The master Bankei's talks were attended not only by Zen students but by persons of all ranks and sects. He never quoted sutras nor indulged in scholastic dissertations. Instead, his words were spoken directly from his heart to the hearts of his listeners.

His large audiences angered a priest of the Nichiren sect because the adherents had left to hear about Zen. The self-centered Nichiren priest came to the temple, determined to debate with Bankei.

"Hey, Zen teacher!" he called out. "Wait a minute. Whoever respects you will obey what you say, but a man like myself does not respect you. Can you make me obey you?"

"Come up beside me and I will show you," said Bankei.

Proudly the priest pushed his way through the crowd to the teacher.

Bankei smiled. "Come over to my left side."

The priest obeyed.

"No," said Bankei, "we may talk better if you are on the right side. Step over here."

The priest proudly stepped over to the right

"You see," observed Bankei, "you are obeying me and I think you are a very gentle person. Now sit down and listen."

The Zen master Hakuin was praised by his neighbors as one living a pure life.

A beautiful Japanese girl whose parents owned a food store lived near him. Suddenly, without any warning, her parents discovered she was with child.

This made her parents very angry. She would not confess who the man was, but after much harassment at last named Hakuin.

In great anger the parents went to the master. "Is that so?" was all he would say.

After the child was born it was brought to Hakuin. By this time he had lost his reputation, which did not trouble him, but he took very good care of the child. He obtained milk from his neighbors and everything else the little one needed.

A year later the girl-mother could stand it no longer. She told her parents the truth - that the real father of the child was a young man who worked in the fishmarket.

The mother and father of the girl at once went to Hakuin to ask his forgiveness, to apologize at length, and to get the child back again.

Hakuin was willing. In yielding the child, all he said was: "Is that so?"

You don't have to drive off a bridge to experience the terror of sinking underwater in a car.

Flash floods can be just as deadly — a car could start floating away in only 2 feet of water. Either way, once the water starts pouring into your vehicle, you need to keep your cool while acting quickly.

First, unfasten your seat belt. That may seem obvious, but you'd be surprised at the number of drowning victims who never unbuckled themselves. Then, before the electricity shorts out, roll down the windows.

THAT'S RIGHT, ROLL DOWN THE WINDOWS

This may seem a suicidal act as you sit in a sinking car. But the point is to equalize the water pressure inside and outside the vehicle. If your sinking car stays full of air, there's no way you'll be able to open the door.

If you still can't get the door open and windows won't roll down, find a heavy object, say a flashlight, and break the glass. Don't try to kick out the windshield; you'll never be able to do it. Smash a side window — it breaks more easily if you hit an edge or corner — and swim out through it and head to the surface.

YOUR LAPTOP WILL FORGIVE YOU

Don't waste time trying to gather up valuable possessions. The laptop, the purse, the DVDs ... their time has come. Yours hasn't, if you use your head.

(Discovery)

Disclaimer

Gudo was the emperor's teacher of his time. Nevertheless, he used to travel alone as a wandering mendicant. Once when he was on his was to Edo, the cultural and political center of the shogunate, he approached a little village named Takenaka. It was evening and a heavy rain was falling. Gudo was thoroughly wet. His straw sandals were in pieces. At a farmhouse near the village he noticed four or five pairs of sandals in the window and decided to buy some dry ones.

The woman who offered him the sandals, seeing how wet he was, invited him in to remain for the night at her home. Gudo accepted, thanking her. He entered and recited a sutra before the family shrine. He then was introduced to the woman's mother, and to her children. Observing that the entire family was depressed, Gudo asked what was wrong.

"My husband is a gambler and a drunkard," the housewife told him. "When he happens to win he drinks and becomes abusive. When he loses he borrows money from others. Sometimes when he becomes thoroughly drunk he does not come home at all. What can I do?"

I will help him," said Gudo. "Here is some money. Get me a gallon of fine wine and something good to eat. Then you may retire. I will meditate before the shrine."

