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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Constant Reader who wrote (25665)	9/1/2001 12:10:38 PM
From: gao seng	Respond to of 82486

Lol. Most on the left would say that is an oxymoron. What gods did Rome worship? How about Egypt? Name a Christian society that oppresses non-Christians. Besides, your initial claim that theists are the great oppressors of freedom in the world is so ignorant, I shouldn't have even bothered to respond.

To: Constant Reader who wrote (25665)	9/1/2001 6:38:46 PM
From: gao seng	Respond to of 82486

Although one cannot be sure without seeing the actual characters, your Chinese name would seem to imply that you are a "learned monk." You read Chinese? I am impressed. Looks like chicken scratch to me, but it really is beatiful. My wife is Chinese, and she has a lot of calligraphy. It is an art form unto itself. My favorite is one that says may fortune gather to you like a thousand clouds. Fortune or luck is symbolized by a character that looks like a ram. Gather is symbolized by a bird and a tree. I would have to ask her to explain the rest to me again. She is out of town, though. But it is really beautiful. How did you learn? I mean, what technique? When I do make the effort, I use a book on Chinese Radicals to help me understand. Do you speak it? I will never be able to speak Chinese, I think. The tones drive me batty. As for gao seng, there is a book called "Biographies of Eminent Monks" (gao seng zhuan). In general, the monks in these accounts conform to conventional notions of what a monk should be. Many are selfless ascetics, dedicated to lives of self cultivation, or to proselytizing. They keep to a strict vegetarian diet, eschew wine, women, comfortable clothing, and so on. But curiously, mixed in with these biographies of humble ascetics we occasionally find accounts of monks who are just the opposite. They openly eat meat, fall down drunk in the middle of town, associate with wayward nuns, and curse their detractors with foul language. These monks are not condemned in the "Biographies"; they are apparently considered just as admirable as their more conventional counterparts. This paper attempts to explain where these figures came from, and what they are doing in what are supposed to be collections of "eminent" monks. I think this is very profound. edit: btw, she is from Beijing, and she was an atheist when I married her. It really doesn't come up that often, although the few times she has prayed, she was amazed at how fast her prayers were answered!