OVO

Buddhism started in India, long ago. Then it moved into China and was influenced by Taoism; the Zen tradition comes from this interaction. When Zen Buddhism moved to Japan it gained the rituals and structure and the koen tradition which later still appeared in the West. But what happened when the Buddha nature moved to Australia in the 20th Century? Why, a late 1980s/early 1990s Buddhist BBS went up, of course.

Sacred Texts host a collection of texts which originally appeared at the Coombs Buddhism archive, one of the earlier Buddhist resources online. They’ve preserved the text is satisfying ASCII.TXT, with the original ftp and gopher addresses right in there. And if that isn’t satisfying enough, the texts make reference to being transcribed from cassette or multi-generation photocopied TYPED text (as in manual typewriter, where fingers moved levers of metal to press ribbons soaked in ink against paper), or converted (with errors) from old ‘CP/M ‘ computers. Ahhh… watch the waves of technology break on the shores of bliss consciousness.

I’m still going through this large collection of texts, but some favorites so far are Cheng-Tao-Ko, Mumonkan Case 5, The Fortunate and Ongoing Disaster of Lay Life and Soul in Zen. Some real duds in there too, but enjoy.