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The following first appeared in the private email list IVy-subscribers,
which is available to all those who subscribe to the
printed magazine, International Viewpoints.
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Confessions from the Buddha
by Phil Spickler
29 Jul 00

Hello and goodbye, or Goodbye and hello!
       But actually, I've been away from the IVy-list for awhile, looking over
my alfalfa holdings, which are to be found in various parts of the world and
are quite extensive.  My serious affairs, such as what's going on on the IVy
list, have long been taken care of for me by the two Mongoloid idiots that I
employ to deal with serious issues.

        Anyway, the fellows have forwarded to me some information that makes
it look like Siddhartha Gautama Buddha once went out of his way to look up
some alleged holy man, and  found out that in 25 years of hard spiritual work
the only or main accomplishment was the ability to walk on water.  Now
allegedly or supposedly, according to this tale, upon hearing this
Siddhartha, our Gautama Buddha, is supposed to have said some invalidative
and evaluative remarks to this guy (holy man) that made it seem as though he
had wasted his 25 years, and he could have just spent a penny and gotten the
ferry man to take him across the river, instead of needing to walk on water.
And then having heavily invalidated and evaluated this old guy, he kind of
walked off and left him as a poor shell of a person.

        Well now, I ask you -- does that sound like the compassionate Buddha?
It sure doesn't to me.  If the message we're supposed to get from this tale
is that we shouldn't spend our valuable spiritual lifetimes pursuing fancy
stuff to impress the peanut gallery, well, there may be something to that.
But it sounds like just as good a way to waste a lifetime as any other,
particularly if you get a kick out of it.  Besides, walking on water could be
darned handy when the boat sinks, or if you just want to get to the other
side any darn time you please.  I myself am not too impressed with
water-walking, but that doesn't mean it isn't pretty nifty.

        Well,anyway, I decided to look up Gautama Siddhartha Buddha and ask
him if that story really happened, or whether it's just black PR in his name.
  Well, it took me awhile, about 5 or 10 minutes, but I finally found him in a
little village in Africa, a village that is wracked by the AIDS epidemic as
well as other diseases and problems of a most miserable nature.  And when I
finally got to him, he was in a woman's body, and he was in the last throes
of AIDS and dying a pretty unpleasant death.

        Well, I asked him about this story, and he said, "Yes, it's true."  He
said he was having a really bad day and was mean to that old guy, and as a
result of doing this he made so much bad karma that the terrible lifetime
he's experiencing now will carry on through many other lifetimes to make up
for his malfeasance.

        Well now, to those of you reading this, I just made that up.  As a
matter of fact, the Buddha never even knew who this guy was, and if he had,
he'd probably have taken lessons in water-walking from him.  I myself spend
some time every day doing everything I possibly can to assault the notion
that I have any higher potentials or far-out OT abilities.  I do this, of
course, and I urge others to do the same, because it will give you the
opportunity to parallel what everybody's doing anyway, since if they weren't,
it would be impossible for there to be anything called a human being.

       And finally, regarding lies, the Lie, and lying: well, gee whiz!  what
a strange subject to get sensitive about, given that Life itself is a lie,
and we, by its very nature, are the liars who, in order to play at this
happy/unhappy thing called existence, are both the postulators and perceivers
of it.  And as you well know, without that lie there wouldn't be anything,
which, believe you me, is very undesirable.

        Well, having said this, I'd like to bid my fellow liars a fond
farewell for this evening, and the reminder that everything you're doing or
not doing is an OT ability or disability (take your choice).
       --Phil
P.S.  I just might, in the very near future, start a new contest concerning
lies or lying.  I hesitate to do this because there would be so many entries
from so many people that it might take years to sort it all out and determine
who had told the best lie of all.  But second best is, you can just imagine
such a contest, and that would be about as good as having one.
      --P.