer monks without any pretensions sat, lining the walls, on the verge of laughing.

When Worn Out Sandals came near the throne, Lackey lightly struck a five-foot-wide gong which, even to the cynical ears of the audience, had the ring of authenticity, and which, for a moment, created a reverent silence in a room that had known no reverence for quite some time.

A junior monk, barely older than a child, broke up the reverent atmosphere by rushing to the front and saying, "Oh great visitor, behold the great Master Beating Stick, our teacher, discredited in all Three Worlds, known far and wide as a great fraud, an ogler of young women, a fondler of temple secretaries, a raider of treasuries and a drunken lout envied by all the demons in all ten hells."

Master Beating Stick took his huge stick and started to chase after the boy, but Lackey held him back. The whole room burst into laughter. Worn Out Sandals sat in a guest chair near the front and put his head down, trying to imagine how it was he came to be in such a silly situation.

Master Beating Stick straightened his robe, huffed out a sigh of disapproval, and took his seat on the throne. He looked out through a cloud of smoke and said, "Well, visitor, what has brought you to The Throne Room of The High Mountain Seat of The Law!"

Worn Out Sandals then seated himself on the floor and gazed up at Master Beating Stick and said, "I had rather expected to meet you in an office."

"Sometimes," noted Master Beating Stick, "you try for an office, but you get a throne. Life's funny that way."

Looking around at the gold-plated decorations and altars within altars, Worn Out Sandals said, "Really, this is all not necessary."

"I say it's necessary," retorted Master Beating Stick. "Now please, do us the honor of asking your question."

Apprehensively glancing at the squinting faces all around him, Worn Out Sandals collected himself and said, "I'm just looking for Salvation from suffering."

"You've come to wrong place," bellowed Master Beating Stick. "Mere Salvation from suffering, mere Salvation from the wheel of birth and death, mere Salvation from the flames of Hell — all of that is simply way beneath the scope of our practice."

"Then what is your practice?" asked Worn Out Sandals.

"Our practice," replied Master Beating Stick, "is the great and mysterious and ever-new discovery of The Non-Possibility of Salvation."

"Why do you bother to practice your path if there is no hope of Salvation?" asked Worn Out Sandals.

"Most of the people who come here, and you can't imagine how few there are, come here because they had thought they'd attained Salvation a hundred times over, only to discover they were again caught in the karmic ocean of delusion and craving," proclaimed Master Beating Stick. "Our practice is light years beyond all of that."

"Very interesting," said Worn Out Sandals. "And what do you call this practice beyond Salvation?" Master Beating Stick stood up majestically, and leaned forward, lifting his long, thick staff a few inches above the ground, and said, "You see this big stick here. It's reserved for anyone who tries to give it a name."

Abruptly, Master Beating Stick turned away with a snarl and exited the room from a door behind one of the altars. Lackey, both amused and amazed, smirked with awe and confusion as he struck the gong several times to indicate the service had concluded.

Upon hearing the gong struck, the young junior monk who had been chased away again returned to the front of the room and stood erect and mechanically shouted: "Oh great visitor, your have beheld the glory of the great Master Beating Stick, our teacher, discredited in all Three Worlds, known far and wide as a great fraud, an ogler of young women, a fondler of temple secretaries, a raider of treasuries and a drunken lout envied by the all the demons in all ten hells."

The senior monks roared with joy as the young man bowed, but this time with a trace of sincerity, and ran to the back of the room.

The small crowd quickly dispersed. The old lady bid farewell to Worn Out Sandals and assembled a few mid-level monks to give the Throne Room a more thorough cleaning.

*

About an hour later Lackey gently knocked on Master Beating Stick's door. At first there was no answer, so he knocked again, a bit more forcefully. This time he heard the familiar, "Come on in, if you must."

Lackey entered the room and shut the door behind him. Master Beating Stick was staring out of a small window at the rock garden below.

"Hey preacher," said Lackey.

"What," replied Master Beating Stick without turning around.

"You know," said Lackey with a warm smile, "that was a pretty damn good caper you put on for our guest."

Now Master Beating Stick turned and faced Lackey and said, "Did you really think I did well, or are you only mocking me?"

"I'm serious. You were a total knockout. You had us on the edge of our seats. You seemed on verge of being credible," said Lackey.

Master Beating Stick now smiled more widely and added, "I just wanted to show you kids that the old man could still put on a show."

"By the way, Master Beating Stick," added Lackey, "several of the senior monks were talking among themselves after our visitor left, and they told me to come and tell you that they want you to start giving Dharma talks again. Since we can't get rid of you, you might as well start acting like an Abbot again."

"Very well, then let us all convene in the Throne Room every Saturday at eleven in the morning."

Lackey nodded and turned to leave. As he was shutting the door behind him, Master Beating Stick turned and whispered, "Oh, and one more thing; be sure and tell those senior monks . . . they can kiss my ass."

"Will do," said Lackey with a grin. "By the way, a bunch of the monks are in the kitchen. They've decided to prepare a big meal tonight in honor of today's special occasion. Can we count on you being there?"

"Sure," said Master Beating Stick.

"See you then," concluded Lackey as he closed the door behind him.

As Master Beating Stick turned toward the window facing the rock garden, he heard as burst of laughter coming from the kitchen. And, every several moments or so, one monk or another, as he prepared the vegetables, rice or tea, would be overheard saying, "Kiss my ass!" and then another round of laughter would ensue.

The rain was falling harder in the rock garden, and Master Beating Stick watched little rivers of water appear in the furrows of sand. He could see The Great Silence, and it brought him a moment of fleeting happiness.

Worn Out Sandals stumbled home in the rain. He was cold and miserable and soaking wet. When he got to his small apartment, he saw again that he was alone and lost. He poured himself a cup of tea and looked out of his own window, watching the rain land in a dirty parking lot. He felt sure of nothing, except that he was beyond saving. And for now, that felt reassuring, even relaxing. And he even thought to himself, "I ought to go back to that Throne Room every so often just to see how the old man is doing."

Finding The True Believers

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The Dreaded Fujikami was sitting in his study, brooding over the writings of Dogen Zenji when a knock came upon his door. The knock was produced by me. As usual, one or two questions had been bothering me throughout the night as I attempted to sleep.

It practically goes without saying that Fujikami was not the therapeutic type. When one came to him, one could not really expect to go away feeling "ministered to," as some might prefer to put it. He lacked what so-called Westerners call "sweetness."

When he sat Za Zen, he looked harder than marble. When one asked him a question, one did so nearly trembling. When he shouted, usually some epithet in monosyllabic form, one felt like running for one's life. To say he was formidable would be an understatement. More precisely, he was simply terrifying.

To paint this picture more clearly, I shall relate an experience I had in the Palm Springs area many years ago. It involved a visit to a kind of animal sanctuary, not quite a zoo, but not exactly a game preserve. In one of the exhibits there was a large kind of artificial environment made to simulate the stomping grounds of the cougar, sometimes also called a puma, and in California usually referred to as the mountain lion.

Notably, the front of the display was not composed of bars, nor was there a moat, nor any of the usual protective features. Instead, there was a thick glass wall positioned in such a way that the mountain lion could walk right up to the glass, and so could the viewers.

Just to see what would happen, I put my face flat against the glass, so that my eyeballs were almost against the surface. The mountain lion took notice of this immediately and seemed to sense the point of my game. He then walked up to the glass directly in front of my face and pressed his own face flat against the glass. We were eyeball to eyeball, staring straight into each other's pupils.

I cannot do justice to the communication I felt I received at that moment. It was a profoundly, one might say, "spiritual" experience. On a more primitive level I also was given to understand that should that glass be removed I would be unsanctimoniously torn to small shreds at the speed of lightning without even the slightest thought of mercy. One had a similar sense when approaching The Dreaded Fujikami, and hence, approaching him to deal with an emotional problem was, perhaps, far beyond absurd. And yet he was my Zen Master, and so I felt it was his job to deal with my questions, whether he liked it or not. And so into his room I went.

"Master Fujikami," I said abruptly, attempting not to appear as intimidated as I really was.

"My God, Little Rat," (this was his pet name for me), "what can you possibly need now!"

"Sir, something has been bothering me."

"No doubt, Little Rat. Something has been bothering me too. I have been bothered by the realization that we all 'die like dogs' whose bodies are tossed into landfill and crushed by steam rollers. Now, what seems to be your problem!"

"Um," I replied, "I think I'm entitled to a more profound discussion than that."

"You think so, Little Rat? For one thing, you're just an Abbot's assistant at forty years of age. And since you are as frail and nervous as a field mouse fleeing the talons of an enraged hawk, you will surely die before me and have no chance of running a monastery of your own. What a pathetic end you are coming to! Isn't that itself quite profound?"

I felt like laughing out loud. (Readers unfamiliar with my master might not understand that this was his way of joking.) However, I kept my response to a smirk as I stared self-effacingly at the ground.

"Okay, then, what!" huffed The Dreaded Fujikami impatiently.

"I was just wondering," I said, still facing the ground, "what really is the definition of a true believer?"

The Dreaded Fujikami seemed to be about to faint with exasperation. "You silly Rat, we have no beliefs, and therefore no believers!"

"Beg your pardon, sir," I said, looking up only partially to see what sort of wrath I was about to bring upon myself, "but I feel that all of that kind of thing is just rhetorical posturing. I think we do have beliefs, and I think there must be true believers somewhere, and I assert there must be a way to find out who is who, regarding this matter."

Fujikami's brow crinkled in fury and his face darkened as though the very shadow of the Tenth King of Hell had come over it. He inhaled deeply and said, "If I felt I could replace you tomorrow, I surely would strangle you to death today."

"That may be so," I said, now looking straight at him, "however you are still obliged to answer my question."

The Dreaded Fujikami stared at me in disbelief for a moment, then a very thin smile spread momentarily across his face. He turned toward the wall and said, "In two days you shall have your answer. Now go, before I send you to King Yama! He will have less patience with you than I."

*

The next day almost all of the usual students and visitors came to the monastery for the daily Zen Sitting sessions. (We prefer the word "sitting" to "meditation." We do not use the word "meditation" too often out of concern that people might read too much into our practice.) Master Fujikami said little or nothing before or after the Zen Sitting sessions. (We thought this was a good thing, since it meant fewer people would be frightened away by his obnoxious personality.)

The Sitting session was going fine and most everyone managed to get concentrated on their breath and bring their focus back into their bodies, and, thankfully, no one sneezed or had a coughing fit.

But suddenly, about ten minutes into the session, Master Fujikami rose from his zafu cushion and turned toward everyone in the Zendo. He threw his zafu cushion violently to the ground so that it rolled across the room, then he kicked and stomped his zabuton cushion until it tore open and the kapok stuffing began flying out.

He then took his staff and slammed it against the wooden floor and began shouting, "This is just bullshit! I can't believe we're wasting our lives on these stupid cushions when there's a real world out there! You losers need to go get real jobs and stop all your obsequious bowing and scraping. There's nothing here in this narcissistic hell hole! All of you, just go away! Go! If you can't think of anything productive to do, go get drunk or go get laid! Do something real!"

After this episode of shouting, he broke his staff over his knee and kicked over a small altar in the middle of the Zendo which caused the Kanon statue to fall and break. He stormed toward the exit door and turned once again and said, "Bullshit! This shit is just bullshit! Do you hear me!"

*

I was furious and lost all fear of Fujikami. People were milling about the room asking what should be done next. My face was red with anger.

I didn't bother knocking, but rather slammed his door open. I found him seated there calmly reading his Dogen Zenji book.

"What an asshole you were!" I shouted. "What the hell is wrong with you? Why were you behaving like such a jerk?"

Fujikami looked up, but his expression was like nothing I'd seen before. He seemed very gentle, almost like an old woman. He looked up at me and smiled openly. There was no facade there whatsoever.

I was still angry and would not let the subject go: "Just what the Hell was that scene all about in there What on earth am I going to tell the others? They're standing around not sure what to do."

"Right," replied Fujikami, "just tell them the afternoon sitting will be tomorrow at the usual time."

"I still don't understand what the purpose of that terrible tantrum was," I said, insisting he account for his actions.

"Don't you recall, Little Rat? You said I was obliged to give you an answer. I promised you an answer in two days. Tomorrow you shall have your answer. The ones that come back — they are the true believers."

Absolutely Not!

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Blind Fidelity paid a visit to No Wei Ai Go:

"Sir, the scriptures of all religions say that we must show unlimited, unconditional and eternal respect to our priests. Do you have such respect for your fellow priests?"

"Absolutely Not!"

"Sir, the scriptures of all religions are equally adamant that one must show undying, permanent and profound respect for one's parents. Do you have such a respect for your parents?"

"Not for an instant!"

"Sir, the scriptures of all religions demand unequivocal, unwavering and absolute respect for our teachers. Have you given such respect to your teachers?"

"Never in my life!"

"If you have such disregard for these venerable personages, am I wrong to assume you would have no respect for me either?"

"Yes, you would be mistaken to assume that. Indeed, I respect you deeply and with all of my heart."

"How can that be so, sir?"

"For one thing, you start out with the considerable advantage of not being a priest, a parent, nor a teacher."

"How then am I to regard the scriptures of all the world's religions?"

"They are like the vandalized tombs of disgraced emperors."

A Negative Religion

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The Dreaded Fujikami sat before a small crowd of seekers, monks and temple elders. It was question-and-answer period, the time of week he hated most of all. He had initially tried to evade the duty altogether, however, the Board of Directors at the temple had threatened to fire him if he did not engage in some teaching activities.

The situation was made more awkward by the fact that he was in the habit of answering questions while holding a black cudgel and scowling in a menacing way.

A brave World Religions student raised his hand: "Sensei, I have heard from many Monotheists that Buddhism is a negative religion."

Fujikami broke into a twisted smile and his grip on the cudgel tightened. His neck muscles strained as he spoke, just above a whisper, "If those people ever come here, I'll show them just how negative it can be."

A learned monk noted, "It's true than many people say Buddhism is not a life-affirming faith."

As Fujikami's eyes grew red and his pupils dilated, he chuckled with a wild look in his eyes and said, "Oh, I very much affirm my life. Anyone from the outside wishing to challenge that is more than welcome to come here and try."

A church elder objected, "I feel that there's no need to act in such a threatening way to get our message across."

Fujikami smirked as sweat poured down his forehead: "Be assured, I'm not acting at all."

A few nervous visitors excused themselves and beat a hasty retreat out the back door.

One senior monk quipped, "I guess they were hoping to attend a stress-reduction seminar."

Everyone in the room laughed.

Fujikami's face slowly became tender and serene. A silence enveloped the room. For several moments no one spoke.

At last The Dreaded Fujikami grinned and said, "Isn't the Dharma just precious?"

Restless Zen

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Sensei was now Sensei Emeritus, which is to say that he was unceremoniously kicked upstairs to make room for, as the temple President gracelessly said, "a minister who is not a total whack job."

Sensei really deserved to be fired, but his presence had become so traditional that the Board just couldn't go along with that. A few of the generous and talented laymen had gotten together and built an add-on to the back of the temple. Sensei would stay in there and, preferably, stay out of the way.

Sensei had always had a following of ad-hoc listeners who liked to drop in unannounced at various times of the day to pose questions. Since the old master was mostly out of his mind, his answers would usually bring some amount of amusement, at the very least.

The new minister was respected and, as was much hoped, brought some administrative competence and some regularity in terms of scheduling and other important matters. Additionally, the new minister was a good fund-raiser, and so the temple was no longer on the verge of bankruptcy. In spite of all this, most of the monks still saw Sensei Emeritus as the heart and soul of the temple. Hence, often till late in the evening, one could overhear Sensei carrying on with his old comrades.

*

One of the younger nuns had heard enough about Sensei's checkered past to know she wanted little to do with him. As a result, she refused to join the others for these "afterglow" sessions over at what they called "Sensei's hut."

Many of the senior monks lacked the courtesy to respect her preference in this matter and often badgered the poor young nun for not joining them. But for some time she resisted their entreaties, partly because she knew that Sensei's hut had become the unofficial designated smoking and drinking area, and she had become a nun partly to avoid getting caught up in such worldly habits. Of course she would eventually have to give in, which she did after only about three months' residency at the temple-monastery compound.

It must also be noted that the temple officials and the new minister were well aware of the drinking and smoking that went on "out back," but many of the most beloved monks had been low-level alcoholics for years and it would have created severe political problems to begin to correct them, as one Board member said, "at this late date."

*

When the nun finally made her way back to the hut, the monks let up a cheer of appreciation. She smiled and took a seat on a cushion on the floor. A flask of sake was quickly circulated to her and she looked around and said, "Tando!"

Tando, the ceremonial bell-ringer, blushed and said, "How did you know it was me?"

"Because you're the one with the red nose, you lousy drunk!" she replied.

The hut rang with laughter and Sensei watched in charmed joy.

Looking kindly at the nun, Sensei said, "I've not had a chance to meet you yet. Are you new here?"

"Not that new," she said. "I've just been avoiding you."

She looked around and added, "Oh great, is that dope I smell? That's shameful!"

Sensei said with a note of concern in his voice, "It seems like you're a bit anxious. Would you like a valium. I've got quite a stash back there from . . ."

A monk from the back chimed in, ". . . from the last time he was in the locked ward of the nuthouse."

Another round of boisterous laughter erupted from the group. Then there was a moment of uncertain silence.

The nun thought a minute and then asked, "Sensei, do you even sit Za Zen anymore?"

The room was still quiet.

Sensei replied, "I have some hazy recollection of the practice."

Tando heckled the nun: "Come on, ask him a real question. We're getting bored over here!"

"Alright!" snapped the nun. "Here's my problem. I'm not sure what to make of this:

"I was practicing at a temple in another city some time ago while I was on vacation, and there was a very annoying man there. He ruined my whole week. And I wondered what you would think about it.

"The first day we were sitting in sesshin, a man next to me kept squirming about on his zafu cushion. He would scratch his face and mutter about being itchy all over. I asked him to please be quiet as people were trying to meditate.

"Next thing I know he gets up off his cushion and bows, mumbling that he needs to go to the bathroom and telling me he couldn't hold it for a whole half hour more.

"At this, the minister in charge asked him to please stop disrupting others as they attempted to meditate.

"On his way back from the bathroom, he stood outside the zendo door and blew his nose several times and complained to himself about his allergies. He must have gone out to his car to get his allergy medicine because then we heard the doors and trunk of a car slamming several times. Perhaps he was searching desperately for his antihistamines.

"He then came back and started sitting again. He lasted about ten minutes before he got up and started whining, 'I just can't do this. My leg is totally asleep. I'm going to cut off my circulation and kill my leg.'

"This time the minister didn't bother to chide him. He paced around and then resumed sitting briefly.

"Next door a dog started barking for several minutes on end. At this the man sitting next to me again got up from his cushion and stormed outside. I heard him say to the people next door, 'Don't you inconsiderate bumpkins realize people are trying to mediate next door! Either shut your dogs up or get their vocal chords cut out so we don't have to put up with this shit every day!'

"After a few days of this, the minister there was not only putting up with these disruptions, but allowing the other monks and laymen to laugh at these antics while they were sitting.

"What am I to make of this annoying person?"

Sensei's eyes lit up and his skin seemed to glow slightly. Some people attributed this seemingly supernatural ecstasy to the voluminous combination of psychiatric medications, alcohol and cannabis Sensei was known to consume. Others said it was a sure sign Sensei was a Great Sage with fantastic powers and insight from the gods.

The room always went silent when Sensei looked this way. Even though people claimed to be cynical as to the causes of this aspect on Sensei's face, they were usually hushed into a kind of awe when "the light came over him."

Sensei tilted his head slightly, seemed almost to be on the verge of shivering and said, "I think . . . that man's practice was coming very close to absolute perfection."

"Really!" said the nun incredulously. "I don't think so at all. I think his Zen was very restless."

"Ah yes," replied Sensei, "but it may just be that Restless Zen is the Greatest Gate yet."

The nun stared on, but had nothing more to say.

Sensei continued, "You know, this whole story has inspired me to start sitting again. Would you all mind joining me in five minutes of Za Zen?"

Tando shouted from the back, "Right on, Sensei!"

And with that Sensei lifted his hands high into the air and brought them down into a mudra position. His eyes bulged out and he took a huge gasp of air and exhaled slowly. The other monks, though tired of Za Zen, having already sat for hours that day, smiled and joined in. The nun too assumed the Za Zen posture and inhaled a very satisfying breath as she pondered the value of having done some good to Sensei.

As the minutes ticked by, the sun suddenly set behind very dark and heavy clouds. A few crickets tentatively chirped in the garden, but were themselves silenced by the eerie bawling of mating cats behind a fence leading to an alley.

By the time everyone looked up again, they saw Sensei had fallen fast asleep in the sitting position. There was a childlike peace on his face. The odor of stale sake hung in the air.

The Reason For The Master's Silence

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Worn Out Sandals went to Urban Zen Temple to meditate. His regular group was taking the week off and he had to get his fix of Clear Breath Whole Body Drug.

The Temple was spacious and well-appointed. It even had a Zen Buddhist book-and-supply store on site. The kitchen was modern and impressive and the number of monks was also notable.

The attendants were cordial enough, even though a bit repressed, self-consciously quiet and forcefully humble.

Soon enough the wooden knockers got going and the bells were ringing. It was time for Za Zen sitting. The sitting was also a welcome relief. It had been a hard week and this bit of practice went well for Worn Out Sandals.

He noted that it was rather odd that after he'd sat for a while, and the introductory bell for the session had already been rung, not very many people were meditating. The place was almost empty.

Curiously, the nearest person to Worn Out Sandals was the Zen Master. On the other side of Worn Out Sandals was a female student who seemed all out-of-sorts. The Zen Master fidgeted quite a bit and the woman kept putting her hands on her face, seemingly in a kind of bored despair. And well into the session, various students were still traipsing in, seeming like children being dragged to church against their will, but finally relenting and agreeing to go. Eventually the room began to fill up.

The room was an inspiring place, and the fact that they offered sitting sessions almost every day of the week meant that this would be a reliable back up in times of need. His own experience of the meditation went well.

The chanting session was a bit chaotic and uninspired and no one seemed able to keep any rhythm or timing or melody. Worn Out Sandals was not too bothered by this, since his Za Zen that day had been very soothing.

After several lackadaisical bows, the students and laymen turned to leave the hall. The Master left first and, as was customary, the students then followed.

Worn Out Sandals had hoped to have a word with the man, however the Master stomped out quickly, and, at the end of the hall, slapped down his slippers and grabbed his shoes off the rack, and departed hastily.

*

After several years of sitting Za Zen there on an occasional basis, Worn Out Sandals began to be curious as to what sort of teaching might go on at the temple. Upon inquiring, he was told that only one talk per week was given. Given that there were eleven Za Zen sessions per week, it seemed, even for Zen sensibilities, a bit minimalist that the Zen Masters there only gave one lesson per week.

