Grinning Like a Chinese Monk.

I get irritated with myself when I put serious posts up. I don’t really want to be serious. I want be silly. Life sometimes seems too pointless to be serious. I’ve got a marble figurine sitting on the bookcase in my office. It’s one of those fat Chinese monks with a bald head and big belly, sitting in the lotus position and smiling. People call them ‘Buddhas,’ but they’re not, of course. Depictions of the Buddha usually show him as slim and statuesque, with a serene countenance. The fat bellied ones are grinning monks, and they’re grinning because they’ve achieved enlightenment and seen through the pointlessness of samsara. They find it amusing that they ever concerned themselves with matters of the material world. That strikes me as a very good way to feel.

So, I wanted to post something funny tonight, but I can’t think of anything. I did some pretty tough garden work today, cutting back excessive growth in a particularly inaccessible place where I was constantly fighting thorns and twenty-foot-long briar shoots. Briar shoots fight dirty! I suppose I should have just smiled at the pointlessness of it all.

I did discover to my delight, however, that I must be stronger than I thought. I had to put so much effort into cutting the thicker branches that I bent my loppers. Bending one’s loppers is expensive, because if you bend them too much you have to buy another pair.

I suppose it’s slightly funny, too.

‘What did you do today?’

‘Bent me loppers.’

‘Sounds painful!’

That’ll have to do.