The Iraq War for Dummies (A Zen/Christian parable)

You live in a house.

That's built in a yard.

A lovely yard and house in which you procreate, eat, sleep, shit and will eventually die.

It is your castle. It is your world.

One day, a snake slithers across your yard. A cottonmouth! Deadly and venomous.

There's a stream beside your yard and you watch as the snake swims across it. You return to the house and tell your mate and children of this startling new development. There is a new danger to your castle!

What can be the best way to protect yourself from this new and "evil" danger?

The discussion with your life mate and children begins with "we must hunt this down and kill it!" At first, this seems like the obvious answer. Then, your five year old daughter asks, "don't they eat mice? Like the mice that eat our grain?"

"Yes, but they could kill you as well." is the answer.

"How?" asks the child.

"Well, if you encroach on their territory they might bite you." you say.

"We're so much bigger. Why would they try to come get us?" asks the child.

"They won't. But if you happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time... or if they see you as a threat to their life, they might bite you."

"So why don't we just try and stay out of the snake's area?"

"It might come back here some day." you say.

"Can't we deal with it then?" your child asks.

"It's better to be safe than sorry." you chide.

That night, you row across the stream with a hoe to chop the snake with. You have a flashlight and a gun and night vision goggles. you know all the snake has is itself. You are the biggest and baddest creature in the woods that night.

You land on the bank and stealthily look for the snake. After three hours you don't find it. You go back to your boat and start rowing back to your shore. Halfway there. you are bitten by a mosquito.

twelve days later you die of encephalitis.

That is war. That is Karma.

That is the way the world works.



(patterned loosly from Zell's "parable" for going to war that was a freeper email for a while)

Or, my favorite line of his: "You finally realize, that there is nothing to realize."

:shrug:

And really, IMHO, it's pretty much up there in the top ten.

Give this simple statement a few moments of thought and it's really pretty spot on. Love ya' TN!

:toast:

Little known fact about TahitiNut - he meditates and has 'survived' ego death many times. He knows Satori (Kensho). (Being "one with all" is not mere intellectualism, nor is seeing the spaces between moments of Is - the heartbeat of the Universe.) Discussing it, however, is like carrying water in a sieve. :shrug:

I think about wearing a t-shirt that says: "Being here; Doing this." :silly:

(Big time LOL)

I KNEW IT! I KNEW IT! I KNEW IT! I KNEW IT!

I KNEW IT! I KNEW IT! I KNEW IT! I KNEW IT!

I KNEW IT! I KNEW IT! I KNEW IT! I KNEW IT!

I KNEW IT! I KNEW IT! I KNEW IT! I KNEW IT!

(It's great to pick up things via reading)

:silly:

I doubt very many understood when I once said I looked upon Thich Quang Duc with a reciprocal respect and admiration ... and not just a little bit of aspiration, with a sense of 'we too'.

But with a helluva lot more eloquence.

It's simplistic but kinda there.

"And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin."

"Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof,"

During the 'missing years' of Jesus' life, he supposedly travelled to Egypt. At that time there were Buddhist communities in Alexandria.

Some of Jesus' sayings certainly have a lot in common with Buddhist thought.

http://www.answers.com/topic/history-of-buddhism

enlightening?