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Buddhist Marathon Monk Completes
Seven-Year Run…
A Buddhist priest dubbed the marathon monk has completed a seven-year ancient running ritual in the remote Japanese mountains. The run in the Hiei mountains, a range of five peaks that rise above the ancient capital of Kyot, covered a distance equivalent to a trip round the globe, said an official at Enryakuji Hoshuin, guardian temple of the grueling tradition. The 44-year-old monk, Genshin Fujinami, returned on Thursday, March 1, from his 1,000-day, 40,000-kilometre spiritual journey. “I entrusted everything to god. I am satisfied,” Fujinami was quoted as saying in a newspaper report.
Since 1885, only 46 other so-called “marathon monks” of the
Tendai sect have lived through the ritual, which dates to the 8th century
and is believed to be a path to enlightenment. The last monk to complete
it returned in 1994. A few have done it twice; many more have not lived
to finish. Traditionally monks, known as gyoja, who can’t continue
to the end must take their own lives either by hanging or disembowelment.
A rigorous regimen dictates that in each of the journey’s first three
years, the pilgrim must rise at midnight for 100 consecutive days to pray,
run along a 30-kilometre trail around Mount Hiei - stopping 250 times to
pray along the way. He can carry only candles, a prayer book and a sack
of vegetarian food. In the next two years, he has to extend his runs to
200 days. In the winter, the pilgrim runner takes a break and spends the
days doing temple chores. His most difficult trial, however, comes during
the fifth year when he must sit and chant mantras for nine days without
food, water or sleep, in a trial called “doiri,” or “entering
the temple.” In the sixth year, he walks 60 kilometers - slightly
longer than a marathon race - every day for 100 days. And in the seventh,
he goes 84 kilometers for 100 days and then 30 kilometers for another 100
days, before returning to the temple, located in Otsu city, about 374 kilometers
south-west of Tokyo.
I have nothing to say—I’m speechless. That’s just freakin’
ridiculous. And I just bitched about having to get up off the couch to go
to the bathroom.
The Heat Is On (His Girlfriend)…
Robert “Drew” Stephenson, on trial in Fort Worth, Texas, in January for “torturing” an ex-girlfriend, acknowledged her severe burns but said it wasn’t his fault. He said the two were having sex in a house that had no heat, and to warm himself, he ran the flames of a lantern up and down his arm. According to him, his girlfriend said she wanted to be warmed up with flames, too. (He was convicted, and in February, after four other women testified that he had beaten them, was sentenced to life in prison.)
What’s next, life in prison for cutting your girlfriend up with a
knife because she’s scared of the sight of blood? I mean, he probably
thought it was ok—he’s from Texas after all.
I Still Wet The Bed When I Was 10…
Southern California filmmaker Dominic Scott Kay filed a creative-control lawsuit in January against the financial backer of his short film, “Saving Angelo,” starring family friend Kevin Bacon, which he wanted to enter in independent festivals but was kept from doing so by the financier. Dominic Scott Kay is 10 years old.
Ah, the future looks bright for Hollywood. Remember what all of us in Generation
X have been saying about things changing when we rule the world? Yeah, we
can all throw that out the window now. It’s over.
Define Reckless Self-Importance…
A 2006 Church of England report warned that disagreeable congregants, together with the pressures of the church’s “feudal system” bureaucracy, were turning priests harshly negative and creating an “irritable clergy syndrome.” One of the report’s authors told The Times of London in December that priests are bothered by “having to be nice all the time to everyone, even when confronted with extremes of nastiness,” such as aggressive and neurotic parishioners.
Stop shorting me on that dank communion bread and wine and we’ll see about fixing my attitude problem. All God’s children, my foot.
All Hands On Deck…
In February, two anti-whaling activists (one from Australia, one from Los Angeles), intending to attack a Japanese whaling ship near Antarctica with a bottle of acid and a smoke bomb, got lost in the fog in their small dinghy and were rescued with the help of several boats, including the whaler. However, as soon as the activists were safe, one thanked the Japanese crew but said, “I guess we’re back on schedule, and we’ll be pursuing you again.” Shortly after that, the activists approached the whaler and tossed the acid onto the deck, injuring two crewmembers.
I wonder if it’s hard to fall so in love with yourself that stupid
self-important melodramatic actions such as this seem viable and proper
topics of discussion while having a martini social with Greenpeace?
Lunar Land Still Safe From Landgrubbing Earthmen... For Now
A Chinese appeals court has upheld a ban on a company from selling land
on the moon, ruling that “celestial bodies” could not be anyone’s
property.
The company in question, Lunar Embassy to China, offered to sell plots of
lunar land for 298 yuan per acre (approx. $38 USD). Within three days of
opening for business, a reported 34 clients had purchased 49 acres of land
on the moon, earning the company more than 14,000 yuan.
The Beijing Administration of Industry and Commerce revoked Lunar Embassy’s
business license and fined it 50,000 yuan in October, 2005, and the Haidian
District People’s Court ruled against the company in November of that
year.
Lunar Embassy responded by suing the Beijing Adminstration of Industry and
Commerce, but the Beijing First Intermediate People’s Court this month
upheld the original 2005 decision which revoked the company’s license,
citing an international treaty China signed in 1983 which states that “outer
space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, is not subject to
national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation,
or by other means...”.
If ever there was an occation to break out the old “bridge in Arizona”
joke, this would be it, right?
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