Mitch,

Though I meant the tale to be  timeless it's actually based on some 
very important historical events...

(Ah, yes, as I again break the rules and explicate one's own work, I 
never seem to learn!)

In historical China, around 842, Buddhism underwent a persecution 
similar to what has happened to Tibet. Some 250,000 monks and nuns 
were made homeless--and *persona non grata*--and over a thousand 
monasteries destroyed and nearly a million acres of monastery land 
seized without any compensation.  In the main for reasons I've 
outlined in the  tale (of course I've used the option of historical 
fiction to augment along properly *energeic* lines).  The teacher was 
an actual historical person, Huang Po (named after Mt. Huang Po in 
China--I forget the province).

The details of the assassination of Langdharma "the Heretic Julian" 
King in Tibet are true too (though for dramatic unity I moved the 
whole matter to a province in China). In fact the matter used to be 
regularly celebrated at Tibetan religious festivals--the monk who 
allegedly pulled off the matter was named Palgyi Dorje, and he used 
the trick of the dying the pony to elude capture. The whole matter 
would be reenacted--to enthusiastic applause!

There actually was a disciple named Young Grasshopper, too. (Even 
the  old TV series "Kung Fu" makes use of this matter). His dharma 
name was Lin Chi, and as the "Old Grouch's" star pupil, he went on to 
found the Rinzai school of Zen--one of the four major branches. 
Though it is claimed that they used staves, etc., to "irrationally" 
shock pupils into awareness (shouts, koans, too), the "exoteric" 
knowledge (read "insiders") say No...

Kind of a prank that was played upon pupils.  After Huang Po passed 
away, 80+ years old, c. 850 A.D., Lin Chi would "dharmic act" in a 
fierce and growling mode at times--telling the panicking newer 
pupils, "Ah, Yes, you are all the dregs of humanity--cracked pewter 
that can never ring like the Old Master's bell! How I long for the 
feel of his teaching staff across my back!" Then look at them, 
like, "Go ahead, punk, make my day!" They of course would be 
terrified and would never fall asleep or show drowsiness again...

Truth of the matter was that the Old Grouch--a very large and 
powerful man--never hit nor permitted his pupils to be hit. The tales 
have him stopping sutra chanting if a fly landed on his prayer book 
and talking to the fly to urge it to go elsewhere--not even brushing 
with his hand. As if the creature could understand him!

This Lin Chi was quite a character. At another point he was asked, as 
Bodhidharma was, "What merit is involved with ______[some very public 
works]?" He is said to have scowled and said, "None whatsoever! Just 
a steaming pile of dung. Why, until you understand the true state of 
homelessness, you will never progress along the path to 
enlightenment!"

Huang Po was intriguing, too. The Buddhist monks and nuns formed an 
underground resistance--one of the first examples of "guerrilla" 
counter-strategies--and when something would happen, Emporer Wu's 
guards would come looking for old Huang Po...Who would feign 
stupidity, deafness, frailness, etc., until they would get annoyed 
and say, "Come on! We're wasting our time with this Old Fool!"

One last funny part: Huang Po and a hermit named Ma Tsu recognized 
the brilliance in this Young Grasshopper when he first arrived but 
pretended otherwise. Huang Po growled at him to "Go find Ma Tsu, you 
bedwetting little devil, I cannot help you!" 

So, the all too earnest and now brokenhearted Little Grasshopper 
dutifully went to find the eccentric Ma Tsu, living like Yoda in the 
wild. Ma Tsu played with his head deliberately, getting very good 
answers from the young one but slapping him across the cheek anyway 
and calling him "spoiled rotten by that old grandmother's kindness. 
Get out of here!"

On the way back to the monastery the young one had a flash of 
*kensho* flood through him and his grief disappeared. He was in such 
high spirits that when he was, "reluctantly" of course, granted 
interview with the Old Master again, he shouted in his face, "There 
is nothing to old Huang Po's dharma after all!" And slapped him 
across the face! 

Huang Po said, "Why you, tweak the tiger's whiskers will you!" and 
his left hand shot out lightening quick, grabbed the Young 
Grasshopper by the folds of his robe and judo threw him over his 
shoulder.  Rather roughly I'm afraid...

The matter of his losing his temper upset him so much that he 
retreated to something like that glade and sat and cried for days. 
Thus the Jakarta like tales of all the animals trying to comfort him--
while one or another disciple would espy upon him to see what was 
going on.

