Those who know do not speak; those who speak do not know
Why are all buddhist stories like this?
Anon has apparently never read a buddhist story
Yes.
Koans are designed to be given by a teacher to a student when the teacher personally assesses that the student could benefit from considering it. They’re also designed to not be comprehensible rationally or immediately, but rather to prompt introspection and to get someone to reflect on their own thought patterns. You can’t just rip them out of that context while not understanding the belief system and treat them like a riddle from Reader’s Digest and expect to get anything out of them.
If you immediately know the candlelight is fire, the meal was cooked a long time ago
Zen buddhism kōans are intentionally incomprehensible https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9p5Oi4wPVVo
I know it is a shitpost but I think the goal is sometimes to force a student to move away from thought.
That’s Zen Buddhism which is like that.
Theravada Buddhism is different, it’s actually comprehensible.
Mahayana can be pretty out there too.
Siddhattha overhears these doubts being expressed so he takes of his clothes, spreads his legs and shows the ladies what is there - and what was there is his kosohitavatthaguyha glowing with a golden light. Then a lotus appeared and from its centre a baby boy’s penis emerges which gradually grows into an adult’s. More lotuses appear, each with a bodhisattva in it. The sutra doesn’t record what the ladies-in-waiting said about this extraordinary exhibition
https://sdhammika.blogspot.com/2010/08/strangest-sutra-of-them-all.html>
When I googled “kosohitavatthaguyha” I found this
According to the Tipiṭaka, one of the 32 Signs of a Great Man is that ‘the cloth-hidden is encased in a sheath’ (kosohitavatthaguyha, M.II,135). This was interpreted to mean that the Buddha’s penis could be drawn into the body and remain there as with some animals like horses, cattle and elephants.
the banyan tree was considered sacred, and the Buddha is supposed to have had the proportions of a banyan tree (nigrodhaparimaṇḍala), i.e. the length of his outstretched arms equalled his height. He is supposed to have had long curved eye lashes (gopakhuma) and a very long tongue (pahūtajivhā), both of which are features of the cow, an animal the Indians greatly revered.
According to the Ṛg Veda, an attractive penis would be big and thick like a club. The Atharva Veda has a prayer to make the penis long and hard like a taut bow and also contains spells to make it as long as that of the wild ass, the elephant or the stallion. The Rāmāyana on the other hand, describes the auspicious man as having a slender, short penis with a smooth glans and drooping testicles. The Buddha seems to have had an aesthetic appreciation for this part of the male anatomy too.
It seems probable that like the ancient Greeks, the Buddha’s contemporaries considered having a penis whose foreskin (kosa) remained over the glans (makula) when either flaccid or erect, to be a sign of beauty and nobility and that at a later period this physical characteristic was attributed to the Buddha.
I didn’t know Buddhism had so much dick lore ~ I want that horse cock spell.
You haven’t read much Abhidharma if “comprehensible” is how you would describe Theravada.
Not saying anything is wrong with Theravada. Entire cultures are built on its principles. But it takes a surface-level glance to think of it as something simple and easy to understand.
Zen though, most of the teachings are about pedagogical methods rather than doctrine. That’s why it sounds weird to westerners who think of “religion” as dusty old books and priests who tell you what to do/think.
Zen teachings literally tell you “Don’t cling to fixed ideas. Don’t seek answers from some external authority figure.” Everything they teach is about guiding you to internalize those things. It’s about showing, not telling.
So expecting it to “make sense” in the lens of “just let me read a book that will tell me what to believe” is already starting from the wrong foot.
Rinzai Zen to be specific. Soto Zen doesnt emphasize koans.
It’s also Chan Zen.
If you meet the Buddha on the road, tell him I said hi.
If you meet Buddha on the road, fucking shank that bitch, he owes me $20
Are you the hot dog guy?
Sure thing
In the Second Scroll of Wen the Eternally Surprised, a story is written concerning one day when the apprentice Clodpool, in a rebellious mood, approached Wen and spake thusly:
“Master, what is the difference between a humanistic, monastic system of belief in which wisdom in sought by means of an apparently nonsensical system of questions and answers, and a lot of mystic gibberish made up on the spur of the moment?”
Wen considered this for some time, and at last said: “A fish!”
