Saturday, May 05, 2007

Joshu Sasaki on his 100th Birthday

"The key to long life is to immediately forget things."

8 comments:

ICEX_71 said...

Zen, one of those things that can't be described. You can't live it since you don't know what your living, having no boundaries of physical or metaphysical nature.

You can't talk about it for to talk about it is to describe in some manner "it" which destroys the "it" making "it" something other than "it".

Even the great masters are not great masters since they can not convey the how or why, the wind on you temple or cheek is as Zen as the wind on your knee. But is it?

How do you master your knee? Or the wind?
You can not even move them twice the same way.

In the real world on the Masters birthday the British Ryal Air Force was founded. Don't as me where it had been losted. All I know is I didn't do it.

Cool_Hand_Coon said...

Aquarium,

Zen can be mastered, but one never knows when that happens.

Unknown said...

I practice Zen every now and then, but I don't know which way to go, since when is the end of the Zen and the Zen of the beginning?

buddy larsen said...

The key to immediately forgetting things, is a long life.

Charlie Martin said...

Aquarium: the perfect way is without difficulty. What are you making difficult?

Buddy: Roshi would undoubtedly damn near fall down laughing at the one. He's a fun old bastard.

buddy larsen said...

Ha--glad to hear that. A religious man with a sense of humor seems so right--

Charlie Martin said...

Buddy, the last time I saw Sasaki Roshi in person, he told me the story of the monk who lived up on the jmountain. After some years, a woman who wanted to particularly be kind to the old monk sent her toothsome young daughter up with instructions to take off all her clothes, climb in the monks lap, throw her arms around him, and kiss him.

She did as instructed, and the monk jumped up, turned to the wall, and started meditating very fast.

When the daughter told Mom about this, she climbed the mountain herself and burned the monk's hut to the ground.

Roshi's moral: "Don't make mistakes."

buddy larsen said...

Ha! --love it. "Hell hath no satori like a woman scorned" --?