maybe

32
The Tao is nameless and unchanging.
Although it appears insignificant,
nothing in the world can contain it.

If a ruler abides by its principles,
then her people will willingly follow.
Heaven would then reign on earth,
like sweet rain falling on paradise.
People would have no need for laws,
because the law would be written on their hearts.

Naming is a necessity for order,
but naming can not order all things.
Naming often makes things impersonal,
so we should know when naming should end.
Knowing when to stop naming,
you can avoid the pitfall it brings.

All things end in the Tao
just as the small streams and the largest rivers
flow through valleys to the sea.

38
The highest good is not to seek to do good,
but to allow yourself to become it.
The ordinary person seeks to do good things,
and finds that they can not do them continually.

The Master does not force virtue on others,
thus she is able to accomplish her task.
The ordinary person who uses force,
will find that they accomplish nothing.

The kind person acts from the heart,
and accomplishes a multitude of things.
The righteous person acts out of pity,
yet leaves many things undone.
The moral person will act out of duty,
and when no one will respond
will roll up his sleeves and uses force.

When the Tao is forgotten, there is righteousness.
When righteousness is forgotten, there is morality.
When morality is forgotten, there is the law.
The law is the husk of faith,
and trust is the beginning of chaos.

Our basic understandings are not from the Tao
because they come from the depths of our misunderstanding.
The master abides in the fruit and not in the husk.
She dwells in the Tao,
and not with the things that hide it.
This is how she increases in wisdom.

this got moved to off-topic before i could get back to it.

one of the recent themes in the forums has been rule making (e.g. zoning, griefing, hardcoding group decision making into sl, etc).

rules of any sort have their use. so i'm not saying don't make rules.

but rules arise from other things. and it's worth examining those other things. rules are not the beginning or the end of social interactions.

a view of solving things without seeing those other things going on only treats the symptoms, not the actual issue.

we tend to see thing as through the lens of our minds, and tend to miss what is actually happening.

things are as they are, not as they seem to be.

* * *

the focus of the forums moves around. it goes from the macro level to the micro level. issues like "is sl a game?" "what is the purpose of sl?" "why are people in sl?" have bearing on issues like "zoning," "greifing," and "rules".

Do you really think SL Zen will defeat the griefers? What if they use Zen griefing?

This thread was originally moved to Off-Topic because it had no dicussion of Second Life within it. Any threads which are started in General without any SL dicussion will be moved to Off-Topic. Thanks.

I'm in the process of making a zen gun.....it shoots flowers and positive thoughts that blast the victims ass up to 8 sims away

That's no zen gun. Sounds more like a hippy gun.

A zen gun would shoot koans, and help the shooter reach a perfect state of "no-mind", an empty mirror in perfect parody with its surroundings, transcending the mortal shell while blasting the victims ass up to 8 sims away.

16 sims as 8 is mediocre

Shadow

Transcending the mortal shel works for me....Maybe it should transport the mortal sheel up to 30 sims away....bah the no mind thing doesn't do it for me and if flowers are out of the question I'll just have to go back and work on my Vegan gun that shoots hot dogs andsausage

I'm sticking with my Chardonnay-filled super soaker (she aims for the mouth and never spills a drop).

this isn't zen. it's just one way of looking at thing. different viewpoints provide information. in problem solving information is useful.

Sigh! I guess there is no Zen humor, or Zen sarcasm where yo come form.

i'm humor impaired actually.

There is Zen humor and Zen sarcasm, but none of either in this thread. However, I'm humor-impaired also, so I'm only being Zen obnoxious in pointing this out.