AUTHOR'S COMMENTARY
DHARMA THE CAT: EPISODE 15 "Food For Thought"
by David Lourie


To be, or not to be -- a vegetarian, that is!  This is an issue central to many people's lives.  Many people will be surprised to learn that the Buddha himself was not a vegetarian, and according to the Pali Canon He specifically required His followers to eat whatever they were offered, without preference or discrimination.


Computers, for example, lend themselves to Haiku:

Yesterday it worked
Today it is not working
Windows is like that

A crash reduces
Your expensive computer
To a simple stone

Cats lend themselves to haiku, as well:

I lie belly up
In the sunshine, happier than
You will ever be

Dogs, too:

I love my master
Thus I perfume myself with
This long dead squirrel

(Continued from page 18) Haiku

invoke Sabi - solitude or
detachment - and Wabi - the spirit of poverty.

In Zen, enlightenment may be described in different way - the great enlightenment of satori or the small, little flashes of
enlightenment which come to us in everyday moments, when we seem to connect us with a sense of awe, which are called kensho.  Haiku are like poetic kensho -
little bursts of clarity in
condensed form.  Haiku record a momentary experience. They
record the essence, rather than describe or react to the subject. Haiku simply happen - they catch life as it flows.

Of course, Haiku can be applied to the everyday in modern life.

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