I'm not much into the whole answer a question with an all-knowing glistening-eyed question (although some aspects of zen are attractive, especially the lay variety), so I'll just give me interpretatins.
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On page 31, CONTROL. The passage is:
"To give your sheep or cow a large spacious meadow is the way to control him"
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Basically, animals are naturally averse to confinement and closed spaces. If you have seen footage of chickens and pigs and other livestock packed into cages and 200% capacity or more, you know that they become deranged and very violently psychotic. Why? Because ALL animals need space to roam. But if you put those same animals on a free-range farm, they would calm down and be quite happy and cooperative, and probably wouldn't even notice that they were still confined to a designated area within fences. The same with humans. If you impose too many restrictions on them and dictate their behavior to the point of they feelinglike they have no freedons at all, they will become deranged and have to express those forbidden drives or desires in sociably unacceptable ways. A prime example would be the Victorian upper and middle classes in England. Intense levels of suppression of their own behavior to abide by extensive social norms created all those dodgy venues in the backstreets and the underbelly of society for them to release their desire to be more animalistic: brothels, SM parlors, opium dens, and more. The extremes of suppression cause extremes in the opposite behaviors when the person find the outlets (which will arise to capitalize on that very phenomenon). If you want people to be cooperative or passive without having to crush them down and risk a backlash with unpredictable consequences, make them feel like they are free, despite them bein in a fences in pasture designed to your own liking. This ties into the next quote below.
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on Page 32 on the same Subject:
"The best way to control people is to allow them to be mischeivous"
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This is an incomplete version of a well-known application of human psychology. The general law is much more expansive, in that it doesn't restrict freedom just to mischeivousness, but the freedom to be whatever the individual wants to be (within certain limits). The law is spelled out quite beautifully in Robert Greene's the 48 Laws of Power (a book I highly recommend for those who may not want to coerce people, but at least want to defend against control and coercion by schemers and plotters around office), the brief explanation of the law within the table of contents goes like this:
Control the Options: Get Others to Play the Cards you Deal-
The best deceptions are the ones thaat seem to give people a choice: your victims are in control, but are actually your puppets. Give people options that come out in your favor whichever one they choose.Force them to make choices between the lesser of two evils, both of which serve your purpose. Put them on the horns of a dilemma: They are gored wherever they turn.
Now mind you, this person uses very powerful and sometimes offensive (to the white doves amongst us) language to describe very real laws applicable to controlling fellow humankind. Nonetheless his historical case studies are spot on in rvealing how these laws were effectively utilized.
Anyway, while there are a few nice things in zen, I have never liked the answer-question-with-question-thereby-not-really answering-anything-but-looking-like-I-could-if-I-wanted-to-thereby-making-myself-look-wise style of trying to help people actualize their lives. It's based on the premise that people have plenty of time just to sit around like cloistered monks and ponder questions to somehow create some kind of psychological serendipity. Life is short, and our lives will be over in a flash. Would you rather ponder sayings of wisdom that have been acknowledged as true through the ages or some question which may or may not really have any bearing on taking you further down the road of wise living. There is a quote in the bible that goes "It's better to be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt." Like I said, there are some things I like about Zen, but smart-assed (even if well intended) questions to questions should only be used sparing, bit exclusively, in my humble opinion. And their frequent use creates doubt in me whether the person knows jack-all about real wisdom and the real world. No intent to flame here. Just being frank.
Greg Ellis
I like autumn best of all, because its tone is mellower, its colors are richer and it is tinged with a little sorrow. Its golden richness speaks not of the innocence of spring, nor the power of summer, but of the mellowness and kindly wisdom of approaching age. It knows the limitations of life and it is content.