This Buddhist Reference Sheet by the Numbers comes from an article I posted on a previous blog some ten years back, in May of 2016. I have found the sheer number of lists and numbers that exist in the Buddhist teachings to be one of the things that attracted me to them early on. I know some folks found it helpful back then so I’m bringing it back in hopes that it might be of benefit.
The Grateful Dead only opened a show with Franklin’s Tower once in their career — 5/9/78 in Syracuse, NY — but it’s where this series opens. The lyric ‘If you get confused, just listen to the music play’ is the seed syllable for this project, and leads us where the four winds dwell.
Some days I find myself suspended between feeling too much and not wanting to feel anything at all. Buddhist philosophy points to a middle way between these two extremes.
For the coyote in the Warner Brothers’ cartoons, hitting the ground usually meant he was about to get crushed by a boulder and mocked by his quarry, the roadrunner. “Meep meep!”
What does it mean for us?