So, while I can't take credit for these wonderful elements,  I wanted 
to write a piece incorporating these characters--after reading an 
article in the SF Chron about a shrink in Marin County whose "claim 
to fame" is the infamous "Twinkie Defense" of Dan White. Guy of 
course has made all kinds of money in the EST-machievellian "beat me, 
daddy, eight to the bar" sadomasochistic kul-cher we gots around 
here. Real slick manipulating weasel, too: drove previous wives to 
commit suicide, his last, estranged/divorced one to finally snap and 
attack him with steak knives before jumping off the Golden Gate 
Bridge to her death. When interviewed he of course struck the poseur 
of Freud, the master of professional deceitfulness,  with the chin 
buried in hands, pondering on the meaning of it all--as if he gave a 
damn! I had a boss like him once, a New Age Nazi of the Gestalt 
movement at a health sanctuary near Mendocino where I once worked, so 
I could see right through...

But, in *these days* of "deconstruct/reinvent yourself every five 
minutes," what the hell! Honesty and authenticity are for losers! And 
get outta the way before my BMW SUV runs ya over, pal!

Anyway, glad you enjoyed--and I did indeed want to write this one 
about a man troubled by the "authenticity" facing him as a challenge, 
so, perhaps I had to go a wee bit back in time. Kind of a Chinese "to 
be or not to be," I guess...

TaMO 


--- In fiction_writers_workshop@y..., Mitch <gigzoo@y...> wrote:
> WOW TaMo!
> 
> Again I am confounded by your intelligence.
> 
> I am a pretty simple minded person but whatever i just
> read, although i can't make most of it out, i think
> was beautiful and hardly feel that i am at all
> qualified to comment on this piece!
> 
> However I will anyhow, lol, lol, lol!  I think it's
> about a man who's lost interest in what interested him
> for such a large part of his life ... teaching ... and
> that buracracy had infiltrated his environment and
> robbed him of his pleasures and that he vindicated
> himself with an uncharacteristic action by
> assasinating a bad dude.  Am I at allll close?? lol,
> lol, lol  
> 
> I loved the part about painting the mare black and it
> regaining it's white colour after passing through the
> water ... very very clever!  I felt an incredible
> sadness for the teacher and the descriptions of the
> monkeys and squirrels was well done.
> 
> Reading this piece was like being thrown into a
> mystical tale, illustrated years and years before now.
> 
> Great writing TaMo, so glad ur up and running again! 
> Ur talent awes me!!!  Going to go read it through
> again.
> 
> Mitch
> 
> --- Finn MacChumaill <big_rudra@y...> wrote:
> > 
> >    tnoonan  Normal  tnoonan  2  115 
> > 2001-05-22T19:18:00Z  2001-05-22T19:18:00Z  6  1411 
> > 8046  PCCD  67  16  9881  9.3821    Print  
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> >             Even the doe nuzzling the old Chinese
> > man—seated upon a rock in the tree-lined shelter of
> > a cool glade—was no consolation to him.
> > 
> >             "Ah, I am just an old man now," he
> > sighed, the muscles in his broad chest shaking with
> > grief. "Nobody pays me any mind any more."
> > 
> >             Several squirrels who'd scampered in
> > from the forest shook tails like plumes, then, with
> > soft, almondine eyes, resumed watching him.  The
> > monkeys who'd swung down from the branches regarded
> > him too—tipping heads first one way, then the other,
> > holding feet in hands and gently rocking. The doe
> > went back to grazing.
> > 
> >             The chin of his big bald head nodded
> > inwards as the large luminous eyes that used to
> > sparkle with mirth when he was teaching softly
> > teared.
> > 
> >             He'd taken to coming here for respite
> > when he could no longer handle the camp of monks and
> > nuns.  Though his eyesight was failing (his hearing,
> > too, getting even worse) he knew that his
> > distractedness and inability to pay attention to his
> > pupils—or even the mundane matters of seeing that
> > the supplies were properly gathered, the meals
> > cooked—lay elsewhere and he was troubled that he
> > just did not know why. 
> > 
> >             Perhaps he no longer knew what to do… 
> > 
> >             He remembered how at one time he would
> > lecture to 1,000 people on Vulture Peak, with people
> > traveling from far provinces just to hear him
> > discourse on the Dharma. How in the world had things
> > become so different?
> > 
> >             In front of him one of the monkeys
> > stood, did a backflip, then reseated himself to the
> > chattering approval of the others. Usually said
> > tricks made his eyes grow wide with wonder, his
> > belly shake with amusement. But not today.  Another
> > tear slowly ran down his cheek. 
> > 
> >             For too long now he'd found that no
> > matter which way he led the camp they could find no
> > monasteries remaining.  Perhaps, he thought, that 
> > when Emporer Wu's troops had arrived at their own
> > monastery he should have done things differently.
> > Yet he could not believe his ears when the captain
> > had confronted him—as the senior teacher—and
> > demanded that, according to new proclamation, they
> > renounce Buddhism as a foreign superstition and
> > convert the monastery to a center for studies of
> > native Confucianism.  He'd been sewing a rip in one
> > of his robes, and, not wishing to be distracted, had
> > simply nodded his head  No. 
> > 
> >             The troops had brandished swords and
> > lances and prodded everyone out of the buildings and
> > courtyard..  Then they had gathered all the
> > religious statues, thangka paintings and other
> > sacred objects forming the shrine's alter and,
> > denouncing it all as demonic idolatry, smashed
> > everything into a pile of rubble.
> > 
> >             As all watched in astonishment, next the
> > buildings were torched.  Flames leaping high behind
> > them the troops then left—coarse laughter resounding
> > among the hoof beats…
> > 
> >             Since that time—six years that have
> > seemed like an eternity—they trekked to Lung Hsing
> > Monastery, then K'ai Yuan and a dozen others
> > outlying their region.  At each one, rubble.  His
> > scouts would return—eager with news of one in an
> > area not yet plagued by the mad Emperor and his
> > cadres of Confucian court scribes—and each time,
> > with high spirits, they'd set out as if seeking the
> > promised land of Heaven.
> > 
> >             Yet too many times now they'd crest a
> > hill and discover, in the distance, columns of
> > billowing black smoke. As if the troops had awaited
> > their arrival before destroying. Still more crying
> > refuges with tales of fresh destruction.
> > 
> >             They had even had to take on groups of
> > nuns—wandering in utter bewilderment. The older ones
> > wide-eyed with fear, unable to speak of the
> > savagings the younger ones had had to endure as each
> > was bounced roughly along from one soldier to
> > another.
> > 
> >             Of course he knew that monks and nuns in
> > the same camp was not a wise idea, but what choice
> > had he had?
> > 
> >             In the branches above him birds
> > chirruped, startling him. The squirrels and  monkeys
> > before him still sat, regarding him.  
> > 
> >             "So, you are my pupils now.  Hmmn, yes,
> > I see," he chuckled.  
> > 
> >             His thoughts returned to the source of
> > their plague—Langdarma the heretic! The heretic's 
> > brother, who'd administered the province before him,
> > had been most favorably disposed towards Buddhism. 
> > 
> > He himself had been invited to the capital to
> > discourse the Dharma and had delivered one of his
> > best and sharpest sermons.  He'd told the tale of
> > mountains and rivers: at first in practice,
> > mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers.  Then
> > one begins to notice mountains in everything. 
> > Rivers in everything.  If one looks, for example, at
> > a peak when the sun is just right, it glimmers like
> > a river.  When one gazes into a stream, seeing the
> > cool deep rockbed beneath the spangling surface,
> > then relaxing the eyes with mushin, no gaze, no
> > concepts, no form, no emptiness, one sees the
> > surface of the water as being as solid and of great
> > form as a mountain. Then mountains become rivers and
> > rivers become mountains…
> > 
> >             The governor had then asked, But then
> > what happens?
> > 
> >             He'd flashed his famous inscrutable
> > smile and said, The ox returns home of itself…
> > 
> >             Out of jealousy, however, Langdarma had
> > murdered his brother—claiming in secret it was
> > necessary because as governor he'd gotten out of
> > control.  Shrewdly, to ensure protection, he'd then
> > sent a scholar, Han Tse, to the Emporer Wu with this
> > nonsense of return to native Confucianism, expel the
> > foreign devils.  The propaganda was quite elaborate:
> > the Chinese in their innate wisdom should have known
> > better when this tall, gaunt figure Bodhidharma, the
> > First Patriarch of Buddhism in China, had appeared
> > from India several generations ago. Wrong body style
> > for the more corpulent and sensual Chinese. One too
> > aggressive as well—this light-skinned devil
> > Bodhidharma was possessed of unnatural abilities and
> > unnatural quickness and strength and had taught his
> > demonic martial arts to so many since that the very
> > security of the nation-state was threatened! Too,
> > this devil's gaze—piercing with intensity—would
> > enter the softly-focused, unsuspecting eyes of the
> > Chinese and subtly brainwash them with sorcery!
> > Before one knew it, one would wind up in Hell, with
> > one of the Confucian Mandate from Heaven scribes
> > holding a long list of sins committed (albeit
> > unconsciously), the scribe's face sad in recounting,
> > as help would be unavailable now…
> > 
> >             Never had he heard such claptrap! Such
> > perversion of the Dharma! Why, the monkeys when they
> > chattered made more sense! Cannily the right idea
> > had been stolen from their own holy writ and
> > dissembled in the false piety of another!
> > 
> >             Still that part had not been the worst.
> > Cloaked words can always be brought to the light of
> > Truth by the subtle use of dialectics in debate. No,
> > this Langdharma had become the very embodiment of
> > depravity.  Palace orgies went on for days—and he
> > was especially fond of despoiling young Buddhist
> > women. 
> === message truncated ===
> 
> 
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