Hi Agarash,
Would you mind to sign a first name to your posts (maybe put a human face photo too)? lt help us stay a little more human around here. Thank you.
Oh, l like the "rebel" and the bringing it our in the world, and down to earth, part of lkkyu. l am a fan.
But you know what?
My opinion of the drinking and some of the womanizing in the brothels has changed recently. (l actually mentioned this yesterday, when Kirk and l were recording Episode 3 of the "Zen of Everything" podcast, due out this Friday). Frankly, for that part, l don't think it was really a teaching or "tantra" (the Tibetans, by the way, don't really have sex in a way you would usually think of "sex," but that is off topic). Now, l think that it is more likely that lkkyu Sojun was a wonderful teacher in many ways, but was also just a drunk and a old horn dog in that other part of his life. l don't now think of it as a "teaching," or "iconoclasm," so much as that he liked his sake and his girls for hire.
l think he is a lot like Trungpa in this way, a wonderful teacher in some ways, but an alcoholic and sex fiend in other parts of his life. Hopefully lkkyu just paid for it, and was otherwise an honorable guy, and wasn't the psychological and sexual abuser that a couple of so-called "teachers" have been like Sasaki and Shimano.
This came to me when l read some other translations of lkkyu poems last week, some of which are quite something (granted, these are translations, and l have not looked yet at the original Japanese.)
all koans just lead you on
but not the delicious p**sy of the young girls I go down :
a beautiful woman's hot vagina's full of love
I've given up trying to put out the fire of my body
a crazy lecher shuttling back and forth between whorehouse and bar
this past master paints south north east west with his c*ck
And so on.
ln his last years, he settled down pretty much with one woman, a visually impaired concubine, and that was another part of his life. Before that, not a teaching, just a guy who liked to party, get drunk and screw. Then he would put his robes on and head back to the monastery.
No problem, and at least he was honest and open about it.
Gassho, Jundo
STLah