It was a challenge to get near the "Teacher." Either he was fleeing the Zendo, or he was surrounded by students eager to get even a nod from him, or he was unapproachable as he sat angrily eating his food.

But time was on the side of Worn Out Sandals. It so happened that he had come to browse the book store one afternoon when he saw the Master ducking into an office down at the end of a long hall-way. Worn Out Sandals sat on a bench in the hall-way. It would be a perfect ambush.

Only about fifteen minutes later, as Worn Out Sandals sat in the hallway pretending to read his book, the office at the end of the hallway creaked open. The Zen Master peeked timidly down the hall, and, thinking he saw Worn Out Sandals totally engrossed in a book, he decided to try to sneak by. But Worn Out Sandals intercepted him.

The Zen Master looked on with an expression that showed a combination of loathing and fear, (far more loathing than fear), and his face suddenly dropped to a scowl and he said, "What do you want?" in a hard and aggressive whisper.

"You know damn well what I want," said Worn Out Sandals in a reproaching tone. "I've had it with this little Saturday Dharma Talk thing. I want to know when you're going to really start teaching for real."

"Oh my," said the Zen Master condescendingly. "I'm afraid I wouldn't be your type. I'm not one to pollute the untainted dharma with mere words."

"Nice try," countered Worn Out Sandals. "You can try to chalk it all up to some Taoist kind of Teaching-No-Talking thing, but I don't buy it for a minute. Besides, we're paying you a salary and giving you a place to live. I say you should have to sing for your supper."

Another bout of fear and loathing crossed the Zen Master's face. He took a step back, looked about apprehensively and said, "Why don't we just go into this office."

Both men filed quietly into the small office and sat down. "Okay, okay," said the Zen Master, "I'll tell you what this is all about."

Worn Out Sandals smiled happily and leaned back in the chair: "Now we're getting somewhere," he said with anticipation in his voice.

"As you know," continued the Zen Master, "our founder, the great Authentic Buddhist From Japan, was a very inspired man."

"Yes, yes, I recall it well. He made quite a splash in this country," affirmed Worn Out Sandals.

"Well, then, as nature would have it," said the Zen Master, "our founder passed away some time ago."

"Indeed, a sad thing," noted Worn Out Sandals.

"Now, as you may recall," the Zen Master said, "his favorite pupil was quite a thunderbolt as well."

"True, true," agreed Worn Out Sandals. "It was a darn shame about that sex scandal thing."

"Right," said the Zen Master, "but as you know, Americans take that kind of thing seriously."

At this point the Zen Master lowered his gaze straight at Worn Out Sandals. There was a serious moment of silence.

"And then?" asked Worn Out Sandals with some anxiousness to hear more of the story.

The Zen Master said nothing, but cleared his throat in a very authoritative way, and then again lowered his gaze, this time more confidingly and very imploringly. He coughed again, a little less louder, then sighed.

"Ah . . . ah . . . why yes," said Worn Out Sandals with an empathetic tone, "of course, I should have thought of it sooner."

"Right," said the Zen Master.

"So then," continued Worn Out Sandals, "the succeeding masters were more or less dragged in from the outside, but the chemistry just wasn't there."

The Zen Master nodded his head mournfully.

"And then," added Worn Out Sandals, "you got promoted even though you felt totally uninspired."

The Zen Master then straightened up and returned to his poker face. He began sorting out some letters and tending to other paperwork on the desk.

Without turning back toward Worn Out Sandals, he said, "Now that your curiosity is satisfied, I hope you will kindly not press me for any more answers."

A few moments later, Worn Out Sandals found himself wandering down the dirty streets that surrounded Urban Zen Temple. The air was heavy with fog and the afternoon sky was gloomy, but he felt happy deep in his gut. He felt that the Zen Master had indeed given him a gift. He could not say exactly what it was, but he decided that this Zen Master was indeed a most generous man.

5. To The Lifeboats!

A Quick Meeting With The Master

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"Sensei," said a student.

"Yes," answered Sensei.

"Do the Hindu gods exist?"

"Yes," replied Sensei.

"Are you saying the Hindu gods are real?" asked the student.

"No," replied Sensei.

"How can they exist without being real?" wondered the student.

"You and I are doing it this very moment?" said Sensei.

"Sensei," said the student.

"Yes," answered Sensei.

"Are we permitted to worship the gods?"

"Yes," replied Sensei.

"Are you saying we should believe in the gods?" asked the student.

"No," replied Sensei.

"Why would we submit to beings we don't believe in?" wondered the student.

"To be consistent in all our relationships," said Sensei.

A Short Discussion On Prayer

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"Sensei, does God answer prayer?" asked a student.

"Yes, every time!" answered Sensei enthusiastically.

"What is your understanding of prayer?" inquired the student.

"It is my understanding," replied Sensei, that there are three prayers that humans address to Heaven:

"Dear God, please eternally save me from separation from those I love.

"Dear God, please eternally save me from the loss of my money and possessions.

"Dear God, please eternally save me from the ravages of illness, aging and death."

Sensei asked the student, "What is your understanding of prayer?"

"My understanding of prayer," replied the student, "is essentially the same as yours. Although, I would add a fourth prayer."

"Really," said Sensei. "And what would the fourth prayer be?"

The student replied:

"Dear God, may Thy will be done always."

"Well stated," said Sensei with a wink.

"Sensei," ventured the student, "How do you believe God answers prayers?"

"God always answers 'no' to the first three and 'yes' to the fourth."

A Few More Notes On The Great Matter

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Sensei sat Za Zen, as they used to say, ferociously. His posture was extremely firm, yet supple, hard as steel, yet not rigid. He seemed as imposing, as the old cliché goes, as a mile-high wall. As he meditated facing the wall, persons entering the room were unaware of the smirk almost permanently frozen on his face.

A new student ventured into the Zendo with a certain amount of trepidation. He tiptoed forward till he was only a few steps behind the Master. He cleared his throat.

Sensei responded, "What now?"

The student, knowing he had violated protocol by interrupting a meditation said, "Sir, I have a matter that seems rather urgent to me."

"Child," said Sensei, "when we run out of coffee on a cold winter morning because the procurement monk forgets to go for supplies — that is urgent."

"I'm afraid my matter is The Great Matter itself," said the student, now gaining a little confidence.

Sensei turned around on his cushion and said, "You mean mere death?"

The student nodded in the affirmative.

"Oh," replied the Master, "you should never interrupt a meditation if death is the only concern. I thought you were going to bring up something important. I was worried for a moment that you were going to tell me they had closed the sake house down the street, or something like that."

"Master," queried the student, again more quietly and timidly, "they say that you are a psychic."

"Hmm . . ." said the Master with a kind of shrug of the shoulders. "I hadn't thought of that, exactly, but sure, why not?"

"They say that," explained the student, "because you are so sensitive to reality, to the past and the future, as well as how it all comes together in the present moment. It's said that this extreme sensitivity is what makes you . . . um, a sort of . . . nut case."

The Master grinned and barked with a laugh, "Fair enough!"

"Master," persisted the student, "could you tell me when death will finally arrive?"

"Oh," shrugged the Master again, "just any old day now."

"How soon?" exclaimed the student with some alarm.

"Very soon," replied the Master, "it will seem just like moments from now."

"Is there no chance I could live for several decades more?" pleaded the student.

The Master paused and considered the question for a minute.

"Yeah, it could happen that you live longer than usual," agreed the Master.

"How could that be," asked the student.

"Let me tell you what it would be like," concluded the Master. "It would be as if a family of loggers had decided firmly to clear a certain section of the wood. And it might so happen that as they arrived at the last tree, one of the sons tired a bit more easily than on other days and said, 'Father, I'm feeling rather sickly today. Could we cut down this last tree another time?' And it might be that the Father would reply, 'No problem, Son, we'll get this one next year.' In such a haphazard way are our lives spared."

A Dinner At The Monastery

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As the monks were all eating together one evening in the dining hall, Little Bikhu looked up from his soup bowel and said, "Sensei, I read that when Manjushri announced the Buddha as the Dharma King, Buddha immediately got up from the throne and left the building without saying a word. Could you please tell us what that was all about?"

Sensei said, "No."

A visiting scholar who had been poring over many sutras during his stay there had come across a term that was unfamiliar to him.

He asked Sensei, "Who is the one the sutras call The Ten-Body Controller?"

Sensei replied, "Anyone around here who is willing to deal with the kids in Sunday school."

"I also read," added Little Bikhu, "that when a student asked the Buddha about the subject of 'Not Speaking The Dharma,' the Buddha did not reply. Could you elaborate on the meaning of this?"

Sensei said, "No."

Another monk set his bowel down and queried, "And what's all this the sages say about he who has died The Great Death and come back to life?"

Sensei said, "Even married people can attain enlightenment."

A Short Time At The Lectern

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Sensei entered the Zendo, stood behind a podium and gazed out sweetly at the Sangha. As they waited for him to speak, he raised his right palm and faced it flat toward the students. He waited for another moment, noticing that some had furrowed their brows and others looked perplexed. He then touched his index finger and his thumb, forming a circular mudra. He turned to look at his hand and smiled. His face then lost all expression. He declared softly, "Exactly this," and left the room.

The Ocean of Birth And Death

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Sensei sat in the middle of a large group of students. Sensei was surprised to see this large of a gathering, since only recently a news article had run in the local papers about a scandal involving him and several of his younger female students.

Sensei asked the group straight out, "How is it that you would come to me for spiritual guidance when the word is out about my lack of discipline?"

One student barked from the back of the room, "We already knew you were an old pervert. If that was to stop us from visiting you, we would have abandoned you long ago."

The room rang out in laughter. Sensei blushed slightly, but otherwise seemed to maintain his composure.

A student near the front of the room asked sincerely, "We have heard you were near your own Master at the time of his passing. Can you tell us what kind of experience that was?"

"Certainly," replied Sensei. "As you know, my master was not the last in a long lineage of notorious cowards. So, as you might have guessed, he mostly wept bitterly and complained incessantly during his last few months in this life."

"But," the student pressed, "what were his last moments like? Did he have a great awakening? Were there any final orders given? How did he sum up his dharma path?"

Sensei thought about the question for a moment and replied, "I can't say there was anything like that to report."

The student seemed very interested, and looked at Sensei expectantly. Sensei took this as a cue to continue the story:

"As you know, this very life we live, (and my Master was fond of pointing this out constantly in the many laborious years we spent with him), is likened unto a great, dark ocean, roiling with birth and death, abounding in monsters and predators. Indeed, our bodies are like brittle rafts made of thin wood. And we are using these bodies to attempt to carry ourselves through a very turbulent, violent and intolerable storm."

"Yes," said the eager student, "but what did your Master say at the end?"

"Oh yes," said Sensei. "So, as I was about to say: My Master was on his deathbed. And I was very traumatized, since, frankly, I need to take extra psychiatric medications even when suffering from a small bout of allergies. And I had no faculties with which to handle the actual demise of a respected human being in my presence."

"Now there were several others in the room," continued Sensei, "and this helped me deal with the situation somewhat."

"At that time, to tell you the truth, it was not thought that I would be the one who would continue the Master's lineage. After all, he referred to me as a weak and stubborn goat. So, imagine my surprise when, as he was about to take his final breaths, he called me to his side.

"I was shivering with fear and apprehension, much as I do now when the Board of Directors of the temple calls me in to account for my activities. But somehow I summoned the courage to approach very near to his face. And I asked him: Sir, how am I, and how are my brethren, lacking in skill and character as we are, to ever hope to cross the ocean of birth and death and get to the other shore?"

"At that moment," concluded Sensei, "my Master's face began to glow. It was as though there was light beneath his skin. He was radiant. The others in the room came close behind me to look at this awesome sight. Many of us were soon pressed all around his bed. The Master raised his head ever so slightly, and his eyes bulged out wildly. He turned his head frantically a few times, seemly in both fear and tremendous ecstasy and proclaimed his last words: Gentlemen! To the lifeboats!"

6. No Wei Ai Go's Fourteen Heresies

No Wei Ai Go's Fourteen Heresies

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No Wei Ai Go said:

As long as you remain Agnostic, God can still transmit revelation to you. Once you become a firm believer with a holy book in your hand, it won't be long before your romance with The Divine will be as loveless as an arranged marriage.

*

No Wei Ai Go said:

You ask me if it's okay for women to serve as high priests? How could such a thing seem controversial In most of the homes I visit, it's clear enough that the women of the household are already issuing most of the orders. Why go to the temple and pretend before the gods that men are in charge of anything?

*

No Wei Ai Go said:

You have asked me if I am angry because people are burning copies of the sutras. Yes, I always say this infuriates me, because they always forget to the throw the Bible and all the other holy books in there too. Only when all the scriptures of the world are abandoned, can the real search for God can begin.

*

No Wei Ai Go said:

When the censors were burning all of my heretical writings in the town square, I ran home to get my love poetry. "What are you doing?" asked the magistrate, when I began throwing my love poems into the flames. "Those are just silly works of infatuation over women."

"Indeed," I replied, "these are the most heretical of all, because, instead of being works of blasphemy, these are works of idolatry. Mere insults to the gods are a petty sin compared to our daily practice of turning women into gods."

The magistrate smirked at me and said, "You have a deeper understanding than our censors, but if we implemented this concept, the kingdom would be thrown into open rebellion."

*

No Wei Ai Go said:

When I emerged from my hut yesterday, I was greeted by the Chief of Police. They searched my hut and confiscated most of my writings and threw them into a big pile and started burning my library. He said the Governor let me off easy. I was lucky they didn't hang me, as they usually do in such cases. He also inquired of me, as the flames crackled away, why I was smiling as decades of work went up in flames. I told him, "One's fellow writers will never allow anyone to retire under ordinary circumstances. Now, at last, you have given me an acceptable excuse to stop working."

*

No Wei Ai Go said:

I would have fought valiantly against the orthodox priests when they came to enforce religious law in my town; but it so happened I knew one of the high priests, and he had promised to order some woman to marry me when he became Governor. Normally, I would have opposed such a thing with every ounce of my moral fiber, but I was too old and poor and ugly to find a lover in the romantic way, and so the incoming dictatorship was my only hope.

*

No Wei Ai Go said:

I tried moving to Europe to escape the horrors of the primitive world only to find, after I arrived in Europe, that I got so caught up in worldly things that I had no time for the gods. I also noticed that the worldly people there were so enthralled by sensual pleasures that they didn't even have time for Atheism.

*

No Wei Ai Go said:

Moses could not possibly reveal what God said to him from the burning bush, so he wrote some worldly commandments instead. The reason Moses never crossed the Jordan into Israel was because God punished him for reducing His presence to mere words. The burning bush Moses saw then is before you even now, but who really wants to face it?

*

No Wei Ai Go said:

In a society of masters and slaves, the escaped slave will be universally unpopular, unacceptable to the masters, and bitterly resented by the other slaves. This is why I lie and tell everyone I'm a common slave. If they ask how I am, please tell them I'm miserable. It will be better for everyone if you don't tell them about my happiness.

*

No Wei Ai Go said:

It may seem cruel of me to tell the believers that there is no eternal reward; but God showed me what an eternal reward would look like, and I swear to you, even if you could have it, you wouldn't like it for very long.

*

No Wei Ai Go said:

I sincerely regret to inform you that the Buddhist principle of "Right Livelihood" will have to be abandoned if you have any attachment to love, money or social approval. However, if you can tolerate poverty, celibacy and mediocre coffee, then, by all means, live with integrity.

*

No Wei Ai Go said:

The Governor told me not to take his ban on free speech personally. In fact, he said that my ranting amused him, however, he made it clear that his primary job was to protect the economy. He said, "You might think speaking the truth is all fun and games, but most businesses, religions, and marriages, would collapse if the element of truth were introduced."

*

No Wei Ai Go said:

You should never stop listening to a person just because most of their utterances are lies and crazy talk. If we only took advice from honest and sane advisors, we'd be be in danger of ending up like reasonable people, and you all know what a horrible fate that is.

*

No Wei Ai Go said:

Have any political or religious views you like, but I assure you of this: If there are even a thousand men like me alive on this earth at any given moment, then there will never be any way whatsoever of saving this planet for virtue's sake.

7. An Excess of Opium

The Revolutionaries

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The sage was awakened by a loud rapping on his hut door. He staggered heavily to the door as he was still recovering from some excesses at the opium den the day before.

"What is it?" he said testily as he cracked the door open and beheld a face within the blinding light of midday.

"Come now to the center of town! They're trying to overthrow the dictator and everyone wants to be a part of the action," said his friend.

"Who is leading the attempted coup?" inquired the half-asleep sage doubtfully.

"The revolutionaries!" excitedly replied his friend.

"Which revolutionaries?" snarled the impatient sage.

"All the ones you know!" said the friend with earnest assurance in his voice.

"The ones I know?" hissed the sage. "In that case I'm afraid I'd rather stick with the dictator. The dictator only wants to steal our money. The revolutionaries want to steal our minds."

"But don't you want to see the people have a voice in the affairs of state?" pressed the friend.

"Which people?" inquired the sage with a scowl.

"All the people of the city," the friend enthusiastically replied.

"The people of this city? Oh no," concluded the sage. "I think I'll stick with the tyrant," said the sage as he slammed the door shut.

A moment later there was yet another rapping on the door.

"What now?" exclaimed the sage with irritation as he again cracked the door open.

It was his friend, who, looking a bit crestfallen, said in a mild and sincere tone, "On second thought, I wondered if, instead of going to the coup, I might come inside instead."

"Why would you want to do that?" the sage now asked in genuine confusion.

"Well, it suddenly occurred to me that much of the village had seen you reeling on opium last night and, frankly, many of them envied you. I know you've not quite gotten over your hangover from last night, but I . . ."

". . . wondered if I had some left?" said the sage with a slowly brightening smile, as the guest nodded serenely. "Very well then. My pipe is your pipe. Come in and have a smoke."

As it so happened, the revolution that day had started to prevail, but, due to some tactical errors on the part of the revolutionary leaders, the tide of the battle changed, and, at last, the revolutionaries were put down.

A week later the friend stopped by the sage's hut and observed, "I think your cynicism may have saved my life. Most of the revolutionaries died, it turns out, and the ones that lived are set to be hanged next week in some kind of publicly-humiliating manner."

The sage welcomed his friend back into his hut and concluded, "I only save other's lives on accident. The only time I put anyone's life in danger is when I consciously try to save them."

The Test

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Sensei said:

You will each be given an extensively long test, each question containing several feasible answers, and the possible combinations of all those answers will amount to an incomprehensible number. But whichever combination of answers you give, including deliberately falsified answers, guessed-at answers, answered obtained by cheating, truthful answers, or answers arising from factual knowledge — all of you will get a certain score on that test.

Your scores will be wildly various from every other student who takes the test. Even so, the score you will get has already been written down, and I have already seen that score. And no matter how many times you retake the test, and no matter how much you study for the test, and no matter how many times you change the patterns of your answers — still your score will be the same.

I only bring this up to mention that you could not possibly fail to be yourself no matter what you do.

However, although it is not possible to take the test poorly and thereby fail to be a fully valid person, you are never to tell your friends, family members or work associates that they are fully valid no matter what they do, since, if they knew that, they would loose all fear of you, at which point it would become almost impossible for you to make any money or find any love, both of which you will need to get through this particular incarnation.

If people try to convince you that what I have just said is not true, (should you slip up and spill the beans), realize that they'll feel they must do this because they would have reason to suspect that you might soon loose all fear of them if you knew you were valid no matter what; and if everyone lost all fear of them, they themselves would likely have no means of survival either.

With all of this in mind, enjoy the test.

Some Sayings of The Anti-Saints

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God's Beloved Agnostic said: Do not believe anyone who claims to have a final and permanent revelation, since revelations, if they are real, exclude all finality and permanence. Regarding the prophets of old, you should know that their lies are not superior to the lies of the new prophets merely because those lies are harder to disprove and are widely believed by popular people.

*

Ever Hopeful asked Fujikami, "How can I learn to love people and see them as fundamentally good?"

Fujikami replied, "If you need to see people as fundamentally good before you can love them, you have attained nothing. Love only begins after you know for sure they are thieves, liars and traitors, but you discover you feel genuine affection for them anyway."

*

Sensei flung open the door and burst into the room and said, "Hurry! Get in the van now! We're late!"

Little Bhikhu rushed to get the keys and four other monks ran to the van.

"I didn't know we were due somewhere. What time were we supposed to arrive?" replied Little Bhikhu.

"Never!" shouted Sensei.

"In that case," inquired Little Bhikhu, "why is there such a rush?"

Sensei said, "If you really understood never, then you would know how urgent the matter is."

*

"Sensei," one of the monks asked, "how do we know when a monk has truly fallen in love?"

"That's easy," replied Sensei, "the one who hasn't fallen in loves comes around for weeks saying he thinks he's falling in love. The one who really falls in love abruptly stops coming here and doesn't return my calls for six months."

One of the monks inquired: "Don't you get angry when a monk runs off with a woman and abandons you without explanation?"

Sensei said: "Such incidents never anger me, but only make me envious."

No Markings of Greatness

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Shakyamuni Buddha himself was standing in line at a vegetable market when he was spotted by the earnest and sullen philosopher No Joking Around.

"So, there you are, hiding in plain sight, thousands of years later, keeping a low profile, no doubt, on account of being the charlatan that you are!" pronounced No Joking Around.

"How could you know I am anyone in particular?" replied Shakyamuni Buddha. "I resemble an ordinary peasant, a simple, middling housekeeper with no markings of greatness."

"I could tell by the self-satisfied smirk, the calm, deep breathing, and the easy, smooth movements of your hands and legs. There is an air of naturalness about you. It all amounts to perfect fearlessness. I could spot it a mile away," observed No Joking Around.

"Fascinating!" Shakyamuni replied. "Well, in any case, even if I were someone special. What on earth would you want with me?"

"You've got some explaining to do," declared No Joking Around ominously. "You see, I finally let go of every false belief and became a confirmed Atheist. But you, having seen through every false belief, did not come out properly as an Atheist, but left it all up to everyone else to make up their own stories about the universe. Once you had let go of all false beliefs, you had a duty to make sure everyone was not only disabused of all falsehood, but told sternly the truth."

"Well," said Shakyamuni, "I'm afraid you were a bit hasty in assuming you had attained liberation."

"How could that be!" exclaimed No Joking Around, now outraged. "Just as you always told us to do, I abandoned all false views based on wishful thinking."

"Perhaps that's so," noted Shakyamuni Buddha, as he paid for his vegetables and turned to return to his ordinary shack in the countryside. "But by merely letting go of false beliefs, you have attained only a half liberation."

"A half liberation?" said No Joking Around. "What is the other half that I failed to attain?"

