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As late as the
mid fifties people would still write letters with pens on paper.
Though it's become an antiquated form of communication, it was
once a popular and effective one. Many old people who were brought
up on Papermates and Bics and don't understand pixels, still
prefer pens. Some of them even use fountain pens, a tool that
goes back to the period between cuniform and pocket protectors.
Anyway writing letters with pens had a physical component you
just don't get with a keyboard. And, it required time. But time
is not something much appreciated at the dawn of the 21st century.
Time is now to be managed and saved --as if time could be stood
still and stored like bullion or something. Despite the prevailing
winds, time is not money. You can't hoard process. Time is life
itself.
It was quaint in the old days to see people hunched over desks
under forty watt bulbs putting words to paper. Sometimes whole
paragraphs of pen strokes would be sent to enemies or loved ones
via a guy in a blue-gray uniform who actually carried them around
in a sack to be handed out personally. But just as often these
words would be filed away in a drawer somewhere and become lost.
Usually this was no big deal (if you've ever perused an average
journal). But every once in a while some person with a peculiar
slant on things would come along and jot down his thoughts, only
to misplace them. Then one day, somebody would find them in an
old trunk in Weehawken, or in a cave overlooking the Dead Sea,
or buried in a field in New York State, for instance. And, because
what they found sounded a little peculiar ,and because they figured
it was "cosmic" that they found it (because God is
often confused with coincidence), they decided those old notes
must have religious significance.
So (to get to the point), an anonymous person (who we'll call
Joseph Smith for the sake of this discussion) just emailed us
a scan of some sprial notebook pages he discovered in a Garfield,
NJ basement on Farnum Ave. They were found in a ceiling cavity
above a lally column along with a copy of the I-Ching, several
pennies, 3 dozen Hershey bar wrappers, a pack of Zig-Zag papers,
and two very dehydrated grapefruit. It was learned later that
Roshi Bob (then still known to his friends and family as Bobby
B ) had spent some time with his aunt Rose and uncle Leroy somewhere
in that vacinity at about that time (the pages were dated June
25,1958 and July 5th, 1958).
These have since been authenticated as genuine sayings of Roshi
Bob, and have been certified as having been penned during his
Post Judeo-Christian (PJC) period. Therefore, these two sayings
have officially been added to the Bob Canon and catalogued as
Analects 100 and 110.
Links to latest analects:
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Analect 1 / LINK
"Being a guru, people often ask me, 'What's
it all about, Roshi?' and I'm nonplussed. I'm thinking, how am
I supposed to know what it's all about for them if they
don't even have a clue themselves? Am I them?
'No,' I answer myself, and go on about my
business hoping they'll eventually get to theirs."
Commentary:
Everybody's looking
for answers from somebody else. This is the wrong tack. If God
wanted everybody to get their answers from somebody else, God
would not have needed to invent so many people. One person, like
one giant media conglomerate, would have been enough.
We can infer from the fact that there are so many people, that
God sought to encourage diversity of thought.
Then along came the first dogmatician with his calipers and sacred
book.
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Analect 4 / LINK
"Intelligence is a strange phenomena. Some
who have it are brilliant, while others are as dumb as a stump.
In fact, the fruits of intellect are as varied as the whims of
man and should not be counted on to bring bliss.
"Brilliant idiots invented the atomic bomb, and brilliant
idiots are responsible for TV.
"Remember it's usually not Mensa rejects who invent
spectacularly diabolical things. It's geniuses gripped by an
ignorant and arrogant inertia."
Analect 5 / LINK
"Ah, Imagination. The free realm.
"This is where you go when you dump dogma.
"They say that truth is the mother of imagination.
They don't say who the father of imagination is, but he must
have one helluva dark side." How else can you explain 9/11
and global warming?
Commentary:
Imagination in the
right hands will produce a Pieta.
Imagination managed by somebody like Darth Vader turns out Hiltlers
and Holocausts.
Keep your eyes peeled for the Darth Vaders:
those heavy breathers blowing poison vapors.
May the Force be with us, at the very least.
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Analect 6
/ LINK
"Any head raised on a steady
diet of TV would not stand out in a room full of cabbages."
Commentary:
In modern times,
a person's perception of what's happening in the world is colored
by many things, but the main one is TV. If any nation's grasp
of reality hinges upon TV news coverage spouted by pretty heads
in great clothes, or the bouncing attributes of babes in thongs,
it can say goodbye to its future.
Note: Whenever Roshi Bob meets a cabbage-head
raised on TV you'll hear him mutter,"Golumpky". More
often than not,the person referred to thinks this is an esoteric
Polish incantation.
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Analect 129/
LINK
"I'm convinced God grades on a curve. Having
created a sliding scale of intellectual and emotional ability,
would it be fair to allofasudden become absolute?
"If that's God, we're sunk."
Commentary:
To an absolutist
it seems that God is absolute. What's the big surprise?
To relativists? Well, their god is little less remote, much more
merciful, and sometimes available for periodic, sit-down re-evaluations
over a beer or latte --depending upon class.
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Analect 130
/ LINK
"There are many different
kinds of lies and politicians know them all; complete with addendums,
appendixes, and footnotes."
Commentary:
Politics is, first,
the art of the verbal manipulation of reality. It's part an actor's
game, part linquistic prestidigitation. Skirting the truth with
a straight face while seeming to make some looming contradiction
disappear, and all the while not breaking into a sweat are tools
of the trade.
Not being able to fool all of the people all of the time, is
not as crucial as being able to fool some of the people some
of the time.
You only need some of the people to get elected.
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Analect
133 / LINK
"Certainty is a funny thing
...or not.
"The most certain are the most dangerous.
"In light of the constant flux of the universe, to be certain
is to run counter to life. Things running counter to life are
dangerous... this is absolutely certain."
Commentary:
Who doesn't desire
certainty? This is a widespread delusional impulse from the lazy
side.
God demands more work than that.
If theTao didn't expect us to embrace change, why would
it have stuck us with so much of it?
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Analect
161 / LINK
"For purposes of population control marriage
would be an effective tool, but only if the psychological condition
typically found in couples married for 15 years or better could
be mentally grafted onto the freshly married.
"A great sage once said, 'Headaches are more effective than
condoms in the war against overpopulation and sexually transmitted
diseases.' "
Analect
164 / LINK
"He who beds-down with lies
wakes up lousy with them."
Commentary:
In a given instance,
any man or woman having found the truth an insurmountable hurdle
--or just very uncomfortable-- will often resort to a convenient
lie. This is just human nature.
But the only difference between "l-i-e" and "l-i-c-e"
is a single letter, which (as can be plainly seen) is not much
of a buffer --spelling bees have been blown on as little.
Therefore, to avoid conceptual contamination due to single-letter
typos, one should never become comfortable with lies, even those
as tiny as lice. Otherwise, "He who beds down with lies
wakes up lousy with them."
Note: In political contexts
this analect should be squared. Pertaining to business-political
relationships it should at the very least be cubed.
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