Subject: Re: Hyakujo's fox
From: Scottie Bowman (rbowman@indigo.ie)
Date: Wed Dec 06 2000 - 03:15:41 GMT
I'm interested in the mind that succumbs with such swooning
pleasure to these Zen stories - Cecilia's slaphappy friend Obaku
& the various other one-handed cheerleaders. What is it
about the inconsequentiality, the gossamer pointlessness of it
all that hypnotises otherwise intelligent people?
I find it a bit reminiscent of the conversation of schizophrenics.
When first encountered, this sounds - with its wild associations,
its puns, its pregnant pauses, wonderfully droll & charged
with potential. The young shrink comes away thinking:
'By Jove, he's not as crazy as he looks. There's something in there,
I'm sure, if only I could enter his world ...'
After a while, though, it becomes evident that what's actually
in there is futility, confusion & barely disguised horror.
Someone once asked Dr Johnson what he thought of Bishop Berkeley's
idea that the material world was nothing more than a construction
of our minds. Johnson swerved out into the roadway & took a flying
kick at one of the loose stones lying around. 'There, Sir,' he said
(or words to that effect), 'that's what I think of the good Bishop.'
Mutatis mutandis, as our Roman grandpas were forever saying,
that's what I think of the Kashapa Buddha.
(I should probably confess now that I'm not an elderly monk
in the shape of a fox but rather an elderly fox in the shape
of an 18th C. English sage.)
Scottie B.
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