And Clodpool went away, satisfied.
I love how, even never having read this before, I know it’s Terry Pratchett
Here’s a legit Zen koan that fits the bill:
Mumonkan number 14: Nansen kills the cat
Once the monks of the Western and Eastern Halls were arguing about a cat. Nansen, holding up the cat, said, “You monks! If you can say a word of Zen, I will spare the cat. Otherwise I will kill it.” No one could answer, so Nansen cut the cat in two. That evening, when Joshu returned, Nansen told him of the incident. Joshu thereupon took off his sandal, put it on his head, and walked off. Nansen said, “If you had been there, the cat would have been saved!”
an interpretation
It might make more sense if you replace Joshu’s actions with “doing a jerk-off motion.” He’s treating the discussion as unserious, as well as treating himself as unserious.
Nansen shows up looking to start an argument in bad faith, no doubt with all sorts of rhetorical talking points prepared designed to catch the other side in a gotcha. Attempting to engage just takes you into his prepared talking points and responses, while evading the question or refusing to answer makes him feel like he’s “won,” and leaves his words unchallenged.
The only thing you can really do is to take him off script and take the wind out of his sails. Nansen was prepared for the possibility that they’d answer, and prepared for the possibility that they’d refuse to engage, but he didn’t have a plan for what to do if someone put a shoe on their head.
Also, by treating himself unseriously and humbling himself, Joshu removes Nansen’s motivation to prove his superiority and the superiority of his house. Joshu essentially “shows his belly,” and says through his actions, “Bro, I’m just a silly little guy, if you wanna kill that cat, that’s all you.” Nansen’s internal justification for killing the cat could only be that he wanted to knock the other side down off their high horse, and so by abandoning any sense of dignity he would remove that motivation, and the cat’s life would be saved.
By both having the wisdom to understand Nansen’s thought process, and having the humility to put aside his dignity for the sake of saving the life of an innocent being, Joshu ironically displays a better grasp of Buddhist teachings than Nansen, regardless of whether Nansen could beat him in a debate through wordplay and rhetoric.
Neat :) thanks for that
I am enlightened!
Rhetoric is like Excel, it can make anything look sensible.
Those koans were stories written by Mumon. They weren’t all based entirely on real events. Maybe Nansen gave a dharma talk where he said he would kill the cat, but to actually kill it would go against the precepts. Highly doubtful that actually happened.
The point of the koan isn’t surface level though, and if you expect to be able to extract a lesson from a koan by one simple reading, then you’re approaching koans wrong to begin with.
Mumon’s commentaries might help guide your understanding, and perhaps secondary scholarship like a translator’s notes or whatever. But unless you’re viewing it from inside the tradition, it’s likely to seem obscure/perplexing.
But unless you already understand what he means by “say a word of Zen,” and why Joshu placing a sandal on his head was taken as an acceptable answer, then this story will elude you no matter how you look at it.
Ah yes, enlightenment
You wouldn’t get it…
It goes to school in a different country
A Buddhist monk walks up to a hot dog stand and says “Make me one with everything.”
A buddha walks into a sculpting studio and says “Make me.”
The hot dog vendor hands over the sausage and bun with all the trimmings, and the Buddhist hands over a twenty. The vendor pockets it.
The Buddhist asks “Where’s my change?” and the vendor replies “change must come from within”.
Then the Buddhist pulls out a pistol and sights it on the hot dog vendor. The vendor holds up his hands and says, “Whoa, whatever happened to inner peace?”
The Buddhist replies, “This is my inner piece.”
The hot dog vendor scoffed confidently, “You won’t shoot, you don’t have the nerve on ya’.”
A piano falls on the buddhist and kills him. The hot dog vendor was enlightened.
Buddha did say you could put whatever you want on your pizza, even if he himself didn’t like it, which is pretty fucking based as far as religions go.
Buddha never had someone order durian pizza for the group.
The most Zen thing would be to eat it all up, every bite, and say nothing since obviously durian pizza for the group would be intended to get a rise from them. You accept the adversity, and learn never to let that guy order pizza for the group ever again.
Pretty sure that was the apostle Paul, but what ever
Note to myself: Do not put pineapple on pizza in presence of Buddha.
