Thursday 11 July 2013

brad warner wakes up slightly?

brad warner actually replies to me on you tube ! my full reply : o)

16 comments:

  1. An3drew, do you recommend any Zen schools in North America? Are there genuine teachers in NA?

    Also, what do you think of Rinzai Zen? They use more koan practice rather than Shikantaza, which damages the knees to inflexible people such as myself.

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  2. the only teacher I thought understood of what it was about in sufficient adequacy was toni packer and it is disturbing to see her present situation, some issues with dementia and needing full time care and not having sufficient financial resources

    http://www.springwatercenter.org/news/

    it's depressing !

    I really don't recommend the zen scene now, it's changed from when I stayed in centers and travelled 21 to 17 years ago..........

    the new generation of teachers is even more stupid and incompetent and there's too many health issues in these places and the diet absolutely sucks now !

    pay attention to income and diet and health and if you really are keen on koans, all my writing is a koan and there's plenty more everywhere in literature and life if you look : o)

    you question is actually a koan, just an investigation of reality and you may notice you are going in circles : o)(

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  3. sepehr g. your koan is you are going in circles, you have a major issue to work your way out of and there's no instant kensho miracle going to do that, but small productive changes !

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  4. Burn a cross while at the same time planting a garden, that's my motto!

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    1. you misunderstand the cross and it nails you anyway, the garden is an illusion : o ()

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  5. What books by Toni Packer do you recommend, and is Kusan Sunim's The Way of Korean Zen good?

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    1. "the work of this moment" by toni packer i found very useful and i liked "the way of korean zen"
      (translated by martine batchelor)

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  6. Thank you.

    Also, I have no experience in poetry, and I want to start again.

    Do you have any edition or collection of Emily Dickinson's poetry to recommend? I want some annotations to help me along the way, and in the future I can read without it? I plan to buy an electronic dictionary again because I want to read poetry.

    Do you think reading stuff like Dogen or Han Shan is a waste of time due to the biases of the translators? I think sticking with poetry written in one's native tongue is better then?

    I will procrastinate on improving my math while I read this stuff. I hate math so much.

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    1. my book and video list with Emily dickinson at the top !

      http://mueller_ranges.tripod.com/links/book_list.html

      yeah dogen is a waste of time, but there are some good translations of han shan around !


      in today's world it's bad news to get stuck without good job or income earning skills because unskilled or semi-skilled labour pays so little now, it didn't use to be like that in the western world !:o(

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    2. So starting off with

      " the poems of emily dickinson edited by w. r. franklin

      emily dickinson's intimate letters to susan huntington dickinson"

      is the best?

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    3. I haven't read the franklin edition, but from the reviews on amazon it's supposed to be the best !

      I never bought the "intimate letters", but read it in a bookshop in boston, that is taking me back :o)

      the web of course is very good, the really important thing is quality reading which Emily Dickinson and Charles bukowski are for instance and shunryu suzuki and most dogen translationns are not ! :o(

      real understanding is so rare, one needs to read and talk to the great minds of the past :o)

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    4. So I'm buying...

      The Work of This Moment by Toni Packer
      The Way of Korean Zen (tranls. Martine Batchelor)
      The Poems of Emily Dickinson edited by W. R. Franklin
      Emily Dickinson's Intimate Letters to Susan Huntington

      I've sold lots of books, so I have money to afford these. Do you have any Han Shan translations to recommend? I didn't really feel Red Pine's translation was on target... but I could be wrong.

      Also, I plan to buy a translation of the Shahnameh soon. I noticed on your book recommendation list you had some cool Hindu myths, Persian poets, and etc. Have you ever read the Shahnameh? I also plan to read The Eddas in the future. I think poetry and myth are both pretty cool.

      Finally, on a tangential note, I don't like the practice of magick. What's your opinion on stuff like Chaos Magick or other similar stuff? I don't think the rigid practice of Zazen is useful... but the same applies to the recent popularity in stuff like magick, tarot, or reiki stuff...

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    5. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    6. long reply to sepehr g. so linked

      http://mueller_ranges.tripod.com/andrew/pending_poems95.html#shahnameh

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    7. Yeah, I'm very good at using the internet. I torrent most of my books for school, and I torrent a lot of other books too. I also utilize various search engines and mIRC. I never buy movies or documentaries because I can easily torrent them. Russian websites have the best torrents btw.

      I just don't like doing deep reading on the computer screen. It strains my eyes. I may consider getting f.lux though, but I don't think it'll help one hundred percent. I just like holding the book, highlighting, and doing deep reading. I print most of the Scientific Journal Articles I read btw.

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    8. long reply with turquoise : o)

      http://mueller_ranges.tripod.com/andrew/pending_poems95.html#f_lux

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