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Tag Archives: Religion and Spirituality

Brilliant artwork, simplicity throughout. A delight to read. Some pages soar to artistic expression that thrills while others seem like a kid playing with his favorite hero models. The text feels almost like an afterthought and I feel that I might just have enjoyed the book more if it was a set of silent stills and graphics with all meaning to be derived from your past readings while the imagery is being supplied by the author/artist.

Hardly anything is given any space in the book and it barely touches on the drama that is latent in it. This adds to the sense of a dreamy retelling that is not meant to amuse or to entertain but simply to lull you into a gentle nodding ascent, like how you used to listen to your grandmother tell these stories – the details never were to be told, they were to be enacted later in your imagination. The story plays out again and again only adding to itself by the dance of repetition and of adumbration. Abhishek has transmitted this sense of reading/listening into his artistry and catches us in that spell. This is certainly a rich successor to his previous works.

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[REVIEW] Krishna by Abhishek Singh (uberlit.wordpress.com)
New York’s Metropolitan Museum Showcases Hindu Lord Krishna (eurasiareview.com)

Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind

24 Feb

Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind by Shunryu Suzuki

My Rating: ★★★★★

If and when you meet The Buddha,
Kill him.
Then come back
And sit.
Sit
In Zazen.
Be.
Enlightenment is there,
Before it arrives.

View all my reviews

If you meet the Buddha (paradelle.wordpress.com)
Shunryu Suzuki roshi: Study Yourself (buddhistinsight.com)
You: Americanized Buddhism (japantimes.co.jp)
When you do something (zenflash.wordpress.com)
Another New Year’s Thought (In Case It Rains) (kmabarrett.wordpress.com)
Dark Night of the Soul, Lenten Observance, Day 17, 2013 (allsoulo.wordpress.com)
A Split Soul: Darkness and Light (bipolarlessons.com)
beginner’s mind (jeffjosephwoodworker.com)
Zen Chic for your (Beginner’s) Mind, (Old) Soul & (Hot) Body (fashiontribes.typepad.com)

Sisyphus Speaks

16 Jul

Tired of your unceasing pity,

Of your allusions to hubris well rewarded,

Tired of being the symbol for absurdity,

And the one first invoked at failure,

Sisyphus speaks out now aloud:

I ask you — what of yourself?

The absurd hero is seen in you, not me!

Doomed to eternal failure I might be,

But blessed am I in every way,

When I stand next to you,

You common man of today:

Blundering though your life,

Never knowing a goal or a path,

How can you know that taste –

The sweet taste of success, when

You are not even blessed enough,

To know the strong spice of failure!

So stop your pitying glances,

And envy me, you foolish rats:

Symbol for failure I might assuredly be,

But at the least I know what my success is.

Have you seen its form this life,

Or even conceived dimly of the thought?

— For I see my goal everyday so clear,

And feel the exhalation of glory near,

I taste the spice of failure everyday;

And I live so I can fail and fail,

And try again the very next day,

Doomed to fail yet untiring, questing,

What greater success there be ever?

To strive in sweat to that distant goal,

And come tumbling down in grand despair!

Yes I would choose this lot of mine,

Over your blind and stumbling life,

With no grand goal, no glimpse of glory,

Just a sodden tramp in them marshes;

Rolling your stone on in the pointless plains,

Straining for nothing, attaining nothing,

And pitying me, for you dare risk nothing!

Sisyphus speaks out now aloud:

Come join me if you care to live a little –

Take that rock and start the impossible (Sisyphean?) quest!

Failure Doesn’t Exist. (anthonysramblings.wordpress.com) (Follow this link to get a sense of the positive side of the Sisyphean labour alluded to at the end of the poem.)
What is the Point of Sisyphus? (2voices1song.com)
Camus, Kierkegaard, And Happiness (constanceeleanorsmith.wordpress.com)
They Say (verydemotivational.memebase.com)
Breaking Free of the Sisyphusean Boulder (donhall.blogspot.com)

2 Comments

Posted by SuperTramP on July 16, 2012 in Creative, Philosophy, Poetry, Puzzles, Thoughts

Tags: Art, distant goal, Failure, gaming, glimpse of glory, Goal, Greek mythology, Health, literature, Recreation, Religion and Spirituality, Sisyphean, Sisyphus, travel, vacation

Book Appreciation: Zen in the Art of Archery by Eugen Herrigel

06 Jun

Zen in the Art of Archery by Eugen Herrigel

My Rating: ★★★★★

Are we all such helpless and inexperienced beginners with not the slightest clue on how to correct our aims or on to draw our bowstrings right?

This supposedly uplifting book has depressed me amidst its poetry and beauty into a realization that I will probably never ‘correct my own stance’ or ‘let the arrow fall at the moment of highest tension’, effortlessly hit any goal or even realize what the real goal is…

Why is there no art in life anymore? Isn’t it all that should exist? Can we please ban money and all its accouterments and live by the High Arts; that might then bring some insipid meaning back to our lives?

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