Shakymuni Buddha, as he was padding down the muddy road to the distant outskirts, turned once more toward the philosopher and declared, "While it may be true that you let go of all false beliefs, it's very clear you're still holding on to all of your true beliefs. True beliefs, when the subject of ardent clinging, present as great an obstacle to Nirvana as false beliefs. Until you let go of them too, you're just another desperate man on the Wheel of Samsara."

The philosopher did not know how to reply and just stared straight ahead.

Before Shakymuni headed further down the road he quipped, "And if you say a word about our meeting to anyone, I'll tell them that not only am I not the Buddha, but, as the old heretics said: Buddhas have never once appeared in the world."

The Way of The World

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No Wei Ai Go was approached by Common Suffering Businessman: "Sir, I find that I am failing in commerce and unable to get satisfactory promotions, thus I am languishing in mid-career, lost in a mediocre middle-management position with no prospects of significant advancement. I fear it is all because I am unable to better conform to The Way of The World."

"I have studied The World, and I have studied you, for many years," said No Wei Ai Go, "and I have concluded that, even in a hundred lifetimes, you could never conform to The Way of The World."

"Alright, then," conceded Common Suffering Businessman, "then I shall give up The Way of The World if you shall teach me how to conform to The Way of Heaven."

"I have studied Heaven, and I have studied you, for many years," said No Wei Ai Go, "and I have concluded that, even in a hundred lifetimes, you could never conform to The Way of Heaven."

"Why do you say that I lack these capacities?" inquired Common Suffering Businessman.

No Wei Ai Go replied, "At birth, each of us given a certain ability to conform to the ways of the World and the ways of Heaven. You cannot increase your ability to conform by strenuous effort, nor can you perversely decide to be less conformist by acts of defiance. If you attempt such things, your natural levels of conformity and nonconformity will resurface in the form of passive-aggressive anger and psychosomatic health problems. If you attempt to be untrue to yourself, your real self will be like a river overflowing its banks, or water raging over the top of a dam. Our real selves will always out."

Common Suffering Businessman protested, "How can I take your word about these things on faith? Where's the evidence?"

"Please do not believe anything I predict, nor anything predicted in books," concluded No Wei Ai Go. "Instead, go and observe your life for a while on your own. And, if you like, try to go against your own mind-body complex for a prolonged period of time. Then, if things turn out differently than I said they would, you come right back here and tell me so."

"What's the use in pretending," added Common Suffering Businessman with a sigh. "Of course I've already tried everything, and things have already turned out the way you said they would."

"If it would be any help to you," added No Wei Ai Go, "you might like to know that I was, for decades, a common suffering businessman too. My current charades make life look easier for me, and thus I am more able to put on the pretense of detached calm. Were I really to face the pressures you do, I'd probably go insane after about a week. Hence, in the great scheme of things, your spiritual attainments will be at least equal, if not superior, to mine."

Lao Tsu's Failed Incarnation

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Lao Tsu appeared before The Serious Judgment God after living an entirely irresolute life.

The Serious Judgment God said, "Well, what do you have to say for yourself?"

Lao Tsu replied, "I lived a life in which I floundered without finding my calling."

"And how do you feel about that?" inquired The Serious Judgment God.

"Just fine, now," replied Lao Tsu.

"Interesting," mused The Serious Judgment God; "and can you tell me how you came to feel fine with that?"

"Yes," said Lao Tsu: "At one point in my life I found that I could not resolutely declare that any of my vocations had been successful. At last I found The Holy Man of Ill Repute and told him of my woes. He prayed about my situation all week and returned with this oracular pronouncement:

"The Serious Judgment God has informed me that your true calling in life is to experiment with a life in which no distinct calling can be found."

"After that, I very much enjoyed having no visible vocation whatsoever."

"But," pressed The Serious Judgment God, "were there not serious social ramifications, such as the loss of family, lovers, friends and coworkers? How did you survive such an upheaval without going insane or dying of grief? I myself don't understand how people cope with the stress of life, even as I tinker with their fates."

"Yes," agreed Lao Tsu. "After a while I lost them all and was entirely alone. Much distressed, I returned

again to The Holy Man of Ill Repute and told him of my woes. He prayed about my situation all week and returned with this oracular pronouncement:

"The Serious Judgment God has informed me that it is His will that you experiment with a life containing no family, lovers, friends or coworkers."

"After that I wandered around as if I were a king, since there could not possibly be any social penalty due to anyone thinking unfavorably of me. And, in fact, since their thinking unfavorably of me was the whole point of the experiment, I counted it as an extra credit to myself if, on any given day, several more people had decided I was discredited."

"Well done!" exclaimed The Serious Judgment God. "In that case I award you your choice of births in any favorable condition you like."

"Thank you very much," said Lao Tsu with a humble bow. "I would chose a favorable situation for myself, except that my findings are, after living the experimental life you ordered me to, that I would be hard pressed to choose a favorable life."

"And why is that?" asked The Serious Judgment God.

"Well, you see," concluded Lao Tsu, "after I got deep into my mission of having no mission, I took time to inquire after the details of the daily lives of those who had such things as callings and vocations, and those who enjoyed a great many social connections. Much to my surprise, I found them to be far less secure than myself and in greater anxiety than I had imagined, as they feared, at every turn, that they would be labeled as ones without vocations, at which point, apparently, they too would be left alone and without resources. It was only then that the verse of the Sutra seemed real to me:

". . . all states of existence are coequal . . ."

"Thus," admitted Lao Tsu, "I cannot say with any confidence what a favorable birth would be, and thus I am at a loss as to how to choose one."

This Very Day

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I went to Sensei in the morning and asked him, "When should I retire and finally be free?"

Sensei replied, "On this very day. If you do not do it today, it will never happen. No other day is acceptable."

"Your preaching has gotten tiresome," I replied. "I shall try you again during my lunch break to see if I can make any sense of what you say."

At lunchtime I returned and said, "Today our boss is letting us out early on account of the Holiday. On such days, our whole office goes to singles establishments afterwards, trolling the town for love. I find this to be exhausting and heartbreaking."

"You must cease looking for love as of this very afternoon. If you don't stop this behavior this afternoon, there will be no end to this emotional self-abuse. No other afternoon will do."

"Now you're repeating yourself like some demagogue," I countered. "Perhaps this evening you'll be less of a tyrant. I will try again later."

When the afternoon love-chasing had ended and the sun was setting, I approached Sensei and complained. "Sensei, I have had it with going to the cultural get-togethers in the evenings, but everyone makes it clear that attendance is absolutely required. What should I do?"

"You must refuse all invitations to any events that do not please you and accept the consequences no matter how harsh they might be; and you must resolve to begin routinely refusing such things on this very night. If you do not stop your compliant behavior tonight, it will never stop. No other night is acceptable."

"You know something," I said to Sensei, "you're a very unreasonable person."

"I know," admitted Sensei. "I tried being a reasonable person for a very long time, but came no closer to liberation than you are now. In the end, I finally realized that realistic people can never be saved."

8. Everything You Ever Wanted

Everything You Ever Wanted

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Continually Searching came upon a vending machine with just one large button that flashed: "Everything You Ever Wanted."

Chaung Tsu was standing there watching him hesitate.

At last Chuang Tsu said, "It really doesn't matter if you push the button or not, because everyone who gets Everything You Ever Wanted, still ends up back here anyway."

Your High Standards

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Earth approached my table at the teahouse and said, "May I sit down?"

"Sure," I replied. "I didn't know the whole planet could take the form of a single person."

"Actually, I was a person long before I was a planet. Being Earth itself was just an afterthought."

"You seem familiar to me," I mused. "It's like I've seen you before."

"You walk all over me every day. That's probably why I feel familiar."

"No, I mean, it's like your human form is familiar too."

"Did you live in Huntington Beach in the Mid Eighties?" asked Earth.

"Yes, I was working temp jobs and going to Goldenwest College."

"That was it. You see," said Earth. "There's no way to get the feel of surfing when one's head is in the clouds, living full time as a god. So I spent a year there smoking pot, drinking beer, surfing, and trying to pick up on beach babes?"

"I still don't get it," I replied.

"That's okay," said Earth, "but listen. I'm here on a mission."

"Really?" I said incredulously.

"Yeah, here's the deal. I've been getting a lot of email complaints about you."

"The gods get email?"

"Of course! They have to. If we're going to put on any kind of play here, we can't just sit around reminding ourselves of our omniscience and omnipotence. That's dull. So we have to have protocols."

"So people got your email address and they stopped praying?"

"Yes, but I didn't mind. The message got through. Anyway, you know how you've been walking around the Earth for half a century telling everyone on Earth about your high standards?"

"I guess so," I replied.

"Well, I just came here today for the sole purpose of letting you know that no one on the Earth gives a shit about your high standards."

A Parasitic Existence

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The revered monk Free Food was wandering through the marketplace on a busy weekday with his large retinue when he was confronted by a layman.

"What are you monks doing in the marketplace in the middle of a busy workday?"

The monk turned to his retinue with a smirk, then stared back at the layman silently.

A rather short and slender monk with a shaved head stepped forward and replied, "At the risk of belaboring the obvious, we are here in search of free food."

"But why should these hard-working people feed you? Why do you live such a parasitic existence?" the layman impatiently asked.

The other monks then looked back at Free Food who then decided to speak.

"Back when I was a young novice," began the monk, "I used to work very hard, often putting in sixteen hour days in order to prove to my family that I was self-sufficient, since they had communicated that they were only capable of loving self-sufficient people."

"After some months of studying with my elderly teacher," continued the monk, "he got fed up with me coming in to my lessons half asleep; so he demanded to know how much I had been working. I told him that I would work as many hours as it took to avoid being like the people my family described as evil parasites. At that point he asked me whether I thought I was better than those who lived off of free food and did not work. Given the continual harangue my family gave us about how horrible it was to eat free food, I told my teacher that I would rather die honorably of starvation than eat free food."

The layman replied, "Good for you. That's what I like to hear. Why on earth did you ever stop working?"

The monk continued, "After a while my teacher called me into his office for a private meeting. He asked me point-blank if I felt that, as a worker, I was morally superior to people who ate free food. I informed him in no uncertain terms that people who work hard for their dinner are certainly far better people than those who eat free food. It was at this point my teacher said, 'It is our duty here to free ourselves of our ego attachments. Your attachment to your own superiority is the greatest barrier to your liberation. Therefore, if you wish to continue on our path at all, then I order you to cease working immediately and consume only free food. Until such time as I sense that you no longer believe you are better than non workers, your are ordered to ask others for free food.' And thus was I given my spiritual name Free Food."

"But that was long ago," protested the layman. "Surely you are over whatever superiority complex you had back then and are therefore at liberty to return to work."

"No he's not!" exclaimed the short, slender monk. "Every day he looks at the unemployed standing in the bread lines and tells us what losers they are."

Free Food nodded at the layman, acknowledging the charge made against him by the junior monk, and then added, "Mr. Layman, I hate to cut this short, but we really do have to be about our business."

"Suppose I have more questions?" inquired the layman who was met with only an icy, silent stare from Free Food.

"The only way we will have time for them," said the short, slender monk as he again stood forward to speak for his master, "is if you buy us all lunch."

The Things You Are Asking For

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Kami no Kami said: The reason the gods don't respond to your prayers is that they have seen the future results, and the final, long-term effects, of the things your are asking for, and out of infinite mercy, they have opted to have you think they're monstrous instead of winning your favor by bringing forth all of the disasters your successful plans would bring about.

Leaving Your Mark Upon The World

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A popular critic approached Sensei and said, "Now that all of your students have abandoned you, how do you intend to leave your mark upon on the world."

Sensei replied, "When I'm out walking, I notice that my dog stops to urinate every few minutes in order to let all of the other dogs know it was there. Maybe I could try that."

Half The Truth

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Sin Nick, the motivational speaker, had just got done delivering a pep talk to a sold-out crowd at the Anaheim Convention Center when he was approached by Sensei.

"You only told them half the truth," proclaimed Sensei.

"Why would you say such a thing?" objected Sin Nick. "I told them they could do anything if only they set their minds to it."

"It would be true enough," noted Sensei, "that they could do anything they set their minds to, but you forgot to tell them that none of them can be found to possess any such thing as a so-called mind."

No-Nonsense Rural Guy

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No-Nonsense Rural Guy came to Sensei's place and said, "I tried reading your books and listening to your lectures, but it all sounds like gibberish to me. I can't understand why this meditation technique of watching myself breathe and letting go of all my thoughts is supposed to be so great."

"I'm not sure what I can do for you, then," replied Sensei.

No-Nonsense Rural Guy said, "I need you to stop speaking as though you were reciting abstract poetry or translating a secret code. Just tell me something simple that will help me understand what you're trying to get at."

"Perhaps," replied Sensei, "a simple story told in a straightforward manner would make it all clear to you what this Zen business might be about."

"Yes," agreed No-Nonsense Rural Guy. "That's just the kind of thing I was hoping for."

"Okay," began Sensei, "there was once a common man, not a Christ or a Buddha, not a saint nor a sage, but a common laborer with no special qualifications. One fine day he was walking along a dirt road outside his village. The wind picked up just a bit, and he was refreshed to feel the gentle breeze in his face. From time to time a butterfly flitted past. To the right, he could hear a trickling spring and an occasional bird chirp. Passing by him, at various times, were certain horrific people who had done horrible deeds; and at other times he noted people who had lived lives of solid virtue and praiseworthy action. He thought to himself that his wife had become a bit boring and that work had been a bit disappointing that year. On the other hand, his eldest daughter had just given birth to a beautiful child. But he still remained slightly disturbed about the actions of the newly-elected government.

"Overall, he could not say that life was good or bad, that things were improving or deteriorating, or that the overall pattern of the world was moving in such a way that any advantage or disadvantage could clearly be made out from the whole thing. However, for no reason at all, he decided, taking into account all of the flaws present in his life, that his life was somehow sacred and that he would not to rush about trying to change much of it, and that somehow, even if things got way worse, it might, after all that, merely amuse him rather than embitter him.

"It also occurred to him that certainly his wife was sleeping with his business partner behind his back, however, he would not bring the subject up with either person. A smile came to his face and he chuckled to himself, and said to himself, 'Good for them. I'd begun to think they were both hopeless cowards incapable of any gusto whatsoever. At least now I know they are living, breathing human beings.'

"He came to the edge of a great ravine, where several rivers converged and formed a waterfall. The roar was almost deafening. He sat down and watched the torrent. Wild dogs were down there dragging fish from the shallows. Huge herons were winging overhead. For the life of him, he suddenly realized that if he could pray, he'd have no idea what to ask for as there was not a single way in which he currently wanted to change anyone's life, including his own."

Suddenly No-Nonsense Rural Guy stood up and shook his head, as if in confusion, and politely said, "Sir, this has been interesting, but I really must go."

Sensei said, "I insist you not go just yet, as I must know what part of the story upset you so much that you felt you had to leave just now."

"It's my wife . . . the story . . ." stuttered No-Nonsense Rural Guy.

"Ah!" said Sensei, . . . "so she's cheating!"

The visitor just nodded severely.

"Don't worry," Sensei assured, "whether you divorce her tomorrow or stay on slavishly forever — either way, I promise you'll always be welcome here. In any case, whether you return or not, you must admit that our teachings are not so abstract."

Fu War And The Disillusioned Westerner

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Fu War sat smugly in his den on a cold Fall morning, taking sips of tea, and he relaxed in a large, well-cushioned chair which faced toward the garden. As his aids came to and fro to get instructions, he addressed them with a condescending air regarding which he felt no guilt at all.

The room was just a bit too ornate for a shaved-headed monk, and the congregation was slightly embarrassed about the seeming lack of austerity in the life of its abbot. But, as things stood, no one quite had the courage to question him to his face about this flaw. It slightly aggravated tensions that he also kept a mid-size Bengali cat in the room whose every heavy purr seemed to give off a bit too much of a sensual feel for the comfort of the average parishioner.

A tepid knock came on the door, and Fu War looked up with a supercilious and perturbed air and said, "Come in and state your business. I haven't got all day."

Into the room burst an awkward businessman dressed in a suit which seemed to just not quite fit well on any part of his body. The man was not bald, but could not muster an inspiring head of hair either. There were glasses on his face, but they were half slid down his nose, and he alternately tried to squint through them and tried to look out over them. The whole affair was uneven and somehow both overdone and not well-done.

Fu War put his palm on his forehead and quietly exclaimed, "Dear God, what on earth have we got here? Oh well, now that you're here, (and Lord only knows what you thought you might get by coming here), please tell me what would be disturbing you. By all appearances, you've been striving for peace your whole life and not gotten anywhere."

The man half bowed, but was not humble about it, and then aggressively took a seat across from Fu War, thus breaching protocol, and announced, "My life, just now, has completely fallen apart. Today was the last straw. I'm floundering and can't even imagine what my next step is to be. It's all for naught!"

Fu War leaned back, took a leisurely sip or two of tea and then smirked, asking, "Could it really be true that much of anything you could be troubling yourself with is that urgent? And anyway, you give off the air of one who was raised as a Catholic or some such thing. Should you not be consulting a Western priest who can give you trite, little assurances to calm your nerves, given that you Westerners are sent into a tailspin at every minute material or social setback?"

"No," you see, my priest would not understand. "It's worse than a material or social setback. It's the opposite. I've not had any setbacks, not that anyone could see from the outside. My job is still quite secure. My marriage is not on the verge of any breakup. Most of my friends still have full confidence in me. On the surface, I can't say I have any complaints."

Fu War perked up upon hearing this and said, "Indeed this is curious. Then if there is a hidden problem, some sort of subterranean angst, I should be amused to hear all about it."

The man again nodded in a partially-deferential way toward Fu War and explained, "It's disillusionment. That's what's really got me all in knots."

"Now we're getting somewhere," said Fu War. "You must tell me precisely what it is you're disillusioned with. Disillusionment — that's a topic most dear to my heart."

"It's all hit me at once," the man replied. "You see, although my pay is adequate and my coworkers are not the worst one could end up with, I'm utterly disillusioned with my career prospects; and though my priests and fellow parishioners are kind and decent people, I'm disillusioned with them too; and although my family and friends are supportive and respectful and numerous, I must confess that I'm disillusioned with all my relationships. So, it's a real crisis, you see. The entire affair of my worldly existence — the whole thing seems entirely unimpressive to me. It's a complete disaster."

Fu War stared coldly at the man for a moment, causing the visitor to become briefly more agitated, but then at last Fu War warmly, but patronizingly, waved his arm expansively in the direction of the man, in a way that seemed to sweep over the whole world behind the visitor.

Then Fu War inquired, "And so if I were to go through a list of every person, place or thing in your world, is it true that at the naming of each thing, your earnest reply would simply be, 'disillusioned?' Is that the gist of what you're saying."

"Yes!" exclaimed the visitor, "you've understood me perfectly. You've seen the nature of the crisis."

Fu war pertly smiled and concluded, "This crisis you speak of, this thoroughgoing disaster — you might be surprised to know that in my particular sect, in the lineage I come from, we happen to call it "the gateway that leads to total, perfect, final and incomparable liberation."

Eager To Please Gets A Date

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The guy who everyone thought was God was walking along Broadway in Oakland near the 19th Street BART station when he happened to pass Eager To Please. Eager To Please lived within shouting distance of BART.

The guy who everyone thought was God was wearing a black and gold sweatshirt and was sporting a grease-stained Giants cap. He was rather gaunt looking and it appeared he may have had some kind of substance abuse problem. His jeans were saggy and propped up by a cheap leather belt he'd bought from a Mexican leather shop that had lost its lease.

Eager To Please called out to him as he approached and asked the old man if he was indeed The Lord God of Hosts, as many had suspected.

"Hey man! You know the rules of the game. I'm not allowed to answer that question. The laws of this universe are not meant to be violated. There will be none of this supernatural funny business."

"Okay," agreed Eager To Please, "but at least tell me this. How is it that I always end up in some love affair or another that seems to be psychologically damaging or somehow morally wrong?"

The old man smirked and his beady, dark eyes peeked out from underneath his visor: "If you ever come upon a love that isn't psychologically or morally tainted, I promise it will bore the living shit out of you quicker than you'd care to know. Stick with bad love affairs. You're safer that way anyhow."

Eager To Please winced: "Excuse me, but I admit I take a bit of offense at the idea of God, I mean an old man, swearing like that."

"I'm in a bit of a hurry, and I don't want to be late to the game, so I'm afraid I'm going to need you to get right to the point, young man," pressed the old man.

"Right," agreed Eager To Please. "The matter can be boiled down to this. I'm living a life full of sinful and selfish motives, and I've just not been behaving like an honorable, well-adjusted person. I want to be a good man. It's become tiring to end up in relationships which make me feel empty and to repeatedly hear women say being in a romance with me causes them to feel unsatisfied and unfulfilled."

"I don't recall," said the guy who everyone thought was God, "ever giving you permission to be a good man? Why do you think you're so special that you get to avoid being a dog like most of the other fellows? What did you think I would do, create a planet of four billion nice guys? Even the women would soon die of boredom if confronted with such a world. Remember, we were all together in Heaven before this world came along, and we were all just about to go mad with the ennui of sitting there in some perfect, changeless, timeless state. Trust me, if I ever need you to be a good man, I'll let you know. For now, the way everyone's roles are all cast, I'll need you to keep playing a kind of simpleton who means well, but ends up coming off like a jerk in the end. Now, if you would be so kind as to let me pass, I really have to be getting onto the train platform before it's too late."

"But wait!" exclaimed Eager To Please, "then didn't you just kind of admit to me now that you really are God? Otherwise why would you say such things?"

The guy everyone thought was God dismissively waved off Eager To Please and hobbled lamely but singly-mindedly down into the BART station so as not to miss the first pitch. Eager To Please was still depressed, so he decided to stop by a café for the third time that day to guzzle down even more coffee, in spite of the fact that the caffeine and the acid involved were destroying his digestive system and he was sure to die an early death from it.

At the coffee shop, he turned to the most beautiful woman there and said, "Would you be insulted if I admitted to you that I'm only talking to you because you're the best looking woman here?"

"Why should that offend me? It's not like you're some philosopher or theologian, is it?" replied the woman.

"Hmm," said Eager To Please. "What would you say about a man who would fall in love with a beautiful woman and then ruthlessly dump her if she ever got fat?"

"Well, if I hated men who were like that, I'd be a very lonely gal, since there are fewer and fewer saintly men in Northern California these days. I guess once I decided I liked men, I realized it would be rather self-defeating to get upset every time one of them was superficial. If I did that, I'd be reduced to walking about in an indignant rage the whole time?"

"So then you'll have dinner with me tonight?" inquired Eager To Please.

"Sure," said the woman. "And I guess I'll have to pick up the tab, because, given your outfit, it looks like you're already reduced to shopping at Old Navy, right?"

Eager To Please acknowledged the truth of her assertion by just hanging his head in shame without speaking.

