What have you been reading lately?

[aquarius]

I am reading The Sea of Fertility by Yukio Mishima and am currently into the second book of this tetrology.  It’s like philosophy converted to art and I am simply spellbound by it.

[crow]

I am reading Amerika.org.
Every day.
Forever.
And most of its commenters, although there are a few I never read, based upon their past performances.

[Annihilation]

The first verses of the Dhammapadda (trans. Irving Babbitt). A selection:

1. All that we are is the result of what we have thought: it is founded on our thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts. If a man speaks of acts with an evil thought, pain follows him, as the wheel follows the foot of the ox that draws the wagon.

2. All that we are is the result of what we have thought: it is founded on our thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts. If a man speaks or acts with a pure thought, happiness follows him, like a shadow that never leaves him.

[...]

6. The world does not know that we must all come to an end here; but those who know, their quarrels cease at once.

[crow]

All that I was was the result of my thoughts.
Not any more.

No thoughts, to color reality, leaving only reality, itself.

I am beginning to suspect nobody else, now, or ever, knows/knew this.
Read and consider.
Now you know it, too.

[Tancred Hauteville]

"Lord of the Rings" and "An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith" by John Damascene

By the way Crow you are right, No one has ever thought that without the infiltration of arbitrary thoughts only shining reality would remain, only you have ever thought this.

Maybe you think too much?

 

[crow]

Certainly I once did.
Now I do not.
So I can say, with authority, that it is possible.

[BillHopkins]

After Liberalism by Paul Gottfried
Leo Strauss & Nietzsche by Laurence Lampert
And a whole lot on cultural evolution and philosophy of biology during the day.

[BillHopkins]

All that I was was the result of my thoughts.
Not any more.

No thoughts, to color reality, leaving only reality, itself.

I am beginning to suspect nobody else, now, or ever, knows/knew this.
Read and consider.
Now you know it, too.

So by your logic cave men had a better understanding of reality than paul davies. You need to be more specific in what you mean. I know what you mean, and I appreciate the general spirit of where you're coming from. But to use this spirit to chastise human beings for wanting to come to a greater intellectual understanding of the Logos is masturbatory.

There is a time to switch of discursive thought, but there is a time to engage it. Stop using technology if you think discursive though (which spawned technology) is not penetrating into 'reality' in some important sense.

And wtf, i'm sure you only came to your rehashing of eastern spiritual limericks via reading, gasp, BOOKS! I think TheWaters might have been alluding to this point.

[BillHopkins]

PS have you read my book yet?

http://www.counter-currents.com/2011/06/beyond-good-and-evil-bill-hopkins-the-divine-the-decay/

[crow]

I don't read books.
Understand?

[BillHopkins]

I don't read books.
Understand?

No, I don't. If you 'don't read books', then are you suggesting that your knowledge of eastern spirituality has come from, what, 'direct awareness'? Meditation? When you are letting your compassion be as limitless as space, and your mind be at peace, and you are resting in the vast, empty luminosity of mind itself, does traditional knowldge of the tao and oriental styles of dressing up spiritual advice in a certain styles of prose (riddles) just appear in your brain? Or does some psycho-active fungus produce a gateway to the mind of long dead Buddhas? Perhaps still, you have just hit on a psychological archetype that we all have acess to, residing as it does in the 'collective unconscious'?

I'm genuinely interested my friend, as I have never been able to manifest such direct and noble channels of knowledge. I guess I am just a plebian who must depend on the written word.

I apologise if this seems divisive, but i'm merely calling you out because you called out those who seek to learn, pretending to be special in some hipster way. This could be a good thread to share books, for example I am going to investigate Yukio Mishima mentioned in the first post. Instead you invade it with your narcissistic comments that are only disigned to make you look special.

[crow]

Wot a fukkin' doap.
You are a prime example of what intelligence can result in.
Projection.
Not a pretty sight.
Rather you than me, etc.

[Humanicide]

Enough bickering. Too many threads evolve into this. I don't give a damn if crow reads books, because if he doesn't - well then more for me to read!

I'm in the middle of a compilation of Lovecraft's tales. However with the intense work my master's course requires at this time, reading for pleasure has unfortunately taken a back seat.

[fallot]

I am re-reading The Arabian Nights. I read them in my youth and they have taken on a new life as I see them through older eyes.

[Undermind]

I've been reading the Byock translation of The Volsung Saga recently.  As a translation, it is fairly faithful to the source and clearly written, though perhaps less artful because it largely ignores the verse structure of the saga.  It also contains a good deal of insight and explanation in the translation notes, which is useful if you haven't read much Norse saga before.