Haiku: your pet peeve and other musings about Buddhism

nonBuddhism dis-
guised as Buddhism, and my
own imperfections

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Thinking is bad
I ve been told
What to make of this thought?

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Judging

“If I were a monk -
Calm cool unlike you slackers!”
(All vice fine for now)

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Making do again
Suede shoes on a rainy day
Wool socks in pastels

Adapting Western cold weather gear for use in monastic life brings up conflicting intentions for a monk:

  • wishing to maintain the look & feel of the holy life (to inwardly feel authentic, and present an outer appearance recognized as ordained Sangha); yet
  • wanting to uphold the ideal of passively accepting what lay people choose to offer; yet also
  • needing to keep the body sufficiently protected from harsh elements.

In this poem, suede shoes will be ruined by rain, but putting aside the summer sandals (which Western laity tend to view as idiotic to wear in cold months), the next best option, heavy boots, would look comically clunky with the robe (unless, say, snow is on the ground). So, the suede it is.

Wool socks most effectively protect feet in cold weather thus are greatly valued. Unfortunately donors bring wool socks in a variety of appearances including bright patterns, pastels, even polka dots - all clearly unsuitable as they clash with any traditional idea of a robed monk.

On a similar note,

Plain orange phonecase please
No I’ll buy you something nice:
ladies’ paisely print!

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Being told what I think:
Disappointing muddy talk.
Lilies keep pushing.

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What does this mean?

To me they are a type of artist’s chalk.

Or pastel colours :slightly_smiling_face:

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@Viveka is correct. In “American”, pastel - accent on the 2nd syllable, lol - primarily means a soft color, such as light blue, light pink or light green.

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It’s a colour (correctly a range of colours) here too, but with the accent still on the first syllable. But I imagined you were putting your wool socks into a type of shoe called ‘pastel’. My bad.

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Nikāya purists,
five, three if you’re radical:
EBT misuse.

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What exactly is a “Nikaya purist”?
It sounds like a loaded phrase.

It was meant in the sense of “Nikāya Puritanism.” The Puritans were a loosely affiliated group of sects of Protestantism who, at one point, became the government of the UK. There was even a Barebones Parliament! Many Puritans settled in America later to escape persecution after the defeat of the Puritan governments and the restoration of the monarchy in Britain, but that’s as much as I know, and maybe I know it wrongly(!).

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I seem to know about as much as you do about the Puritans in the UK. But I don’t get this reference:

3 or 5 what?

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Why, nikāyas, of course! :upside_down_face:

Nikāya Puritans would always acknowledge 5, but if you’re “truly” a “radical” Puritan (he said, with an eyebrow raised), you only acknowledge 3 nikāyā, namely Aṅguttara, Majjhima, and Saṁyutta.*

I don’t consider a Puritan a “good” thing to be necessarily, maybe that is an inadvertent exhibition of a Canadianism. If that’s so, in the above haiku, with the meaning I intended, I don’t think anyone should be a “purist” that way. Maybe it didn’t some across right when read. It’s certainly possible. It wouldn’t be the first time I had a hard time “explaining myself,” so to speak, in prose or poem. :sweat_smile:

*That is to say, there is a movement in EBT subculture, chiefly prevalent on web forums thankfully unlike this one, that devalues the Dīgha & Khuddaka as authentic.

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It made sense to me and gave me a laugh.

Edit: @Coemgenu

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When the balloon popped
its contents became the world,
encircling all.

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It strikes me that that last New Year’s haiku is only a haiku if you have a Canadian or Northern US accent maybe, where “encircling” is four syllables, the “l,” with a preceding schwa, forming its own syllabic nucleus, or “ɪnˈsɜrkəlɪŋ,” as one might be tempted to spell in IPA, the International Phonetic Alphabet.

In some accents, “encircling” is three syllables, “ɪnˈsɜrklɪŋ.” Sometimes the diversity of nuances of language, even something mundane as regional accent, strikes you and you are just left to wonder at what you don’t regularly consider.

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3 posts were merged into an existing topic: Nikaya Puritanism

A post was merged into an existing topic: Nikaya Puritanism

@Coemgenu

My ignorance must
shock those versed in EBTs.
I apologise.

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