Sharing stories around the campfire

[Rick]

Isn't that what we're all doing here ... sharing stories around the (virtual) campfire?

Some stories appeal to some, not to others. Some seem clearly fictional, others closer to nonfiction. Some are told in a soft voice, others are shouted from the rooftop. Some have been told in various forms for thousands of years, others are newer.

But stories they are, all 10,000 of them.

?

[Queequeg]

Let my inspiration flow in token rhyme, suggesting rhythm,
That will not forsake me till my tale is told and done.
While the firelight's aglow, strange shadows from the flames will grow,
Till things we've never seen will seem familiar...

Inspiration, move me brightly; light the song with sense and color;
Hold away despair. More than this I will not ask.
Faced with mysteries dark and vast, statements just seem vain at last.

[jkarlins]

We were sitting at lunch, my teacher had made soup. He does this sometimes. As he was leaving the room,

"Hey, good soup lama. Good soup lama! Thank you"

He came over,

"Are you sure?"

I looked down,

"No, let me try again."

[Rick]

Good stories, thanks for sharing.

[Yavana]

One of my younger sisters is deathly afraid of Rush Limbaugh.

Throughout our childhoods we would be awoken in the middle of the night by the sound of her crying out and sobbing. My now late mother would comfort her and assure her that everything was okay, and she would ask, with tears in her eyes, for my mother to make sure that "the Limbaugh" was gone and nowhere nearby.

Apparently my sister fell asleep one night when she was very young with the TV on and her subconscious amalgamated a scary movie she'd been watching with the "Rush Limbaugh Show" that started just after it. "The Limbaugh" became a persistent figure of her childhood nightmares.

To this day, she still has no idea what Rush Limbaugh's political views are. True story.

[Strive]

im normally quiet when doing campfire. just drink beer and eat marshmelows ha ha

[Dan74]

One of my younger sisters is deathly afraid of Rush Limbaugh.

Throughout our childhoods we would be awoken in the middle of the night by the sound of her crying out and sobbing. My now late mother would comfort her and assure her that everything was okay, and she would ask, with tears in her eyes, for my mother to make sure that "the Limbaugh" was gone and nowhere nearby.

Apparently my sister fell asleep one night when she was very young with the TV on and her subconscious amalgamated a scary movie she'd been watching with the "Rush Limbaugh Show" that started just after it. "The Limbaugh" became a persistent figure of her childhood nightmares.

To this day, she still has no idea what Rush Limbaugh's political views are. True story.

Heed the unconscious wisdom of your sister, O Cicada!

[Wayfarer]

Here's a story that's a little bit spooky, but completely true. Back in 2009, I signed up for an online account where they ask you a security question that only you would know the answer to. The one I picked was 'first pet'.

Now my first pet was a skinny black dog, which my parents had named Haaji; I was at primary school at the time. Anyway, after some time we were due to go live overseas for a year, so my mother boarded the dog with the neighbour, who had a boy about my age.

When we got back, I kept pestering Mum about the dog - when are we going to get Haaji back? She eventually broke it to us that the kid next door had become really attached to the dog and she didn't want to ask for it back. We were outraged at the time (although I later came to realise it was a very compassionate decision, as that kid lived in very meagre circumstances and had no siblings.)

So that would have been 1960's. Cut to 2009. Now my mum is in her old age, in care, she barely speaks. That same day I signed up for the online service, I go down for one of my regular visits, I'm sitting next to the bed when suddenly she sparks up and talks to me. 'Sorry about that, dear', she said, in this really faint voice.

'Sorry about what, Mum?', I replied.

'About Haaji', she said.

She lived on until about 2012, but that was really about the last thing she ever said to me.

[Dan74]

[Rick]

In a retreat a few years back Anam Thubten Rinpoche said that although believing in stories causes suffering, if there's one story you hold onto, let it be that of enlightenment.

[Yavana]

There was an old thread somewhere on the forum called "Late night stories by the fire" that I had intended to get back to, but which seems to have been lost in the digital ether with the forum activity since it was last posted on. I actually prepared a story (or rather, a written personal experience) for this lost thread, and would like to relate my story regardless:

So, this story is "fireside" quality due to the eerie factor and because it's true.

