I assume my esteemed reader is a learned person. I assume my most cherished and learned reader is well educated and intelligent. The beauteous spark of my enchanting reader’s acumen is what engenders such concord between us.
I am speaking to you today of the notion of the “koan” – as used in Zen Buddhist meditation. There the teacher may ask the student to ponder such a question as “does a dog have Buddha-nature or not?” – though I think the most famous ones are “if a tree falls in the forest and there’s no one there to hear it, does it still make a sound” and “what is the sound of one hand clapping” – you know, stuff f that nature.
When you spend a great deal of time amounting a mass of words, like I have, you tend to go off on things like that.
This is neither here not there, I guess, but I found what you might describe as modern day koans and I will now, in my Zen way, share some of them for the pleasure and amusement of my most valued and esteemed reader for them to ponder at their leisure.
They are as follows:
* Whose cruel idea was it for the word ‘lisp’ to have an ’s’ in it?
*Why are there flotation devices under airplane seats instead of parachutes?
* Why did kamikaze pilots wear helmets?
*Why do toasters always have a setting that burns the toast to a horrible crisp, which no decent human being would eat?
Now, run along and meditate on these under a bodhi tree and see if you might, by this measure, gain enlightenment.
I remain, as always, you humble servant.
ROL
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