Classics, translated?

A fellow traveler, and a haiku poet.

Basho

Alan Watts

Hear him talk (podcasts available on iTunes) – deep Anglo voice, perhaps that of a Shakespearian actor, hints of a Continental upbringing with a New England tinge. What an interesting character, is he the link between Gurdjieff, Roerich, Burroughs, and the Beatles?

The 3rd replicator, according to TED

From TED talks:

• variability + selection + heredity/propagation –> design (by evolution)… creator not needed
• three replicators: genes (biology), memes (ideas copied), and now temes (technology)
• the 3rd replicator, temes, currently needs us to replicate
• but this may not always be the case….

It’s more scary (if you take an anthropocentric view of the Universe)/enlightening (if you take a holistic, perhaps Dharmic, view) than it sounds.

Mind of no mind

無心

Nothing really to say today. So I though a couple of photos I took at Ruen Mallika might be in order.

A statue of the Buddha

 

A painting with scenes from the life of the Buddha

There might be a connection after all. This weekend is the Chinese New Year, Yaowarat must be in full party mode. Even IS has a feature on Singapore’s Chinatown and its own version of Nana, Geylang.

The cosmic game

I’m sure the fellows ready to go back to caves (funny how these Ortho’ dudes, whose creed has been mainstream already for over 1.5 millenia, like to don the revolutionary/persecuted chic) would have a ball with this guy. Interesting character. If only more Russians were like him.

As I walk through the valley of the shadow…

When not stylin’ and loungin’, I am an occasional highfallutin’ thinker; I just read the whole Ecclesiastes the other day. Not being religious, I only had a cursory knowledge of it until now, but now I can say I was very impressed. The style is beautiful, and the contents is about as close to Buddhism’s main tenets (as espoused in the Four Noble Truths) as it can be (there are some unpleasant mysoginistic paragraphs; if considered poetically, they are ok, but I’m afraid there are enough believers who took them at face value). I was also amazed at how many popular sayings are borrowed from Ecclesiastes, things I had heard many times in daily usage before but had no idea where they were coming from.

At the same time this is stuff that seems so remote from the further Christian utterances, that it got me thinking. And yes, it appears that Christianity actually had to embrace the Old Testament and make it hers in order to convince the Roman authorities (who prized long established order and religions) that it was no threat to the system; in time, becoming the system. Nice move, Ratzinger.

And yes, wish I could find the time to read this.

The Closing of the Western Mind