the monk rode in
on a bright-eyed tiger, and
started hulling rice.
Fēnggān [Senryū]
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Tag Archives: Mad Saints
PROMPT: Holiday Invention
Invent a holiday! Explain how and why everyone should celebrate.
Mad Saints Day. In honor of all the crazy sages throughout history (e.g. Hanshan, Diogenes the Cynic, Ikkyu, St. Isadora, Drukpa Kunley, Nasreddin, Milarepa, William Blake, etc.)
It’s celebrated by violating some societal convention that doesn’t have direct adverse health and safety consequences (This is not “The Purge.”) Of course, violating even the most absurdly arbitrary societal convention will cause many people to freak out, so the other element of celebrating Mad Saints Day is just getting the f@$& over it.
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PROMPT: Successful
Daily writing prompt
When you think of the word “successful,” who’s the first person that comes to mind and why?
Diogenes [of Sinope] and – also – Drukpa Kunley. Each of them spoke his mind, lived by his own rules, never wore a mask, and could not be controlled. They were truly free.
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PROMPT: Admired Profession
What profession do you admire most and why?
I most admire Mad Saints / Crazy Sages because it requires great courage to show a path of thwarting convention, and it demonstrates a level of freedom and self-realization unseen, elsewhere.
Furthermore, unlike the other major contenders, there is no bad motive for entering the field. So, if you want to talk on the whole. Many doctors chased pitiful motives like money, prestige, or simply doing what their parents told them to — unquestioningly. Some teachers became teachers based on the June through August dead time or the love of the power to make kids eat their meat by withholding the pudding. But all crazy sages became so because someone needs to point out the world outside the cave, and they had no capacity to do otherwise.
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Thoreau’s Wish [Free Verse]
“I desire that there may be as many different persons in the world as possible”
Henry david thoreau, Walden
Too many people wish that the world consisted of those who held the same views as they - who loved what they loved, who believed what they believed, who would do what they would do. I can't imagine a more boring world than that. If there aren't those with different: ideas, desires, beliefs, and values, then who will show me something new: something that -- for good or for ill -- will change my world and advance my understanding. If truth be told, I'd just as soon spend time among the crazy sages who -- having rejected all programming -- will not be made prisoner to a train schedule, let alone to a norm or convention or protocol. The madmen who shaman one out of all mental conventions. But such as they are hand forged, each vibrating at his or her own wavelength -- hard to see and not easily found.
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Mad Saints, Poets, & Lovers
In the ecstatic madness sits a different kind of bliss so untethered that you drift far from the familiar. There is no cord unwinding to snap you into place, and you may float into and out of your original face. And when one stands screaming, unwilling to be shooshed - naked as a J-bird - immune to being rushed, you may find a freedom that would terrify the rest: the homeless kind of freedom of the sanity dispossessed.
Tiger Riding for Beginners 