The woman stood up and grabbed his hand and almost dragged him out the door like a crestfallen child. She hailed a cab and took them to a new soul food restaurant that was jam-packed with trendies and hipsters and computer-world executives and coding slaves of every description, some with tattoos, others in Italian suits, and still others working with some blend of high-end formal attire and low-brow casual accessories. However they worked their game, everyone in there, except Eager To Please, was swimming in money.

Much to his surprise, the woman was a brisk and perky conversationalist. Their banter was lively and intimate.

At the end of the evening, the taxi dropped Eager To Please off at his building before taking the woman home to her place.

"Listen," she said, "when I can work you into my schedule, we'll have sex every couple of weeks, but don't get too attached, because I'll dump you the minute a guy with real money comes along. You got it?"

Eager To Please nodded in assent and turned to climb the stairs to his rent-controlled studio when the guy who everyone thought was God emerged from BART and waved him over.

"So?" said the old man.

Eager To Please stood there in a daze.

"Don't just stand there like you're in a coma. Tell me how the date went."

"Don't you know everything already?"

"No, I limit myself to knowing just enough to create trouble, but I like to keep the results a mystery to myself. It"s more fun to hear the news from you people."

Eager To Please shrugged in a nonplussed way and said, "I guess I'm going to be getting some sex, for a little while anyway."

"Oh, so she must have objected to your low salary?"

"Right."

"Now see here," said the old man, "it's better for weaklings like you to never really make it in the money game. You'd do way more damage than you already do if we put too much money in the mix. Trust me, you're way better off this way."

As the old man hobbled about a half block away, Eager To Please called out to the guy who everyone thought was God and said, "Will I ever be a truly good man?"

The old man looked at Eager To Please and declared, "That's none of your business, son! You just muddle along just the way you are. That's the least harmful thing. You just let the people cut out for the goody-good roles do their job and you just continue to do your job as an accidental, low-level bad guy. Stop trying to interfere with the plot. This is a long book I'm writing, and I don't need any fuss from any B-actors!"

Eager To Please went into his messy studio and cleared some bills and letters off of his primitive altar. He lit a candle and tried to pray for a completely different life and a totally transformed personality; but, much to his surprise, that suddenly seemed like the most immoral and unhealthy thing to do.

9. Master of White Lies

The Smallest Candle Flame

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Politico said: "In spite of all my efforts, I cannot change the world, and I'm wearing myself out."

Sensei noted: "The smallest candle flame can effortlessly light a countless number of candles and not be exhausted. No matter how much of the world the Dharma lights up, the Dharma itself is not slightly depleted."

Returning To The Scriptures

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The Consistency Guy approached Daily Apostate:

"So, I notice you're reading the scriptures again. Didn't you just swear them off forever two weeks ago?"

"Yes, I did," replied Daily Apostate.

"Why did you quit reading them in the first place?" asked The Consistency Guy.

"Because they were composed of transparent lies," said Daily Apostate.

"Why then have you returned to them now?" inquired The Consistency Guy.

"Because," concluded Daily Apostate, "I soon realized I couldn't live without being lied to."

Fear

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The Dreaded Fujikami said: Many sophomore college kids think Buddhism is gentle, and that most other religions are based on fear. Within a week of studying with me, those kids learn what real fear is.

Master of White Lies Meets Radical Honesty

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Master of White Lies was comfortably easing his way down Broadway in Manhattan, accompanied by a throng of hangers-on, groupies, investment advisers, handlers and public relations managers. He was wearing a custom-made suit and wore a designer tie, even though the summer heat made such an outfit quite uncomfortable. He was, on sheer principle, unwilling to look like an amateur, regardless of the hardship which that could involve. His physical fitness and flawless hair were the envy of all, but he always acted surprised when anyone complimented him, as all cynically-modest men must.

He was in his 1,000th incarnation and things were going perfectly. At his advanced level, he could remember his previous lives, but never dared to tell others about it, as he would not even entertain the notion of making others feel inferior by bringing up such a faculty. And as he looked over his cycles of existence, he could not recall one of them that was more relaxing than this one. He smiled broadly and took in a deep breath, but did so only momentarily to be sure no one interpreted him as being too smug or self-satisfied.

Along his route, he became aware of the presence of a withered, elderly man, trudging forward awkwardly in a walker, cursing obnoxiously as he proceeded. He had only a few strands of straggly, gray hair left, and he sported extremely-thick glasses and huge hearing aids, indicating that he was half blind and half deaf. In spite of these difficulties, Master of White Lies immediately recognized this as his old friend Radical Honesty from 940 incarnations ago. Just as he realized this, one of his aides said, "Just look at that hostile, old crank muttering caustically along. It's tragic to see people end up like that."

"I wouldn't assume that," noted Master of White Lies politely, as he turned to call out to his old friend. "Hey, Radical Honesty. It's me! We were in incarnation #060 together!"

Radical Honesty came to a staggering stop in front of Master of White Lies, looked up and laughed, "So . . . we meet again."

Master of White Lies asked, "Can I take you out to lunch? My limousine shall be pulling up presently and I can excuse my entourage so that we might have a private talk."

*

Forty-five minutes later, Radically Honesty found himself sitting across from his old friend in a very exclusive booth at The Russian Tea Room. Woody Allen could be seen a few tables over joking with his extremely young wife, Soon-Yi; and a few tables over from them Paul Simon could be seen in a serious discussion with his wife Edie Brickell.

As the two old friends from incarnation #060 reminisced, they sipped the best black Russian tea and dined on perfectly delicious appetizers.

After a good while of joking and congenial talk, Master of White Lies looked at Radical Honesty with a serious expression and said, "But honestly, how are you really doing? Enough small talk between us. Let's get down to the heart of the matter, as I have meetings all evening to get ready for."

"Certainly," replied Radical Honesty. "In a nut-shell, the situation is like this: I have systematically gone through the whole of my life, and even time-traveled to reach everyone in my former and future lives, in order let everyone know the truth of my condition and how I really felt about everything else in our world."

"Yes, I recall now that in incarnation #060, you told me in no uncertain terms you would, in some future life, try to pull off this spiritual discipline. And so now I take it you have either completed the task, or will have shortly completed it — a stunning feat of will. The discipline and fortitude involved must be tremendous."

"Indeed," agreed Radical Honesty. "and as you might have guessed, my body, mind and spirit are now experiencing the extremely harsh consequences of such a quest. Of course I've been warned by my doctors that I'm almost ruined by the stress I'm under. But, at last, I've completed my mission and therefore have never felt better about facing my impending doom."

"Bravo!" exclaimed Master of White Lies. "Rarely does one meet with a man of such consistency in countless lifetimes. Tell me, are your friends proud of this achievement, to the extent you could even begin to explain it to them?"

"Ah, friends," lamented Radical Honesty. "Of course there are none left. Each of them is so offended that they refuse to ever speak to me again. And so I face the end of life in complete terror on the one hand, and with a robust pride on the other. In spite of this, I swear I would not have lived any other way. The project had an excellence of some sort. And the terror is the merely the price I pay for having completed the task fully."

There was a moment of contemplative silence as both basked in the profound simplicity and elegance of such a fate as Radical Honesty was facing.

At last Radical Honesty turned his gaze upon Master of White Lies and noted, "Since you are the only one who was never offended by me, I imagine you would not be upset if I asked you to break out of the character of your current incarnation to tell me the deep reality of your current estate."

"By all means!" agreed Master of White Lies. "For you — anything."

Both men smiled slightly and nodded in mutual reverence as Master of White Lies began to speak.

"As you well remember, during that wonderful incarnation we had together, I had vowed to pursue the path of social acceptance, promising you, and all the other sages present, that I would take as many lifetimes as needed so as to attain perfect conformity with all social requirements until I saw myself fully rewarded in the way The Masters of The Universe are rewarded."

"Breathtaking!" exclaimed Radical Honesty. "So we have both had the courage to see our projects through to their outermost logical conclusion, not fearing or recoiling, but proceeding on with absolute firmness until we saw the full implications of our chosen paths!"

"Right you are," agreed Master of White Lies. "So, as you saw, as indicated by the entourage and the accouterments that surround me, there is no worldly pleasure and no worldly status that is ever denied me. All I must do is keep on lying the entire time and suppressing almost every ordinary feeling at every turn. Obviously the results have been spectacular. And thus it appears we have, as fate would have it, reached our goals in the very same lifetime."

"For sure," said Radical Honestly. "And I suppose I must have a similar question for you as you had for me. What do your friends, family and lovers think of what you have attained, and what is your internal experience of this major accomplishment?"

"Well, as you might guess," continued Master of White Lies. "it was all very exhilarating for the first five decades of this existence. But alas, I find, now that the thrill of material, sexual and social boons has worn thin, that I am utterly alone. True, I'm surrounded by all the people anyone could wish for, but they have only loved me because my true self has been buried in hundreds of lifetimes of deception. I have no regrets, since this project had to been seen clear through to its culmination. But, as you might imagine, the emptiness and pain of it is unbearable."

"All quests, it seems," noted Radical Honesty, "seem to have similar outcomes, don't they?"

Brahmá, in his heaven, began to get annoyed at all of this off-script dialogue and entered the body of a waitress at The Russian Tea Room and walked by the table.

"Hey guys," the waitress said without herself knowing she was saying it. "Get back into character before I evaporate you both."

At this Radical Honesty stood up suddenly and said to Master of White Lies, "I've got to get out this place before people think I'm as pretentious and shallow as everyone else here."

Master of White Lies laughed aloud and said, "Excellent! Then I'll be happy to pay the bill and let you excuse yourself."

Radical Honesty pretended to storm off in a huff and Master of White Lies pretended not to be hurt. Brahmá, as always, was pleased, as long as every player kept to his or her role.

Krishna, who happened to be stopping by to visit Brahmá's Heaven at the time, saw what had gone on and said to Brahmá, "Very good. I'm glad you got those fellows back on track, so that they finish their lives out well. I never tire of saying that there is nothing more dangerous than trying to live another person's life and nothing more indecorous than an actor forgetting his lines."

Uptight Zen Guy And Pure Land Preacher

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Pure Land Preacher received an urgent call from Uptight Zen Guy:

"Although I'm calling for Pastoral care, I want you to know, right off, that I don't believe in any of the mythology you propagate."

"No problem," replied Pure Land Preacher, "I think I might be able to help you, since I also don't believe in any of the mythology I propagate. That's the fun thing about myths, believing in them is optional."

"Your cavalier attitude toward the Holy Dharma sickens me. I should have never called," snarled Uptight Zen Guy.

"On the contrary," retorted Pure Land Preacher, "you should always call and confess all of your problems to me every day of your life. The fact that I have no credibility with you in no way undermines the sacredness of the process of elucidating each and every one of our sins, shortcomings and shirkings of duty."

"Okay, here's what's going on with me. I've called every Buddhist priest in town and no one is of any use, and so, as a last resort, I've now turned to you, the most irresponsible person I can think of who dares label himself a Buddhist."

"Excellent! Then there is yet hope for you. Please tell me of this insoluble complex of worries and I shall listen as carefully as though I were waiting to hear my name read aloud on a last will and testament."

"I need to know whether I should go to the emergency room, or somehow change my ways."

"An emergency room! What sort of symptoms are you having?"

"I feel sick all over, as though I were on the verge of entering into some stage of terminal illness, and it's made me reevaluate my life."

"Are you experiencing extreme hatred for others?" Inquired Pure Land Preacher.

"How did you guess?" replied Uptight Zen Guy. "Not only have I experienced undiluted hatred for half of the people I meet, but no spiritual practice I try can make it go away completely. Furthermore, I'm filled with a kind of nausea, as if I were about to have a stroke or a heart attack."

"Ah, it occurs to me, upon hearing of this, that you may have fallen in love and are ensnarled in a seemingly inescapable web of lust."

"Yes! So you see, in addition to all of this hatred I have, then there's this strange extreme of loving another person to the point of madness. My head is spinning. I think it could be vertigo, or perhaps some oncoming seizure, or maybe some immanent organ failure."

"May I ask," added Pure Land Preacher, "did you respond to all of this by attempting to transcend all worldly desires and to attain to The Clear Light of The Void where The Perfected Buddhas dwell?"

"Of course!" countered Uptight Zen Guy, "that's what any real Buddhist is supposed to do. But in attempting this, I have to confess, I became short of breath, as though perhaps I was about to have full respiratory collapse. I came this close to calling the medical rescue workers to my home. Even as we speak, my chest is palpitating, and I'm afraid I could do something drastic."

"Congratulations!" declared Pure Land Preacher. "You've entered into the second most elevated state in the universe, other than that of the most flawless and selfless Arhats of Old."

"How could that be?" protested Uptight Zen Guy, "I'm fairly much resigned, at this point, to existing as a hopeless basket case?"

"Previously," noted Pure Land Preacher, "you believed you could be delivered from all human suffering through sheer willpower and the fruits of your own steadfast labor. This frame of mind made you so arrogant that the compassion of the Boddhisattvas could never reach you. Now that you have entered fully into humanity, everything in the universe is available to you."

"But what about all these horrific symptoms I'm having?" asked Uptight Zen Guy.

"Oh those," replied Pure Land Preacher, "that particular combination of symptoms that seem so alien to you — that's actually what we here at this temple call The Fundamental Human Condition. Without experiencing it, you could never reach The Pure Land."

Salvation

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"Sensei, how may I earn my salvation?"

"You? There's no way you could earn it. It would take an infinite number of lifetimes, and that would only be possible if your mastery of body and mind were almost perfect. As it stands, you're actually gathering more karmic debt as you go along, making an increasingly complex mess of every situation you confront."

"Then what savior might I turn to in order to receive the grace necessary to be forgiven for the huge assortment of sins and mistakes that now weigh me down like a mountain on my back?"

"There are no saviors as such, and no way to earn salvation though anything that would be akin to rigorous discipline or sincere repentance. However, you will be aware of your salvation when you realize that Salvation itself is the operating principle of the very ground you walk on and the very air you breathe. Salvation surges through all of nature, through all bodies and minds, and all phenomena, whether physical, mental, real, or fictional. You couldn't even escape salvation if you tried to run away from it. The very cells of your body are bathing in it."

"How then, am I to contribute to this process?"

"To attempt to contribute to such a thing would be like trying to aid a flash flood along its way, or trying to push a hurricane along in order to help it on its course. This vast waterfall is self-sustaining, ever self-renewing and flows with unimaginable power. If you are an expert rafter, you might like to enjoy riding the rapids to wherever they might be heading. Beyond that, there was never a single thing required of you. If anyone says there was, they're only lying to you in order to see if there's some way you could be shamed into serving them."

Trying To Send Lao Tsu To Hell

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The White Judgment God thought He had sent Lao Tsu to Hell, so when Lao Tsu passed though Heaven as he headed for the dimensions of Timelessness and Spacelessness, The White Judgement God became furious.

"I thought I sent your body to Hell!"

"Sir, no living being has any permanent body which may be burnt in Hell for anything more than a temporary amount of time."

"Then I shall send your mind to Hell!"

"Sir, no living being has ever had a mind that was proven to be his own, but rather, such things as were called minds were really aggregates of thought gathered from other minds who gathered all their thoughts from other minds before them."

"Then I shall send your soul to Hell!"

"Sir, there is no living being such that its constituent parts contain anything which maintains any unchanging element or any parts which had not been collected from other previously-existing parts, as all entities are interconnected with all other entities since beginningless time and therefore have no permanent selves or souls."

"Then I shall send all of the universe to Hell!"

"Sir, there is no such universe which has any kind of constancy in any manner that can be grasped, held on to, controlled, prevailed over, or managed, in any way that could be conceived of; and given that there is no such universe that can be contained, as it were, then there is no place which it could be sent to or imprisoned in."

"How then," inquired The White Judgement God, "shall I punish living beings?"

"That's easy," replied Lao Tsu, "create a world in which living beings are convinced that bodies, minds, souls and universes are permanent and can be grasped, maintained and controlled. Once you've got them believing that, you won't even need to bother creating or sustaining a separate place called Hell."

10. 108 Dusts

108 Dusts And Perpetually Dissatisfied Lover

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108 Dusts was seated in meditation in his bamboo hut when he heard a knock on the door. He answered the door and found Perpetually Dissatisfied Lover there. He welcomed him in and they sat on cushions placed on a circular rug.

After sharing some tea and tobacco with his guest, and after staring into space absorbing the full effect of these stimulants, 108 Dusts said, "Well now, since all formalities have been seen to, it's time for you to get right to the heart of the matter and tell me why you've wandered through this damp, cloudy village to speak to me."

"The matter is simple enough," replied the guest. "I have been in search of a partner for quite a long time, but am becoming more and more alarmed at my prospects. It looks as though I shall pass from this world and not attain my goal."

108 Dusts took another long hit from his pipe and then greedily gulped down another cup of dark green tea, then he laid back against his cushion and mused, "As for your central anxiety, I can say that it seems highly unlikely that another woman, of the type I find attractive, will ever make her way to my door again. And thus I do not fear spending bitter decades in romantic desperation, since I am already living in bitter decades of romantic desperation. Such a situation as would horrify the common man or woman is currently upon me, and, as you see, it is not always fatal. So, having fallen prey to a most stark loneliness, I am here to assure you that this state is not only not wrong, but may, in fact, be equal to any other state, including such states as are reported to be 'very lucky' among the mundane populace."

Perpetually Dissatisfied Lover commented: "I find your response, while philosophically interesting, to be deeply unsatisfying."

108 Dusts rose up slightly upon his cushion and seemed more alert as he noted, "I was not aware that emotional satisfaction was in any way a necessary condition in this contingent universe. However, I cannot purport to know everything; so if you yourself have encountered a person who you saw daily, and whom you observed year after year, living in a nearly unbroken string of bliss, do let me know of this individual so I can go and examine them myself."

"Of course there is no such person like that in my life," responded the guest in a rather annoyed way. "Obviously the typical life is mostly ups and downs; but what is the point of spiritual, philosophical or psychological quests if, in the end, we are each just to settle for some commoner's fate with our happiness and unhappiness just kind of twisting in the wind, tossed to-and-fro with every storm?"

"Interesting," replied 108 Dusts, "it seems we have a different view of The Path, as I find that the deeper I go into the very center of reality, the more I find the thing to be like a kind of hurricane of assorted horrors and last-minute rescues and tense wire-walking over pools full of hungry sharks."

The guest became impatient and said, "Your whole approach seems rather smug to me, and not at all in earnest. I myself am looking for both Nirvana and true love, and I don't plan to sell out for anything less. You might settle for some unresolved life of unfulfilling mediocrity, but that's a road for quitters and misfits, and I won't take to the idea of such a fate with glib resignation, as you seem to have."

Just as the last of those words were leaving his lips, he found himself in a pleasant country cottage, fairly-well appointed, but not ostentatious. Before him sat a woman beaming with radiant love and warmth, whose very bearing suggested nothing but pure wholesomeness and harmoniousness.

"Who are you?" asked Perpetually Dissatisfied Lover?

"I am The Humble Queen of The Universe of Unconditional Love; and I am given to understand that you are seeking total and unconditional love without reservation or stint, that you seek a pure soul bonding with a holy soul-mate who will complete you sexually, as well as spiritually, for the remainder of the worldly life you are living."

"Yes," replied the guest, "that is so. Are you able to arrange such a thing?"

"Absolutely," replied The Humble Queen of The Universe of Unconditional Love. "When shall I send down your mate so that she may begin to tend to your needs?"

"Any time, I suppose," agreed the guest. "But may I first see my future bride?"

"There will be no need to see her," the host responded, "as all of the women of this universe look exactly as I do. We are each approximately 330 pounds and about sixty-four inches tall, with brown hair and brown eyes."

"But wait!" objected the guest. "There is no way I can be sexually attracted to a woman of 330 pounds! If I could be, I'd be married already."

"So your love is not unconditional, but based on superficial beauty?" inquired the The Humble Queen of The Universe of Unconditional Love.

The Perpetually Dissatisfied lover mulled this over and realized he had fooled himself into believing he could deliver unconditional love, whereas now, having had his bluff called, he realized that indeed his love was surely tainted with the ordinary worldly addiction to superficial beauty. Upon realizing this, he turned red with shame and began to confess the truth to The Humble Queen of The Universe of Unconditional Love.

But before he could finish his confession, he found himself at another desk in a posh mansion filled with status symbols indicating extraordinary wealth. He was seated across a marble table from a ravishing beauty in a bikini. She had a notebook with her and was studying a very long list. Upon seeing someone had arrived and was seated across from her, she looked up. Her hair was a brilliant red and her eyes were a bright green. Her neck was graced with pearls, her wrist was adorned with a precious gold bracelet and on her fingers were diamond rings. Her body was toned, slender and free of flaws.

"What are you doing in my house?" snapped The Queen of The Universe of Sexual Fantasy. "Who invited you? Who do you think you are, anyway?"

Taken aback, the guest replied, awkwardly, "I don't know how I got here."

"Right!" snapped the host. "That's what they all say. But I know what you're doing here. You're here just because you want at my body. Well, let me tell you something, mister: Before you lay a hand on me or my ladies, we have to have a little talk. Firstly, I've been making a list of non-negotiable requirements that I've decided to impose for any women I send down to the mundane world of slaving workers; and I'm warning you now, the list is long, and the list is strict. There will be no exceptions. I'm tired of sending gorgeous women down to your planet only to find that they're paired with second-rate men who, if I may be blunt, have less-than-impressive erections, pathetic financial portfolios, and the manners of unlettered country bumpkins with zero class. If you're claiming to be ready to date one of my women, you'd better get this straight: You're very replaceable. There are men lined up throughout the ten dimensions who are pining for the women of this universe. So, buster, you better have your act together, and you better have it together now, because we don't have time to waste with men who don't know their ass from a hole in the ground. And, another thing, if your ambition starts to slack off and you end up some minimum-wage flunky, or if you start to get flabby or lose your sex drive, my women will drop you like a hot coal. So now that we've got that straight, I shall assign a woman to appear at your address tomorrow. Here is the list of additional requirements, qualities, traits, mannerisms, social connections, travel arrangements and economic standards you shall begin to arrange, conform to and abide by, if you're serious about keeping one of my women around."

Upon skimming the many-paged list, the guest stammered and stuttered before finally saying, "No Better not! Please forgive me for the intrusion. I don't know how I got here, but I shall excuse myself right away. I've no intention of offending you or your women. No need to see me to the door. I shall find my own way back home."

The guest bowed obsequiously a few times then rushed to the door, but before he could open the door he found himself at the kitchen table of The Queen of The Universe of Crazy Codependent Substance Abusers. The house was all chaos, with correspondence spread everywhere. Stacks of toppled-over books were scattered around, and all of the furniture was torn, broken or smelled of mold. The room was filled with smoke, and the stench of liquor and drugs was pervasive.

