Mu
by 10k films on February 6th, 2012
Mu (無) (in Japanese/Korean) or Wu (simplified Chinese: 无; traditional Chinese: 無; Mandarin Pinyin: wú; Jyutping: mou2), is a word which has been translated variously as “not”, “nothing”, “without”, “nothingness”, “non existent”, “non being”, or evocatively simply as “no thing”.
“No.”
by 10k films on February 4th, 2012
“A monk asked Zhaozhou: “Does a dog have buddha-nature or not?” Zhaozhou said: “No.” (Mu) This word No is not the No of existence and non-existence. It is not the No of true nothingness. Ultimately, what is it?
When you arrive here, you must abandon all with your whole body, not doing anything, not doing not-doing-anything. Go straight to the empty and free and vast, with no pondering what to think. The previous thought is already extinct, the following thought does not arise, the present thought is itself empty. You do not hold to emptiness, and you forget you are not holding on. You do not reify this forgetting: you escape from not reifying and the escape too is not kept. When you reach such a time, there’s just a spiritual light that’s clearly aware and totally still, appearing as a lofty presence.
Do not wrongly give birth to interpretations: just bring up the meditation saying twenty-four hours a day, whatever you are doing. Do not be oblivious of it for a moment: diligently come to grips with it and study it in fine detail. If you keep studying like this, pulling it back and forth, when you reach the proper time, you better look back most carefully and see what Zhaozhou’s No means. When you are [unable to turn back] like a rat going into a [hollow] horn, then views are cut off.
When those of sharp faculties get here, they empty through and smash the lacquer bucket [of ignorance] and capture and defeat Zhaozhou. They have no more doubts about the sayings of the world’s [enlightened] people.
Even if you are awakened like this, do not speak of it in front of people without wisdom. You must go see a legitimate teacher of the school.”
[A Buddha from Korea: The Zen Teachings of T’aego, translated by J. C. Cleary. Teaching No. 15 is on pp. 106–107.] See also the 10k film: “Master T’aego Addresses the Great Assembly of Dragons and Elephants“
son of the moment
by 10k films on January 17th, 2012
“The saint hath no fear because fear is the expectation either of some future calamity or of the eventual loss of some object of desire, whereas the saint is the son of his time (ibn waqtihi); he has no future that he should fear anything; and as he hath no fear so he hath no hope, since hope is the expectation either of gaining an object of desire or of being relieved from a misfortune, and this belongs to the future; nor does he grieve because grief arises from the rigour of time and how should he feel grief who is in the radiance of satisfaction (rida) and the garden of concord (muwafaqat)?”
Al-Junayd of Baghdad (830 -910)
Buddhist Economics by E.F. Schumacher
by 10k films on December 26th, 2011
“There is universal agreement that the fundamental source of wealth is human labour. Now, the modern economist has been brought up to consider ‘labour’ or work as little more than a necessary evil. From the point of view of the employer, it is in any case simply an item of cost, to be reduced to a minimum if it cannot be eliminated altogether, say, by automation. From the point of view of the workman, it is a ‘disutility’; to work is to make a sacrifice of one’s leisure and comfort, and wages are a kind of compensation for the sacrifice. Hence, the ideal from the point of view of the employer is to have output without employees, and the ideal from the point of view of the employee is to have income without employment…
The Buddhist point of view takes the function of work to be at least threefold: to give a man a chance to utilize and develop his faculties; to enable him to overcome his ego-centeredness by joining with other people in a common task; and to bring forth the goods and services needed for a becoming existence. Again, the consequences that flow from this view are endless. To organize work in such a manner that it becomes meaningless, boring, stultifying, or nerve- racking for the worker would be little short of criminal; it would indicate a greater concern with goods than with people, an evil lack of compassion and a soul-destroying degree of attachment to the most primitive side of this worldly existence. Equally, to strive for leisure as an alternative to work would be considered a complete misunderstanding of one of the basic truths of human existence, namely that work and leisure are complementary parts of the same living process and cannot be separated without destroying the joy of work and the bliss of leisure…
It is clear, therefore, that Buddhist economics must be very different from the economics of modern materialism, since the Buddhist sees the essence of civilization not in a multiplication of wants but in the purification of human character. Character, at the same time, is formed primarily by a man’s work. And work, properly conducted in conditions of human dignity and freedom, blesses those who do it and equally their products…
For the modern economist this is very difficult to understand. He is used to measuring the ‘standard of living’ by the amount of annual consumption, assuming all the time that a man who consumes more is ‘better off’ than a man who consumes less.”
from ‘Buddhist Economics‘ in ‘Small is Beautiful: Economics As If People Mattered‘ by E.F. Schumacher Read Full Article
Luke 17:20-21
by 10k films on November 30th, 2011
Once, having been asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, “The kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation, nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the kingdom of God is within you.” Luke 17:20-21
The self is the source of thoughts
by 10k films on November 21st, 2011
“Why do you think of yourself as a householder? If you become a wandering monk, a similar thought – that you are a renunciate – will haunt you. Whether you continue as a husband or father, or renounce your family and go to the forest, your small self will still accompany you.
The self is the source of thoughts. It creates the body and the world and makes you think that you are really a householder. If you renounce the world, it will only substitute the thought ”renunciate” for ”householder” and the environment of the forest for that of the household. But the mental obstacles are always there. They even increase in new surroundings. There is no help in the change of environment.
The obstacle is the mind. It must be overcome, whether at home or in the forest. If you can do it in the forest, why not in the home? Therefore, why change the environment? Your efforts can be made even now, whatever your environment may be.” — Ramana Maharshi
It leads to Me
by 10k films on November 21st, 2011
”Whatever path men travel
Is My path
No matter where they walk
It leads to Me.”
Bhagavad Gita
All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace // Documentary by Adam Curtis
by 10k films on October 12th, 2011
Love and Power
http://rutube.ru/tracks/4465754.html?v=8169cfd5ea9771fdcf2c2c359aa6f1e7
The Use and Abuse of Vegetational Concepts
http://rutube.ru/tracks/4487452.html?v=2baf06c898b2262d9b20ac3b3382effc
The Monkey in the Machine and the Machine in the Monkey
http://rutube.ru/tracks/4525740.html?v=30dfe0fefe8182e9febe828bf9efe8dc