Mankind had to crawl out of conformity, like fish had to crawl out onto land.

It is naive to think that you wouldn't have taken part in historical atrocities once considered normal

if you embrace all the trendy ideas of today.

Aishat Akandi

A thousand years ago, in ancient Japan, there was an old Zen monastery,

and this monastery was holding what they call a Sashin,

which is their enlightenment intensives. These are hardcore retreats that last four or five days

where the monks go real hard for their enlightenment. And so they were doing this Sashin. They were all

in the room together with the Zen master going at it hard.

Just beginning.

And then this annoying little cat came into the room and started meowing and meowing and meowing incessantly.

At first they ignored this little cat, but it just kept meowing.

Finally, the monks were getting agitated and disturbed and annoyed.

And the Zen master seeing this,

told one of the young monks to go tie this cat outside in front of the monastery by the post out front

so that it wouldn't sneak back in to disturb them again throughout this retreat.

And so he did.

And the session went on day after day.

And that was a particularly fortunate, fortuitous sashin, very successful, more than usual monks,

got their enlightenment that sashin.

Fast forward, hundreds of years later, and there are many more monasteries in Japan and this time when

they hold their Sashin as they do every year all of them tie a cat outside the front door

...