"Oh my God," said the guest, "not another one."

"Another what?" said the host. "I'm beautiful, aren't I? Don't you love me? I'll be faithful to you. I'll never leave. I don't care if you get ugly or fat or go broke. I'll be here for you, even if you lose everything. I promise to keep myself looking good. I'll take a second job if you don't want to work. I'm lonely. Please give me a chance. I know what you're thinking, that I'm a crazy addict, but I promise to quit all my addictions just for you."

The guest did not even bother to respond but bolted from the room and again rushed to the door. But when he got outside, the neighborhood appeared to be a familiar one to him. He was already returned to his own universe. His heart was beating in panic and he had broken into a sweat all over. But as he walked along, finding his way slowly back to the home he had first come to visit, his nerves began to settle. He had fully regained his composure by the time he found himself knocking on the door of the bamboo hut.

108 Dusts smiled effusively and again invited Perpetually Dissatisfied Lover into his home, again setting him up with a smoke and a tea cup, imploring the guest to resume sitting on the cushion initially offered him.

108 Dusts tilted his head a bit, scrutinizing the guest carefully, then venturing, "You've been to a few other universes today, have you?"

"You would know, wouldn't you?" the guest sharply replied. "You sent me to those places to teach me some kind of lesson, I suppose."

108 Dusts smirked in such a way as to admit to the truth of his guest's accusation, and asked, "So, my friend, has anyone ever told you why my name is 108 Dusts?"

"No," admitted the guest. "It's kind of funny, but there was some kind of implication that you were a wise man, or some enlightened being. But, now that I look back on it, no one ever said exactly that. They all just hinted at it without coming out and saying what exactly you were or what it was that you supposedly knew."

108 Dusts took another long drag from his pipe and again greedily washed down another cup of dark green tea and, after setting the pipe and cup down, looked at his guest forthrightly and said, "You saw only three of The 108 Universes of Women I visited. And, just so you'll see I am a fair person, I prayed to Kannon Bodhisattva to be born a woman in a parallel life. In that life I went to The 108 Universes of Men. And so you see, my friend, I have been to The 108 Universes of Men and Women and have seen every romantic combination that a human lover could enter into."

"Then," inquired the guest, "am I to conclude from all of this that you have become disillusioned with romance altogether and have shut out any possibility of finding a lover?"

"Oh no, not in the slightest," assured 108 Dusts. "In fact, I have posted a bulletin in the very center of the town square, and I have obtained permission from the local prefect to rent that spot on the bulletin board in perpetuity. The advertisement states plainly that I too, like you, am seeking a lover."

"But you seem like a fine man to me, a little eccentric, to be sure, but not by any means awful or unsightly, and your bearing, while a bit rustic, seems not so far from the norm. I would have assumed a fair number of ladies might have at least come calling out of rudimentary curiosity," ventured the guest.

"Don't worry much about me," concluded 108 Dusts. "I think I've accepted my fate. It's well enough to live in desperate loneliness, because that loneliness comes with something that neither love nor money could ever bring me."

But before the guest could ask what that something was, a knock came on the door and the host invited in a woman of a certain tame beauty and a kind of quizzical expression.

108 Dusts proclaimed to his guest: "My friend, this will be your date for the night. I insist you take her out and treat her as well as you know how. She is someone sent here, as a favor to me, by The Queen of The Universe of Uncertain Outcomes. That was the only universe I visited which had any charm."

Stunned, the guest tried to refuse the offer, but complied as the woman took his arm and began to pull him outside. 108 Dusts said no more, but pointed toward the street with a grave expression, signaling that the interview was over and that he was serious about his order. He closed the door forcefully behind them as they crossed the threshold.

A moment later, he peeked outside. He could see the pair were already walking and chatting briskly, smiling at one another. Seeing all was well, 108 Dusts retreated to his bed. He fell asleep and went to another universe. There he secretly loved many women, but he always abandoned his heavenly lovers in time to awaken in his own bed. He was always home before daylight came again to the mundane world of slaving workers.

All Living Beings

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Worn-Out-Sandals had been wandering from continent to continent, visiting town after town, in an effort to understand the minds of all entities, whether sentient or seemingly-unconscious. His goal was to carry through with his promise of attaining omniscience, so that, knowing the faculties of every life form, and the structures of all material things, he might be best suited to carry out the Bodhisattva Vow.

As he wandered down a bamboo-lined road deep in the outskirts between villages, he was approached by a personage who did not have a single face, but had the appearance of every kind of god, person, animal, plant or rock, or any other formation conceivable, flashing all over his body. Their faces, forms and appearances, alternated like a series of paintings over the humanoid figure. Some scenarios revealed whole landscapes or mountains, while yet others revealed a single blade of grass, or the smile of a baby, or the screeching of an eagle. Perhaps a whole school of fish would appear to be swimming in formation across his chest while his legs seemed to swarm with images of insects. The combinations of matter and life were as endless and as varied as the human mind could comprehend.

After Worn-Out-Sandals stared at this show for a short while, he recalled his teachers telling him not to be attached to, or bowled over by, any phenomena, whether mundane or seemingly supernatural. And so, true to form, after experiencing a few minutes of involuntary awe, he turned to the infinitely varied creature and inquired as to who he might be and where he might be going.

But before Worn-Out-Sandals could get far with his questioning, a voice came from the composite entity which said, "What do you think you're doing? For what purpose are you traipsing around the world making all of these inquiries and amassing an endless list of duties for yourself and others?"

"I do not know what kind of being you are," replied Worn-Out-Sandals, "and I don't know why you are using your powers to display yourself in this way; but I feel you have clearly made use of some spell in order to put on this manifold appearance. What could you achieve by this, other than simply frightening and disrupting the primitive people of this rural province?"

"You may judge me as you like," replied the ever-changing collection of images and textures, "but ultimately I am beyond human judgment. How you feel about me, and how I feel about myself, are not matters that can make any difference in the way I look, sound or move. Since you yourself, and everything that you've done, are also part of the phenomena that pass over me, it would be impossible for your opinion to interfere with my everlasting functioning. But as for you — you have failed to answer my original question: What do you think your are doing, wearing out your sandals, stumbling into every hamlet on this planet to learn every detail of people's ways of life?"

Worn-Out-Sandals rose up a bit on his heals and puffed out his chest a little, and, pursing his lips with a dignified air, replied, "I am merely doing what all of the Great Patriarchs did, fulfilling the Great Bodhisattva Vows to save All Living Beings."

"Well," commanded the odd creature, "you are to stop this business right here and now and return to your home city where your are needed by your friends and fellow citizens who miss seeing you in their daily rounds. It is not right of you to deprive them of your company."

"Be that as it may, (and certainly I regret any small pains my absence may have caused the people of my community), I have a greater calling," declared Worn-Out-Sandals. "I have taken a vow to save All Living Beings, and that supersedes the needs of a few lonely people from my home town."

"But I am All Living Beings," said the multitudinous creature, as it continued to flash the face of every person who ever lived over the surface of its skin, "and I don't need anyone to save me. There is nothing to save me from, and no one with any power to judge me. I am, from all eternity, the uncreated potential, and the actualization of it, in all possible futures, in every imaginable permutation."

"Aren't you tired of endlessly going around in trillion-year cycles of birth and death and rebirth?" inquired Worn-Out-Sandals? "Don't you want to be delivered from the pains of death, aging, sickness, and the ravages of time and chance? Why don't you want to end this karmic circus and exist as Pure Thusness?"

"I already exist as Pure Thusness, and thus I don't need to attain anything, or be delivered from anything. All of the states I enter are coequal states. Whether I appear as a fog-bank, a pile of sand in the desert, or as a sea turtle swimming in the ocean — it makes no difference. Pure Thusness is my nature, and always was my nature, from before time began. Forever abiding in wholeness, all that I experience is complete. You are to stop tromping about the world implying there is anything missing from me. I am All Living Beings, and you could not improve me, even if you labored millions of years to do so."

"Listen to me," said All Living Beings. "I happen to know that the florist in the district you live has been in love with you for a long time. Her daughter has gone away to study at the Imperial Academy, and her first husband died serving in the army. She might flit around the main street claiming to be self-sufficient. But of course it's not true. You might try asking her to dinner. It would mean a lot to her. You know, her own parents are still alive and sit up at nights worrying that their daughter shall become a lonely, old woman."

"And word has it that you're good with numbers." added All Living Beings. "Isn't it true that the owner of the local woodcutting factory is never able to keep his accounts in order? He"d have asked you to work for him by now, but he considered that you would view the job as beneath your dignity. Go to him and seek employment. He"ll be happy you did."

"Go back and help your people with ordinary things," commanded All Living Beings. "No one needs you to be all that special. They would like you even if you were just an impractical bigmouth. Forget trying to fix all your flaws and everyone else's. You're already fine enough the way you are. Turn around! Head back to where you came from, or I'll send some bandit to cut your throat and toss your body along the side of the road. You're lucky I haven't done it already."

Worn-Out-Sandals just looked down at his feet and added, "Plus no one makes shoes like our local shoemaker. It's time I tossed out these worn-out-sandals."

All Living Beings watched as Worn-Out-Sandals plodded off toward the rising sun, beginning the long journey back to his home city. At one point Worn-Out-Sandals looked back, thinking to give a word of gratitude to All Living Beings, but all he could see was just an endless parade of bear faces, tree leaves, wagon wheels and dust storms blowing across the body of All Living Beings.

Worn-Out-Sandals just turned away instead and said to himself, "It's no use even thanking him. The poor fellow can't even make up his mind who he is."

All Living Beings also turned away and headed in the opposite direction. A few villagers passed him, but they had seen him before and figured it was wise to keep their distance. They believed he was a magical entity; but they were a conservative people and figured no good could come from socializing with a guy with millions of faces a day appearing all over him.

For his part, All Living Beings was never hurt by people refusing to speak to him, since he was never really lonely, since he was, after all, everyone.

Trying Again To Save All Living Beings

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"Sensei, I have some good news."

"What's good news to you is usually bad news for me."

"Sensei, would you stop being so negative for a moment. I have a big announcement."

"I hate big announcements, because it usually means someone will embark upon a fully-artificial and labored, self-consciously awkward decision of some sort."

"As our teacher, it would help if you would sometimes try to be a little more supportive."

"Supportive? Are you out of your mind? You're lucky I don't chase you out of here with a cudgel."

"Just listen for a moment: I am a thousand pages into the Avatamsaka Sutra."

"Wow! Really? What a shame. That has to be the most tedious book ever written."

"Would you please not mock me when I'm trying to share something very meaningful to me?"

"Well then, exactly what has the book moved you to do?"

"I have decided to truly embark upon the enlightening beings' path of saving all living entities."

"I really wish you wouldn't."

"Why is that, Sensei?"

"Because every time you try to do something saintly, you turn it into a passive-aggressive, egotistical mess that just multiplies the misery of everyone around you."

"That's a very hurtful thing to say. But I'll overlook that for the moment. Let me ask you this: If I am not the student to take up the enlightening beings' path to save all living beings, which student would you recommend for the job?"

"Are you specifically speaking of my students?"

"Yes, who among us would be best for the job if not me?"

"Frankly, I can't think of a one of my students that I would trust with any such vow. They'd each become so arrogant a few months into the thing that they'd begin to drive each of their friends and coworkers insane with pompous pronouncements that would ultimately leave everyone feeling unfulfilled and less loved than they already are."

"Well then, if the students aren't ready, can you think of a teacher you know who could successfully embark on the great path of enlightening beings' salvation of all creatures?"

"My friend, the teachers I know are all alcoholics, control freaks, floundering money-grubbers or sex addicts busy seducing their students, so it would be odd of them, in such conditions, to seek to save even a single other person, let alone all beings in the universe."

"If such a quest is not possible for human beings at this time, why then does the sutra command, thousands of times, that we vow to save all living beings?"

"Well, I have no evidence to support my conclusions regarding this, but if you're asking me to guess, I would guess this: In all likelihood the writers of the sutras were all on the verge of having nervous breakdowns and were probably already sinking into a sea of grasping delusion and wishful thinking. They would have been better suited to be military generals where they could better work through their suppressed anger by engaging in continual hostilities against one another."

"If you feel that my spiritual goals are too grandiose, then what would be suitable goal for a practitioner at my level?"

"Frankly, (and this is just a personal preference, and in no way a command), I'd be thrilled if you could somehow find a way to go from being a completely craven codependent to someone who could perhaps, at least for an hour a day, go have a quiet cup of tea with a friend and not make a complete ass of yourself."

"Sensei, I'm a bit disappointed in you. I rather hoped you'd have more lofty expectations for your students?"

"Lofty?"

"Yes, lofty."

"Have you heard of the temple four blocks over? They have very lofty ideals and set astounding goals for their practice."

"Really, and what is the result of this method of practice?"

"Sadly, most of those students end up in the mental ward, or they end up creepy old men who no one wants to have sex with. It's kind of scary, really. And if you should happen to run into one of the women students from there, (and this is just my personal advice), I'd run."

"But the sutra specifically says that we should make it our business to fully enter the Realm of Reality and abide there forever."

"I have great news for you then. You can call off your quest completely, since, (and you really must believe me when I say this), you have very much entered the realm of reality, and I promise, as long as you live, you'll be abiding in it. That's for sure."

A Literary Critic

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The dictator's cabinet meeting was interrupted by an aide who burst in the room and said, "Sir, I need just a second of your time."

"Surely," said the tyrant. "What may I do for you?"

"Sir," the aide answered, "do you remember how you ordered us to torture all the prisoners to death?"

"Oh yes," answered the dictator calmly. "Is there any problem carrying out that directive?"

"Perhaps, your excellency," the aide explained. "You see, among the murderers and thieves and dissidents we rounded up, we found one prisoner who is a literary critic. It seemed somehow wrong to treat him like the others who incited insurrection."

"Ah, so I see," agreed the dictator. "Yes, a literary critic. No need to prolong the torture with him. There's only so much damage a person like that could have done. A proper hanging will do."

Entering The Gateless Gate

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Fujikami said:

When all men and beasts flee at the very sight of your straightforward face; when all the lies they are living are revealed to them before you even speak a word; when your simple greeting causes women to wince with discomfort and recoil with suspicion; if, when you enter a room silently, it is already understood by everyone present that merely engaging you in the most mundane ways will destroy every belief they hold dear; when upon your leaving the room, no one can even pretend to themselves that all of their quests are anything other than the most desperate clinging to the most untenably-thin threads of collapsing spider-web fiber; when your employer has given up even trying to reprimand you because he knows no intimidation technique short of threatening to kill you on the spot will have any effect whatsoever on your lion-like sereneness; when the welfare officer approves your benefits without quibbling for fear of engaging in a debate with you; when people you've wronged never protest because even your sincere apology would undermine every pattern of deception they rely on to maintain their position in the world; when clerics and government officials don't bother you with assassination threats because they know you'd be far too happy to fight them to the death if they asked for such a battle; when Buddhists squirm with discomfort when you salute them cheerfully and seek to excuse themselves at the earliest possible moment — only then will you be on the verge of true seeing. If you see all the way through to the center of the world system, then even your own mother will be forced to abandon you. And even though you'll have no official position, people will regard even a quietly-whispered request by you as a dangerous thing to disregard. This is the mystic meaning of the passage, "I came not to bring peace, but a sword." To live as true freedom itself, is to have already declared war on almost all of humanity. Without opening your mouth or raising your fist, your freedom alone, the very knowledge of it, will drive them to seek refuge in the most flimsy pretenses possible. Any path that falls short of this is like someone calling themselves a snake charmer and then refusing to work with cobras. How could any such character be taken seriously?

The Great Patriarchs

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He confessed to the itinerant monk, "Sir, when I meditate or pray, I don't feel anything out of the ordinary. When the beautiful women walk by in their fabulous clothes, I'm not moved to chase after them. I don't even mind that my job is boring. During concerts and readings I just fall asleep there in my seat. I'm afraid I've failed to amount to much of anything."

The monk stopped, stared into the sky and appeared lost in reverie for a moment; then he looked back down at the man and said, "I want you to know that the kind of life you described is in no way less than those lived by the great patriarchs."

11. The Slot Machine Bodhisattva

The Pure Light of No Teaching

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At great expense to himself, his family and his patrons, and at great risk of coming to harm due to the ubiquitous presence of armed bandits and warring factions along the road, the English traveler soldiered on to his goal, The Hillside Palace of the Taoist Sage known as The Pure Light of No-Teaching.

When he finally arrived, he found he was a bit disgusted by the fact that, while allegedly under vows of poverty, and while allegedly beyond needing worldly comfort, the sage maintained a hillside palace and complex of landscaped gardens that was outlandishly large and lavish. The current state of famine, warfare, and pandemic crime in the area, made this level of materialism appear excessive and unseemly in its conspicuousness. The whole scene looked bizarre in contrast to the soul-crushing poverty that surrounded the compound's gates. Not even the local warlord's quarters were so extensive.

Setting his personal revulsion aside, and attempting to keep a scholar's open mind about the whole affair, he pulled on a thick rope, which was tied to a mallet that rang an absurdly-large copper bell which thundered out a report. Feeling impatient to get this matter over with, seeing as he had probably wasted his time coming to this place, he was further annoyed to find no one responding to his call. However, after ringing the bell a few more times, a slow, pompous, overdressed servant lumbered out awkwardly to unlock the gate.

The servant opened the gate and said, "You are Major Arlen Newcastle?"

The traveler stood stunned for a moment, perplexed, and then said haltingly, "Why, yes, yes, of course; but how would you have known my name? I always come to visit sages unannounced, both for security reasons, when I am in foreign lands, and to add the element of surprise to my visit, so I might catch supposed-sages off guard and in their true daily condition. I'll not have them preparing a lavish act on my account when no holiness resides in them."

The servant's eyes opened wide, in a kind of mock surprise and feigned deference, as he replied, "Oh, well then, why certainly, then you must come in. We would hate to present any false front to a man of your stature and spiritual forthrightness."

As the servant opened the gate wider and let the Major pass, the traveler then added, "But you still didn't tell me how it would be that you knew my name before I got here, since I told no one on this island my name, or who I was to visit, or why."

The servant smiled in pretend reproachfulness and said, "Good sir. Anyone of any merit in Japan surely has eyes and ears in England. All doctors of cosmology know that the myriad universes all rotate around London. Why, it has always been our presumption that all the gods have their second homes there."

Frustrated with this insubordination from a low-level servant, the traveler waved him off and declared, "I'll take no more of this attitude from a second-rate Oriental butler! Now go find me your master so I can conclude this foolish journey and break the bad news to my backers that there is no wisdom to be found here."

At this the servant hustled off in a state of over-acted urgency and alerted the Taoist Sage, one of the few who lived in Japan instead of China. After what seemed to be a very long time, the The Pure Light of No-Teaching at last appeared. He strode into the room briskly and evinced a charmed and light air of friendliness and hospitality, as though he were eager to accommodate.

"What is this?" said the traveler in a testy tone. "So I am greeted by a man of the spirit who is somehow dressed like royalty and flits into the room with the simpering face of a Westminster social butterfly? What on earth could be the meaning of all this? And why do you live in self-indulgent luxury while your countrymen live in utter squalor?"

"Oh," replied the Taoist Sage as he stopped short of shaking the traveler's hand and said, "I'm quite sorry if the current situation is not to your liking. The answers to your questions are probably a bit complex; and as you are one who appears not to be given to long-winded explanations, I will simply accept your criticisms for now so that we may get to the heart of the matter. My servant tells me that you are already displeased and wish to resume your return journey as soon as possible. So then let us get straightaway to your main question."

"First of all, how is it that you speak perfect English when I would have been one of the only English visitors to venture into this snake pit?" inquired the traveler.

"Again," said the Taoist Sage wincingly, "I'm afraid that story would be too long and convoluted for your taste. Was there a spiritual question you had? That is the reason you risked your life and your fortune to come here, isn't it?"

"Okay," said the traveler, "under these circumstances, this seems very stupid, but I'm obliged to report your answers back to my patrons. So, Good Sage, where may one find The Passage to The Clear Light of The Void?"

"Ah," replied the sage happily. "Was that it then? Was that your only question?"

"What other question would matter?" the traveler impatiently snapped.

"Yes," continued the sage, "astutely said on your part. Well then, please follow me this way."

For what seemed to be about ten minutes, they walked down corridor after corridor, every few moments passing some other servants and workers. And with each turn they took, the traveler's conviction that this Taoist Sage was really a money-grubbing charlatan grew and grew.

After what seemed like an eternity, they stopped in front of a plain-looking doorway in a rather undistinguished dead-end hallway. The Taoist Sage paused and looked silently at the traveler.

The traveler barked out, "Well! Don't just stand there. If you are to give me some meditation instruction that will allegedly open my mind up to some vast expanses, then let's get that door open and go on in and sit down."

The Pure Light of No-Teaching held up one finger in mild protest, saying, "Excuse me, honored guest, but you mentioned nothing of meditation instruction. You said, I believe, you wanted to see The Passageway."

"Yes! Yes, for God's sake, The Passageway to The Clear Light of The Void!"

With his index finger still in the air, the Taoist sage said, "Precisely, my honored guest; and so I have brought you to The Passage, as you requested. We are standing in it now. The door we are standing in front of is The Doorway In."

The Major, with hands on his hips skeptically chimed, "The door to what? What sort of hucksterism is this?"

Still staring intently at the traveler's face, The Pure Light of No-Teaching said, "Now I am going to open this door. You don't have to go in if you don't want to. I shall not be offended if you choose not to go in. In fact, before going in, you might like to stand at the threshold and look off into the distance, and perhaps glance about to your right and left."

As the traveler stepped forward and the door opened, he stood at its threshold. And before him stood something human words could not describe. It was indeed clear, but far more than the clearness of simple water or air. It was also indeed void, but not merely the absence of characteristics, but more like the possibility of everything existing before it had actually existed. He appeared to be looking at what some Gurus who had made their way to London were calling "The Nameless Source of Creation."

The Major stared on in awe, but did not cross the threshold. He had attained many altered states in his worldwide travels, and had mastered many stages of meditative heights. But this was so intimate, so near to the very center of his own self, so revealing and open that it made him feel almost naked, almost ashamed of all of the pretenses he now realized he must have been putting on in front of everyone for his entire life.

Still standing at the threshold, looking all around inside, the major, now speaking with humility said, "What is it? I mean, what is it really? Exactly what are we looking at here?"

