Hello and welcome to another episode of the secular Buddhism podcast.

This is episode number 110. I am your host, Noah Rasheda.

And today I'm talking about headed unhappily towards happiness.

Keep in mind you don't need to use what you learned from Buddhism. To be a Buddhist,

you can use it to learn to be a better whatever you already are.

Last week I talked about a Zen Kowan called Bodidharma's beard.

And as a reminder Bodidharma is the founder of Zen. He is the person who took Buddhist teachings

from India and introduced them to China. And he was known for having a large beard.

So the riddle or the kowan is that when waku'an saw a picture of bearded Bodidharma,

he exclaimed why hasn't that fellow a beard. And any normal person would think what

what are you talking about? You're looking at a picture of a guy with a beard,

a guy known for having a beard. Everyone knows about the beard and hear you're saying why doesn't

that have a beard. So to look at him and to hear someone ask why doesn't he have a beard is

an odd question to say the least. To ask why has Bodidharma no beard is actually an absurd question.

And the practitioner can go and they can meditate on that question all day long and puzzle over it.

How do you answer that question? Why doesn't he have a beard? It's so obvious that he does.

When there's clearly a large beard there in the picture. So if you try to answer the question

by saying but he does have a beard, you'll be told to go back and look again and keep meditating.

And if you're lucky with time the realization will come that the master was right all along

Bodidharma doesn't have a beard. So who is Bodidharma and what does he actually possess?

Like the previous co-on that talked about having a temper, who really has the temper?

Is the temper yours? Is the beard really his or does it belong to his body? Is Bodidharma a body or

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