Friday 17 May 2013



I notice that my reply to sepehr g's comment to the rilke post just below loses something being so cramped, so here is a link to it on the full web page !


2 comments:

  1. Andrew, I wish to engage myself into poetry reading. In your book list, you called Mandelstham the best poet, and I am wondering what book and/or translator you recommend? What poets do you find most creative and realized, and do you have specific recommended translators?

    I think, though I'm not sure, the fractal of the real and unreal is in-line with truly creative poetry or koans, and I wish to immerse myself into them more.

    Also, I noticed you seem to read a lot of Western philosophy. What do you think of Deleuze? I find his philosophy interesting. He seems to argue there is only one world, one flow, but it is a world of pure difference, and the imaginative is actual and real (he calls it virtuality http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtuality_%28philosophy%29 ).

    I wish I had a good Zen teacher in real life... I am kind of moving away from Soto Zen in USA, GA.

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  2. I hadn't come across deleuze who looks interesting !

    the pre-eminent modern philosopher is jacques derrida of whom there are some good videos on the web and incidently regarded himself as a friend and colleague of deleuse !

    both him and deleuze are autistic as are any other decent philosophers like nietzsche, schopenhauer and heraclitis !

    the ultimate paradigm is autism and zen is essentially autistic, dogen sticks out a mile of you read some of his stuff like rolling up small balls of sand to clean ones arse ! : o)

    my approach to zen teachers and religious teachers in any sect or tradition is what I call "vampire zen" which is what I did in practice which is just to gut them and take what they have to offer and move on !

    lol a heraclitis fan song !

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9a630Gh_N4

    he was one of the first philosophers, but todays moderns are in his shadow ! : o)

    theres plenty of translations of mandelstham and just about any non-English poet now on the web, the more amateur translations can often be better than the professional because they don't carry such a burden of how things should be and can be more literal!

    the final word on philosophy

    "meaning is a fluid"

    poetry is that fluid and philosophy is always a failing approximation of good poetry ! :o)

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