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Night before last I stumbled upon a dharma talks podcast from a guy with whom I lived at the monastery twenty-seven years ago. He runs a Zen practice center nowadays, having received transmission from his teacher, the charlatan who'd been abbot when I was there. Let's just say I was not expecting much.
I have spent some hours, over the last thirty-six or so, in horrified fixation that swings back and forth between an intensely wrathful state and a gobsmacked cosmic concentration. I want to scream, "What? Did he give you a true or false final and declare you enlightened? Is it possible to be even less of a Zen master than that clown?"
You won't be able to understand the wrathful part, or the concentration part, but it came within thirty seconds of making me late for my haircut, still in a state of desperation to hop on a plane and go chew him out.
Beside being incoherent and less insightful than a dirt beginner, it's bursting with POLITICS. Holy fuck. That's such a monster abuse of suffering sentient beings, I can only emit sporadic loud curses and insults at my computer when some particularly rich horse shit issues from these "dharma" talks.
In an attempt to cool down or move my heat somewhere else, I started googling others from back when I first left the world only to find it the world cubed — meaner... more dishonest... behind an adamantine facade of "piety" — and found Taiyo, who somehow seems to have taken a clue and done something worthy.
So I'm not going to go cut the fuck to ribbons, because looking at Taiyo's pictures soothed my outraged nerves. It will not do even an ion of good to box the "dharma" blatherer's ears because he's got a PhD and has written a bunch of books and taught at a bunch of universities and studied with some "genuine" Japs for a couple years in the bargain... a pig's ear who thinks he's a silk purse. PURE imposture.
I have been feeling the need to know the outrage in detail, know HOW far degenerate the ancients' work has become, and it has, for the first time in my life, given me the urge to open up shop for student refugees from charlatan abuse. I'm sure it will pass if I can find more of my once-compatriots who aren't living off ruining sentient beings.
pipe up any time....
