Three monks are meditating far from the humanity, in the Himalayas. One year passes in silence, and one of them says to the others, "Pretty cold here." Another year passes and the second monk says, "You know, you are quite right." Another year comes to pass... And the third monk says, "Hey, I'm gonna quit unless you stop bitching!" Sects, sects, sects. Is that all you monks ever think about? An old European monastery is perched high on a 500-foot cliff. Visitors ride up in a big basket, pulled to the top with a ragged old rope. Halfway up, a passenger nervously asked: "How often do you change the rope?" The monk in charge replied: "Whenever the old one breaks." A monk takes a vow of silence. He's silent for five years, and then he goes to the head monk. The head monk congratulates him on his acheivement, and offers a chance to say two words. The monk utters, "Bed hard." Five more years pass. Finally the monk sees the head monk again. He is allowed two more words after these ten years. "Food bad." Five years later, the monk is allowed to speak after a total of fifteen years. His words: "I quit." "Well, you might as well quit. You've been complaining ever since you got here," replies the head monk There were three pious monks. These monks were so pious, in fact, that the head abbot decided one day to reward their devotion by granting them each one day of sin, on the condition that they confess their activities to him at the end of the day. So, the day cometh, and the three monks go off into the night to indulge in all manner of sin. The first monk saunters in at 1:00 in the morning, and tries to sneak upstairs to bed. But the head abbot, who was waiting up for the three, stopped him and demanded that he relate his doings. "No, head abbot," the first monk said, "it's too evil for me to admit!" "The deal was for you to tell me everything you did, otherwise you will not receive absolution!" said the abbot. So the first monk agreed to tell what he did. "I - I - I drank! And I did all manner of drugs..." "Enough!" said the head abbot, enraged. "Those are evil sins, but I promised to forgive you. Go out back, drink some Holy Water, say some prayers and you will be forgiven in the morning." The first monk thankfully went off to follow the abbot's instructions. The second monk wanders in at 2:00 AM. "What did you do last night?" demanded the head abbot. "I can't say! It's much too evil!" "The agreement was that you must tell me everything you did!" "Okay," agreed the second monk. "I had all manner of sex. I had sex with young girls, young boys, small furry quadrupeds, large species of flora, my CD player..." "Enough!" cried the head abbot. "That is a truly great sin. But I promised to give you absolution. Go out back and drink some Holy Water. Then say some prayers and you will be forgiven in the morning." The second monk sauntered off to do just that. And the third and final monk crawls in at 3:00 in the morning. "What," asks the head abbot, "did you do this evening?" "No, head abbot, it's too great a sin to admit. I cannot tell!" "The agreement, monk! You must tell me!" The third monk bowed his head and nodded. "All right, head abbot. Last night I...I..." "Yes?" "I pissed in the Holy Water." MONK GLOATS OVER YOGA CHAMPIONSHIP 'I am the serenest!' he says LHASA, TIBET-Employing the brash style that first brought him to prominence, Sri Dhananjai Bikram won the fifth annual International Yogi Competition yesterday with a world-record point total of 873.6. "I am the serenest!" Bikram shouted to the estimated crowd of 20,000 yoga fans, vigorously pumping his fists. "No one is serener than Sri Dhananjai Bikram - I am the greatest monk of all time!" Bikram averaged 1.89 breaths a minute during the two-hour competition, nearly .3 fewer than his nearest competitor, second-place finisher and two-time champion Sri Salil "The Hammer" Gupta. The heavily favored Gupta was upset after the loss. "I should be able to beat that guy with one lung tied," Gupta said. "I'm beside myself right now, and I don't mean trans-bodily." Bikram got off to a fast start at the Lhasa meet, which like most major competitions, is a six-event affair. In the first event, he attained total consciousness (TC) in just 2 minutes, 34 seconds, and set the tone for the rest of the meet by repeatedly shouting, "I'm blissful! You blissful?! I'm blissful!" to the other yogis. Bikram, 33, burst onto the international yoga scene with a gold-mandala performance at the 1994 Bhutan Invitational. At that competition he premiered his aggressive style, at one point in the flexibility event sticking his middle toes out at the other yogis. While no prohibition exists against such behavior, according to Yoga League Commissioner Swami Prabhupada, such behavior is generally considered "unBuddhalike." "I don't care what the critics say," Bikram said. "Sri Bikram is just gonna go out there and do Sri Bikram's own yoga thing." Before the Bhutan meet, Bikram had never placed better than fourth. Many said he had forsaken rigorous training for the celebrity status accorded by his Bhutan win, endorsing Nike's new line of prayer mats and supposedly dating the Hindu goddess Shakti. But his performance this week will regain for him the number one computer ranking and earn him new respect, as well as for his coach Mahananda Vasti, the controversial guru some have called Bikram's "guru." "My special training diet for Bikram of one super-charged, carbo-loaded grain of rice per day was essential to his win," Vasti said. The defeated Gupta denied that Bikram's taunting was a factor in his inability to attain TC. "I just wasn't myself today," Gupta commented. "I wasn't any self today. I was an egoless particle of the universal no-soul." In the second event, flexibility, Bikram maintained the lead by supporting himself on his index fingers for the entire 15 minutes while touching the back of his skull to his lower spine. The feat was matched by Gupta, who first used the position at the 1990 Tokyo Zen-Off. "That's my meditative position of spiritual ecstasy, not his," remarked Gupta. "He stole my thunder." Bikram denied the charge, saying, "Gupta's been talking like that ever since he was a 3rd century Egyptian slave-owner." Nevertheless, a strong showing by Gupta in the third event, the shotput, placed him within a lotus petal of the lead at the competition's halfway point. But event number four, the contemplation of unanswerable riddles known as koans, proved the key to victory for Bikram. The koan had long been thought the weak point of his spiritual arsenal, but his response to today's riddle-"Show me the face you had before you were born"-was reportedly "extremely illuminative," according to Commissioner Prabhupada. While koan answers are kept secret from the public for fear of exposing the uninitiated multitudes to the terror of universal truth, insiders claim his answer had Prabhupada and the two other judges "highly enlightened. With the event victory, Bikram built himself a nearly insurmountable lead, one he sustained through the yak-milk churn and breathing events to come away with the upset victory. |
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