Your Power of Search is awesome and subtle. I virtually genuflect.
You’re evidently doing better than I’m doing. Maybe it’s the after-Chinese MSG, but I am having the devil of a time parsing that sentence out. I just don’t know what “detach from the potential of placing oneself in a possible” means.
Is she asking if we’d be making joking commentary if the video was full of half-naked guys? I probably would be.
As to the video itself, the guy seems to have a very no-nonsense zen manner. Life has served him up an interesting dish, and he’s taking it at face value and making the most of it as it comes to him. That’s very zen. Quite honestly, there’s really nothing wrong with a Zen monk having a lingerie store, other than the humor people experience because of the percieved contrast in goals.
But because of that cultural amusement at this taboo, the situation this man finds himself in does lend to jocularity. I don’t think you can blame people for cracking wise. I somehow don’t think the guy in question would be too offended. 
A sense of humor is crucial to understanding the guy.
He certainly has one.
He is, as probably you’all can see, a very ordinary
and straightforward guy, not at all charismatic,
and he’s not really a ‘religious leader.’
The image of Zen monks - masters, probably - standing in a group and laughing their guts out for no apparent reason is an archetypal one.
All the better. I have to beg to differ on the “charismatic” part, though. I thought there was a very infectious and charming quality about him.
I like him very well but there’s no special energy or
quality about him–at least that’s my impression.
The fellow is very ordinary, despite his remarkable
situation and off beat sense of humor. Certainly
no flashing eyes or sexual aura or something that
would make anybody wish to ‘follow’ him.
I think this is one of the qualities of good buddhists.
They are bland. The Dalai Lama is a very ordinary
fellow who might just as well have been a mechanic.
Buddhist practice, if you do it right, doesn’t make
you an interesting person, with exciting ideas, etc.
There’s less of you than there used to be, you’re
empty.
Suzuki Roshi said to his students that he thought
they wouldn’t much like enlighenment. ‘From where
you’re looking, it wouldn’t be very interesting.’
One of the most interesting things I’ve learned about
freedom is that it’s boring, and this is one of the
best things about it. And the people who get free
become less interesting. Calm, kind, serene,
good listeners. Attie does interesting things
but he’s a bland fellow anyhow, IMO.
For me, when a Buddhist teacher is charismatic,
there’s an attractive energy radiating, I leave.
While we’re on the subject of West Coast Zen teachers,
Joko Beck is the teacher at the San Diego Zen Center.
She’s written a couple of books, Every Day Zen,
and Nothing Special Zen. I don’t always like what
she writes, but sometimes she says something
perfectly. This quotation seems to me to sum up
the meditative side of Buddhism.
“The ‘secret’ of life that we are all looking for
is just this: to develop through sitting and
daily life practice the power and courage to
return to that which we have spent a lifetime
hiding from, to rest in the bodily experience of
the present moment - even if it is a feeling of
being humiliated, of failing, or abandonment, of
unfairness.”
~Charolotte Joko Beck
Emotions are a combination of sensation (in the gut, often)
and thought. The idea is to stay in touch with the
sensation. Also sounds, feels, pains, tickles, etc.