Now I understand the koan

Several people have been darkly amused by the koan

I walked to Master Moldbug but the road was too long. I visited master Jim and he hit me with a stick.

I did not understand it.   Seems to me that I am a pussycat.

But now I think I understand

11 Responses to “Now I understand the koan”

  1. Red says:

    My take on it:
    “”Mr. Donald likes to mock Catholics for optimism about the Church:”

    In the bay area, places that once were churches are now meeting places for lesbian feminists, bookstores for Marxist books, and such, and no one recollects how what once was church, is now no longer a church. The same will in due course happen to the Vatican. The pope’s letterhead for speaking ExCathedra will wind up on the desk of some Harvard functionary, who will, over time, use it less and less until it is forgotten and thrown out with the rest of the dead white male stuff.”

    Christians view this as mocking because the person making the statement is not a member of their tribe. Jim’s not trying to mock them, rather he’s making a blunt prophecy about the future of the church. Honest prophets are so rare today and like the prophets of the old testament, no one wants to hear from a prophet preaching doom if they don’t change their ways.

    It took me a while to understand it, but telling someone that their tribe or group is being subverted by deception is roughly the same as telling a man you barely know that his wife is a cheating whore who’s slept with every man in town. A mans first reaction is to punch you because you both insulted his wife and his ability to judge his wife faithfulness. His second reaction is to deny it and insult the truth teller to keep his reality intact.

    Master Jim’s pretty blunt about his prophecies with the intent is to warn and inform. Thus his method of teaching is the hitting you with the stick of truth.

  2. Anissimov says:

    Don’t see how the link connects (everyone should be able to understand the koan without reading that rambling post), but OK.

    • Anissimov says:

      Perhaps Jim doesn’t understand how not-a-pussycat he is, but everyone else clearly sees him as relatively brusque. It’s a virtue, because someone has to do it.

  3. Peter Blood says:

    OT: Charlton thumps for Mormon equality of the sexes:

    http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2014/01/should-wives-submit-to-their-husbands.html

    LOL, my first thought was, “Oh, Jim is going to blow a gasket!”

    • jim says:

      Not really, since entirely in accord with my expectations.

      The business of separate but equal spheres is necessarily a euphemism. If you had separate apartments, the child support model, would work, but we already know that the child support model fails children and fathers disastrously. If you are actually living together, someone has to be in charge, and someone has to submit, and the nature of men and women is such that it has to be the man in charge and the woman who submits. There are some strange couples where it is the other way around, but this works out horribly badly.

  4. Thales says:

    In a world of timid mice, the pussycat is king.

  5. ‘There was a monk who kept asking a Zen Master, “What is the Buddha?” Each time he asked, he got hit upside the head with the Master’s staff. Finally discouraged, he left and sought enlightenment with another Master, who asked him why he had left the previous teacher. When the poor gawk explained, the second Master gave him the ontological hotfoot: “Go back to your previous Master at once,” he cried, “and apologize for not showing enough appreciation of his grandmotherly kindness!”‘

    Anyone who recognizes the source gets a cookie.

    • barneyMuldoon says:

      Großmütterlich gefälligkeit.

      Do what thou wilt. But never trust anyone with the initials H.C.

  6. Alex J. says:

    You have the all too rare capacity to get to the point.

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