Hey, you wanna go take a piss for me?

THE STUDENT Doken was told to go on a long journey to another
monastery. He was much upset, because he felt that this trip would
interrupt his studies for many months. So he said to his friend,
the advanced student Sogen:

"Please ask permission to come with me on the trip. There are so
many things I do not know; but if you come along we can discuss
them - in this way I can learn as we travel."

"All right," said Sogen. "But let me ask you a question: If you
are hungry, what satisfaction to you if I eat rice? If your feet
are lame, what comfort to you if I go on merrily? If your bladder
is full, what relief to you if I piss?"

Anybody notice anything weird about the koan? Both of the names are Dogen with one letter changed.

When Doken asked Sogen to come along, Sogen would have been making the journey for Doken, because Doken would have continued to use the excuse that Sogen is a better monk than he is. Doken was trying to get Sogen to take control of his life and actions for him, which if you know anything about Buddhism is a big no-no. Sogen says that Doken needs to do his own work and he gives three example. If you're hungry I can't eat for you, if you have no feet(Or they don't work) I can't walk for you, and if you have to piss I can't drain the lizard for you. Sogen was teaching Doken that he needs to take control of his own actions, because the only person responsible for your actions is you.

My summer is finally over.

So, after getting a little too much into Guild Wars, completely ignoring my own whims to put out my own CD in November, starting school, and doing the musical I've decided I'll try my best to keep up a blog when I remember it.

Today I'll start out with a rant on a certain teacher who bothers me because of his closed-mindedness.

My teacher, who will remain nameless for privacy purposes, had us do an assignment on the Summa Theologica and how it proves that God definitely exists using logic. Logically, God shouldn't exist because there's no concrete proof. All those "saints"? Yeah, they're just nutjobs that the Catholic Church took and put on a pedestal. Don't get me wrong, I don't not believe in the divine and good, but I'm saying faith means believing in something that shouldn't exist naturally. I find it hard to believe in something that I haven't seen, because of this koan(A zen story) that says at the end, "I don't know about Buddhas of the past, present, or future; but I know cats exist, and I know cows exist." Pretty much the dude that said that meant he couldn't tell you about anything he hadn't seen for proof. He had seen cats(Around the temple) and he had see cows(Out in the fields) and therefore he knew they were real, but he had never met Buddha and had no proof that Buddha even existed or wasn't some looney-tune with a towel on.

Now, I'm not saying don't believe in God, Allah, or whoever else you worship, but what I'm saying is take everything anyone says with a grain of salt. You don't need to believe someone just because they have a fancy degree or they stand up in front of the class and tell you "how it is." The assignment we had to do was so obviously wrong I had decided I would actually do the assignment, just to see some counter-arguements. Well, the assignment wasn't collected, looked at, or hardly discussed in class, but I did input on one part of the Summa Theologica, and that's what I'm going to leave here so that you can come up with your own arguement to return to me, since apparently, "That's not true," is the only answer I was able to pull out of said teacher.

God exists because he is the only thing that is necessary to exist for us to be here in this world. (Starting arguement)
My reply was, "But this world wouldn't be the same without me in it." This the class laughed, thinking I was trying to be funny. I then said, "You see, I shape the world around me just as much as the world around me shapes me and therefore, without me this world would not be THIS world, but a different one." The teacher responded with, "But the world would be the same, that's not true." And I repeated myself, only using the teacher as an example in hopes of furthering his understanding. "The world would be the same because God changes the world how he wants. That's not true." So apparently, God can act outside of cause and effect, can change the world however he wants independent of people, and is all-powerful. Why does he need us? Oh yeah, he's lonely. Therefore, the world WOULD NOT BE THE SAME if we(the human race) were not here in this world*.


*The word world I'm referring to would be this moment and time in the universe, every planet, every star, everybody, and everything, even that itch on the side of my face I'm going to scratch after I send this post in.