The Taoist Sage then leaned toward the traveler and said, "It is really that which I am merely named after. It is The Pure Light of No-Teaching. If you go in there, what will greet you is the absolute obliteration of all doctrines, dogmas, constructs, systems, pathways, and spiritual notions you hold dear. It is a place where not even one tiny speck of any tale told by any human mind can be believed in. Within that room, which is beyond all rooms, is the very end of who you think you are, who you believed I might be, and who everyone you thought you knew could be. Inside there, not one accumulated thing in this lifetime, not one accomplishment, not one credential, not one status symbol, of any kind whatsoever, is permitted, or could possibly stand, for even one fraction of a second. If you go in there, you may indeed come out, but when you return to your patrons, you will be a changed man. Your very gaze, the very certainty and wholeness of it — this may actually frighten and bewilder anyone who has ever known you. It could be a very lonely life. You do know, don't you? Your other gurus — they have told you, haven't they, how lonely The Final Reality is?"

The traveler took one rather shaky step back, took in a few deep breaths, then regained his dignified bearing, and, turning to the Taoist Sage uttered, "Great Sage, if it's all the same to you, if you would not take it as a refusal of hospitality, then I might like to pass up the offer at this time."

The Pure Light of No-Teaching shut the door gently and turned to his guest, resuming his aristocratic air of superfluous gaiety and replied, "Certainly there is no offense taken here. We aim only to oblige our guests. Now, if you wouldn't be too put off by the opulence of it, we do have a rather large room modeled after the tea room of your current queen. And, it so happens, you are in luck, as the pantry man returned today and brought back some English Breakfast tea, just in the nick of time it seems."

The Major smiled, quite relieved, and said, "Oh no, I should not mind, in the least, a nice, warm, spacious, English tea room. Yes, with some shortbread cookies in it?"

"Major," replied the Taoist Sage, "you might not believe it, but those are especially a weakness of mine. Although the whole thing may seem like lunacy, I have importers risking life and limb to get these out to us."

"Ah, well, no, not crazy at all," replied the traveler as the Taoist Sage patted him affectionately on the back and ushered him into the tea room.

Toward the end of their conversation, as the Major was rising to leave, and as they were headed toward the front door, the Taoist sage inquired, "So, your type — they seem to all have been to India, many of them going almost every year if they can. Is that where you'll be off to next?"

"Great Sage," the traveler admitted, "that had been my plan. But, after I explain this part of my journey, I think my patrons will understand why I'm cutting my travels short this year."

"Why, of course," agreed The Pure Light of No-Teaching. "It all makes perfect sense to me."

As the Major strode away from The Hillside Palace, the Taoist Sage waited till his guest was about a half block away, then added, "Honored Guest."

The traveler turned around and said, almost alarmed, "Yes?"

"The Door," intoned the Taoist sage.

"The Door?" inquired the traveler.

"Just remember," The Pure Light of No-Teaching concluded, "you can open The Door from anywhere, if you ever want to."

"I know. I know," assured the Major. "I am quite confident I could, were such a thing to my liking, but I don't think it will be any time again soon."

"Surely," agreed the Taoist Sage. "As you saw, at least for a brief moment, in this Universe, there's no rush for anything, in any way. But know this, when I'm drinking my English Breakfast Tea, I'll be remembering you."

The Major could not think of a single word to add to any of this, and so he simply nodded in deep appreciation and maybe a little bit of love. Then he turned toward the road, and was tempted, for perhaps a second, to let a single tear roll down his cheek. But he grimly held that tear in check and carried on.

His breast was warm in spite of the cold. In spite of the road being full of highwaymen, he didn't feel an ounce of fear. The late fall wind picked up, and small flurries of snowflakes brushed past his heavy jacket, and the now-bare Japanese tree limbs trembled in the wind. The sky alternated between a dark white and a light gray.

From time to time a soldier would pass him on the road. The Major, having once been a soldier, knew the other soldiers would recognize a former military man just by his comportment. And thus, from time to time, a soldier coming his way would pause, search over the travelers face, then nod and continue on, as if somehow everyone in the province knew what had transpired.

When the Major finally reached his boat in safety, his crew asked him which port they might sail to next.

"Back to London!" the traveler replied. "There's nothing more to see. Let's try to make the Capital before Winter sets in. If you've anymore questions, I'll be in my quarters going over my papers."

That night, as the dark sea heaved the ship to-and-fro, the Major lay wide awake, his eyes staring at the cabin ceiling. He heard the wind whipping against the decks and strong waves breaking against the side of the sturdy boat.

Outside his portal, he gradually noticed an impossibly-bright light gathering. It began to shine through his portal and fill the room till its intensity was unbearable.

"Oh no you don't!" exclaimed the Major as he slid the wooden slat over the portal to block out the luminosity. "I know exactly what you're up to, and there'll be no more of that for now."

And with that, the traveler, with hands trembling, unscrewed the lid off a bottle of aged scotch, belted back two shot-glasses full, then turned on his side and fell fast asleep.

Those Scriptures

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One trillion Bodhisattvas appeared in an incomprehensibly-large circle in the sky around my home, along with water nymphs, and demigods, and magical animals, and forty-quadrillion fruit bats; and billions of choir singers, backed by hundreds of thousands of musicians, gathered in ever larger concentric circles until every kind of being that ever existed in the history of the universe was whirling around the city.

At the moment, at the very crescendo of it all, while great oceans of bells and strings were ringing out and legions of great dragons were roaring, at last the great Manjushri Buddha appeared with his amazing golden sword of truth.

He stopped, looked down at us, and then the whole universe fell silent. At that instant, he said, in an almost mild voice: "Oh, by the way, I just thought you should all know: All of the scriptures of Buddhism, and all the scriptures of every other religion, and every scripture that quoted me, and every scripture that quoted every other holy man, deity, or angel — those scriptures are all bullshit."

There was another moment of unbearable silence; and then the great Manjushri Buddha withdrew to his abode, which is no abode whatsoever. And then, again, the unspeakably large retinue began its interstellar-sized circling and singing and musical vibrating until at last they all vanished into a huge storm front of clouds that moved in overhead.

Afterwards a gentle rain fell sweetly upon the earth. The residents of our town walked slowly home as the sky began to return to darkness.

The next day there was only this world, only thusness, only suchness, and only existence as it really is. For a while that was a bit sad for people, but some months later, people admitted that it felt holier than the scriptures had ever felt, the most sacred part being that they rarely felt the urge to lie to themselves anymore.

Continual Bowing

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While Mo Mochi was playing with an ill-tempered cat in the town square who hissed at him continually, Worn Out Sandals came and stood at the temple gate.

Mo Mochi ran up to him and said, "Sir, you are dressed too improperly to enter a sacred shrine."

"Good," replied Worn Out Sandals, "I live to make the common people uncomfortable."

Having never been in the shrine himself, Mo Mochi said, "It is also improper to go in with no offering, which is why I myself have never gone in."

"Great," declared Worn Out Sandals, "then we shall go in together and thus not be lonely in our impropriety."

And thus, with no offering, and in disgraceful attire, they entered. They sat for hours shamelessly drinking from the temple's giant tea and sake dispensers and commenting impudently about the priests.

Mo Mochi noted, "The priests seem to be almost continually bowing, and their faces remain fixedly serious. I feel that all of that serious bowing will not benefit them. It's all too much."

"You don't understand," countered Worn Out Sandals. "These men and women are bowing continuously because they are so sorry for the sins that have been committed."

Mo Mochi was a bit confused at this remark and said, "Their sins could not have really been so great as to warrant continual apology."

"No," concluded Worn Out Sandals. "Their continual bowing has nothing to do with their apologizing for their own sins. They bow continually to apologize for all of our sins."

The Slot Machine Bodhisattva

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Desperate men milling around casino doors, and women on the hunt for a husband — they avert their gazes when catching sight of one another. Some types of business are just too serious to casually discuss.

The Slot Machine Bodhisattva strolls through the crowd smiling like a jackass. Most of the locals frown bitterly at him. He only gambles with quarters he finds in the gutter. He only makes love to strippers who give him sympathy sex.

As for real love and real jobs — he never stains his "pristine purity" for either.

The Echo Park Buddha

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So I found the Echo Park Buddha living in a rent-controlled dump off of Sunset. He hadn't showered for a couple of days and didn't smell too good.

I spoke to him about his oneness with all things, and, much to my surprise, he was all like, "Dude! Stop saying that shit! I'm not one with you or any of these people you're talking about. Stop creeping me out."

Finally he said that if I insisted on pestering him with these matters that I would be required to go buy a twelve-pack and split it with him. I admit we got fairly trashed. You could hear some kind of weird moaning and stuff coming from the other room from behind a closed door.

"Don't trip," he said, upon seeing my concern. "That's just my old lady. She does phone sex for a living on account of that I can't hold a job to save my life. Anyway, now that I'm a bit buzzed, I can handle this Buddha stuff you're always carrying on about. So, what did you want to know, again?"

"I want to attain to the highest heaven of Brahmá," I replied.

The Echo Park Buddha leaned back, after taking a tremendously long and deep hit on a wide bong pipe and concluded, "Yeah, man, I remember that gig. So, I guess my PR guy quit before getting the word out that I had to stop that guru stuff and go on disability. Well, no hard feelings, cat. I hope you get oneness, or whatever, if that will help, or whatever. Um, at least I hope you could at least get laid, or something, because you seem a bit uptight, but I guess that's none of my business."

The Name That Can Be Named

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And then one day Lao Tsu was saying that the name that can be named is not the Eternal Name, when suddenly, out of the blue, God appears and says, "My name is Ed Smith, and you can use my name any time you like, and it's eternal," which really threw Lao Tsu's sermons off course for the whole afternoon.

Thankfully, Ed Smith never reappeared, and almost all the other monks promptly forgot his name, but me and Lao Tsu — we still remember.

The Dreaded Fujikami Plays Humble

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The Dreaded Fujikami and an associate were walking down the main street of their village when they were set upon by an overdressed woman with heavy layers of makeup on her face. She beseeched them, "Oh darling Fujikami, you and your friend must join me for dinner. I've just been to the market and I have the makings of a perfect dinner, complete with a boundless supply of sake."

Fujikami, putting on an air of earnest simplicity and chastened humility, modestly declined, saying, "Ah, me and my associate would love to take you up on your most gracious and generous offer, however, we've already promised to meet tonight with the prefectural Bishop and therefore must pass. However, I hear that the local branch of the Dogen Zenji sect is short on food. You might like to offer them a chance at an excellent meal. As for my temple — we're frankly flooded with food donations and have to end up giving half of it to the local poorhouse."

"Very well, then," said the woman with a haughty air. "I shall not trouble you any further with my victuals. Others shall see the value in what I have to offer."

Fujikami said, with a bow of almost obsequious deference, "Thank you for excusing us from attendance. I sincerely wish you health and prosperity."

After the woman strode away, his associate said, "Fujikami, why did you rebuff that kindly woman's offer of a free meal and as much sake as you could drink? Have you lost your mind? And anyway, why were you being so deferential to her when you bully and mock almost everyone else who comes before you?"

Fujikami, taking a deep breath and then heaving out a sigh of relief, said, "You have no idea of the jeopardy we were in, young man. It's true, I'm brave before even the most deadly enemies, but she — she is a foe of an altogether different sort. Her generosity is a complicated web of extortion. Receiving even the most precious gifts from her is like being robbed by bandits wielding daggers. Once you owe her anything, she'll collect interest on it for life. Whenever you meet such a person, it's best to fraudulently feign the most docile humility. It's only when they feel fully superior to you that they finally stop proffering gifts. Only then are you safe. When you meet her, you are to throw out all your scruples and act like a social incompetent, otherwise her munificence will erase the good karma of decades of spiritual work; and by the time you escape her clutches, (if you escape at all), you will be reduced to the status of a rejected student standing in the snow begging to be let back into the monastery."

Dialogue of X And Y

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X: "All things are non-self."

Y: "That's not true. The laws of science are permanent."

X: "Really? Who is your leading physicist?"

Y: "Probably Doctor Stephen Hawking."

X: "Interesting. And what has the Doctor told us will be the fate of the physical universe?"

Y: "He says that, due to the law of entropy, it will run out of energy and become dispersed so thinly, due to the flying apart of galaxies, that eventually there will be no energy left, and once there is no energy, there can be no matter. And once there is no matter, there can be no universe."

X: "So he admits the universe will become extinct?"

Y: "Yes."

X: "Tell me, do the laws of the universe operate separately from the universe? Are there laws floating about the void which operate when there is no universe for them to operate in?"

Y: "No, of course not. When there is no universe, there will be no laws either."

X: "I agree. So, at such point that there is no universe — and we all agree that point is coming — then there will be no laws of the universe and thus no laws of science, according to your own leading scientist. Therefore the laws of the universe are also impermanent."

Y: "But you make it sound like the laws of science are no more important than myths, when I know science is more important than myths."

X: "Tell me, when the universe no longer exists, who will be there to judge myths to be inferior?"

Y: "There will no be no one left to do any judging."

X: "Then you admit at some point judgment also cannot exist."

Y: "I suppose so."

X: "So that's a mighty odd permanence you have, one in which the laws only exist if a universe exists, and judgement only exists if the laws exist; but, as it stands, you also admit that none of them will exist. Wouldn't that be the very essence of impermanence?"

Y: "But I need certainty, and I can't be messing around with a wishy-washy world view that isn't solid."

X: "That is why I told you that all things are non-self, because non-self really can be non-self without even a universe existing."

Y: "I don't see how that can be true."

X: "Because non-selves, by definition, don't require laws or universes or permanence, since non-self is itself at one with impermanence and non-being."

Y: "This all sounds very negative. Why should I be happy with it?"

X: "Have you ever given non-self and non-being a good trying out?"

Y: "How would I try them out?"

X: "Fortunately, you can try them out without trying at all."

Y: "It seems to me that you are not really a sincere Buddhist. Everything you say smacks of heresy and nihilism, both strictly forbidden by the teaching of the Buddha."

X: "When Buddha was stalking the earth, he had a realization that his teachings, even those about impermanence, were themselves impermanent. Furthermore, he never told us, at the moment of his enlightenment, that the state of enlightenment is permanent."

Stray Dogs

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Thieves and Zen Masters recognize each other at once along the roadsides.

How wonderful not to be fooled.

Stray dogs steal food from one another by day, but by evening none retains any anger.

Winterhorse

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The horse waited for years, till he figured out every human trick for tracking and catching a horse. One night he just kicked his way out of the paper-thin stall his owners assumed he was too tame to ever try to break though. And when morning came, not only was that horse gone, but they never caught him again. They tried calling him back, luring him back, tracking him down — but all for naught. That horse was so far gone that he didn't even look like a horse anymore. He now gallops along the high ridges of the snow-flecked mountains, one with the lightning, the wind, the rain, and the wild, tumultuous winter sky. The cougar, the wolf, and the other feral creatures all keep their distance.

All The Things I Am Not Doing Now

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Some weary spiritual travelers stumbled up to Lao Tsu and said, "What must we do in order to be enlightened?"

And Lao Tsu said, "It is precisely by not-doing that you attain to the loftiest awareness."

The traveler then replied, "Which things shall we not-do in order to reach this state?"

Lao Tsu said, "Can you see all of the things I am not-doing now?"

The traveler observed, "There are millions of things that you are not-doing at this instant."

"Exactly," exclaimed Lao Tsu. "Simply don't do any of those millions of things, and you'll be forever safe."

That Last Commandment

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The Buddha commanded, before he left this world: If it comes down to clinging to unhealthy relationships or having no relationships, you should be prepared to travel alone with no external support, having only truth as your lamp.

Over two millennia later Sensei received an inter-dimensional letter from Buddha: "I've been alone for about 2,500 year now, and I finally have to admit that I'm actually starting to freak out, so never mind about that last commandment."

The People And Cocaine

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A district attorney who went by the name of The People entered the courtroom and approached the judge and the jury.

"I would like to call to the witness stand Cocaine."

The courtroom audience gasped as something like a hard-body super-model in a thong bikini entered and took her seat on the witness stand. Her skin was very fair, on the verge of being completely white, and seemed to be covered with a light dusting of powder. She gazed out at the audience and the jury as though she were devouring them sexually.

The judge proclaimed to her, "After your testimony today, you will be remanded to the bailiff and will serve thirty days in county jail for disrespecting this court!"

"I plead for extreme mercy, Your Honor," replied Cocaine.

"What concessions are you prepared to make to The People that warrant any leniency from this court?" snarled the judge.

"That's easy. I''ll 'do' anyone in this courtroom after the trial," pledged Cocaine.

"But everyone in this county knows the defendant is your lover." protested the judge. "How could he stand for such a thing?"

"Our relationship," noted Cocaine, "is an open relationship. I allow him to experiment with any other psychotropic substance he likes. And sometimes I join in too. I'm always up for a threesome. I especially like it when alcohol shows up."

"I find your proposition unconvincing," asserted the judge. "Thirty days in jail!"

"But wait!" protested The People. "You're leaving those of us who can't get a date out in the cold. Not everyone here has the prestige of being a judge and having their pick of lovers."

The judge, who was very close friends with the prosecutor reluctantly conceded, "Well, okay, this time only, we'll let her off the hook. But the prosecutor had better be prepared to treat for dinner at the clubhouse next week."

"On your honor, sir," promised The People. "I'll pick up the tab."

"Now," continued the prosecutor, turning toward the witness, "as you know, The People believe the defendant is guilty of abusing you, the witness, Cocaine. Are the charges true or not?"

"The charges are totally false," said Cocaine sincerely. "I have been romancing my lover for many years and not once has he abused me. It's been a loving relationship since the day it began."

The judge stopped the testimony and scolded The People, "Your star witness is a total flop. This is a waste of the court's precious time. I'm dismissing this case for lack of evidence."

The judge turned to the defendant and noted, "I see you wearing Taoist monk's robes. How is it that you can be doing Cocaine and maintain any kind of holiness?"

"Your honor," said the Taoist monk with a bow, "back in China we used to do opium on a regular basis, but it's harder to come by here, so I settled on Cocaine, who, by the way, turns out to be, as you can see, totally hot."

"Interesting," said the judge with an arched eyebrow, before he added, "Case dismissed," and banged the gavel.

Outside the courthouse, The People gingerly approached the couple as they were leaving and said to the Taoist monk, "Is it still true that I can 'do' Cocaine, even after I tried to throw you in prison?"

"No problem at all," exclaimed the Taoist monk. "In fact, I'm a bit disappointed at not being sent to prison, now that I reconsider the matter. Perhaps I should have pleaded guilty, since now, I realize, I've got to pay rent to the monastery every month for the rest of my life. The jail cells in this county are, in fact, slightly larger than my monk's cell; and the cooking at the monastery is horrific. My only condition is that if you 'do' Cocaine, I get to watch, (and I know that's kind of kinky, but that's the way I am), and secondly, you must promise never to put anyone in jail again for 'doing' her."

And so it was that for one evening The People and Cocaine ravished each other's body while the Taoist monk watched.

After the evening was over, The People turned to the Taoist monk and said, "This was a fine evening, but I don't think I'll be making a habit of this. It's just not my style. But I'll keep my word to you. No one should ever go to jail for this."

An Encounter At Throne #6024

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Never Okay With Himself had been to every church in his country before running into a one Priest X, on the brink of retirement, who decided to break the rules and give out the location of the vast system of judgment thrones which exist in this world in a parallel system of dimensions which can be entered through certain dressing rooms of many large department stores. The priest snickered a bit sarcastically as he handed the seeker a sheet of paper with all the information he needed. Since he had technically already resigned, and was merely holding over till they could get his replacement trained, he was already securely receiving his pension and had thus become careless about revealing trade secrets.

After finding a comfortable dressing room inside of a Macy's men's department, Never Okay With Himself implemented the relatively easy, but counterintuitive, procedures to get to the necessary dimensions to continue his task of forever seeking the approval and guidance of others. He found himself in a place that seemed exactly like the ordinary three dimensional world where he was greeted by a typically-apathetic receptionist like one might find in San Francisco or New York, or other places where high prices and bad service are, on principle, combined and fastidiously maintained.

"Excuse me, but I had been wanting to get to The Next World and it seems like I'm still stuck in this one," Never Okay With Himself said. "Where can I find what my latest priest describes as The System of Judgement Thrones? I'm looking to be evaluated, and, ideally, validated in all the works that I am performing to justify my existence."

As the receptionist stared at him, seemingly unwilling to talk, her supervisor came through a door behind her and said, "Sorry man. that's what we've been trying to tell people: About The Next World — there never was a next world. It's all always been one world. This is just a part you usually don't go to. The part of the universe you usually live in is too expensive for what we do here. These Heaven and Hell theme parks, all the actors posing as gods — there's no way we could afford to put on a show like that in someplace like The Bay Area. Let me see that sheet of paper you're holding."

The supervisor snatched it from Never Okay With Himself's hand and said, "Ah, #6024. So, you're one of those. How sad. Well, it's none of my business what your kink is. Okay, so just go to the elevators at the end of that hall to the left. On floor 450, you'll find the people you're looking for."

Never Okay With Himself proclaimed, "450 floors! There is no such building in the world like that."

"Whatever, dude," replied the supervisor as he shoved open the door he'd come in from and left the room without a further word, as the receptionist continued to stare in a hostile and icy way.

After a torturously-long elevator ride, Never Okay With Himself emerged out of the elevator into an area that looked like it had not been remodeled since the 1950s. All the hallway doors were locked. Various offices had various functions and titles painted on the cheap, smoked glass windows of the doors, but the lights were out in most of them, and no one could be heard within. He wandered for some time through a maze of empty, depressing, institutional-looking hallways until at last one door, behind which one could clearly see light emitting, appeared with a sign saying #6024. The sign itself was written in black, felt, marking-pen ink and was made of cheap cardboard. There was no slot for the sign, so it was simply taped to the door with clear packing tape which was now peeling somewhat, adding a dingier air to the place. He gingerly pushed the unresisting door open.

There was another receptionist desk. An old phone was ringing, but no one was there to answer it. Stacks of unopened files were piled up on the sides of the long desk and a spilled box of office supplies lay on the floor. The trash cans were full to overflowing and there were no workers to be seen anywhere who might empty them. To one side of the desk there was yet another door. It looked almost dark behind the door, but he had not come all this way in order to just return from where he came. (He was given to understand that this dimension, curiously, also had many Macy's stores, and their men's dressing rooms would all be fine portals "back home," whatever "back home" might now mean.)

He couldn't see very far into what appeared to be a very large room, perhaps one set up to host convention meetings. However, before long it was apparent he'd set off a movement detector because the whole room lit up revealing an almost comedic set of decorative flourishes. The room was wildly put together with primitive two-dimensional tableaus like one might have seen when riding on the It's A Small World ride in the 1970s at Disneyland in Anaheim. It was indeed a kind of cheap parody of what The Pearly Gates might have been thought to look like to the average American some decades ago.

The sudden illumination of the whole room caught the lone worker off guard and he rushed from his office in the back and called out, which created an echo, and said, "Which office were you looking for?"

"#6024," replied Never Okay With Himself. "I was quite specifically directed here by a retiring Priest X who assured me I could speak with someone here."

