Chih-I refers to the Four Elements as snakes, he wasn’t the first to do so, yet it is his work we are exploring. An explanation for the metaphor of four snakes can be found in the Suvarnaprabhasa Sutra which offers a parable of a man who fleeing from the two bewildering forms of life and death spies a rope (life) and climbs down into the well of impermanence. In this well are two mice who…
To have physical form is to have disease. Why you might ask? Beside an obvious answer that a physical body is subject to decay and change another response is because of the natural imbalance of physical life forms. Our bodies are comprised of the four elements of earth, water, air, and fire. That may sound a tad bit ancient or even suspiciously superstitious and certainly not the language of modern medicine. Remember though we are…
(I am one of the signators of this letter) Article by Michael Zimmerman “From Baptists to Buddhists, Roman Catholics to Rabbis, and from mainline Protestants to Unitarian Universalists the number of clergy stepping up to make it clear that religion and all facets of science need not be in conflict is exploding. Indeed, more than 16,000 clergy members have now joined The Clergy Letter Project, a grass roots organization designed to demonstrate this point. These 16,000…
Disease is a fact of existence. Chih-I considered disease to be of two types. One is real and the other is tentative. We must not be misled by the use of tentative however as being something that only is of short duration or that will simply go a way. Another way of considering tentative is they are diseases of instruction. A disease of instruction or tentative would be like the illness of Vimalakirti the famous…
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