When the man of the house returned about midnight, quite drunk, he bellowed: "Hey, wife, I am home. Have you something for me to eat?"

"I have something for you," said Gudo. "I happened to get caught in the rain and your wife kindly asked me to remain here for the night. In return I have bought some wine and fish, so you might as well have them."

The man was delighted. He drank the wine at once and laid himself down on the floor. Gudo sat in meditation beside him.

In the morning when the husband awoke he had forgotten about the previous night. "Who are you? Where do you come from?" he asked Gudo, who still was meditating.

"I am Gudo of Kyoto and I am going on to Edo," replied the Zen master.

The man was utterly ashamed. He apologized profusely to the teacher of his emperor.

Gudo smiled. "Everything in this life is impermanent," he explained. "Life is very brief. If you keep on gambling and drinking, you will have no time left to accomplish anything else, and you will cause your family to suffer too."

The perception of the husband awoke as if from a dream. "You are right," he declared. "How can I ever repay you for this wonderful teaching! Let me see you off and carry your things a little way."

"If you wish," assented Gudo.

The two started out. After they had gone three miles Gudo told him to return. "Just another five miles," he begged Gudo. They continued on.

"You may return now," suggested Gudo.

"After another ten miles," the man replied.

"Return now," said Gudo, when the ten miles had been passed.

"I am going to follow you all the rest of my life," declared the man.

Modern Zen teachers in Japan spring from the lineage of a famous master who was the successor of Gudo. His name was Mu-nan, the man who never turned back.

I posted about Babylon dictionary 7 giveaway event (maybe it's babylon dictionary 8 giveaway) before. It's a really useful software for someone to learn languages. But it's not cheap for somebody to afford. If using illegal licenses isn't not your choice (of cause, I don't like it,too), I'm sure you will
happy to find a free alternative ^^. Even information of this software has been posted on many forums and sites, but for my site visitors' benefit, who may not know about its exist, I post an article about this software on my blog. Not sure about its legal right of its dictionaries, hope its owner deliberated on this issue before giving those dictionaries to its users !

Lingoes is an easy and intuitive dictionary and text translation software, It offers lookup dictionaries, full text translation, capture word on screen, translate selected text and pronunciation of words in over 80 languages. These language are English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Greek, Swedish, Turkish, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Arabic, Hebrew, Vietnamese, Thai and more...

Nan-in, a Japanese master during the Meiji era (1868-1912), received a university professor who came to inquire about Zen.

Nan-in served tea. He poured his visitor's cup full, and then kept on pouring.

The professor watched the overflow until he no longer could restrain himself. "It is overfull. No more will go in!"

"Like this cup," Nan-in said, "you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?"

How safe is your computer when you're online (even off-line) ? To avoiding many threats out there is a difficult task, even you're an experienced user ! Choosing a good security software or an anti-virus software is a must, but how do you know what is suit to your desperate need to protect your computer now ? Is there another choice ? Yes, of cause, it's using virtualization technology, security software that creates a separate environment allowing you unlimited freedom to enjoy all Internet activities without the fear of external threats !

Currently, there are two choice, one paid software and free software. If you want , try it to see how it works.

Paid software: Bufferzone
Alternative Free software: Sanboxie - click here to download

BufferZone Technolgy

The Virtual Zone

BufferZone's unique application virtualization technology transparently redirects any potentially threats such as browser based applications or other downloaded desktop applications to an isolated virtual environment called the Virtual Zone protecting your actual system from dangerous Internet threats.

BufferZone's technology should not be confused with PC virtualization software such as VMware or Virtual PC and does not consume resources, memory and CPU space the way PC virtualization software does. Moreover, it fits into your existing Windows environment with no need to create or manage a separate virtual environment.

