Moshi's Hand
Moshi was living in a temple in the province of Chiba. One of his pupils complained that his wife was too thrifty.
Moshi visited the pupil's wife and showed her his clenched fist before her face.
"What do you mean by that?" asked the woman, taken aback.
"Suppose my fist were always clenched like this. What would you call that?" he asked.
"a deformity," replied the woman.
Then he opened his hand and lay it flat and limp in front of her: "Suppose it were always like this. What then would you call it??"
"Another kind of deformity," said the wife.
"As you understand that much," finished Moshi, "you are a good wife." Then he left.
After his visit, this wife helped her husband to spend as well as to save.
dcj commentary: Goldilocks thought Papa Bear's porridge was too hot and Mama Bear's porridge was too cold, however, Baby Bear's porridge was just right!
I watched a Netflix special on Hindu yogis recently. There was this one whose practice consisted entirely of holding his arm up permanently. He had literally held his arm up for years, so that it had essentially withered and petrified in that position. I do not believe he could have lowered it anymore even if he wanted to.
I realize that this is only tangential to your post, but the show really got me thinking about the relationship of the body to the path. Some (like ascetics) seem to see the body as an impediment, something to be shunned and even tortured in order to demonstrate lack of attachment to it. Others (like Taoists) strive to perfect the body through practices like qigong in order to make it an ideal vessel for expressing the inner self.
Personally, the latter school of thought makes a lot more sense to me.
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That reminds me that Buddhism sometimes being described as the middle way; the middle between extreme sense indulgence (hedonism) and extreme renunciation (ascetic ). I see martial arts such as Judo providing a similar middle path for the body - not extreme ascetic like your yogi example or extreme body building.
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Exactly!
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