"You're kidding, right?" said the man who looked like a 1960s aerospace worker from Central Orange County, complete with pocket protector and wrinkly long-sleeved shirt and dark suit pants. "Didn't Priest X get the word that I'm the last worker here. We're shutting this place down. This whole paradigm is almost completely past its time."

"I have to ask you something," asserted Never Okay With Himself. "Are you the one who has, for the last many years, been playing the role of Jehovah God?"

The man put his head in hands and then looked up with a worn expression and said, "Good Lord, am I glad I'm retiring in just two weeks, because this stuff is just so over."

Suddenly, the man turned around and, as he went to occupy the central stage from a door below it, he looked back and said, "Oh well. I'm still on the payroll, so I guess I have to do this job one more time."

After a few switches were flicked, the whole room came to life, with the two-dimensional, badly-painted facades moving in various circular ways, while yet other decorative items moved back and forth on slow tracks noisily. Creaky motors cranked laboriously on and soon cut-outs of angels with speakers planted on their faces were cranking out old gospel hymns like one might find in a lonely Baptist Church in some California City that no longer had any sincere believers left. Clunky impressions of clouds painted on giant hanging canvas sheets moved about the ceiling overhead.

At last a spotlight shone on the stage and a marble chair rolled forth to the front, and the man Never Okay With Himself had just been speaking to was revealed in full regalia, wearing some badly conceived rendition of papal vestments quite obviously made of the cheapest polyester.

"I am," said Jehovah God, "from all eternity, the creator of all things. You may ask me anything!"

At last this finally got Never Okay With Himself to laugh at himself and his quest, but now Jehovah God, having been forced back to work, insisted on being asked a question.

"Okay," said Never Okay With Himself, "what brought me here was this: I am forever feeling that I have not done enough for the world, or perhaps I've done a lot, but clearly I've not done the right things. The bottom line is that I want to help."

"The world is already made," thundered Jehovah God. "How can you help it be itself?"

"But if I can't help the world out too much, then perhaps you could give me some hints on how I might work on myself," replied the seeker.

"Your self is already completely designed," roared Jehovah God. "How dare you insult my handiwork! You are hereby forbidden to engage in the sinful activity heretofore known as self-improvement. Fear the judgment of no man or woman. Go wherever your nose takes you. Do whatever smells right. Cook whatever you want to eat. Drink whatever beverage looks appealing. Steal a little bit, if that's what it takes to get by. Try not to bother anyone with your advice. Ask for physical affection everywhere you go. Beg for money if you go broke. Take care of the basics."

Then, as quickly as it had come forward, the marble chair was retracted deep into the stage set, the lights over the stage began to dim and the odd mechanical devices clunked to a stop in their original positions. Never Okay With Himself just stared on.

A few moments later, Jehovah God, now dressed in his sterile-looking office attire came back out, brushed his long sidelocks over his bald spot and said, "How old are you?"

"In another fourteen months or so I'll be sixty," said the seeker.

"Good," said Jehovah God. "That's about my age. Listen, let's make a deal. Let's both agree that after this week, we'll both retire. You can live off your union pension, and I'll get out of this God business for good. Hey, it's not been a bad show we put on all these years, but let's be real. It's time to call it quits."

Never Okay With Himself ventured one last metaphysical question: "Is there only this one multidimensional world, then?"

"Yeah, I'm afraid so," said the retiring actor. "You can't really die, and you weren't really born. You didn't come from anywhere, and you're not going anywhere. We just keep changing form, all of us, gods, animals, rocks, trees."

The actor then lurched forward, with his eyes and forehead looking a little moist, (whether from perspiration or emotion one could not say), and said, "This world will always be your home. I promise. You already made it, kid, a hundred times over, but somehow you kept missing the point. I already loved you all. I think you did yourselves some damage trying to impress me; but what's done is done. I'll miss you all. I really will. Now let's both take a few well-deserved years off, then, you know, maybe we could take up drawing, or writing short stories, or just visiting some brothels now and then if nothing else works out. Frankly, I like slot machines. But, to each his own kink."

Never Okay With Himself stumbled down to the nearest Macy's and took the portal back home. The next day he went to go see Priest X, but the church secretary said he was called away on urgent family business and was not expected to return to duty as his replacement was already en route.

As the seeker went to leave the church, he turned to the secretary and said, "Do you believe in Jehovah God?"

"Hmm?" the woman replied. "I can't be sure. But I believe you are a rather handsome and lonely man. Perhaps you could treat an old church secretary to dinner. I'm a widow now, and don't get many visitors."

Never Okay With Himself's eyes bulged a bit and then he mumbled, "Dinner. Yeah, sure. Why not?"

The church secretary threw a shawl over her thin shoulders, quickly brushed her thick head of silver hair and turned out the sanctuary lights. Outside the streetcars rumbled along their ancient routes. The sun was setting and the street filled up with pub crawlers and teenagers. The two wandered into a cheap Chinese joint and talked for hours over tea and fried rice.

Subject X

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Subject X stands before Judgment Throne: "I'm so sorry I screwed up my life."

God stares at him and then rifles through his planner, does a quick computer search, then replies, "Yes, Subject X — you know, we never actually assigned you a life, so I'm not sure how you got one, but anyway, you can't have screwed it up, since it technically never happened."

2016 Haiku

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Basho would be ashamed of me

Except that he is still a dead man

And I am still alive and annoying

12. Selected Ancient Fragments From The Scrolls of To Fu

Selected Ancient Fragments From The Scrolls of To Fu

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1.

I have produced these works,

but sadly the emperor rejects them.

Now I suffer loss of face,

even as my brother's fame spreads.

2.

The young women parade

Through the banner-filled streets.

They seek profitable husbands.

I've not had a date in months.

3.

I sit in the cold silence

Of this slat-board guard shack,

Guarding the coal mounds

From the hungry hands of villagers.

4.

The simplicity of the country life

We lived at Divine Rice Road —

It is stamped always on my heart.

Too bad they chased me out of there.

5.

The nobility of being a simple worker,

Tending to the planting of seeds —

It was all ruined one day

When I groped the farmer's wife.

6.

In the distance, temple bells ring,

Harkening back to monkish days.

Truly I have learned this lesson:

Never raid the Abbott's sake stash.

7.

Even children in the streets

know of my poetic doings.

"Your verses," they tell me,

"Always ring of falsehood."

8.

I was accidentally published

By an inattentive editor

Who mistook my name,

Thinking I was my famous brother.

9.

Sometimes I find partially-burned

Pages of my poetry blowing about

The deserted streets of the outskirts.

My books are used as fire kindling.

10.

When I speak to women passing by,

They scowl and look sickened.

Turning to each other in disgust,

They snicker at the sight of me.

11.

"The gods have been good to me."

I say this without proof.

"Gods come to the aid of men."

Who am I trying to kid?

12.

The tea pot is steaming hot.

The sole reason I rise from bed

Is to sip from its offerings.

For a brief moment I have dignity.

13.

I lie every day to the fat women,

Claiming to think they're lovely.

They're almost foolish enough to buy it,

but at last refuse to sleep with me.

14.

I only achieved brief notoriety as an editor

Of other writers who achieved some fame.

"You can spot good work," the critics said.

"Too bad your own writing's not credible."

13. Every Labor Every Commenced

Zen Moon Poem

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The moon is almost full

It peaks out like an albino eye

And the twilight speaks softly

Saying all along

The Great Work has been accomplished

There is no other time like this

No other world like this

And as I look at the faces

Of evening walkers passing

I think about them

In all the world

There is no one like you

Well done

I don't need to even ask your name

Social Duties

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Earnest Sincerity, on his daily social rounds, stopped by to visit Discredited Priest.

Discredited Priest answered the door and said, "How is it that you manage to come by every day?"

"It's simple," said Earnest Sincerity, "I must conform to the great virtue of consistency and reliability."

"But no one's relying on you for anything," protested Discredited Priest.

"Still," noted Earnest Sincerity, "if I slack off on my social duties, surely Indra, The King of Heaven, will see it and mark me down for severe punishment."

"Have you taken into account how severely I might punish you if you don't go away?" inquired Discredited Priest.

"Yes, I have," assured Earnest Sincerity, "and I've concluded that I'm a better wrestler than you and would prevail."

"Impressive," mused the defrocked holy man. "Then I suppose I should invite you in for generous heapings of meat and huge bottles of wine."

Earnest Sincerity became a bit uneasy and confessed, "As a devout layman, you must know that I am committed to moderation in all things."

"Right, but that would constitute a refusal of hospitality, which, if I recall the scriptures right, would land you in a deeper circle of Hell than mere neglect of social duties," countered Discredited Priest.

"So, then, I'm doomed either way?" wondered Earnest Sincerity.

"Yes," concluded Discredited Priest, "because excess is a lesser hell than moderation."

"It must be logic such as this that resulted in your defrocking," added the layman.

"Yes," agreed the unemployed former-cleric, "it was always logic that ruined everything."

This Dimension

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Fu War was sitting smugly on his cushion as he looked down harshly upon all of humanity. Contrary to everything his teachers had ever told him, the more arrogant he became, the more liberated he felt. And it was in just such a state of self-satisfied complacency that Evading The Process happened to find him.

"Fu War, it is said that you never really answer anyone's questions, but merely mock them until they give up asking. Is that true?"

"Of course it's true. The whole viability of my future livelihood depends on people never being able to corner me in any way."

"What would happen if they somehow successfully cornered you?"

"Then they would find out that I am only twice as good as they are, at most; and their minimum standard for a sage is that he or she must be about ten times as impressive as the ordinary human specimen."

"That's a shame, because I had a specific question."

"Okay, then, I'll try to answer it, but only so long as you don't tell anyone else about this, because many people are looking for answers, and it would be dreadfully-hard work to have to supply answers continually to every desperate soul who wandered this way."

"That's fair enough," agreed Evading The Process. "As you know, life in this dimension is very hard, and I'm starting to wonder, with no small anticipation, when our work here in this dimension might end."

"Ah," noted Fu War, "you've asked me a really easy one. The simple answer is: There are not now, nor have their ever been, anything remotely like 'other dimensions' to go to in order to stop working."

"But what will we do when we pass from this life?"

"There never was a passing into, nor a passing out of, this life. Before you had your so-called birth, you worked in this dimension; while you yet live, you will continue to work in this dimension; and at any point, should you meet with your so-called demise, you shall continue to work in this dimension."

"If there is only one dimension," wondered Evading The Process, "where would the heavenly beings reside, and where would the great powers of the universe reside?"

"All beings, powers, forces, gods, demons and so-called human beings — they all live and reside and continue to forever work in this world. They are in no way above us, nor beneath us. All entities move about, without transitioning from realm to realm, because all realms are within this realm."

Evading The Process suddenly looked downcast and admitted, "This is all very bad news for me, as I was hoping there would be a point where my struggles might end."

Fu War inquired, "Imagine that your struggles were finally at an end, then tell me, after a billion years in a state of non-struggling, what would you do with yourself?"

Evading The Process confessed, "I'd probably get bored and launch out into some form of struggle again."

"Excellent," proclaimed Fu War, "then if you continue to struggle now, you'll have a billion-year head start, and you'll be equal to all the saints and sages and gods, since they all struggle here too. In fact, I've met many heavenly beings in my spiritual journeys, and they told me about you before you ever got here; and they mentioned, by the way, that they find dealing with you to be a great struggle."

Every Labor Ever Commenced

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Always Seeking Comfort approached Sensei with a question: "Will you answer my question sincerely today, or give me some mean-spirited, evasive answer?"

"You hit the jackpot today," replied Sensei. "I'm going to answer your question as if this Zen act never existed."

"Good," said Always Seeking Comfort, "then I shall ask you directly what the meaning of life is."

"I can tell you what the whole thing is about, but I can't tell you its meaning; but I'm honestly not being evasive," assured Sensei.

"Okay then," agreed Always Seeking Comfort, "then tell me what this whole incarnation is about."

"Very well," continued Sensei. "As far as I know, the whole show goes like this. Brahmá got tired of crafting His own offerings to Himself. Being all knowing and having all matter at His disposal, the element of surprise was missing."

"Yes," agreed Always Seeking Comfort, "I could see how that might be a problem."

"So that's where we come in," noted Sensei. "Our job is to create tons of interesting details through our striving. Brahmá forced Himself to not-know what humans are thinking unless they voluntarily tell Him. (That's where prayer comes in, by the way.) So long as the game goes on, He refuses to be all-knowing, and thus the element of surprise remains. Once a certain number of billions of years passes, He has Shiva come along and cook the place fully. At that point every karmic trace of sentient beings is burnt away, and thus they are all delivered temporarily from their attachments to food, sex, alcohol, drugs, families, gambling, money, social approval, the arts, politics, romance, the sciences — all the components of the edifice that create continual human acquisitiveness. (The last element of human misery to be eliminated by Shiva is the desire to be a spiritual winner and a moral victor, since it is by those devices that people look down on each other; and the practice of looking down on each other is the very deepest attachment of all human attachments.)"

"I don't see how this myth you're telling me differs, in terms of the final results, from the strictly materialistic idea of the scientists that everything first explodes into a fireball of flame and then entropies till there's no more universe," protested Always Seeking Comfort.

"I don't recall promising anyone that I would contradict science for them, although I certainly do, at times, just to be annoying or make people uncomfortable," said Sensei.

"How is the wanton destruction of every labor ever commenced somehow meaningful?" pressed Always Seeking Comfort.

"Yeah, that's the hard part," concurred Sensei, "that bit about meaning. You know, one time I had a vision of Brahmá, and during this seeming hallucination, I asked him what this all meant. But all he would say is, 'You've got to learn to love the fire?' Soon afterwards my apparently-frenzied state just wore off, and I woke up in my bedroom alone."

Always Seeking Comfort inquired, "Do you have anything to add to comfort me regarding this awful specter?"

"There was one coincidence," concluded Sensei, "that really helped me with the incident of the supposed vision of Brahmá, which, I admit, troubled me deeply. The next day I went to see a priest at a temple for some general advise about some personal affairs. Seemingly apropos of nothing, the priest tilted his head and looked into my eyes and said: Sir, is it not funny how, when you love your work, you don't seem to mind so much if it's destroyed; but if you hate your work, it hurts all the more to lose it?"

14. The Third Diamond

Doctrines

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Sensei read the following poem to the sangha:

The problem with doctrines

is that you never love quite right,

never really live fully.

You can never figure out

whether to fight or to flee.

Nothing you do is quite noble,

nor even impressively evil.

All the intuition is killed off,

and every decision is a halting,

second-guessing half-measure.

Self-confidence is sold into slavery.

Doctrines are just pacifiers to use

in the hopes that something or someone

convincing will come along

and make things feel natural again.

A Wealthy Man

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Lack of Ambition was wandering down the bike path when he ran into Fred who asked him, "So, since your early retirement, what have you been up to."

Lack of Ambition replied, "Well, given how small my pension is, I've been reduced to going to poetry readings on weekdays, sneaking into the opera house during breaks and stealing seats on the weekends, and badgering publishers into running my essays until they find out I'm totally discredited. When all else fails, I sweet-talk the local supermodels into giving me free wine and cheese before they finally kick me out of their houses without a kiss. When every other option is exhausted, I hound the airlines into giving me discount flights to sleazy cities full of low-end casinos and cheap booze."

Fred replied, as he walked away, "Sounds like a wealthy man to me."

Jade Emperor 2017

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The Jade Emperor is staring harshly out at me

From behind his glass-and-paper throne

His eyebrows are raised in a frightening way

As if to say I deserve every minute of Hell

But underneath his black cap and confucian beard

I feel that somehow the truth about me is known

There is no question of forgiveness or love

In all honesty those are things he has no use for

What is left behind the clouds of incense smoke

And the rows of desperately burning candles

Is the final dignity of my own lowly condition

Not a thing has been compromised here

Because he adorns my makeshift heathen altar

Somehow I can carry on for another hour

He towers over me in his Chinatown palace

Where his minions stare at me in disbelief

It is good to have passed beyond niceties

In any case there is a place sustained

In the Heaven and Earth complex where

There is no need to learn foreign languages

Miss Emotionally Wholesome Meets Primordial Sensei

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Miss Emotionally Wholesome cornered The Dreaded Fujikami in his study and pressed him for an answer to her question.

"Fujikami, suppose I should pounce on you now and you were unable to resist me, and, at last, we ended up making love all night?"

Fujikami replied, "At the break of dawn one would find me winding my way through the back alleys of our city fleeing for my life."

"Could we not conclude from that," continued Miss Emotionally Wholesome, "that you are afraid of genuine human intimacy?"

Fujikami responded, "To ask a man like me if he is afraid of genuine human intimacy is like asking a feasting carrion-jackal if has deliberated upon Christian virtue. One could do it, but one has to admit at the outset that the basis of such an interrogation would itself be laughable."

Miss Emotionally Wholesome observed, "How could you respond to my earnest inquiry in such an inhumanly bestial way?"

"Oh no!" concluded The Dreaded Fujikami. "What you are observing now is my most tenderly loving side. Were you to see my inhumanly bestial side, you yourself would be fleeing for your life as we speak."

A Day In The Life of Aku no Ken no

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Sensei was called before the Prefectural council where it was rumored a number of denouncements would be proclaimed against him. Since the hearing was public, and since he was a well-known sage, the hearing room was packed. Sensei, having no money for an attorney, stood alone before the panel and the crowd, when who should appear to take the very center seat, but the famously-corrupt Governor, Aku no Ken no.

As was his ceremonial custom, Aku no Ken no did not enter the room until everyone in the audience and everyone else on the panel was seated. At that time a court page would call out, "All will stand for His Excellency, The Very Right Honorable Aku no Ken no." At this point everyone seated would rise and stand, suppressing a smirk, since, of course, The Governor rose through the ranks through pure nepotism and hadn't a single virtue anyone could name. Additionally, it was dangerous to appear at a hearing over which he presided, because if anyone appeared to have even a trace of disrespect for him, whether working in an official capacity, or simply viewing from the gallery, they could be taken out and tortured to death. However, people's perverse curiosity outweighed their fear, and they loved nothing better than the debunking of a formerly-revered saint.

The Governor, after looking sternly and ominously at everyone in the room, ordered everyone to be seated. He glanced again at the paperwork put in front of him by a court clerk and chuckled to himself in a most diabolical way, which meant he could do anything. It was well known that his angry moods were not as dangerous as his playful moods. Now many people regretted having come, feeling that they really had put their lives at undue risk merely to satisfy their most base voyeuristic instincts.

Aku no Ken no addressed Sensei, who was still standing, his bald head, his second-hand garb, and his wrinkly face making him look all the more pitiful when contrasted against the formidable, youthful bulk of the heavily-decorated Governor.

"Before I go through the formality of reading off the complaints against you, since I imagine you very well know what they would be," began The Governor, "I shall first give you a chance to offer any desperately concocted defense you might have for your ridiculous self."

Sensei bowed slightly and replied, "Sir, since I have been doing the same works, such as they are, for almost half a century, it would be certain that by now that the number of witnesses who could discredit me would exceed the number of stars in the heavens. For me to pretend to have any pretext whatsoever for justifying the manner in which I have lived — such a pretense would be a great disrespect to your majestic personage."

At this point the entire courtroom, including the judgement panel members, the court clerks and pages, and the audience, burst out in uncontrollable laughter. No one in attendance, even under the threat of death for disrespecting the proceedings, had the dishonesty to pretend things hadn't gone beyond absurdly comedic proportions.

Aku no Ken no, who could have had the entire audience killed, said, "You will all return to silence now!"

After the audience settled down, Aku no Ken no added, "Had it been any other day of the year, I surely would have had you all tortured to death, but my mood is such that I'm going to forgive the audience for it's insubordinate attitude and continue with the proceedings."

The Governor then lowered his eyes at Sensei and said, "You do realize that beheading is the customary and expected punishment for a man claiming to be a sage while living a life of a gross debauchery and unrepentant impudence, don't you? And you do realize that it is unforgivable to be one living on a government salary and the donations of the public while simultaneously flaunting his disregard for everything we, as a people, hold sacred, don't you?"

Sensei again bowed and replied, "Your Exalted Majesty, I can only be in daily astonishment that I have grown to such an old age and have not yet been summarily strangled and then left out for stray dogs to feast on in the public square."

Again the entire courtroom burst into uncontrollable laughter, but this time the murderous Governor simply waited till the laughter died down without even scolding the audience. This was as close to an anarchic situation as the country had seen in years.

The Governor suppressed a wide smile and continued, "The charges are as follows: You have abused all of the powers entrusted to you in every way imaginable, showing undue favoritism to shallow people, while withholding mercy due to deeply deserving souls, all the time indulging in conspicuous displays of endlessly self-indulgent activities; and then there is the matter of your promiscuity, your frequenting of sake bars and opium dens, and your shirking of nearly all of your priestly duties. Furthermore, word has reached us that there is no high official, whether political or religious, whom you hesitate to mock, and that you live your entire existence as though you were wholly above the law and beyond judgement. You don't dare deny any of this, do you?"

"Deny it?" replied Sensei. "Were I to be beaten every day for a thousand years for such behavior, and then set free again, upon the very first day of my freedom I would, almost certainly, resume the exact pattern of living with even greater gusto than before. Such is the debased nature of my dog-like character."

"Well then, that concludes the evidentiary part of this hearing. And so," continued Aku no Ken no, "I shall ask my four panel members to first give their opinion on the matter."

The four panel members, in accordance with tradition, and presuming the usual predetermined verdict in all such kangaroo-style courts, in unison, simply proclaimed, "Death!"

The Governor proceeded, "I thank the esteemed panel for their most astute judgment in such a matter. However, Sensei, you are not any ordinary criminal. Indeed, your cowardliness and vanity are such that few mortals attain such a state, even given a hundred lifetimes to do so. Your opportunism, your continually calculating mind, and your ruthlessly self-serving manner of reasoning — all of these things well exceed that of the common rebel or simple thief. And so, given these special circumstances, the usual punishments shall be put aside, and I'd like, instead, to offer you a job."

The whole courtroom was in shock. Again, risking their lives, the guards, the clerks, the panel members, and all in attendance, glared at The Governor angrily.

Confused, Sensei looked around the room, seeing nothing but hostile faces wishing for his demise, and then asked nervously, "Your Excellency, which job would you order me to do?"

The Governor stood up to leave, as everyone looked on fully nonplussed, "You will report to The Governor's Palace at the beginning of next week. You are to be the State Minister for Religious Affairs. I'm tired of having weaklings on my cabinet!"

And just as he was at the threshold of the door, before departing the hall, he shouted, "There are five wagons of supplies waiting outside this hearing room. Everyone in attendance shall receive an extra month's worth of household provisions as pay for taking time off of their work to view the proceedings today. If any of you refuse these offerings, my guards will burn your house down and everything in it. Now, all of you, get out!"