BufferZone application virtualization merely redirects PC modifications by Internet and downloaded programs to a separate environment labeled C:\Virtual on the hard drive while Windows and its processes continue to run normally within their usual environment. It's as if those programs and files never modified anything on your actual system and your PC's system configuration and registry (OS) stay clean and out of harms way.

BufferZone classifies Internet programs and their downloads as untrusted by default, automatically blocking all entry or writing attempts (modifications) by any form of malware. By isolating untrusted programs and files inside the Virtual Zone, BufferZone prevents hidden and malicious applications from watching or damaging your PC's assets.

The Benefits of Total Internet Freedom

BufferZone Technology allows you to surf anywhere, download anything, open e-mail attachments, share & chat with your friends and colleagues and e-bank with no fear or risk of infecting your PC with viruses, Trojan Horses, spyware, worms, keyloggers or other malicious programs.

Choosing a right office, especially free of charge, is not a easy task for anyone ! Apart from Open Office, there are some other office softwares that you want to take a look at it. One of them is Ashampoo Office 2008, it doesn't has many functions/ features as Microsoft Office, but if you want to find a free office, it certainly is a good candidate !

Ashampoo Office 2008 is supplied with the word processing tool Ashampoo TextMaker, the spreadsheet program Ashampoo PlanMaker and – brand new in the current version – the presentations software Ashampoo Presentations.

4 Free is about giving our feedbacks on the softwares from the free promotions. So , hoping that we’ll have more tech reactions in comments, here’s again Mike’s feedback from the previous article:

—– General —–

– This is the latest version 3.10. (I used the “FREE FULL activation” English link in the “Let’s start with the killer offer!” section near the bottom of Radu’s “Ashampoo: They Trick You, You Trick Them” page.)
– The testimonials at the SoftMaker site the guys listed above indicate this is a very good app. CNet”s Download.com shows a high user rating of 4/5 for 151 votes, with many comments.
– Memory useage tested with same .doc file: OpenOffice ~70 MB, TextMaker ~16 MB. (OO may shed ~20 MB after some time.)
– Installation size (main directory): OpenOffice ~400 MB, Ashampoo Office 2008 ~83 MB. (OO includes Draw, Math, and Base which are modules not included in Ash.)
– I did find that each of the 3 modules started quite fast.
– OpenOffice users that must open complex Excel documents may want to consider this app. See the comparisons for Excel/PlanMaker/OpenOffice 2.3 at Softmaker.com. I downloaded the files that OO 2.3 had problems with and tried them in my OO 3.0.1, and it still does not display them properly.

—– Compatibility with OpenOffice —–

– The Ashampoo link says that it also reads/exports OpenDocument formats, which are used by OpenOffice. But I found it opened only .odt (word processor) files, and not .ods (spreadsheets). I didn’t have any presentation files to test.
– I opened one of my logs which is basically a long 3-column table of date/time/activity. Many activity items include multi-level bulleted lists. The bullets and levels were not imported, which was a dealbreaker for this use.

I don’t use MS Office, so I couldn’t test compatibility, but comments and press indicate it’s pretty good.

How to grabb Ashampoo Office 2008 for free ?

1. Go to this promotion page and submit your registration, after filling in the required fields.

http://www.softmaker.de/reg/ash08_en.htm

( copy and paste in your browser )

2. You’ll receive the email containing the serial number and instructions. Note that there is also a download link for “Additional dictionaries and proofing tools (~ 13 MByte)”

3. Download the good installer ( 46,9 Mo ) from Ashampoo ( not the trial one )

http://download16.ashampoo.com/m/ashampoo_office2008_310_fm.exe

( copy and paste in your browser )

That’s it! Run the installer and don’t forget to register your product!

Note 1: The software has a nice built-in option to make it portable.

Note 2: Once fully activated, download and install the latest SoftMaker service pack for Office 2008 ( 20 MB ) from here.

http://www.softmaker.com/english/servofw8_en.htm

( copy and paste in your browser )

Enjoy!

This article is from for-free-on-internet.com