this blog is the continuation of a genuine mystical tradition, unless you get in daily contemplative time and abstain to a significant degree from "entertainment" then you are just wasting your time and mine !
This is a good introduction to Derrida I read last night: http://www.amazon.com/Introducing-Derrida-Graphic-Jeff-Collins/dp/1848312059/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1454485419&sr=8-1-fkmr0&keywords=derrida+intro+graphic
Derrida approved of it actually. He saw it in the beginning and end. I loved it.
I also read Saadi's Bustan fully today. Also recently read Durrenmatt's The Visit and Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot.
Everything is falling into place.
I have spent about 50 hrs, if not more on my play.
It's an interweaving movement between presence, word, and absence, wordlessness. I am indebted to you for igniting my creativity and putting me into the quasi-border where all is strange, in all directions.
i suppose "silent illumination" which is a translators phrase is actually "grunt zen" in modern linguistic currency, brad warner's "sit down and shut up" !
particularly a dogenesque/soto thing !
i use the word shikantatza to describe what i did when i was involved with formal zen and when i initially sat i found the notions of 'following the breath' and koans infantile and actually following the breath for any length of time can be dangerous imo
so what it evolved into for me is really just a sort of decompression or processing, in fact i am not really doing anything, its sort of a weird and strange skill that develops, i can't even really explain it . .
the thing about the reading is it puts you in touch with people who actually know what they are on about . .
unlike the current zen scene where just about 99% of people passing themselves off as teachers are just plain wrong minded screwballs
brad warner is perhaps the best example of what you are asking about, talented and had some sort of genuine enlightenment experience but has the great weakness of very limited interests and reading and its just killed him, some pathetic mediocrity floating around trying to recreate some zen master/center success of the past
I'm almost done with my play and will publish it in a competition. Is it okay if I email it to you soon for your constructive criticisms, Andrew?
ReplyDeleteIt's 70 pages long in standard stage play format.
This is a good introduction to Derrida I read last night:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.amazon.com/Introducing-Derrida-Graphic-Jeff-Collins/dp/1848312059/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1454485419&sr=8-1-fkmr0&keywords=derrida+intro+graphic
Derrida approved of it actually. He saw it in the beginning and end. I loved it.
I also read Saadi's Bustan fully today. Also recently read Durrenmatt's The Visit and Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot.
Everything is falling into place.
I have spent about 50 hrs, if not more on my play.
"Everything is falling into place"
ReplyDeletethe place keeps moving !
It's an interweaving movement between presence, word, and absence, wordlessness. I am indebted to you for igniting my creativity and putting me into the quasi-border where all is strange, in all directions.
Deletewhere does your style of shikantaza differ from 'silent illumination' ?
ReplyDeleteis it the reading that you advise ? to not get stuck in one's own schizophrenic fantasies ?
ReplyDeletei suppose "silent illumination" which is a translators phrase is actually "grunt zen" in modern linguistic currency, brad warner's "sit down and shut up" !
particularly a dogenesque/soto thing !
i use the word shikantatza to describe what i did when i was involved with formal zen and when i initially sat i found the notions of 'following the breath' and koans infantile and actually following the breath for any length of time can be dangerous imo
so what it evolved into for me is really just a sort of decompression or processing, in fact i am not really doing anything, its sort of a weird and strange skill that develops, i can't even really explain it . .
the thing about the reading is it puts you in touch with people who actually know what they are on about . .
unlike the current zen scene where just about 99% of people passing themselves off as teachers are just plain wrong minded screwballs
brad warner is perhaps the best example of what you are asking about, talented and had some sort of genuine enlightenment experience but has the great weakness of very limited interests and reading and its just killed him, some pathetic mediocrity floating around trying to recreate some zen master/center success of the past
oatgerm says he doesn't do anything
Deletebut he plays computer games, reads manga, watches crappy youtube videos
he says it's just natural now.. but i think he's full of it
if people don't want to know, you can't tell them, so you can spend all your life on reddit zen or in other ways in real life trying to tell them
Deleteyou are just entertaining them and conferring some slight benefit of rationality to them
that's the point of ones own blog, people come to you if they are interested and it saves fruitless involvement with disputative types . .