Sensei, quickly dashed out of another door on the opposite side of the room and went home to make hours of offerings and prayers to the myriad of good and evil gods that decorated his elaborate home altar.

The Shogun And The Old Celibate

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The Old Celibate was greeted by throngs of romantics as they crowded into the conference room of the Shogun, who, although he hated socializing, was pressured into throwing a fete nonetheless. The people who who twisted his arm regarding this could have had their heads cut off instantly for defying the Shogun, but they defied him anyway. And, although not afraid of death, he was afraid of public opinion, and so his hand was forced; and all the young men and women showed up in droves for dancing and music and chanting and prayer. Much to the Shogun's annoyance, every priest who had a pretext to, also showed up in full regalia.

After the dances and theatrics, and after the music and a convocational prayer, The Old Celibate was politely shoved to the front of the room to give a short homily, but at last he had nothing to say. He looked around at the room full of inquisitive faces and said, "Have you any questions?"

At this a young many timidly came forward and ventured a question, "Sir, do you think we are all silly, cavorting around like this, looking for the attentions of the opposite sex?"

"Oh no, not at all," he replied. "In fact, the whole world depends on such things to keep our race going forward from generation to generation throughout all of time."

"But since you are a celibate," pressed the young man, "do you not pray that we shall all one day get over all this lust-crazed nonsense and live in service of the gods."

"Quite to the contrary," assured The Old Celibate. "Each day I pray to the gods that you might all fall in love. In doing so, you shall serve the gods in a different way than I do, but one full of equal importance to all the worlds. And now, if you will excuse me, I believe it is time I made my way home."

The crowd, still expecting more from him, slowly parted as he made toward the door. The Shogun, seated at the other end of the room, motioned silently for the music to commence. The young couples crowded in towards each other in ways that were improper, and the Shogun thought how, in earlier times, he would have punished them all for unseemly behavior. But now there were dozens of ministers behind him, and although he was their superior, he was somehow embarrassed by their presence and unwilling to conspicuously exercise his authority.

Outside an open door, a Japanese bush warbler was singing in the black night. Underneath the paper lanterns came the forms of sake dealers hustling in heavy kegs for this party that would last till dawn and follow almost no protocol whatsoever.

The Shogun, in mild disgust, turned to the row of priests behind him and said, "Aren't you the ones who are supposed to be enforcing moral order in the capital?"

One of the highest priests, a short, bald, old man, bowed low before the king and said nothing.

"What about the rest of you?" he snarled to the whole row behind him, as they all also bowed and said nothing and wore poker faces as they then slipped away to another part of the room.

The Shogun suddenly felt, as he looked at all his people living freely without the slightest thought of being oppressed, as though this might be the happiest day of his life. He, of course, like The Old Celibate whom he knew well, never fell in love, but he suddenly felt that the sight of everyone else falling in love was good enough for him.

After a while the ensemble took a break. At that moment a maiko with a shamisen kneeled to the floor. The room became quiet again as everyone crowded around her. She sang a low and plaintive song in an ancient dialect no one understood. The melody was fractured, percussive, brittle and beautiful. Suddenly this warm and full night felt sparse and lonely, but somehow reassuring. The young romantics in the room embraced their lovers and wept a little. The Old Celibate was at home in his hut by then, drinking his tea alone, in love with the silence.

An Idealistic Student Confronts Fujikami

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The Dreaded Fujikami stumbled into the bar to give a dharma talk to what he called "real men of substantial drinking," when he was confronted by an idealistic student who harshly questioned him and said, "Fujikami, it's said that you are a very vengeful man. How can you parade about like a spiritual person when vindictiveness is at the core of your practice?"

Fujikami sneered as he took his seat on a barstool and huffed to the crowd of people taking their afternoon constitutional and said, "We're I really a vengeful man, as this young boy says, he would not be breathing now."

Shoji Screen # 2

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The Shogun sent his minions out to scour

The landscape looking for dead dragonflies

And dead hummingbirds. The servants

Collected the wings from the corpses

For a period of two years and six months.

These were made into a delicate paper

That would cover the face of a shoji screen.

The Supreme Question

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Sensei said, "The one question before you today is whether you will flee Mount Hiei now, or whether you will be thrown off Mount Hiei tomorrow. No other question really matters."

Note: Sensei himself used to climb Mount Hiei once every six months, enter the administrative offices and use his staff to pulverize one shoji screen before he turned and descended back down the mountain. The prefectural police were unwilling to prosecute Sensei because they knew all too well how he would relish a year-long trail and all the attendant publicity, so they stubbornly refused to resolve the matter, (although they would, at least once a year, slap him to the ground and curse at him, which somehow seemed fair to Sensei, who seemed, rather than affronted, quite amused).

The Odessa Juggernaut

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It barrels on. Sixteen wheels, seven feet in diameter.

How much pride I had when trying to slow it down.

It has two siblings that are also four stories high

And they all told a half millennia of manic stories.

Nothing ever happened. All is quiescent. Roll on.

All day and night I will complain as a painted face

Stares unblinkingly into every eye ever created

Through every accident and every mutation.

Could you imagine my plans ever mattering?

Nothing's going to happen. It's all chaos. Pull!

It's like a Caucasus Mountains meets South India

Collision course of theologies and cultural mandates.

The only thing we know for sure is everyone needs

To be fed. Feed everyone who shows up for food.

It already went by. But you can still help. Push!

The King of Odessa is coming out on a palanquin.

The whole thing about slaves and princes is over.

There's no way to arrange to be unequal now.

Of course nothing I ever believed was true.

The thing is just hurtling through space at mach fifty.

Everything we say was said in three thousand BC,

But way more eloquently and oh so precisely.

All of the planets will be terraformed soon enough,

So we can put off all arguments for eternity.

Nothing ever happened. All is quiescent. Roll on.

The Problem of The Precepts

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I asked Sensei how I might better follow The Precepts.

Sensei said: "There are no Precepts whatsoever."

*

I told Sensei, "Unless you let me take The Precepts, I can't become a monk."

A few days later Sensei produced a certificate of monkhood for me.

*

I asked Sensei, "Does not automatic conferral of monkhood go against the rules of our lineage?"

Sensei said, "There are no lineages whatsoever."

*

I asked Sensei, "But does not our lineage trace all the way back to Shakyamuni Buddha himself?"

Sensei said, "There never was such a person named Shakyamuni Buddha."

*

I aksed Sensei, "If The Buddha, The Dharma and The Sangha are not real, then what are the foundations of our religion?"

Sensei said, "Ours is the one faith that is finally liberated from all foundations. Foundations are the cause of all human suffering. Free yourself from them, and you shall be greater than any of the so-called Buddhas ever were."

A Short Holiday Play

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Son: Dad, could we talk for a minute?

Dad: Sure Son, what is it?

Son: How much will your portfolio be worth by 2018?

Dad: I think right about nine-hundred-thousand, maybe a million. Why?

Son: Well, you know, Christmas will be coming, right?

Dad: Of course.

Son: So, did you ever think how creepy I must feel having to go buy a guy with a million-dollar portfolio a ten-dollar nicknack thingy while everyone looks on feeling sort of awkward?

Dad: I'm glad you mentioned that, because that always struck me as totally weird, but I was under the impression Mom really believes in the Christmas ritual, so I went along with it mostly for her. To be honest, Son, I love you whether or not you stretch your barista job money to buy me some cringeworthy card from CVS along with some oddly-decorated shot glass sets from Target, or whatever the fuck the thing ends up being. And anyway, I never even asked Mom if she cares or not. It just felt like too touchy of a subject to mention.

Son: Could you please tell Mom then, because I'm really burning out on this whole song and dance.

Dad: Well, I'll tell you what. How about this: What if I sneak you about eight or nine hundred dollars so you could buy everyone in the family something that doesn't look like crap. It's the least I could do for you?

Son: But dad, that's just you buying yourself a gift, so that's totally fake!

Dad: Yeah, I admit, now that I look at it, the whole thing seems like a pathetically desperate way to prop up this misery every year, to try to save an almost dead thing from the killing-off is so richly deserves. And you know what?

Son: What dad?

Dad: Did I ever mention how shitty it feels to buy you a $400 winter coat each year only for it to get stuffed to the back of the closet while you wear black leather everywhere even though it's snowing?

Son: Yo, Dad, I never really thought about that, but now that you mention it, that just sucks. Plus, anyway, me and my girlfriend only get off on wearing thrift store clothes that we can convert into a kind of death-metal goth-rap-dance thing. So, right on. Screw those $400 coats. You know, not even Mom wears those way-out things you buy her either. What the hell?

Dad: Honey! Get in here.

Mom: What is it darling?

Dad: Our son is getting sick of this whole Christmas charade. Here he is trying to be a minimalist punker, or whatever the hell the thing is, and here we are buying up $1,000 worth of Land's End things for everyone; and you don't even wear those fifteen-hundred-dollar mink stoles but once a year. Plus, think how this whole exercise hurts those poor animal-rights girls demonstrating in front of Nordstrom's.

Mom: You know, if we blew off this Christmas thing, then I wouldn't have to put up with your parents dominating our whole house for a week. And your mom and dad don't even like me. Couldn't we just meet them for dinner and all get drunk and pretend to like each other while sloshed on port? Heck, we could even pay for their Uber ride home and bundle them away in a nice hotel room in the City, anything to get them off our backs.

Dad: Okay, let me get our daughter in here.

Daughter: No need to call, dad. I've been listening from my room. My door's been open the whole time. Tell mom just to up my allowance for the year so I can shop for myself. She has bad taste in clothes. You have no idea how embarrassing it is.

Son: You know, I've been an Atheist up until now, but I think the way this is all turning out is starting to make me believe there might really be a God.

Popular Buddhist Authority Meets Monk On Meds

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Popular Buddhist Authority went to go see Monk On Meds in an effort to save him from his fears. Monk On Meds decided to invite all of the most anxiety-ridden students he knew. Popular Buddhist Authority sent a letter in advance of his appearance which Monk On Meds read to all of the seekers about an hour before the meeting. The letter said the following:

"How very shocking that you've still not overcome the most basic fears that plague humanity. It is rumored that you still tremble in fear each evening and can only relax after a heavy dose of sedatives or a bottle of wine. I am told by those who know you that you fear the possibility of death, the idea of losing your worldly income, the probability of eventual disability and illness, the specter of ending up without secure housing and at last perishing friendless and alone. By now you should have developed some maturity and have conquered these childish worries. Had you taken your Bodhisattva Vows seriously, I would not need to come there and chide you to abandon this pitiful state of weakness that you choose to cling to. Upon my arrival, I shall demonstrate what true fearlessness is and set you straight once and for all. Since it's your style to make an egotistical public spectacle of everything, I imagine our meeting will be well attended. Very well, then the others you bring with you shall also be set straight and be made to heed my demand that they become men and women of unparalleled bravery."

After Monk On Meds read this most muscular and commanding letter, one of the students asked if he felt Popular Buddhist Authority might really be a truly enlightened one who had conquered all fears and attained bodhi mind.

To the seeker's surprise, Monk On Meds said, "I believe I know this gentleman's weakness and plan to expose him as a person with a most critical shortcoming that precludes him being the sort of fellow he claims to be."

The students were stunned to hear this, knowing that Monk On Meds was about the most failed specimen of Those Seeking Serenity that they had ever seen. For the life of them, knowing what they already knew about Popular Buddhist Authority, they could not imagine what their nearly-hysterical friend could have over this reputedly unflappable leader.

Surely enough, Popular Buddhist Authority arrived and gave a one-hour talk highlighting familiarly trodden ground, covering such topics as the giving up of all desires, the cessation of bodily clinging, the abandonment of worldly graspings, and total peace in the face of mortality and the loss of physical faculties. He, in short, demanded that everyone there turn their backs on their sheltered lives and dedicate themselves to the selfless service of humanity, brushing aside all temptations for petty love affairs and the fawning affections of obsequious worldlings. And at last, in a seemingly angry tone, he shared his exasperation with the undisciplined mediocrity of the practices this group was known for; and he assured them there was simply no excuse for their indulging in the cowardice they had up till then been known for; and he simply demanded that they repent of this lukewarm and tepid style of urban narcissism and navel-gazing.

At the conclusion of the speech, everyone gave a polite applause as Monk On Meds came to the front of the room to shake hands with Popular Buddhist Authority and to thank him for his participation that day.

Before Popular Buddhist Authority could leave the room, Monk On Meds said to everyone there, "I again thank this brave man for challenging us to be with him as he exhibited a most manly and praiseworthy form of bravery. And now I think it's only fair that he remain with us for another hour as we engage in our practice of The Full Acceptance of Fear. I hope he won't be afraid to join us for the proceedings."

Popular Buddhist Authority seemed to be attempting to come up with a pretext to excuse himself, but Monk On Meds pressed him further: "It's okay if you are afraid of such an exercise. Indeed, most people are, so, if you wish to excuse yourself, we won't hold it against you."

Very apprehensively, Popular Buddhist Authority assented to remain for the duration of the next hour. He watched as each of the students came to the front of the room and gave a short talk about the fears that they had been unable to attain victory over. And as they revealed precisely which relationships, occupations and twists of fate held them in the grip of almost unbearable anxiety, Popular Buddhist Authority got more and more restless and found it hard to remain comfortably in his seat. Eventually a woman got up and began to share several short anecdotes of times in her life when panic overcame her and she lost her composure entirely, making a fool of herself on many extremely awkward occasions.

Suddenly Popular Buddhist Authority made some incoherent statement about feeling ill and needing to get to his car immediately, and he more or less bolted from the room without even properly saying goodbye or wishing everyone well. The whole thing came off as rather strange and disturbing. For a while the room was rather silent as people looked over at the door through which Popular Buddhist Authority had suddenly left them. Only a few disgruntled whispers could be heard throughout the room. The women who had been speaking, unsure of what to do, stopped her short presentation and took a seat.

Monk On Meds reoccupied the front of the room and said, "Does anyone have any questions before we adjourn the meeting?"

"Yeah," said one rather bothered student who stood up after being called on. "Why did our main speaker just desert us like that? I feel rather offended."

"Ah yes," said Monk On Meds. "Well, you will please forgive our speaker for leaving the meeting in such an untimely matter, but, you see, as I promised, I would expose his main weakness so that you would not delude yourselves into believing that Popular Buddhist Authority had attained any more enlightenment than any of us here."

"Right!" said another student. "Frankly, it seems as if he turned out to be more afraid than any of us, after all that."

"Indeed he is," agreed Monk On Meds. "While Popular Buddhist Authority may have some kind of attainment in the conquering of the fear of death, poverty, disease and loneliness, there is one fear he has finally not come to grips with at all. It is his fear of intimacy. It turns out, in the end, it's his fear of your fear that is his undoing. He is, alas, like the rest of us, a coward after all. But we have one advantage over him. In this practice we are not afraid of each others' fears. If one is ever to attain Intimacy and Naturalness, that's actually the first fear one should learn to practice with."

The Circumstances Regarding Sensei's Eventual Retirement

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Through a dramatic series of misunderstandings and confused communication, Sensei was again promoted to Abbot of a medium-sized Sangha in a remote city of Northern Japan. This promotion was effected although Sensei had been living in Los Angeles so long that he could hardly remember any of his already-weakened Japanese language skills, and though he was on the verge of retirement because his congregation had largely lost interest in him and viewed his religious practice as almost pathetic.

Because the congregation in Los Angeles had all but dismissed him by giving him the title "emeritus," and because the tiny stipend for such a symbolic position was not nearly enough to live off of, he was forced to surrender his life in California and make a move to Hokkaido.

When he arrived in Japan, he was informed that he was replacing a long heredity line of ministers who oversaw the temple as a simple matter of employment, even though they themselves had no personal belief in their duties. Their family's succession to the Abbot's position ended when the last child in the lineage refused to continue the family's traditional vocation, citing total disinterest in anything remotely Buddhist in nature.

The congregation had ceased listening to the formulaic and stiffly-delivered homilies each week, since they were, after all, being delivered by non-believers. Due to such conditions, everyone present at the temple was merely going through the motions and felt little zeal for their own spiritual lives. Because leaving their traditional home temple was regarded as treasonous by the local community, the congregants simply endured membership there and had little hope for any kind of spiritual renewal.

When Sensei arrived, he delivered his weekly talks in a minimalistic and fumbling sort of Japanese dialect which contained countless mispronunciations, however, these mispronunciations were often the equivalents of other words in Japanese, and, as a result, the "dharma talks" came off as hilarious. Because Sensei viewed his entire situation as absurd, he deliberately threw absurdism into his speeches, causing even more laughter and more comedy-oriented curiosity about him.

As this series of accidents continued to unfurl, the formerly dreary congregation came to life. Although their renewed interest in the temple was not exactly spiritual and was more related to the fact that they enjoyed this particular form of "entertainment," still the number of onlookers increased each week as did the total amount of donations coming in to the temple. Within two years the temple was unable to accommodate the number of people who wished to attend, and the otherwise nearly-sleeping Board of Directors was forced out of their slumber and felt obliged to arrange for the building of a massive, "mega-church-style" facility.

Sensei could not really handle the stress of all this activity going on around him, and so he began promoting the feistiest and most eccentric congregants to the position of "Assistant Dharma Speaker." After a while, this batch of spiritual comedians slowly took over almost all of the regular speaking duties, delivering sermons, between them, seven nights a week, each of which was enthusiastically attended. Because of his compassion for the membership of the temple, Sensei appointed serious administrators to manage what were now considerable treasury resources. These highly-competent men and women, in contrast to the parade of jokers he had delivering sermons continually, were extremely serious and pious sorts who would not allow the least bit of corruption. And while they disapproved of the horde of "Assistant Dharma Speakers" Sensei had appointed, they would not forsake their solemn dedication to their administrative work.

Having little paperwork to do, and having only one sermon a week to deliver, and being frankly unenthused about the sutras, he had few duties but to attempt, rather haphazardly, to sit Za Zen a couple of times a weak, mumble through a few chanting sessions and dress himself in ceremonial garb for major festivities, during which he merely sat and smirked benevolently as others hustled about carrying out the details of the services.

He dealt with the matter of how much time he had on his hands by having one of his most loyal and unquestioning assistants attend his sake and tea bar which was installed in his office over the administrators' objections. (The bar was paid for by an anonymous donor and would cost the temple no money.) This attendant acted as a formal host as Sensei invited virtually every dignitary into his office from a hundred miles around. Although Sensei had no inherent interest in what these folks had to say, he was able to listen attentively and evince a warm and loving aspect due to the alternating effects of caffeine and alcohol surging through his veins, not to mention the continual state of sugar-high he induced by importing boxes of fortune cookies from a factory in Chinatown in San Francisco.

At night the geishas came to entertain him, however, much to everyone's surprise, he never attempted to seduce these gorgeous, clever and amusing young women. Many of the more ribald church elders pressed him on this point and were somewhat disappointed he had not availed himself of this ever-present possibility of worldly pleasure. Sensei noted that he enjoyed beauty well enough, enjoyed observing it and admiring it, but that entering into any kind of romance, however casual, or formal, constituted "way too many doings" for his taste. His life was "complicated enough," he argued. He protested that he was already of some advanced age, and that, "after all, a person must claim a few precious moments of peace for themselves at some point in this lifetime."

At some point Sensei petitioned the Board of Directors and the leaders of his sect for permission to finally retire with "a real pension that a real man could live off of." After many objections, and sorrowful lamentations, the sect and the congregation wished Sensei a happy retirement and gave him a grand sending off so that he might retire in downtown Los Angeles and live a nearly anonymous life.

When he arrived back home in Los Angeles, he was able to secure a rent-controlled, subsidized senior's apartment not far from Wilshire and Western. He then spent his time aimlessly wandering into synagogues, churches and temples, never agreeing to join any religion and never letting on to what his real beliefs were; and anyway, his beliefs changed daily, so it would be of no solace to those who knew him for him to attempt to thoroughly explain himself.

He "took up residence" daily in a large café, continually pestering the clerks for free drinks and discounts on pastries. This particular establishment was often host to many circles of organized criminals, prostitutes, welfare malingerers and other discredited or antisocial types. Sensei spoke with all of them for hours each day. He never judged them or proposed that any of them reform in any way.

Twice a year his old congregation in Northern Japan would fly him out so that he might give a little talk, as he had in old times. Sensei thought to himself, "Two sermons a year! Now that is a work load I can deal with."

The Third Diamond

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Kami no Kami burst into a rival Shinto temple and all the respectable parishioners and priests simply fled the main sanctuary rather than call the police. But many of the low-lifes and hangers-on remained to see what would happen as Kami no Kami approached a kneeling worshipper in front of the main altar and said, "You will stand up this instant!"

The rather short and slender man of middling age stood up hesitantly and bowed. He seemed on the verge of trembling, as though he were deeply shaken.

Kami no Kami said impatiently, "What's the matter with you?"

The man turned to him and said, "Reverend Sir, I am only just now fully facing the consequences of the way I have lived. It seems I'm a great disappointment to my fellow countrymen."

"In what way have you failed to live up to our national character?" pressed Kami no Kami.

The man replied, "Reverend Sir, I have lived a life of financial humiliation, sexual deviation, obsessive gambling and irreverent pride."

Kami no Kami said, "You should get back on the floor and kneel before the gods again. Only this time, instead of weeping about your sins, you should thank them for having had the chance to really live. That's more than can be said for most of the patsies inhabiting the back rooms of this sorry temple."

Then Kami no Kami turned to the low-lifes and hangers-on and said, "The so-called honorable people of this temple won't get very far in their practice. But it's the likes of you who need to remember, you are the true keepers of The Third Diamond."

And with that, Kami no Kami burst out of the temple doors into the radiant sunlight. He walked alone toward the center of town to visit his regular sake house. Socially conscious and politically savvy people maintained a wide distance around him, so that as he walked along, the crowd parted around him like the water does when moving around a large boulder in the middle of a small river. Because he did not need their love or approval, he attained the state of "no social hindrances" and wandered the world as easily as a tumbleweed blows across an American desert, meeting almost no resistance, utterly unburdened by the duty to arrive at any particular destination at any particular time.

Shallow Pleasures

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Kami no Kami said to me: If you've ruined your life chasing after shallow pleasures, still, you ought to cherish the memories of those shallow pleasures, since, after all, you really did get to experience them. It is a grave mistake to believe that despising your past failings will ensure future success. In both failure and success, you should enjoy telling your own life story. (Kami no Kami also bought us some sake and sushi. He ordered me not to regret consuming them.)

Mountain Lions

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Bambi Sensei told Codependent Deer: Please don't try to make mountain lions love you.

Ask God For Anything

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Kami no Kami said: "Ask God for anything!" A person in the audience said, "Did you mean to say we should ask God for anything as long as it's selfless and good?" Kami no Kami replied, "No! When I said 'anything,' I meant anything." Upon hearing this, the students left the temple somewhat disconcerted.
