Jedi/Sith... light, dark?

So we're quoting stories, are we? Alright.

"A few hundred years ago, a dude named Gensa was a young monk. One day he got fed up with the temple where he was studying. He figures he'd be better off getting out and seeing what the rest of the world has to offer. Maybe another temple will have whatever it is he's been looking for. Or maybe he'll just give up on temples all together. As he's heading out the gate, he stubs his toe on a big ol' rock. He's hopping around in terrible pain, bleeding from under his toenail, going, "OW! Ow! Sh*t! Piss! Damn!" And he think, "I've heard that the body is an illusion. So, where the hell did all this pain come from?"

All at once he gets it.

Later on, his teacher, a guy named Seppo Gisan, asks him what's up and he says: "I just can't be deceived by others."

Seppo really gets off on this statement. "Is there anyone who doesn't have these words?" he says. "But, who else can speak them?!" You may think that he means "I" as in the self... but in reality, he's speaking with a universal "I". There is no deception, for all is one. And that is the key to Buddhism."

- Sit Down and Shut up, Brad Warner.

The Most Important Teaching

A renowned Zen master said that his greatest teaching was this: Buddha is your own mind. So impressed by how profound this idea was, one monk decided to leave the monastery and retreat to the wilderness to meditate on this insight. There he spent twenty years as a hermit probing the great teaching.

One day he met another monk who was traveling through the forest. Quickly the hermit monk learned that the traveler also had studied under the same Zen master. "Please, tell me what you know of the master's greatest teaching." The traveler's eyes lit up, "Ah, the master has been very clear about this. He says that his greatest teaching is this: Buddha is NOT your own mind."

hahaha. Lovely!

"Several citizens ran into a hot argument about God and different religions, and each one could not agree to a common answer. So they came to the Lord Buddha to find out what exactly God looks like.

The Buddha asked his disciples to get a large magnificent elephant and four blind men. He then brought the four blind to the elephant and told them to find out what the elephant would “look” like.

The first blind men touched the elephant leg and reported that it “looked” like a pillar. The second blind man touched the elephant tummy and said that an elephant was a wall. The third blind man touched the elephant ear and said that it was a piece of cloth. The fourth blind man hold on to the tail and described the elephant as a piece of rope. And all of them ran into a hot argument about the “appearance” of an elephant.

The Buddha asked the citizens: “Each blind man had touched the elephant but each of them gives a different description of the animal. Which answer is right?”"

Connor Lidell wrote: The Buddha asked the citizens: “Each blind man had touched the elephant but each of them gives a different description of the animal. Which answer is right?”"

Nice!!

They each have a piece of data, which needs to be contextualized as being part of the same object for it become information about that object, and through the application of intelligence we might acquire actual knowledge of that object.

Here are some definitions;

1. Data are symbolic depictions of facts.

2. Information is data set in particular context.

3. Intelligence is the processes and the products that lead to
understanding and taking decisions related to reality.

4. Knowledge is the product of thinking, the connection of information
in a logical-functional way. Knowledge allows us to explain or give
reasons for phenomena, and to predict future events.

List from the World Health Organization

Lol well thanks, I guess? I dunno. Go find the author of that piece and tell him. I think he's been dead for a few years. Hahaha

Sometimes everybody's wrong.

Indeed. :laugh: