240814: this is deleuze. clear, concise, capacious, complex. this is exactly what Iif you like this review i now have website: www.michaelkamakana.com
240814: this is deleuze. clear, concise, capacious, complex. this is exactly what I want in continental /postmodern/ deconstructed philosophy. he calls it 'superior empiricism'. he incorporates many (western) thinkers, some expectations with whose work the reader is already familiar. series of four essays, first written last, then his particular interceptions of deleuzean themes in Hume and Nietzsche. of the latter, I was very impressed with the bestiary of his thoughts, with his characterisation of Ariadne, Theseus, Zarathustra. pleased to recognise 1) possible meaning to title Mygale 2) remembrance of my own original conception (age 16) of SFF ideas of Gateworld 'Dion' as in Dionysius......more
240721: comfortable book for architects and architecture-interested. coffee table. big. heavy. extensive. many new buildings, many familiar- but then 240721: comfortable book for architects and architecture-interested. coffee table. big. heavy. extensive. many new buildings, many familiar- but then I look at art-architecture books (49). just photos, no plans, little capsule commentary. only in person seen ones in Canada (Vancouver, Montreal) and Hawai'i......more
240811: this is an excellent, middle-way treatise, between extremes of academics and popular/accessible reading. though the latter is presuming the re240811: this is an excellent, middle-way treatise, between extremes of academics and popular/accessible reading. though the latter is presuming the reader is familiar with buddhist concepts as 'fetters', 'conceptual bondage', 'four truths', and that metaphysics of 'constant process', of 'no mind' etc. so maybe not the first buddhist text to read...
'signless' remind me of the assertion in several previous texts that in this buddhist ontology there is no is/is not for these are only 'signs' as rain, ocean and lake and river and stream water, snow, hail, are all 'signs' of H2O as they transform, but nothing is 'lost'. this is not as beautiful as the book from which that example comes The Art of Living, but is true as well...
so the first step on the path to nirvana is to abandon 'signs', in act, in thought, in words, and experience 'exactly what is' through 'bare consciousness'. bhikku gives several examples. the main idea seems to be everything from 'concept' to 'intention' merely adds layers interfering with this original 'bareness'. this is the first half of the book...
'deathless' is an epithet for 'nirvana', and critically interrogates the contention buddhists were not concerned with an afterlife. the key is how the buddha resolves this debate between 'anihillationists' (like materialists) who think when the body dies the person dies, and 'eternalists' who think the soul of the person persists (like religious). the buddha insists there is no such 'person' to begin with!
deathless involves the 'twelve steps of dependent origination': 1: Ignorance (avijja)2: Volitional formations (saṅkhāra) 3: Consciousness (viññāṇa) 4: Name and form (nāma-rūpa)5: The six sense fields (saḷāyatana) 6: Contact (phassa) 7: Feeling tone (vedanā) 8: Craving...
deathless is 'liberation' in life... is 'stepping out' of our conceptual bondage: great discussion of how this is not misery of suicide but joy of transcendence. 'stepping out' seems to be application of understanding how illusory are signs, definitely passing them... descriptions of 'enlightenment' all agree on how this is positive experience...
240707: read in one day, three sittings, obviously easy to read. or perhaps that isif you like this review i now have website: www.michaelkamakana.com
240707: read in one day, three sittings, obviously easy to read. or perhaps that is because I have read so many on buddhism. but this is excellent. rather than review the entire book, I will focus on each chapter to the end of section 5: how to be an enlightened materialist. here buddhism comes closest to the phenomenology I know from m-p and husserl. this reflects major themes previous and sums all up. 1: comparative empiricisms, 2: myth, logic, the logic of mythology, 3: does the buddha lie?, 4: zen masters and their way with words, 5: how to be an enlightened materialist, 6: reflecting on the buddha to reflect on ourselves...
