The Cucumber Sage: A Modern (Spoof) Zen Story

Here is one of my favourite stories.

It raises key issues about Buddhist practice in the zen tradition but is also a great laugh and a skillful parody of the old zen mondo stories as per e.g. Paul Reps, Zen Flesh, Zen Bones. Maybe Zen monks would find it particularly meaningful?

My Name is Earl is back - Channel 4, Thursday 14th June 2007 10.00pm

A grateful nation will sigh with relief and whoop with joy that Series 2 will at last grace our screens. A good thing is happening for all of us. Collective good karma despite BB???

Thanks be to Channel 4 - at last they got something right. Greg Garcia's version of the poor, ignorant and oppressed is so much more compassionate than BB's.

Ethical Banking

Watch this on Youtube

A Favourite Zen Poem

A million Mount Sumerus are but a drop of dew
On the end of a single hair;
Three thousand worlds are only a seagull
Floating on the ocean waves.
The two children of the tiny creatures
In the eyebrow of a mosquito
Never stop quarrelling between themselves
As to whose earth this is.

Hakuin

From:
R.H. Blythe, Zen and Zen Classics, 7 volumes (Tokyo: Hakuseido,
1960-1970), V, page 198 cited in
Conrad Hyers, Zen and The Comic Spirit (Philadelphia:
The Westminster Press, 1973), page 13.

All Hail Grey Power! Rock On "My Generation".

This excellent BBC sponsored piece of work is in aid of Age Concern (a matter of self interest for the likes of me). These people could be called the generation just ahead of me but, in truth, many of them will be only five or ten years older than I am.

Enjoy the fun and laughter and pray we all have this spirit as old age comes along. Postmodern ironies are probably in there somewhere for those who need them.

A good laugh for all of us.