the egret walks away from a lone cow that's too still to stir bugs
No Egret [Haiku]
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Digesting Empire [Haiku]
carcass of Empire is overwhelmed by nature; rewilded in time
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BOOK REVIEW: God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater by Kurt Vonnegut
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.My rating: 5 of 5 stars
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This novel presents a satire of American socio-economic existence. It spends much of its time poking fun at old money folk (trust fund kids, as they’d be called today,) but the book has plenty of barbs to go around. The story centers on Eliot Rosewater, the head of the Rosewater Foundation, the charitable arm of an old money robber-baron kind of family corporation. Eliot is cut from different cloth, however. He’s in love with the work-a-day blue collar American, and does everything in his power to eliminate his separation from such people, including obsessively working with volunteer fire departments, setting up his foundation in his hometown (Rosewater, Indiana,) and making the Foundation an extremely personal organization that gives what would today be called micro-grants to ordinary citizens for ordinary uses.
Opposing Eliot Rosewater is a lawyer named Norman Mushari who’s made it his mission in life to have Eliot proven insane so that he can have the Rosewater Foundation fortune shifted to Fred Rosewater (of the middle-class Rhode Island Rosewaters.) The challenge is knowing whether Eliot is truly insane or not, even Eliot, himself, doesn’t always seem clear on the matter. For many, such as Mushari, just the fact that Eliot is acting in opposition to the societal norm (e.g. setting up in Rosewater, Indiana v. New York or Chicago and not making big grants to corporations and colossal NGO’s but rather giving a few hundred dollars at a time to residents of Rosewater) is proof enough. And, if Eliot is crazy, is it because there’s something wrong with him, or that there’s something wrong with the world.
This book is hilarious, and the last chapter leaves the reader with a great deal to mull over. I’d highly recommend this book for all fiction readers.
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DAILY PHOTO: Calcutta Chinatown
BOOK REVIEW: Dropping Ashes on the Buddha by Seung Sahn
Dropping Ashes on the Buddha: The Teachings of Zen Master Seung Sahn by Seung SahnMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
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This book’s one-hundred brief chapters mostly consist of interactions between the Korean Zen Buddhist teacher, Seung Sahn, and students of his. However, there are also some old Zen stories, and a few odds and ends: such as the transcript of a completely unproductive “dialogue” between Seung Sahn and a Hindu yogi. Some of the student-teacher interactions are epistolary, but others are face-to-face “dharma combat” or Q&A sessions (which also, ultimately, became dharma combat — given Seung Sahn’s teaching methods.) Dharma combat is a dialogue that resembles Socratic dialogue except that the goal isn’t to use logic and sound reasoning to persuade another, but rather to demonstrate a lack of attachment and proclivity to overintellectualize. It involves a lot of seemingly nonsensical answers and occasional shouting and slapping / hitting. It sounds unproductive, but the objective is to break established cognitive modes and to induce epiphany, rather than to build a rational argument.
It’s a thought provoking and informative book, if a bit repetitive. Most of the conversation revolves around less than a dozen ko-an [kong-an in Korean,] which are questions or statements that’re intended to provoke a kind of realization rather than to produce a straightforward / rational answer. It’s not a problem that there’s repetition, as these aren’t straightforward ways of thinking, and oftentimes it takes many varied looks at a ko-an to grasp what’s being conveyed. That said, I felt this book could’ve used some editing to streamline the dialogue a bit to make it feel a bit less punitively redundant.
If you’re interested in ko-an and dharma combat, this is a great book to look into. However, if you’re familiar with many of the popular ko-an and Zen stories, it may feel a bit redundant.
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Firecracker Flowers [Haiku]
firecracker flowers pop amid a twiggy scene with explosive shapes
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DAILY PHOTO: Scenes from Kodagu
Indy Limerick
There was an old man from Indianapolis who - about the big race - was passionless, "it's far too many miles goin' nowhere with style; I wish I'd been born in Minneapolis!"
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Sun Wukong [Common Meter]
The Monkey King with magic staff outmatched monsters and gods, defying the Jade Emperor's edicts against all odds. He erased himself from out of The Book of Life and Death, and lived through the Crucible -- nearly holding his breath. Finally, the gods called Buddha, though some had their qualms, but the one thing Monkey couldn't do was leap from Buddha's palm.
