Dear All,

I have asked Chugai to take a breather and break from here. I hope he comes back. I had to temporarily suspend his account because he broke a specific promise to me to (1) stop the shotgun approach of flooding the Forum with posts (I asked him to limit himself to a number of posts a day that he thought he really really needed to say) and (2) to stop the "baseball bat over the head" approach with many of his posts, often containing violent, bloody pictures and content.

I explained that there is a time to be "in your face" with folks, wake them up with a bat over the head and an electric shock. However, if one just does that day in and day out, it also misses something. One ends up with a very aggressive, chaotic atmosphere bringing out ugliness in people, unfortunately as found too many places in the world and on the internet these days. I compared it to the following blunt image:

If a fellow came into a Zen group and, to stir things up, threw a bucket of animal blood or feces on the floor and some of the sitters, I would approve perhaps ... if he did it once, maybe once in awhile. This Practice holds all the beauty and ugliness of the world, no problem ... point taken.

However, if he came in every day and tossed a bucket of blood and feces on the floor, I might ask him to take it outside. If he refused, I might ask him to take a breather, and I might ask him to also know the beauty in bringing flowers and incense. Peace and serenity is to be valued too. I also like to sit Zazen in disturbing places, such as garbage dumps, crematoriums or scenes of violence. However, Dogen and others advised us to sit most of the time in a clean, peaceful, friendly, "not too hot not too cold" environment with flowers and incense facilitating to Zazen ... and even if sometimes (no problem too!) we sit squarely in a puddle of blood and pooh!

I told Chugai he is always welcome back (as soon as he leaves the shotgun postings, baseball bat and bucket of blood at the door). I told him he can always write me, and I am always available to chat. I hope we see him back soon. I can count the number of times this has happened in Treeleaf's 5 year history on about one hand ... but sometimes it happens.

Finally, Chugai has assured me that he is actually in pretty good physical health despite some misunderstanding on that point, and that this is not related to anything like that. I was happy to hear that too.

Gassho, Jundo