Nyataimori

i enjoyed this post tremendously.

possibly because it sounds like your writing.

narcissists. both of you. i approve.

Freakin’ Zen. Go back and tell that priest that you are his master and he is your disciple. That would be kind of hot, and then you could tell him to go be something else instead.

mm…i don’t think it sounds like me. but i am a narcissist though.

i don’t want him to be something else. he was all in the robes and the sleeves and the eyeliner with the incense coiling about his head and mmmmm.…

i probably am a narcissist, but how was this being narcissisitic?

it’s like your writing being without quotation marks, short, and somewhat cryptic. it’s a hybrid.

But he could be in the robes and the sleeves and the eyeliner (eyeliner? Buddhist priests wear eyeliner? I never knew this) with the incense and whatnot, without being freakin’ Zen. This is what you should make him understand.

I say it again. Freakin’ Zen.

dianna, elucidate for us why you dislike zen so much, please.

i think he was not actually wearing eyeliner. it just looked like he was wearing it.

Heheh… contrary to what Jacob is probably going to say, I don’t have a particular vendetta against Zen. It’s just the not-appealing-to-me branch of an otherwise appealing-to-me family of religions— not so much the fly in my soup, just the small piece of unexciting limp mushroom in my soup.

There’s only so far you can go with being intentionally cryptic and nonsensical before I start to wonder if you’re being cryptic and nonsensical instead of making a point, rather than being cryptic and nonsensical in order to make a point. And then I get tired of it and wish you’d do something else.

Not you, of course. Just whoever’s doing it. And he should have been wearing eyeliner.

hmm…ok, well i guess i can understand that. i mean, rinzai zen (the one with the koans like ‘what’s the sound of one hand clapping?’ is the really cryptic one. soto zen is, i think, not really that bad. or that different from (oh i don’t want to say this for fear of being wrong) other forms of japanese buddhism.

japanese buddhism is a lot…more complicated than indian or chinese buddhism, i think. it’s like the japanese got buddhism and looked around surreptitiously and then fucked it all up and over.

like they said, ‘well, why do we meditate this way, when instead we can do THIS.’ usually the this turns out to be something like true pure land buddhism where all you have to do is THINK just ONCE the little nembutsu chant and you’re assured a place in the pure land/(heaven). that’s an absurd cop-out in my opinion. silly japanese shortcuts to enlightenment.

Hahahaha… that’s fantastic. It’s like the checkbox in the back of a plastic-covered New Testament I got handed by a Gideon person, that says something like, “Yes! I accept Jesus Christ as my lord and savior! I want to go to heaven!” And you’re assured that if you check it you will, in fact, be saved. So easy!

dear dianna,

do you like me? check one:
_ yes
_ no
_ maybe
_ yes but i like the dark lord satan better

your friend,
jesus

___yes
___no
_x_maybe
_x_please send me more information.

dear dianna,
the results of your survey are as follows:

if you checked yes, please come and join me in heaven for tea and crumpets.
if you checked no, you will roast in hell and there will be not even a crumb of a crumpet.
if you checked maybe, what will it take to convince you? scones in the offing?
if you checked yes but i like the dark lord satan better, then you can have him. but know this. he cheats at chess and he burns all his tea pastries. furthermore, when you loan him your weed-whacker, he always gives it back blooded.

yours in myself,
jesus