Compiled by Evelyn Ruut
On New Year's Day 2008, Evelyn Ruut posted four installments of her annual harvest — lotus flowers she had gathered from the sometimes-turbid waters of talk.religion.buddhism across 2007. The series is named after the lotus, which grows rooted in mud yet blooms immaculate: the best of this community emerged from the chaos and noise of Usenet argument, yet was no less luminous for it.
The contributors include Tang Huyen, Stumper, Keynes, Dar, Lee Rudolph, and others who made talk.religion.buddhism one of the more philosophically serious corners of the 1990s–2000s internet, alongside classical sources: Zen Master Seung Sahn, Thich Nhat Hanh, the Bahiya Sutta, Bodhidharma, and the Buddha's own direct instruction. The four parts were posted minutes apart, as though Evelyn could not wait to share the year's abundance.
My awareness comes and goes at will.
Who knows where it comes from and goes to?
Anger and fear come and go at will.
No need to hold on to them.
Zen Master Seung Sahn said: The first time is very difficult, but if you
don't check your mind, don't check your feelings, don't check your
understanding, then no problem. Thinking comes and goes -- let it be.
v08n04-1980-april-dssn-pra...
--- Stumper
But settling into my accustomed ponderous profundity here's the true scoop on Ultimate Truth. The true seat of unhappiness is one's own ass. Attempting to cover one's own ass makes unhappiness. Because one's ass can't be covered. There it is, hanging right out where everyone can see it. Like the moon that everyone points to. - Keynes
(Our) enemies are not man. They are intolerance, fanaticism, dictatorship, cupidity, hatred and discrimination, which lie within the heart of man." -- from Thich Nhat Hanh
Wavy Gravy once asked a Zen Roshi, "What happens after death?"
The Roshi replied, "I don't know."
Wavy protested, "But you're a Zen Master!"
"Yes," the Roshi admitted, "but I'm not a dead Zen Master."
Don't worry. I don't claim to be there, but awakening is normless, standardless, criterialess, referenceless. Nothing sticks to it and it sticks to nothing. That's what a Buddhist should orient himself to. --Tang Huyen
My path is whatever I manage to do at each moment to awaken. - Stumper
Are we orchestrating our steady march to greater and greater awareness and greater and greater joy? Or is it just more of that built in agenda, such as the separate workings of our parasympathetic nervous system and our need for food and sleep and such? Maybe awakening simply, spontaneously happens like it seems, does everything else. Perhaps our nature is to move from animal-oriented priorities to a more evolved ecstasy of spirit or some such, and it may just be completely out of our control. Lee Frank -
I will continue to follow the path whether it is effective towards some end or not. It in itself is an opening, from out of, what isn't. - Robert Epstein
Is it you that is following a path or is a path simply unfolding taking you away in its currents? How would you know if it is indeed you doing it or is it simply being done to you? Are you living or just 'being lived' ? - Lee Frank
Interesting question. Some think that any form of control or autonomy is an illusion. Wasn't there someone who said that the only true philosophical question was whether or not to commit suicide? For whatever it is worth, whether we are 'doing it' (living) or if life is simply 'doing itself,' it can be a very interesting ride. There seems to be a drive, a purpose of some kind. Don't we owe it to ourselves to follow the path that unfolds before us to the best of our ability?
Look around you. All life seems to know what to do. The leaves drop in the fall and new ones come in the spring. Flowers die and grow anew again. Cats make kittens and all living things create more life. I think that if there is a lesson from all the living things around us, it is that life is meant to be lived until it comes to an end on its own. The lesson Buddha gives us is that fighting against what happens, creating boxes and cages and forcing things one way or another, will make it less peaceful, less comfortable, and that understanding the flow of living and letting it unfold is more comfortable for all.
In the buddhist tradition I follow, we say prayers every day to give living beings what they want, that they should be happy, and we say that we will do what we can to make living beings happy. Interestingly enough some still never make the connection that they themselves are unhappiest when others do not live up to their expectations. So I take it that we are meant to conclude that happiness for ourselves, is being OK with what makes other living beings happy.
Better being OK with it, ALL of it, whatever it is, is all I am
ing. --Evelyn
You state that we should be of concern to other's happiness and although this is a noble gesture, by what I am saying about not being in control of our own destinies it may be foolish to think we can regulate the negotiation of another's when they may not be in control of theirs to begin with, as we may not be in control of ours. Happiness comes as a moment to moment convenience anyway and what may appear to contribute to someone's happiness at present, may indeed make them unhappy in the long run, that old 'be careful what you wish for' syndrome.
Since it appears that we don't control the principles which operate the functions of the universe and it appears that we don't even control our need for food or sleep or how our parasympathetic nervous system operates, it may just be wishful thinking that we are somehow in control of our destiny as far as advancing the horizon of our awareness, or working towards our greater joy, when most times our joy is based on the outcome of our conditionally charged experiences which are in part based on our genetic heritage which influences our decisions, our thinking, speaking and behaving.