Over 10 years ago I first began seriously studying Buddhism. At the time I was trying to master seated meditation with no formal training, but operated under the assumption that I had encountered Buddhism in a previous life and that, if I just followed my intuition, certain things would just come to me. Working under this assumption and willing to do whatever seemed "correct" in privacy even if it seemed a little crazy or weird, I began meditating to hone my intuition itself.

First, I would count breaths to focus my concentration. Then I would concentrate on my breath and all sense input while stilling all thought beyond the experience of the sensations of my body. Then operating on the assumption that all things were fundamentally connected and formed by all other things, (I think this is what Ziporyn describes as the "intersubsumption" and "interpretation" of all dharmas in his work on Tiantai—an idea that maybe I intuited from depictions of Buddhism in pop culture when I was young?) and attempt to "realize" my connection to, inherent knowledge of, all things in the universe. (Pretty cray-cray for a guy with no formal connection to Buddhism at the time, really. Especially when you explain it to your girlfriend.) Finally, I would come back to sensations and begin to "notice" "something," as if becoming aware of my own consciousness. I would concentrate on this awareness for some time and sort of "pin it down" before letting my thoughts flow back in so that I could examine them. The meditation was doing something , since I found myself stopping in a dream to examine what was happening, began meditating on my own consciousness, and would awaken—literally. I woke myself up from sleep several times like this.

But one early weekend morning I had a strange dream that involved sleep paralysis. I was lying in bed and I could hear a racket in the next room. My girlfriend had already left for work and I was afraid she had left the door open and a bunch of thugs or something had wandered in and were trashing the place. I managed to get up and realized that some of the noises coming from the next room were actually deep growls and other noises that human beings don't make. I crept beside the wall to the door and tried to peer into the next room undetected, but what I saw could only be described as Lovecraftian. It seemed that these things in my apartment were aware of my presence and became louder as I approached the door, as if beckoning, but did not, for some reason, dare to cross the threshold into the bedroom. Fear struck, and though I suppressed it, I felt deeply tired—drained.

I crept back to the bed and laid down, not sure what to do or how I could handle this. The groaning and snarling from the other room grew louder, and as it did I started to get angry at the thought that I might be overcome by whatever was there and die this way. Then I woke up.

I went into the next room, the living room, and looked out at the sun shining through the window, and following my "crazy-wisdom" intuition I was struck with the impression that there had been a cause for this dream, and that whatever it was had its source in my residence. Still being cray-cray as a Shaolin Jedi, I started following this sense I had to a particular part of the room. I overturned a basket of dirty clothes and at the bottom I found a large, black book. The title read something like, "The Fundamentals of Magic and Witchcraft." My ex girlfriend, in her foolish naivete took my dedication to Buddhism as a reason to explore the dark avenues forbidden by her strict Christian upbringing and had brought this artifact into our lives—which, apparently, some strange and likely malevolent force was connected with.

Was it just a coincidence? Did my subconscious mind become aware of the book through the corner of my eye at some earlier point? Did some off comment seed the awareness in my mind or something I overheard her saying or doing while I slept? Personally, call me a believer when it comes to the idea that our minds are linked with this world in more fundamental ways than is understood by science alone.

[Yavana]

Then operating on the assumption that all things were fundamentally connected and formed by all other things, (I think this is what Ziporyn describes as the "intersubsumption" and "interpretation" of all dharmas in his work on Tiantai—an idea that maybe I intuited from depictions of Buddhism in pop culture when I was young?) and attempt to "realize" my connection to, inherent knowledge of, all things in the universe.

Should say:

Then operating on the assumption that all things were fundamentally connected and formed by all other things, (I think this is what Ziporyn describes as the "intersubsumption" and "interpenetration" of all dharmas in his work on Tiantai—an idea that maybe I intuited from depictions of Buddhism in pop culture when I was young?) I attempted to "realize" my connection to, inherent knowledge of, all things in the universe.

[Queequeg]

At about the same time that my grandmother died, my cousin emerged from a coma and my sister pissed her bed and then woke my mother.

Just a coincidence.