Snow

I love practicing martial arts in the snow.  There has been a lot of snow lately so I haven't had time to blog.

But here are some things I've dug up.

First off is a very straight story about Buddhist nun's practicing Kungfu.  It seems so normal.  That is what I like about the story. Kungfu Nuns!

I've been reading...a lot.  One thing that caught my mind was an account of the birth of China's most famous patriot.  The story goes that the Buddha was giving a big lecture-demo in India when a female bat farted so loudly it shook the Buddha's lotus flower.  King Garuda, the giant bird, immediately swooped in and killed the bat.  Thus Garuda could not attain full enlightenment and had to be reborn as human.  He thus became general Yue Fei, whose style name is Pengju 鵬舉.  I've been reading C.T. Hsia, but you can get it straight from wikipedia...scroll down to the last paragraph in the Buddhist section.  

Below is an image of Yue Fei in hell!

Speaking of hell, the large collection of images of Chinese Hells at Reed College is amazing.  Check it out.

Now, I haven't had time to read it yet.  But this appears to be the first translation into English of the Heshan Gong commentaries on the Daode Jing.  I personally have most of the commentary in fragments, it was translated into German in the 1980's.  Along with Xiang'er and the partial commentary of Zhang Daoling, it is the oldest and most important Daoist commentary.  The most commonly used commentary on the Daode Jing is Wangbi.  But he was not Daoist and he is said to have died at age 25 from overwork.