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Old 06-18-2007, 11:17 AM   #6
Erick Mead
 
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Dojo: Big Green Drum (W. Florida Aikikai)
Location: West Florida
Join Date: Jun 2005
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Re: Aikido, Martial Arts, and Buddhism

Quote:
Fred Little wrote: View Post
A young man once went to his Jesuit priest and asked, "Father, is it permissible to smoke a cigarette while I pray?"

The priest took a long drag off his unfiltered Camel and shook his head sadly as he replied, "Oh lad, if only you had asked me if it's possible to pray while you smoke a cigarette."

Although from a different tradition, the story does convey an attitude toward the relationship between worldly activity and religious practice that is quite common in the Buddhist world

....This is true even in the language of the Five Precepts, which are presented not as "thou shalt nots" but rather as vows to "undertake to refrain" from activities which increase confusion and suffering. ...
A personal anecdote of the same character; In Lent, my elderly grandmother, who attended Mass daily, prepared breakfast of eggs, bacon and toast for herself, my kids and my wife.

My grandmother, she sat down to eat and was half through with her bacon when my wife suddenly realized it was a Friday in Lent, when meat is prohibited.

My grandmother stiffened, then relaxed, and said, as she finished her bacon -- "Well, waste is a sin, too."

The spiritual point in common to all of these -- martial arts included -- The attention given by the subject engaged in the discipline is far more of the point than the object or circumstances of the discipline attended to.

Cordially,

Erick Mead
一隻狗可久里馬房但他也不是馬的.
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