Two yogis are sitting by the river meditating. A crocodile comes by and devours one of them.The other comments dryly: **Heavy purification**.

The Many Paths   Ma-tsu felt that since the original mind is inherent in everyone, all that was necessary was to awaken the student to its presence.  A monk asked Ma-tsu for the primary meaning of  Zen.  Ma-tsu knocked him to the ground, saying, "If I don't strike you, the whole country will laugh at me."  The monk was enlightened on the spot.        Rinzai studied with Master Huang-po for three years but was not satisfied with his own progress.  The head monk suggested that he go to see the master himself.  So Rinzai went to Huang-po and asked the standard question, "What is the meaning of Bodhidharma coming from the West?"  Huang-po knocked him to the ground with his stick.  Rinzai picked himself up and walked out in confusion, not knowing what to make of this answer. The head monk advised him to try again.  He did, twice more, but the answer was the same.  Demoralized he announced that he was leaving the monastery.  Huang-po then directed him to a neighboring zen teacher named Ta-yu.  When Rinzai related his experience with Huang-po to Ta-yu, Ta-yu's comment was, "How compassionate Huang-po is.  He was just trying to relieve you of distress."  Hearing this, Rinzai suddenly had a deep awakening to his original nature.  He could not contain himself.  He jumped up and down, exclaiming, "Huang-po's Zen is very simple, there's nothing to it!" "You scamp," said Ta-yu, "a minute ago you said that Huang-po's Zen was impossible to understand, now you say there's nothing to it.  What have you realized? Speak at once!'  At this, Rinzai punched Ta-yu in the ribs three times.  Ta-yu kicked him out, saying, "Your teacher is Huang-po, so you are no concern of mine."  Rinzai went right back to Huang-po who greeted him at the gate with, "Aren't you back a little soon?  You just left!"  Rinzai bowed deeply and said, "It is because of your kindness that I returned so quickly."  Then Rinzai related to Huang-po his encounter with Ta-yu, Hang-po said, "What a big mouth that old man has.  The next time I see him, I'll give him a taste of my staff."  Rinzai yelled, "Wait!  I'll give it to you right now."  And he slapped the old master's face. The startled Huang-po said, "This crazy monk is plucking the tiger's whiskers.  At that, Rinzai gave his first, "Katz!", a shout that would become as famous as Rinzai himself. From here on, Rinzai and Huang-po had many sparkling encounters until Rinzai set out on his own, equipped with the transmission and a repertory of punches and shouts, his favorite teaching devices.  The Rinzai Zen survived in Japan solely because of the fondness which the powerful Samurai had for it.  Rinzai's style, hard, illogical, spontaneous and not requiring book learning greatly appealed to them.  It fitted their own experience of life;  now, or it might be never.        The line of Shih-tou produced some extraordinary masters as well.  Among these masters is Tung-shan.  Tung-shan was a contemporary of Rinzai's but educated in the Shih-tou style, his teaching techniques were very different.  He emphasized zazen practice and he was find of metaphoric language to talk his students out of their entanglements.  He is credited with s famous Zen poem, describing the enlightened realm of openness and spontaneity.  Here's one stanza:   The Man of wood sings, The Woman of stone Gets upo and dances This cannot be done By passion or learning, It cannot be done by Reasoning.     This gentle style and insistence on meditation gave the Soto sect the name "silent illumination path," while the Rinzai sect became known as the "introspecting the koan path."   Ju-ching was a Soto master and an uncompromising advocate of sitting meditation.  He ended his daily zazen at eleven at night and started all over again at two-thirty the next morning.  Here Dogen learned his Zen and attained his enlightenment. The story goes that he was meditating one early morning, the fellow next to him began to doze--a rather common occurrence in modern Zen as well. Master Ju-ching was passing by at that moment and yelled at the sleeping monk, ZAZEN MEANS DROPPING OFF BODY AND MIND! Dogen, immersed in meditation was startled at first and then a warm glow began to spread within him, and overjoyed, he realized his original nature.  He ran into the interview room and lit an incense stick to signify his attainment.  Bowing deeply, he said, "I have experienced the dropping away of body and mind."  The master affirmed his enlightenment.    from Zen for Beginners

Sent: 10/9/2002 9:50 AM

Hildegard of Bingen: A Healer Ahead of Her Time   A saint, an herbalist, a medical genius, a visionary, a brilliant composer of spiritual music, a sex therapist, a scholar, and a leader of the church who corresponded with emperors, queens, and popes.  All these achievements for any one person would be formidable.  For a woman who lived virtually her entire life as a cloistered nun in the twelfth century, they are almost beyond belief. Hildegard of Bingen was born of a noble German family in 1098.  At the age of eight, she was committed to a monastery.  Tutored by a neighboring monk in both classical and contemporary medical texts (at a time when most women couldn't read), she subsequently produced two major medical treatises fo her own.  One described the uses of more than 300 medicinal plants; another was a catalogue of diseaser, their causes, adn their cures. Hildegard's healing philosophy was decidedly holistic.  She wrote that the structure of the body echoed in miniature the sacred structure of the universe and that health resulted from being in harmony with that universal order.  Her term for health was greenness, which she also described as "the green lifeforce of the flesh."  She described the circulation of the blood, preached the virtues of a balanced, low-fat diet, adn understood that disease was contagious--all hundreds of years ahead of her time. Hildegard was also hundreds of years before her time in appreciating the connection between emotion and health.  She understood that anger, for example, could give rise to "bile," which in turn could lead to disease.  Recovery from illness required living a life that ws in harmony, both with the natural wold and with God's will.  Sexuality was very much a part of that natural and divine order, Hildegard believed, and as a result, she described lovemaking in pious yet explicit terms.  A man's passion, she write, is like "a stag thirsting for the fountain," while the woman resembles "a threshing floor, pounded by his many strokes and brought to heat when the grains are threshed inside her." Since Hildegard was sworn to a vow of celibacy, it's assumed that her knowledge of such matters was based upon intimate conversations that she shared with married women from the communities surrounding her monastery.    ---Excerpt from Prevention Natural Healing Guide 2000        My editor told me to get a little sex in here.  :-D