A Fool and a Witty

“What do you take me for, a fool?”

The whole enchilada of human relationships, epitomized by the higher “art” of elite political wrangling, can be usefully understood , IMHO, by considering the many ways the concept of “fool” can be applied to them.

We just (it seems to me!) endured the last great “fool” hope, from Hope, Arkansas, who enlightened us with his insightful reminder to us, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me”. Saying this, while HE, HIMSELF, was, and is, the essence of fooling!

And, now, the “fool” dimension has evolved even higher, almost unbelievably, with the arrival of the anointed one, BHO! Talk about the greater FOOL theory---in practice!

Well, I have, MYSELF, a couple of pithy and witty old “fool” ditties, that I think help us play the BHO “recording”---

We all know a fool when we see one, but never when we ARE one.

Let THAT swish around in your processing brain for a while, and expand its shining light of Truth on both BHO and each single other human who has to deal with him—including you.

First, way too many Americans---and, non-Americans, in spades!---did not see BHO as the fool he is, and were thus fooled: ergo, they ARE fools! A fool, fooling others?

Second, as witnessed by the latest presser by BHO, he absolutely does NOT know that he is a fool! He definitely sees the American public as---FOOLS! Why don’t they recognize his greatness? What fools you---we---are!

Here’s another hoary “fool” saying---

You may look like a fool, but why remove all doubt by opening your mouth?

NOW, I, personally, have lived quite long enough, thank you, to have learned the value of SILENCE! (That other old admonition, to not say anything about someone unless it’s a compliment, seems to stem from this wise take.) Boy, was my youth ever a living hell, because I couldn’t keep my mouth shut, so eager was I to tell the truth as I saw it---young Narcissus, in diapers, for way too long!

What is a “fool”, anyway?

Another linked memory---wasn’t it once reported that the Catholic Supreme Court Justice Anthony Scalia was an admitted “fool for God”?

You could have fooled me!

It takes one to know one!

Somehow, this rant about “fool” has brought me to a wonderful choice paradox that took my own foolish life into sheer---what?

“The moment a man attains Prajna (Enlightenment), he is swallowed up in the absolute. There is no stage when he can declare that he is freed; he cannot leave any kind of record. Logically, he cannot even know that he is free; as long as he is in bondage, it would be false to if he took himself to be free; and when he is free, he is no longer there to know that he is free as he is immediately merged in the absolute.”

From “The Central Philosophy of Buddhism”, by T.R.V. Murti, 1955, a book about Madhyamika Buddhism from the “point of view” of Nagarjuna (circa A.D. 150) page 279

These words are meant as a set up; and next, in the book, the author resolves the paradox, in his own way, basically “proving” that there exists Enlightened Beings, like Buddha, Jesus, Krisha, and many other lesser know humans, through time, who can be in both the phenomenal AND the absolute realms, simultaneously.

My favorite metaphor is the spinning pottery wheel.

We, as humans very much resemble one, and so if/when one attains Enlightenment, while spinning, the inertia of the “wheel” = the human one means that even as it slows down, such an awakened one CAN be at once in the phenomenal realm and the Absolute ONE.

Me---life’s ONLY paradoxical!

Pity the FOOL!

posted by James at 11:08 AM
Contact me at jfcrystal@hotmail.com