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BUDDHA: Happy Flowers
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Subject: BUDDHA: Happy Flowers
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Date: Wed, 20 Mar 1996 16:36:36 +1000
Yet more contributions from an erstwhile buddha subscriber (BodhiSattvas?)...
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Date: Tue, 23 Jan 1996 16:17:54 +1000 (EST)
From: Michael Norris <michaeln@cs.uq.oz.au>
Subject: Happy Flowers
Found a marvellous book : "The Importance of Living" by Lin Yutang,
a Chinese writer living in America in the 1930s. It covers with equal
gravity topics from reasons to start a family to the art of getting
drunk and reasons to not give up smoking. He quotes various other
Chinese writers on a range of topics, including "fourteen conditions
pleasing to flowers, and twenty-three conditions being disgraceful
and humiliating to them". (there are only 22, but the author claims
that numbers are not greatly relevant in such matters). I don't
claim to understand either.
Conditions that please the flowers --
A clear window
A clean room
Antique tripods
A carefree friends has arrived
The owner loving hobbies and poetry
Sung ink-stones
"Pine waves" and river sounds
A native of Chichow arrives with wine
Guests in the room are exquisite
Many flowers in bloom
Copying books on flower cultivation
Visiting monk understands tea
Kettle sings deep at night
Wife and concubines editing stories of flowers
Conditions humiliating to the flowers --
The owner constantly seeing guests
A stupid servant putting in extra branches, upsetting the arrangement
The family asking for accounts
Writing poems by consulting rhyming dictionaries
Books in bad condition lying about
Common monks talking Zen
Dogs fighting before the window
Singing boys of Lientse Alley
Yiyang [Kiangsi] tunes
Ugly women plucking flowers and decorating their hair with them
Discussing people's official promotion and demotion
False expressions of love
Poems written for courtesy
Flowers in full bloom before one has paid his debts
Fukien agents
Kiangsu spurious paintings
Faeces of mice and rats
Trailing marks of slime left by snails
Servants lying about
Wine runs out after one begins to play wine games
Being neighbour to wine shops
A piece of writing with phrases like "purple morning air"
[common in imperial eulogies] on the desk
- -m.
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It is good enough that all things are good enough for now.
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