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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Mar 2001
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We all take pleasure in the satisfaction of appetites. But, occassionally, we take a step back and notice that those satisfactions as satisfactions are conditions of duress, compulsions in the most literal sense. Take another step back and life itself appears as something forced upon us against our will. These encounters with the unwilling horizon of will are nauseating. Thus, my lunch-induced thoughts this pleasant afternoon. And, somehow, Adam and Eve came to mind--uninvited. We think of them (and I am not proselytizing, but considering a myth) without want locked up there in their garden. All the fruits of the trees, all the luscious nakedness. But if their every need were satisfied, they were not free of want. What, then, is the fall? The recognition of want: want as pain? And is that not just disillusionment?
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Posts: 13,803
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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A monk had attained enlightenment and was striving to describe to his Master the ecstasy that he had been in for the last few days. The Master replied, "Ah! Something else to let go."
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Joined: Jan 2001
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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The things that you're liable to read in the Bible. ain't necessarily so. Since there never was an Eden, why bother trying to analyze it?
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Joined: Dec 2000
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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why bother trying to analyze it?
Since it's a myth it speaks of the human condition and is, as such, worthy of analysis.
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Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 13,803
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Dec 2000
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The word apple, in English, used to refer to any round fruit such as a pomegranate or a norange.
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Joined: Jan 2001
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jan 2001
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It speaks only of the interpretation of life formed by a very wise man or group of men, who knew so little about the world around them that their opinions about it were necessarily hopelessly flawed.
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Joined: Dec 2000
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Dec 2000
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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More than just a fruit, an apple was used to signify sweetness.. a very desirable thing-- since humans are born with a taste for sweetness.
in the days before cheap sugar, apples represented sweetness,-- and sweetness was the essense of desire...
see The Botany of Desire: A Plant's Eye View of the World" Michael Pollen, (pub. by Random house.) for essay on the subject.
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Joined: Apr 2000
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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> The Botany of Desire: A Plant's Eye View of the World" Michael Pollen
well there's an aptronym for you.
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Pooh-Bah
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OP
Pooh-Bah
Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 2,379 |
Tibetan and Zen Bhuddism were completely separate for, I don't know, thousands of years. The professors at Harvard (I believe (a lot of "believes" herein, no doubt)) decided it would be fun to bring a master of each tradition to a seminar. They thought the ensuing discourse would be a delight and very much the thing for wine and cheese in the aftermath. Well, these traditions are rather different. Zen is more severe, and its practitioners like to cast doubt like a ratan cane on everything. Came the evening and the masters were seated opposite each other. The Zen master held an orange out before the Tibetan and demanded, "What is this?" When the Tibetan didn't answer, the Zen master demanded again, "What is this?" And so on. Finally the Tibetan took the orange and said, "It's an orange, don't you have them where you come from?"
embellished from hazy memory
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