Big East & Beers with My Master

A student took his zen master to a Big East Tournament game.
Who are you cheering for master?
I was cheering for the woman who caught the peanuts that that man with the cart threw to her. Great catch.
No...I mean which team, UCONN or Syracuse?
Which one are you, cheering for?
Syracuse, baby...Go Orange!
Why?
I went to college there.
Where?
Syracuse.
Where's Syracuse?
Upstate New York.
Ahhh. And where is upstate New York?
On a map?
What country?
U.S.-- Did you sneak a beer while I was...at the bathroom?
And where is UCONN.
Connecticut?
What--?
--Country? United States.
I will cheer for the American team.
They are both American teams.
I see a Chinese boy on the court. Is he American.
No they...
Ahh. I will vote for the World Team!
But that's not the point--
What are the players made of?
Slim Jims and Red Bull (grumble).
No. That's what they ate. What are they made of?
Bones. Blood?
No. The little stuff.
Cells, atoms?
And they?
Pudding made from the curdled sweat of angels who dance on pin heads.
What? I am getting deaf in my old age.
Nothing. They are made of the stuff between stuff.
Oh look the game is over. That was most fun.
Son-of-a...!
What is wrong? We all won?
(mutter) The beer guy still serving?
He is all out. I drank the last one while you were in the bathroom, my son.

What is Real?

What is real? Everything. Nothing.

(The beard though, transcends all...
until I shave it and

donate it to make hair plugs

for balding wolverines.)

Okay...enough about the beard.

Time to talk about healing...
About the prize always in hand,

only seeming to be just out of reach.

Strength comes in so many forms,

all driven by the mind, the will.

Strength, the will, and the mind are illusions.
So am I truly cut open? And if so,

aren't I also always healed?

I am everything.

I am nothing.

I am the breath of stars
that are truly only pin pricks in
a bed sheet hung out to dry in the moonlight
on a far-far away world that does not exist

except in the pages of a child's book

left forgotten under the roots of the oldest tree--ever...

And ever will be.

(This is what my Milkman used as an argument when I asked him why he was replacing my empty milk bottles with...more empty milk bottles. I said, well done with the Zen logic, and then paid him with an illusionary one-hundred dollar bill and asked for $90.00 back in real money.)

This is what happens when...

This is what happens when you can't lift...or flip tires. You suddenly rent out space out on your face to endangered arctic wolves to feel good about yourself. Cleared for jogging by doc Baccay, and band work--still no ab work or twisting (no real Wing Tsun...doing my form now). Went back in the weight room...nothing over 70 pounds on certain machines...

Must be the wolves but I am seeing the light!

Miss everyone. See you soon!

Cap

Before Names: Gate of the Great Truth

We desire to understand the world by giving names to the things we see, but these things are only the effects of something subtle. When we see beyond the desire to use names, we can sense the nameless cause of these effects. The cause and the effects are aspects of the same, one thing.They are both mysterious and profound. At their most mysterious and profound point lies the "Gate of the Great Truth".

                 ---Lao Tzu

Vagabond: Musashi

Yeah, Musashi. In another life.

Valentine's Day...Deal With It!

Yeah. Valentine's Day. Made up, marketing, bull----- holiday. A chance for Stover's Candies and Rose Farmers to &*^% you up the &*(%. But so what? If she (or he) is worth it...do something nice! You should do something nice everyday anyway. You don't. You know it. So today...buy some freakin Stover's heart-crap-chocolates, 2 dozen roses and get some. She (or he) deserves your freakin attention, she or he puts up with you the other 364 days of the year. Deal with it!

xoxo
CAP

Buggs in the Machine

"Hair like this makes me look at what others call weality and wonder if they are a part of ours or if we are a part of theirs; celluloid extras in their cartoon dweam. These woots are so existential, doc."

--Buggs Bunny to "Monster" during a permamamnent.

Tao Sam'ich

While others are discussing the Superbowl today. I found myself in need of a more spiritual tack. Modern football gives my mouth a bit of a melange taste. I miss Randy White. So here's some Tao. Good luck. From the book: The Religions of the East by Edward Rice. Two excerpts without interpretation. I figured you needed to work for it a bit (and we all know I don't know what the hell I am talking about, anyway). And the final quote, which I put in the middle, is right from the big cheese: Lao Tzu. I put it in the center because it is the meat in my life's sam'ich. (Well that and my wife and my Zen pickles.) (Okay just added a bit more meat to the sam'ich...so shoot me. It's now a Tao Italian Combo....read on).

1. On an excursion to Red Lake and the K'un-lun mountains, the Emperor lost his black pearl while gazing south to the place from which he had come and to which he would return. He asked Wisdom to find it, without success. And then in turn, he asked Keen Vision and Skilled Debater, neither of whom could find the pearl. Then the Yellow Ancestor requested Nothing (literally, Nothing-seeming) to search, and Nothing found it. "Strange indeed," said the Ancestor, "that Nothing was able to find it.

2. “He who controls others may be powerful, but he who has mastered himself is mightier still.”

2.5 The Tao abides in non-action,
Yet nothing is left undone.
If kings and lords observed this,
The ten thousand things would develop naturally.
If they still desired to act,
They would return to the simplicity of formless substance.
Without form there is no desire.
Without desire there is tranquillity.
In this way all things would be at peace.

3. The philosophers confused themselves about joy and anger, deceived themselves about stupidity and wisdom, criticized themselves about good and evil, and maligned themselves about falsehood and truth, the world began to decline. Excellence in all it's grandeur lost it's equality, and life itself slipped away. The world grew fond of know-how, and the people sought to exhaust it. Axes and saws served as laws, plumb lines determined death, awls and chisels formed judgements. The world went straight to pieces.

(Lao Tzu would have liked the simplicity and naturalness of flippin' tires...him and that Babe-the Blue-Ox he rode. Takes a Strongman to ride an ox, man.)