Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your common sense."
-- Buddha
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People are going to have kittens because you didn't post the whole thing.
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I don't know the whole thing--i didn't think of that when i posted...i just adopted it from something i saw in the political arena and applied it to my learning process lately...
Do YOU know the whole thing? anyway, my Sensei, Nichijo Shaka, may his soul be enlightened, was a bona fide cat freak--upt 50 at a time in his jungle "dojo" in Hawaii--so let 'em have kittens...they're fun to herd.
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I don't know the whole thing--i didn't think of that when i posted...i just adopted it from something i saw in the political arena and applied it to my learning process lately...
Do YOU know the whole thing? anyway, my Sensei, Nichijo Shaka, may his soul be enlightened, was a bona fide cat freak--upt 50 at a time in his jungle "dojo" in Hawaii--so let 'em have kittens...they're fun to herd.
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I kinda agree with the first commenter... it doesn't apply very well to today's politics and what it means to have one own's "reason" and "common sense". Do you mind elaborating?
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That there is so much verbiage being thrown around and with such personal conviction that one must contemplate and find the answer within--which I apply ESPECIALLY to political pedantry, punditry and propaganda from all sides.
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15th-Jun-2007 09:10 pm (local) - Re: my understanding is...
telarus

THE FIVE COMMANDMENTS (THE PENTABARF)

The PENTABARF was discovered by the hermit Apostle Zarathud in the Fifth Year of The Caterpillar. He found them carved in gilded stone, while building a sun deck for his cave, but their import was lost for they were written in a mysterious cypher. However, after 10 weeks & 11 hours of intensive scrutiny he discerned that the message could be read by standing on his head and viewing it upside down.

KNOW YE THIS O MAN OF FAITH!

I - There is no Goddess but Goddess and She is Your Goddess. There is no Erisian Movement but The Erisian Movement and it is The Erisian Movement. And every Golden Apple Corps is the beloved home of a Golden Worm.

II - A Discordian Shall Always use the Official Discordian Document Numbering System.

III - A Discordian is Required during his early Illumination to Go Off Alone & Partake Joyously of a Hot Dog on a Friday; this Devotive Ceremony to Remonstrate against the popular Paganisms of the Day: of Catholic Christendom (no meat on Friday), of Judaism (no meat of Pork), of Hindic Peoples (no meat of Beef), of Buddhists (no meat of animal), and of Discordians (no Hot Dog Buns).

IV - A Discordian shall Partake of No Hot Dog Buns, for Such was the Solace of Our Goddess when She was Confronted with The Original Snub.

V - A Discordian is Prohibited of Believing what he reads.



IT IS SO WRITTEN! SO BE IT. HAIL DISCORDIA! PROSECUTORS WILL BE TRANSGRESSICUTED.
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Hilarious! Thus Spake Zarathud, indeed! But refer to my visible symbol as to when this poor pilgrim will be enjoined with organ-dised religiosity!
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telarus

Verygood sir. Having the understanding of irreligious disorganizations, you should appreciate the text known as Zenarchy.

If I may quote from this non-prophet work:

Zenarchy - Chapter 4
Zen Games, Zenarchy Counter-Games

No one complains more loudly and sincerely about hippie games than hipsters. Zen masters object likewise to something they call "the stink of Zen".
A famous roshi once said to his inquiring monks: "All this talk about Zen is making me sick to my stomach!"
If you like to eat with chop sticks and fan yourself with imported Japanese fans, that's lovely. Just don't get the idea it has a tinker's dam to do with Zen.
In every society ridden with class distinctions there is a tendency to turn everything into games of oneupsmanship. Japan is no more an exception than the United States. Zen literature is replete with transcripts of quarrels among masters about which of them is most enlightened. Such arguments frequently begin and end as jokes, however, for Zen people try to remember what they are about. Once a drunken monk wandered into the room where two Zen masters were ferociously contending and both of them collapsed in laughter, never to cross wits again.
Yet as Alan Watts points out in "Hip Zen, Square Zen", even in Japan there is a trend to formalize Zen schools that tends over the centuries to rob them of much of their spontaneous appeal.
Slapping his master was how the great Zen lunatic, Rinzai, signified his awakening. (Only fair to note: his master had been hitting him with a stick whenever he asked a question.) Said Rinzai of his master: "There is not so much to the Buddhism of Huang Po after all!" Nevertheless, today the school founded in Rinzai's name issues certificates to students who attain satori.
In America, the hip counter-culture has not even fared that well, but was co-opted in a matter of years, instead of generations.
What to do? What to do? For you cannot make rules to preserve liveliness and originality. A Zenarchist answer is to keep destroying old forms - or abandoning them - including the habit of destroying old forms when it gets in the way. For the practice of Zen or Zenarchy or psychological nakedness or whatever you want to call it says with Bob Dylan: "I got nothing, Ma, to live up to." In fact, a popular Zen saying goes, "If you meet the Buddha on the path to enlightenment - kill him!"

......

Words are useful tools of reference. Clinging too desperately to them is like grasping our lives in fear. We shut out our perceptions that made the thing worthwhile in the first place. We become like lovers who get into a spiteful fight over which of them loves the other the most.
All human activity is this way. Outward forms of religious reverence become so much more important than what religion is trying to teach, that devotees kill for them. Jesus would have to arise in every generation to denounce the scribes and Pharisees of every age for it to be any different. That was the point of the saying about new wine in old skins. Over and over, any such prophet would be crucified or stoned or lynched, besides. Objects of art suffer much the same fate. Pointing beyond the uptight concerns of the market place, they wind up objects of its calculations, investment speculations and status seeking.



The Principia's just the exoteric organ of the Paratheoanametamystichood of Eris Eoteric. 'Course, one should familiarize one-self with the work (as it lays out a 'jargon'-set, or pataphysical-game-rules-set)...if you want to dig into more esoteric Erisian texts like Zenarchy, Illuminatus!, Quantum Psychology, or the 1967 California Furniture Certifications and Regulations Guide.

Namaste.
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papananook

As a young man i refused induction into the army and was convicted, "given" a sentence of 2 years of alternate service and became a teacher of the deaf-blind--a far better fate than the horrors of Vietnam--but i am getting off the point. While sitting in a child development class in L.A. with 23 women (whew!) my mind drifted and i wrote this poem:

A zen lunatic i will be
Walking to Oregon by the sea
Never riding in cars
Throwing sand to the stars!

It has stayed with me although my life took me in many directions--herding cats in Hawaii for another lunatic Buddhist for example--
In some way i will always be living that poem...

BTW--i got an "A" in the class, slept with the teacher and borrowed her car so i could go to the beach--go figure!