Erase your cravings!

[imomus]

At Osaka's Shitennoji temple, 2006 is chimed in with the sound of gongs. You queue up at one of the two gong towers (they're like huge stereo speakers, and the gongs they contain are tuned less than one semitone apart) and strike the gong to erase one of 108 numbered cravings. In this way, you begin the new year with all your desires erased; blank tape, as it were.



In other parts of the temple grounds people are queuing to throw coins, clap hands and make a prayer, or hanging paper wishes on a "wishing line", or sipping sweet creamy sake from a paper cup. What amazes me most, though, is the ninja show. The buddhist monks have dramatized the fight with evil desires by dressing them up as freakadelic cosplay monsters. One wears an eyepatch, another has a kind of octopus suit on. You're handed a sword and, captured by video projected onto a screen behind the stage, battle each evil desire. Luckily you always prevail in the end; the evil ninjas--your own cravings--put up a fearsome fight, but are soon felled by your sword, accompanied by loud swooshing and thwacking sound effects.

Ake ome! Happy new year!

Comments

[rhodri.livejournal.com]

And to you, dear Mr Currie.

questions, questions, questions...

[bopscotch.livejournal.com]

And which desire did you erase, Momus? Curious minds would like to know.

[pintele.livejournal.com]

My 2005 has been greatly enriched by your entries.

Happy new year, Momus :)

[csn.livejournal.com]

What a sad day for Buddhism.

[kurenai-kaishin.livejournal.com]

明けおめ!!!!
So cosplay has made it up to the temples?

[cap-scaleman.livejournal.com]

Happy new year!
But, we're still in the year of the rooster, the year of the dog won't begin until 29 January!
Happy new year!

[cheapsurrealist.livejournal.com]

"...you begin the new year with all your desires erased; blank tape, as it were."

I like the blank tape idea. Return to zero and all that. But I'm not sure I want all my desires erased. I'm sure I could afford to toss a few overboard but I've grown quite fond of most of them.

Happy New Year!

[jimyojimbo.livejournal.com]

I agree. Who wants their desires erased? Surely New Year is there to reaffirm your desires - your hopes, your wishes - so you can walk on with some man-made and arbitrary optimism in your heart. Or head, as us post-enlightenment souls would have it.

[stanleylieber.livejournal.com]

It's your desire to see reality as it is not that is meant to be erased.

[jimyojimbo.livejournal.com]

Eh? Sorry? Mummy? What does that even mean?

[stanleylieber.livejournal.com]

It means that people always misinterpret the Taoist/Buddhist admonition to erase desire as being some kind Calvinist finger-wagging when what it is actually trying to get you to do is to let go of your preconceived notions about what is and observe reality without allowing your mind to form judgements about it. That is to say, to erase your desire to insist that the world is something it resolutely is not. Take for example the desire to believe that the United States would find stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons in the area (per Rumsfel) surrounding Tikrit. There is a divergence here between insisting upon a picture of reality that turns out to be inaccurate and letting go of desires to enforce such a template on the world when the world doesn't turn out to be compatible with it.

None of which is to say that designing and applying such 'false' templates of reality cannot be used as an intentional tool to achieve one's aims. But the concept under discussion here is the depth of meaning behind erasing desire.

[jimyojimbo.livejournal.com]

It means that people always misinterpret the Taoist/Buddhist admonition to erase desire as being some kind Calvinist finger-wagging when what it is actually trying to get you to do is to let go of your preconceived notions about what is and observe reality without allowing your mind to form judgements about

Well, congratulations on misconstruing my original sentiments in such a Pseuds' Corner manner. I'll repeat my original reply thus: Eh? And take a little guess about what I Desire to Erase.

[stanleylieber.livejournal.com]

'And take a little guess about what I Desire to Erase.'

All opposition?

[jimyojimbo.livejournal.com]

Aye. Stick a Christmas Tree on my head and call me Saddam! Make a wish kid, it may all come true!

[stanleylieber.livejournal.com]

:)

[chronovore.livejournal.com]

Ah-kay oh-may to you, too. Thanks as always for the thought provoking post.

[(Anonymous)]

"you begin the new year with all your desires erased"

How very Scientology; recall and erase. Any machines on sale there to do it for you?

Ake ome! Happy new year! to you to

[imomus.livejournal.com]

"Craving can also be classified as of three kinds: sensual craving, craving for being and craving for annihilation. When these three are multiplied by the number of sense doors, six , there are eighteen; when again multiplied by two (internal and external) there are thirty-six; when this is again multiplied by three (past, present and future) the result is a total of 108 kinds of craving."

http://www.buddhismtoday.com/english/philosophy/thera/002-dependent4.htm

2006

[instant-c.livejournal.com]

Happy New Year!

[sweetnessss.livejournal.com]

What a nice thought - to start as a blank page... quite the opposite of what the Western world does, no? Resolutions contain cravings...

[cheapsurrealist.livejournal.com]

"Resolutions contain cravings..."

Like the desire to stop desiring cigarrettes. A common resolution.

I've made one this year. I resolve to learn to speak conversational Spanish. A blank space to fill.

What an interesting way to celebrate the new year

[loki-touchstone.livejournal.com]

What an interesting way to celebrate the new year; I've been reading your descriptions of Japan and it makes me want to go! Here in the US you celebrate with parties or television marathons, but erasing your desires...sounds very Taoist:).

It makes me regret entering 2006 by watching South Park.

Happy New Year Nick and Hisae!

[(Anonymous)]

Damn and blast my little sister's computer which hasn't allowed me to "compose" in my webmail! Things going swimmingly in Minneapolis where I am looking out our front window to a vista of snow-covered oak branches. A squirrel runs along the branch exactly parallel to the window, rat-a-tatting an attack call at the neighbour's dog.

The nice thing about other people's cute, well-behaved children: you can hand them back. Nellie's kids Bella and Katie (who Bella calls Kittycat) are exhausting both me and their mum; Nellie's dad is telling stories about being in hospitals both as an RAF doctor in the Blitz (he's 91, ridiculously posh, and because of the dementia which has finally arrived, the stories go in circles) and this autumn as a stroke victim, where cute Tibetan nursing assistants ministered to his every need. He says: "Tiny little women! Holding my cock to pee! You just haven't lived until that happens, eh?" He explained that this strokette paralysed only his left butt cheek. Nellie keeps harshing on him for swearing in front of the kids because Bella returned from holiday saying 'shit' and 'fuck' last time (she's 2 and a half).

Nellie and I used to be the only girls at Nick's club Fortress Europe, and Nick used to jump from the DJ's booth to take turns tangoing to Brel with us (she sends hellos).

My New Year's Eve was in the company of my best Mpls. friend Chris, virtually the entire curatorial/design staff of the Walker Art Centre, sumptuous private party at someone's apartment, fireworks on the sidewalk outside in the recent, deep snow.

Miss you both!

S
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