Πεντάκτινο

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                                Kingston      LA        Athens    

A month of Transcending the bull,

Ten years of perceiving it,

and three years of taming it.

So you are back from the 7th picture of the 10 Bulls

to the 5th. Who are you now? I am a man, 30 years of age,

with the body of a 50 year old bull.

ARE YOU STARTING A CULT?

Zenetsu: "Was Osho a criminal and a fake?"

Michael Hughes: "Not completely..."

Ο ΕΡΓΑΤΗΣ (εις μνήμην Matthiessen)

Βελόνα είναι και κεντάει

τη νύχτα μέσα στο βουνό,

ούτε γάτα είναι, ούτε πεύκα έχει,

κι όμως περιβάλλεται από κενό.

Τι  είναι;

The Snow Leopard

"Tibetan oracle-priests and Siberian shamans practice dream-tavel, telepathy, mystical heat, speed-running, death prediction, and metempsychosis, all of which are known to New World shamans: the Algonkian medicine man who travels as a bird to the spirit world, the jaguar-shamans of the Amazon would be impressed but not surprised by the powers attributed to yogis and naljorpas. The energy or essence or breath of being that is called prana by Hindu yogis and chi by the Chinese is known as orenda to the Cree. Such concepts as karma and circular time are taken for granted by almost all native American traditions; time as space and death as becoming are implicit in the earth view of the Hopi, who avoid all linear constructions, knowing as well as any Buddhist that Everything is Right Here Now."

(How the east has met the west, from Peter Matthiessen's book)

Moods

Στην Δύση μπορεί να είσαι μοναδικός σε κάτι και να στο απαγορεύσει η λογική των πολλών.

Στην Ανατολή, όπου είναι πολλοί, είσαι  μοναδικός αν είσαι πραγματικά χαρισματικός.

Τώρα, άραγε, πού είναι οι "πολλοί" και πού το άγχος ... ;

What about February?

What an incredible, unnecessary comedy !

All this trouble just to sit in my guru's chair?

A Democratic haircut in Karneadou str.

Ή ζενέτσου ή τίποτα !!

ZEN IN THE ART OF ARCHERY

" Assuming that his talent can survive the increasing strain, there is one scarcely avoidable danger that lies ahead of the pupil on his road to mastery. Not the danger of wasting himself in idle self gratification, but rather the danger of getting stuck in his

achievement, which is confirmed by his success and magnified by his renown; in other words, of behaving as if the artistic existence were a form of life that bore witness to its own validity.

 The teacher foresees this danger. Carefully and with the adroitness of a psychopomp he seeks to head the pupil off in time and to detach him from himself. This he does by pointing out, casually and as though it were scarcely worth a mention in view of all that the pupil has alredy learned, that all right doing is accomplished only in a state of true selflessness, in which the doer cannot be present any longer as' himself '.

 Thus the teacher lets the pupil voyage onward through himself. But the pupil, with growing receptivity, lets the teacher bring to view something of which he has often heard but whose reality is only now beginning to become tangible on the basis of his own experiences. It is immaterial what name the teacher gives it, whether indeed he names it at all. The pupil understands him even when he keeps silent.

 The important thing is that an inward movement is thereby initiated. The teacher pursues it, and, without influencing its course with further instructions, which would merely disturb it, helps the pupil in the most secret and intimate way he knows: by direct transference of the spirit, as it is called in Buddhist circles."

(from the same book by Eugen Herrigel)

ΣΥΜΠΛΟΚΗ ΣΤΟ ΣΥΝΤΑΓΜΑ

Ο άνθρωπος που σέρνει το Βούδα

αποτελεί κίνδυνο για τον εαυτό μου και

ζημιά για την μάζα: Αυτό, μερικές φορές,

ίσως σε σώσει για πάντα.

'Ενας Σέρπα

"You have in the Science of Mind, a simple doctrine which is true: If you want to think and think until you get a Mercedes, you probably can. But is that all you want to do with your energies?"

Michael Hughes on the power of Mind

INDEPENDENCE

The word  "realistic" whenever introduced into any discussion on Tibetan politics, never fails to set my teeth on edge. It invariably signals the opening of the argument that if the Tibetans compromised on the question of  independence ("Rangzen"), and accepted some form of autonomous status within China, then the Chinese authorities would reciprocate with concessions. Though not as preferable as independence, this would make life inside Tibet more tolerable and hence ensure the survival of the Tibetan people. On the face of it, a reasonable  argument. So what's the catch? Well, for one the Chinese have never evinced any desire to discuss a compromise solution - not even the most pathetically watered down one proffered by Dharamsala, the site of the Tibetan Government-in-exile.

(Jamyang Norbu  from the book "TIBET -THE ISSUE IS INDEPENDENCE")

Bushido

"About ten years ago, while spending a few days under the hospitable roof of the distinguished Belgian jurist, the lamented M. de Laveley, our conversation turned during one of our rambles, to the subject of religion. 'Do you mean to say,' asked the venerable professor, ' that you have no religious instruction in your schools?' On my replying in the negative, he suddenly halted in astonishment, and in a voice which I shall not easily forget, he repeated, 'No religion?  How do you impart moral education?' The question stunned me at the time. I could give no ready answer, for the moral precepts I learned in my childhood days were not given in schools; and not until I began to analyze the different elements that formed my notions of right and wrong, did I find that it was Bushido that breathed them into my nostrils.

 Bushido has been variously defined, but it would seem that the definition most generally accepted is that it is the unwritten code of laws governing the lives and conduct of the nobles in Japan, equivalent in many ways to the European chivalry. The knights and nobles of feudal Japan were the samurai, retainers of the daimyo. Thus, Bushido was the conduct of the samurai, the aristocratic warrior class which arose during the wars of the twelfth century between the Tara and Minamoto clans - and came to glorious fruition in the Tokugawa period. The samurai cultivated the martial virtues and were indifferent to death and pain in their loyalty to their overlords." 

(BUSHIDO, The Soul of Japan,  by Inazo Nitobe)