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The visit with my old teacher was very good. Now that I know her address, I can go visit her! I was actually thinking that she would be irritated at me when I said months ago that I would email her, but never did, but she was quite happy to see me, and nearly cried when I gave her the picture I painted.

Here's three great passages from the Goddess book:

[I think you'll like this one, Raleigh.]

"A Zen student said to his Zen master, 'Am I in possession of the Buddha nature?'
And the master said, 'No.'
The student said, 'But I've heard that all beings are in possession of the Buddha nature: the stones, the flowers, the birds, the people.'
'You're right,' said the Zen master, 'all beings are in possession of the Buddha nature, but not you.'
'Not me, why not me?'
'Because you are asking this silly question.'

"There are two kinds of philosophers in the world: those who have understood Immanuel Kant, and those who have not. Kant worked on the problem that had already been announced by Locke: How do we know what we experience through our senses is really there? Do our senses distort? Kant begins with what he calls the a priori categories of logic. We can't even think of anything except in terms of subject and object, right and wrong--pairs of opposites, logical categories. Without these categories, there's nothing to discuss. Kant then brings up the point that what our senses do is put time and space around us, and everything comes to us through the a priori forms of time and space. But suppose there was not time and space: then there would be no separateness."

"...In one of the little chapels devoted to [the goddess Cybele] are two leopards, the male and the female leopard facing each other. We would have to go between them to get to the Goddess, so they are the threshold guardians. What does this mean, this pair of opposites facing each other? They represent the threshold of passage from the field of secular thinking, where 'I' and 'You' are separate from each other in an Aristotelian sense...to a world transcendent of that kind of bipolar thinking, more in the way of dream logic, where the dreamer and the dream, although they seem to be two, are actually one. The ultimate mystery of the universe is transcendence of the phenomenal world, which is made up of opposites, Kant's a priori categories of thought. When Adam and Eve fell, the first thing they experienced was the knowledge of good and evil--that is to say, knowledge of pairs of opposites. Before they didn't know any distinctions. We are kept out of the garden by our knowledge of pairs of opposites. Leaving that behind, going back to the place of innocence--beyond the rational discrimination of this and that--going back to that transcendental realm is the passage past the clashing rocks, beyond the guardianship of the threshold of the guardians at the temple."

Joseph Campbell wrote some brilliant stuff.

[Yes, I typed out all of this by myself. ]

Froya: It's alright; I love collecting things and looking for stones.

"A Zen student said to his Zen master, 'Am I in possession of the Buddha nature?'
And the master said, 'No.'
The student said, 'But I've heard that all beings are in possession of the Buddha nature: the stones, the flowers, the birds, the people.'
'You're right,' said the Zen master, 'all beings are in possession of the Buddha nature, but not you.'
'Not me, why not me?'
'Because you are asking this silly question.'

19 yeah right

Santa Barbara looks like a nice place, Kip.

To someone who makes a statement, then when we question the statement, will not answer, except in nonsense.
This is a strategy used by zen masters.
Are you a zen master?

Um...The Buddha is three pounds of flax.