Quick to judge?...

By Vichara

There is a Zen koan that says, “Water is one essence: but drunk by a cow it becomes milk, while drunk by a snake it becomes poison”. When something sp pure and simple is given to two different people the results and proceeds can be completely opposite to each other. Yes simple and self-evident it is interesting to see this example in our daily lives. You may hear how someone has worked hard on something and is reaping the rewards of this and someone may see this hard work as a means to be greedy and manipulative. One simple act consumed by two people and two different results. One observation is milk, the other poison. In our frenetic pace we can be quick to pass judgment on someone and what they do. We can all take a moment before our personal gavel strikes down in judgment to insure that we are not creating more unnecessary poison in the world.

occiput • \AHK-sih-put\ • noun
: the back part of the head or skull

Example Sentence:
"So let me suggest that everyone put away their pitchforks and firebrands and stop trying to 'bury the hatchet' by planting it in the other fellow's occiput." (Allan Falk, Michigan Lawyers Weekly, May 7, 2007)

Did you know?
"Occiput" came to English from Latin, where it was created from "ob-," meaning "against," and "capit-" or "caput," meaning "head." Its adjectival form, "occipital," meaning "of, relating to, or located within or near the occiput or the occipital bone," abounds in medical texts but is found in literary ones too, as in George Eliot's description of the coiffure of the "young ladies who frizzed their hair, and gathered it all into large barricades in front of their heads, leaving their occipital region exposed without ornament, as if that, being a back view, was of no consequence…" in Scenes of Clerical Life. Another "caput" derivation is "sinciput," a word used to refer to either the forehead or the upper half of the skull.