Thursday 19 December 2013

the silent illumination heresy

17 comments:

  1. an3drew, I am trying to decide what poet to invest most of my energies into.

    I read some of Bukowski's poems at the bookstore, and a lot of it felt like hit or miss. "The Genius of the Crowd" was great though.

    I read a little bit of the other stuff you recommended too. While I am going to read Wang Wei and Saadi deeply, I still want something that was originally written in English. I am trying to decide whether I should read John Keats or Sylvia Plath very deeply.

    Btw, is the novel Roadside Picnic good?

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    1. nah, if you like science fiction stanislaw lem is way the best :o)

      charles bukowski takes quite a while to get into, I first wrote him off as a drunk bum !

      he is however one of the great all time poetic geniuses, he drank he said to keep from committing suicide, but how much greater he would have been without the drink instead of learning absolutely everything the hard way !

      honestly I don't buy books anymore, just find interesting stuff on the web !

      really the best poet is Emily Dickinson, she is elliptical and cryptic so needs abit of research to help unwrap the poems so the speak

      but really she is the most "sufi"

      the point of reading these great minds is to have a conversation with them to give a road of insight and sanity out of this cruel mad world :o)

      just abit every day to keep that contact so one isn't overwhelmed by the morons shoving their shit in one's face all the time :o)

      did I say reddit zen ? :o()

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    2. Btw, what do you think of Antonin Artaud? He heavily influenced Derrida. He was quite... interesting but comes off as mad.

      I've decided to buy this anthology of Bukowski's poetry (http://www.amazon.com/Run-With-Hunted-Charles-Bukowski/dp/0060924586/ref=cm_rdp_product) and a Sylvia Plath's poetry anthology (http://www.amazon.com/Collected-Poems-Sylvia-Plath/dp/0061558893/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1387516346&sr=1-3&keywords=sylvia+plath). I think I'll read Emily Dickinson later.

      I'm going to print out your favorite translation of Saadi's The Orchard and read it, alongside all of Wang Wei's poetry in that link on your list.

      I want to do serious, thorough study on some great poetic minds.

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    3. “I cannot conceive any work of art as having a separate existence from life itself”

      ― Antonin Artaud, The Theater and Its Double

      https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/23378.Antonin_Artaud

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  3. Xuyun: "a zazen hall is fundamentally out of place" - "zazen is just an extreme counter-measure for people whose monkey minds run amok" -

    I want to sound smart now, but the real reason I don't do a lot of zazen is because I'm too lazy. It's very boring. I have no problem with solitude, silence, but with the formality itself, the posture, etc.

    Basically any practice - ritual - that I would have to repeat daily at the same time is out of question. I'm not living a routine life that wouldn't be viable. Each day is different. I can't live routine. Not disciplined enough. Perhaps this is a flaw, perhaps a fatal flaw. Who knows. I'm (willing to) paying the consequences.

    "My practice" people say. They have beautiful faces, ordered life, good income, nice friends. They drive decent cars. Sometimes I envy them. I would like to say "my practice" too and smile with a compassionate enlightened Zen smile. But even more than enlightenment, I'd like to have their money.

    This stuff isn't making me compassionate & calm & there's no beatitude, - the deconstruction actually hurts. "No suffering" is a good slogan / marketing motto but in reality it hurts; and it's like a machine drilling into you and exposing your contradictions ... whatever branch I grasp it breaks soon after

    I can understand Shinran - he was a broken person, he couldn't say "my practice" with pride. All his practices failed. He saw his own utter failure as a kind of strange success ... "even good people will go to the Pure Land, so it goes without saying that evil people will!" -

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    2. the problem with zazen and actually a general problem with solitude is that it over-engraves us with whatever dull monotonies we are prone to when the default circuitry of the brain runs too much !

      apart from the joint and circulation/cardiovascular dangers of the unholy postures of zazen, I wouldn't be so against it except that everyone who does it get turns into literally rotten fruit, stews their brains and lives !

      it's important to temper solitude with direction which is reading the greats like sa'di, wang wei and Emily Dickinson so when the default circuitry runs it is productive, creates wide new expanses and vistas and not just deepen the same old (proverbial!) rut !

      but of course, zen does exactly opposite, discourages conversations with these great minds and so you just get the usual narrow ignorant and blighted zen products in a system that perpetuates it's idiocies forever ! (infinitely lol :o)?

      since life seen truly is broken and not successful, if you live a successful life then you are not seeing it truly, some of us are doomed to see life truly therefore we are not successful in the worlds terms :o())(

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    3. Zakaj, I recommend reading An3drew's blog more. There is definitely something profound he's pointing at, which is easy to miss. The more you read his blog, the more his posts start to make sense. At first, I didn't understand what An3drew was getting at, and I still don't, but it's slowly start to make "sense" alongside the senseless which can never be made sense of...

      The problem with Japanese Zen is it stagnates too much into rituals and forces obedience for nonsensical things (like "proper" posture). It is also extremely anti-creative and anti-intellectual. It doesn't encourage one to "entertain" different perspectives or go deeper into questions/koans of life that appear in our daily lives. This is why poetry is the real blood of Zen practice, not meditation. Meditation is just tool while the poetry is the blood that helps give life vitality in all directions.

      This is the reason Andrew emphasizes on nutrition. One's mind has to be sharp to penetrate the poetry of the Greats (Bukowski, Wang Wei, Saadi, etc.)

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    4. I don't want to be a follower of Andrew. What will that do? Instead of kekkafuza, you have a new form - reading poetry. Instead of Daruma, Obaku & Rinzai, you now have Bukowski, Wang Wei and Saadi. One formality replaces the other. You and me can't become Andrew. I stay here in his nearness to observe and to soak myself in the source he's drawing from, possibly.

      You say "there's something profound he's pointing at" - if you don't see it, how do you know what it's like? That it's "profound"? What you're dealing it is not really Andrew but your own projections upon him, the transference. We're always dealing with ourselves like that. Sure that doesn't mean I won't read his blog! I definitely will! It is as if I have written it (for) myself, even when I don't understand it! Especially when I don't understand it!

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    5. Maybe I should invest most of my energies into permaculture and WWOOFing again, so in the future I can buy my own land and live self-sustainability on it. I don't want to be a mere observer of nature but a participant of it without destroying it. There is no such thing as waste in nature. My readings of Bill Mollison and Toby Hemenway have been the most useful.

      It's tough to be an intellectual. There is no doubt that when I get older, I will become an Ubermensch.

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    6. sepehr g. the problem is with heavy manual work one's joints/back start to go after 30 and even earlier these days !

      at that point you have to have either run it as business or walk away without useful real world skills

      today's world needs money, the old zen dream of penniless travelling monastics is just that, a dream and perhaps always was :o()

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    7. I'll stick with neuroscience then. Almost done with my B.S.

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    8. I don't know though, I am tough. Circuit training, HIIT, and etc. don't take a long time to do and they make you tough.

      I will probably be strong and swole when I am 30 cuz I am an Ubermensch.

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    10. Google "Tabata Protocol research", an3drew. It takes only 4 min. and there are lots of peer-reviewed journal articles supporting its efficacy in cardiovascular health.

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