{"id":7077,"date":"2010-08-10T16:34:55","date_gmt":"2010-08-10T08:34:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/moonpointer.com\/new\/?p=7077"},"modified":"2010-08-10T16:34:55","modified_gmt":"2010-08-10T08:34:55","slug":"a-monster-koan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/moonpointer.com\/new\/2010\/08\/a-monster-koan\/","title":{"rendered":"A Monster Koan"},"content":{"rendered":"

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In the movie ‘The Cave’, a parasite takes upon host humans, gradually taking over their bodies and minds entirely. A team of deep cave divers realise their leader was infected by this parasite, when they got trapped in a deep underwater cave. It made me wonder whether I’m a parasite for others or do I let myself be a host for parasites. <\/span>Then it struck me that we are mostly both – to some extent, mindfully or not, once a while – as long as we are unenlightened, especially since Samsara is an interdependent place.<\/p>\n

The dilemma surfaced as to how much of the human leader is still himself, especially as time trickled by. When is he truly a monster to be abandoned or even killed, for the safety of the others? Do either too soon as one becomes a monster in body and mind oneself – for demonising the innocent. Do either too late and one jeopardises everyone else.<\/span> Can his leadership still be trusted? Another movie koan! Why corner ourselves with dualistic alternatives? There’s another way – bind the leader and move on with him to find the exit, with his instructions as guidelines to be followed with mindful discernment for what it’s worth!<\/p>\n

(Spoilers alert: By the way, in the story, the leader’s advice turned out right. He didn’t transform to be a monster, while he sacrificed himself to save his team.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the movie ‘The Cave’, a parasite takes upon host humans, gradually taking over their bodies and minds entirely. A…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[137,381,321,151,160],"class_list":["post-7077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movies","tag-demon","tag-interdependence","tag-koan","tag-monster","tag-sacrifice","wpcat-26-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/moonpointer.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/moonpointer.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/moonpointer.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moonpointer.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moonpointer.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7077"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/moonpointer.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7077\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/moonpointer.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moonpointer.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moonpointer.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}