Monday, April 23, 2007

No Death No Birth. No Dirt No Cleanliness.

That's what Sifu said yesterday after the class. I don't remember the context but I thought it made sense.

He said it in Chinese too.

So now - what does it mean?
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5 comments:

  1. sucheelaApril 23, 2007 at 11:33 AM

    I think it means that we should appreciate all aspects of life even though at first it seems bad. Eventually it will cause some thing good.

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  2. shaolinchad is niederweltApril 23, 2007 at 12:17 PM

    amituofo! it sounds like sifu is talking about the cycle of life & it's impermanence. there isn't one of these things without the other. good lessons to remember!

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  3. cs wallaceApril 25, 2007 at 4:24 AM

    to me that part of the sutra (and all of it) is talking about how nothing has its own independent self that isn't causally related to everything else. nothing is born/created or dies because there really wasn't anything there different from other things to begin with. i think quantam physics and buddhism have a lot in common in that sense. we give things and concepts names and labels because its necessary to in daily life, but when we do we differentiate them, the trick is to get past that.

    kinda hard to do -_-

    hmm that didn't make much sense did it...oh well =)

    oh yea and that reminds me of hui neng's poem -

    Bodhi really has no tree
    Nor clear is the mirror stand
    Nothing's there initially
    So where can the dust motes land?

    whoooo mad buddhisty

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  4. QbertplayaApril 25, 2007 at 9:51 AM

    i wasn't there for when shifu said that, but my guess is that maybe he meant that you can't have one thing without the other. that you can't focus on just one concept without considering the correlative. that you should take everything in the grand scheme of things and not get lost in any one particular detail.

    or, as sucheela suggests and as the theme song to a favorite '80s sitcom of mine goes:

    you take the good
    you take the bad
    you take them both and there you have
    the facts of life, the facts of life...

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  5. EstherApril 25, 2007 at 11:25 AM

    Things I think of:
    1. Life!
    2. Yin/Yang
    3. Balance
    4. Metaphor: see saw

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