1, investigates the different 'empiricism' of the Europeans (English etc/) and Indian systems. there is some argument for 'why study bd?, which always already seems obvious to me, but then Europe, particularly England has never been the conceptual centre of my world. basically, the difference in temp is pragmatic attitude: for the bd the more know the more we can show the 'emptiness' of 'conventional life, the more obvious is the language schism between European (skepticism) and Indian (limitations). here is the beginning of mischaracterising bd as 'nihilism'. European prizes ( illusory) objectivity in viewing the world as separate and independent and real. Indian insists on (essential) subjectivity being in the world, not separate and independent but causal result of dependent arising... so what is selected as of empirical value is not the same...
2, examines myth, logic and logical mythology. I always already have slight prejudice against logic as final arbiter for what is 'real'. like to see the world as more flexible, more surprising, more romantic than the most advanced math can pretend to 'solve'. For myth has always come first for me, the idea that what is real involves the emotions of that experience is more real than the abstracted, objective, rendering of the same has seemed obvious. I would not be an artist if I felt otherwise...
3, does the buddha lie? seems to me provocative title for admitted changes, contradictions, from years of his teaching, so this seems less important chapter. found the dual interpretations of 'karma' interesting (naturalism reflecting moment by moment 'rebirth' as metaphor) and religious (literal as readily of 'hells')...
4, zen masters and their way with words, is the extreme form of buddhism and where I started in my art days. the concept of 'teaching without words' and colourful stories and indeed 'stand-up' comedy routines is excellent vision of this genre of buddhism...
5: how to be an enlightened materialist, is where we get to religion and science in the mirror of buddhism. it has taken me awhile to reach this place, here goes. the most important, the essential, affect of buddhist metaphysics is this: the elimination of the mind/body distinction. this is because there is renewed primacy given to the 'mind only' model of reality- but this is supported by kind of 'buddhist materialism' where matter has very secondary supporting role and the key to what is 'real' is always the mind. there are two methods of gaining knowledge: direct witness, inference (flames of fire, smoke of fire) and there are two words to describe action/event: live or dead and there are 'reified things' and 'saving the appearances' which show basic poverty of western thought: the use of 'dead words' for living real, the insistence on using logic to confound human experience, the abstract concepts of science to correlate what it chooses to be real no matter how ontologically real they are (space, time, force, mass etc.)
6: reflecting on the buddha to reflect on ourselves, mostly deals with 'meta-scientific/religious' discussions of the various narrative we tell ourselves around all these contested words : science, religion, buddhism, empiricism, logic, math, real etc. great summing up......more
240701: j'ai plusieurs problèmes de cet roman mais... je l'aimait beaucoup. je lisait en française pour gagne beaucoup le vocabulaire et ca je me surp240701: j'ai plusieurs problèmes de cet roman mais... je l'aimait beaucoup. je lisait en française pour gagne beaucoup le vocabulaire et ca je me surprise: après des années (decades) depuis je pris les classes française je peut continuer lisait! écrivez? non, pas le meilleur, mais je le fait ici et je m'excuse si je ton langue massacre...
je trouvait les phrase je peut traduire française anglaise et le contre, je peut découvre 'hoche la tete'= nods head, 'hausse des épaules'= shrugs shoulders, et trouvait les mots je sais en contexte: tirez, tuer etc. tout le roman c'est en passe compose tres simple, c''est un peut repetitive, c'et simple, c'est romantique image de la guerre.. n'est pas possible d'écrire en anglais parce que nous avant as le petit ironie et souvent la sympathie pour le trahi, mais est-ce-que je lisait si c'était en anglais...?
(I have many problems with this novel but... I like it a lot. I read it in French to gain a lot of vocabulary and this surprises me: after the yers (decades) since I took French classes, I am able to continue to read it! writing? no, not the best but I do so here and apologise if iu massacre your language...
I find phrases I can translate from french english and back, I am able to discover...)...more
240611: excellent. not much more to say. easy to read one way, hard to read another way. 'trigger warnings' always suggest to me there is subject wort240611: excellent. not much more to say. easy to read one way, hard to read another way. 'trigger warnings' always suggest to me there is subject worth examining, reasoning, reflecting, not pushing it away or refusing to read it. this is not exactly the experience of the women known who have been abused, everyone is different, or my experience as boy......more
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