The power of laughter

Gerard S. HoffLeave a comment

FP-Blog-History-of-Laughing-Buddha

My sister shared this story and it’s so funny and true:

Pu-Tai (which means ‘cloth bag’) was a man of few words, in fact he hardly ever spoke. On the few occasions that he did speak he would reply to questions about why he did what he did. He then explained that handing out sweets was symbolic for the notion that the more you give, the more you receive.

His bag represented the problems all people encounter in life.

Instead of clinging to them you should distance yourself from a problem by putting it down (just like he would put the bag down) and laugh at it, because whether you laugh or cry the problem is not going to change. The magic lies in the laughter and more precisely the power of laughter. Pu-Tai believed that the power of laughing made problems smaller and more easily to handle.

And the man had a very good grasp on things even a thousand years ago, because apparently when you laugh the body produces certain feel good hormones and enzymes. And when you feel good, you might look at your problems differently.

Pu-Tai lived a life of laughter and even when he died he pulled the biggest prank of all. When he felt his end coming near, the monk asked his close companions to immediately burn his body after his death. They were surprised because cremation was not a custom in Zen buddhism. But his wishes were granted and as soon as they set fire to his body, fireworks started to fly everywhere.

Apparently he had hid a lot of crackers and rockets in his clothes in order to create laughter even when the matter was grave.

Did you laugh today?

<I don’t what the source is, but appreciate the text, so I want to share it. Thank you>

Advertisements

Apparition – Spirit FM

Gerard S. Hoff2 Comments

386261f6e61b1f481b46b12413c757a1

Do you recognize that?
That constant stream of words going on in your head?
That is Mind.FM, the radio frequency of your ego. Mind.FM has a very powerful transmitter and has the power to overrule all.

That ego is not you, but pretends it is, and does anything to proof it.

In a way there’s nothing wrong with ego. In fact without it, life becomes perhaps boring. But ego is also responsible for a lot of negativity, like fear, jealousy, the feeling you’re not good enough, or the feeling of being a victim. In that sense it gives a wrong or fake purpose in life.

It is like looking in the mirror. The person you see is the one you recognize as yourself (or at least the image you have of yourself). When you smile, it smiles, when you frown it frowns, but when you raise your right hand it does the opposite. Looking at it from the perspective of the ego that is frustrating.

The trick is to become aware of the one watching the one who’s watching the image in the mirror. The one that is listening to your mind’s continuous flow of words and thoughts (and has some good laughs about the crazy things that happen there), that is the true you, your spirit, your connection to the source. The closer you get to the spirit, the less the ego can interfere.The real purpose in life is to live in the now and enjoy the moment. Watching your mind through the eyes of your spirit gets you there. The way is to be fully aware of the ego in order to learn and to grow.

Just remember there’s always the one watching you, watching yourself in the mirror. Try to connect to him or her at anytime, especially when you feel negative energy, like anger, envy, hate, frustration, jealousy. That awareness is the beginning of a new powerful radio frequency: the one of the spirit.

The one of the true you.

Animal Zen Masters: Salticidae

Gerard S. Hoff1 Comment

Nature delivers the greatest Zen masters in learning how to live in the presence.

Come_Closer,_Jumping_Spider_(Salticidae)_(6246035845)

The fear of spiders is funny, especially for this one, because it actually looks like a cute, little doggie with 8 legs.

Talking about the legs, they’re covered with hundreds of little hairs, with which the Salticidae or Jumping Spider, can smell, taste and hear. They’re not the spider-web kind of spider, they jump to catch their prey. To determine the precise location, they have four (!) pairs of eyes, that create an almost 360-degree vision and 3-D images. The eyes reflect in the dark when hit by light, imagine…

Looking at this beautiful, sophisticated, high-tech creature reminded me, that eyes are just one of our senses and should never rely solely on them.

You can’t depend on your eyes
when your imagination is out of focus.
– Mark Twain

Animal Zen Masters: The Lamb

Gerard S. HoffLeave a comment

Nature delivers the greatest Zen masters in learning how to live in the presence.

1Rf54aN (1)

Estimates are, there are over a billion of them.

Sheep are one of the earliest animals to be domesticated for agricultural purposes and the most famous one is the Ovis aries. They are as practical as they get for humans, as they produce wool, milk, manure and meat.

Originally sheep is derived from the Old English word scēap (which is the same as Frisian) and it is a single and plural name for the animal. I find that very funny, because in a way they’re never alone.

Sheep play an important role in myths and religion, as they’ve been with people so long!

Egyptians worshipped animals and at various periods held certain animals to be sacred and as representations of their gods and goddesses. Agnus Dei is a Latin term meaning Lamb of God, it refers to Jesus as the perfect sacrificial offering that compensates for the sins of humanity.

In my mind, baby-sheep are the cutest animals. I still remember spring, waiting with my granddad for the lambs to be born. Within seconds they stand up and the next day, they lighten up the green grass fields next to his farm, with their funny jumps.

Happiness is the cause of a great day,
not the outcome.

Waylaid

Gerard S. HoffLeave a comment

What is the flow of life?
Is it something you determine or is it something divine?

Life

I believe the flow of life is the thing you want, can and dare to embrace. It is about making decisions, without hesitation. Decisions that are instinctive, from the source.

The funny thing is that hesitations (can) come afterwards. Second thoughts, doubts, fear, things from the past, things from the future and it is rational.

It is the mind that furiously tries to avoid change. The mind wants to stay where it is and derives a large part of it’s (your) identity from that, change means an adaptation to something new.

Don’t hesitate, just do.
The nice things, the good things, the bad things, the things that need to be done, the things that have to be done, the things that should be done and even the things you don’t like to be done. Connect to the source, the original spirit that did not hesitate to embrace the opportunity, including the steps that need to be done to get there.

And it can be a long journey.
It can be a first stone of a long line of domino stones that need to fall down, small stones and huge stones, but eventually they all fall down and you get to the reward,
in order to find new stones to push over,
new prices to look forward to.

Don’t think big,
think small, one brilliant step at the time.

Feel big,
use every steps as inspiration and celebration.
Don’t let anybody else hold you up,
including your ego.

Don’t be waylaid

 

 

 

Waylaid orinated in Middle Dutch ‘wegelagen’ to lie in wait, derivative of wegelage a lying in wait

 

Animal Zen masters: The Mola

Gerard S. HoffLeave a comment

Nature delivers the greatest Zen masters in learning how to live in the now.


The mola is the heaviest of all the bony fish, with large specimens reaching 4.3 m vertically and 3 m horizontally and weighing nearly 2,300 kg. They are frequently seen basking in the sun near the surface and are often mistaken for sharks when their huge dorsal fins emerge above the water.

Mola can become so infested with skin parasites, they jump out of the water up to 3.0 metres in the air, in an attempt to shake the parasites (and they are lousy swimmers). They’ll also often invite small fish or even birds to feast on them.

.It’s wiser to share burdens, then to drown under their weight.