Dec 31, 1969 -- 6:00PM, sixth step phobia wrote:

At the begining of the begining of the beginning is where to start  Goddamit it took me 12 years of excrutitaingly painfull growth never mind the countless surrenders and full acceptance of multiple addictions to get to a point where i feel some modicum of peace and freedom in this life by striving to "know" and now i come to the god-awful paradoxical reality that   "I KNOW NOTHING"  I want to cry and laugh at the same time  UHAH!! what i have done is replace the insane addiction to drugs, alcohol, sex, money and power for addiction to mind and ultimately addiction to "spiritual growth"  So i am at the beggining after 44 years of suffering   One little question and dont tell me you dont know please  "Does anyone have a koan that will break this mind obsessed craving for understanding of god???"

I understand your frustation. Today i was talking to a friend about how nice it would be to have a book that had all the answers and knew what you were asking and opened to exactly the right page.

the only thing i've come to from zen is that, exactly. I don't know, but it's really beautiful, and really dull, and really everything... everything just sort of is. (thats in and of itself a very slippery slope i myself struggle with.)

i guess its when one think they know the answers, or maybe even in the search for them, that they kind of miss the whole point of existence. Becuase it can't simply be about being frustated over answers noone in this life can know.

/ramble. sorry

but yes.. i really love that first translation of the flower sermon.

u may have bad karma thats stopping you from instananeous enlightenment or not enuff practice. Some say enlightenment is like walking through misty air and realizing you're wet. So maybe you haven't gotten out into the misty air yet. But its probably bad karma, yah, definitely that.