I assert that we are not living at all but simply being lived and buffeted by the forces around and inside of us to an already siphoned destiny which we are but innocent witnessing bystanders. Lee
You are your horse, your driver, and your carriage; You are your hangman, your rope, and your platform. --Lee Rudolph
The wisdom of enlightment is inherent in every one of us. It is because of the delusion under which our mind works that we fail to realize it ourselves, and that we have to seek the advice and the guidance of enlightened ones before we can know our own Essence of Mind. You should know that so far as Buddha-nature is concerned, there is no difference between an enlightened man and an ignorant one. What makes the difference is that one realizes it, while the other is ignorant of it. -- Excerpt: The Sutra of Hui Neng (Zen master, 638-713)
I am all in favor of 'soft' karma, which happens within a person from moment to moment, year to year. Sure. But let's make sure that we are clear that the talk of 'hard' karma across lifetimes crossing from one body to another and so forth is mythical and metaphorical, whereas the 'soft' kind is demonstrable and makes a lot of sense. So the term karma is useful in terms of real psychological patterns. Not adding superstition but taking the 'hard' karma stories as metaphor for the 'soft' kind that is real allows one to make use of the talk of karma and allow it to be helpful in one's Buddhist practice. (dharmatroll) --The King of Karma
"How people treat you is their karma; how you react is yours." -Wayne Dyer
The following quote has been attributed to Zen Master Dogen: "I came to realize clearly that Mind is no other than mountains, rivers, and the great wide earth, the sun and the moon and the stars."
Awakening occurs when one opens up unconditionally, in utter humility, without any a priori with regard to what happens under such a circumstance. One drops one's norms and standards, baskets and cages, criteria and references, puts up no obstruction and resistance, and receives simpliciter.
It will never occur if one puts up conditions, such as: it must be mind, it must be matter, it must be a bright light that blots everything out, it must be total darkness that swallows the whole universe, etc. One only empties oneself out and leaves oneself open and accessible, and then it will suffuse one unasked and for free.
Otherwise one merely perpetuates one's prejudices, though one may want to dress them up as awakening to justify them and oneself. -- Tang Huyen
My point has always been that no single source is ever very reliable. To rely solely on one's own experience is fine for a very minimalist position only; any further claims are incredibly susceptible to delusion without feedback loops to verify and calibrate one's convictions. Similarly obedience to any authority without inner confirmation is almost always delusional, and leads to rigid assertions of dogma without evidence. We can't know anything for sure; however we can have much more reliable and correctible views if we have multiple sources and constantly are calibrating and correcting them. -- Dharmatroll
Reason alone is a whore, or lawyer, that rationalizes and defends whatever view we start with, if we only use reason. Again, I hold a meta-position here, and am against all single-sources, and thus am not for any particular single source but only go for synthesized triangulation of multiple sources. - Dharmatroll
DT> There is a passage that goes something like this: There are three kinds of people in the world. The first are those who are like letters carved in rock; they easily give way to anger and retain their anger thoughts for a long time. The second are those who are like letters written in sand; they give way to anger also, but their angry thoughts quickly pass away. The third are those who are like letters written in running water; they do not retain their passing thoughts; they let abuse and uncomfortable gossip pass by unnoticed; their minds are always pure and undisturbed. -DharmaTroll
"The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind." -Henry Louis Mencken
"Learn of the skillful; he that teaches himself has a fool for his
master." --Benjamin Franklin
"God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things that should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other." -Reinhold Niebuhr
God listens, but rarely speaks.
Man speaks, but rarely listens. -- Lee Frank
Buddhism is just more science in the sense that it's about discovering how things are and uncovering patterns. Science is just a term that means organized rigorous common sense and inquiry. And Buddhist practice is that as well. The Buddha came up with a system to understand suffering, the patterns that cause of suffering, and he tested various ways to extinguish those patterns. It was as close to what we call scientific today as anything from that era. He was amazingly scientific. Delusion is simply the opposite of scientific, as scientific means to see things as they are to the maximum extent possible. Dharmatroll
Every moment is what you make of it. If you live it in mindfulness, you make it holy, and your life worthwhile. (By the way, you haven't to wait for some experience of awakening either). Everything hinges on the moment. In this moment, you justify and validate your life by living it in mindfulness, so that there is no unfinished business to it, there is no baggage left over from it. That is the meaning of pari-nirvana -- full blowing-out. Every moment is lived in the "letting pass" mode, and it consumes itself fully ... in the moment, so that there is no remainders. Tang Huyen
The basic urges of the consciousness is to survive, so that its experience addictions can continue allow it to play this hide and seek game with itself, in its countless disguises in this grand and glorious masquerade. - Lee Frank
Colophon
Originally posted by Evelyn Ruut to talk.religion.buddhism on January 1, 2008, in four consecutive installments. Ruut's annual compilations — "Gems" (2005), "Lotuses" (2007), and others — are among the most enduring records of what this newsgroup community found worth preserving. The series spans indices 166637–166640 in the Internet Archive Giganews collection.
Preserved from the Usenet archive for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026.
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