6/11/25
When I finish a book I'm focusing for a book club, I fall back onto my pile. Today it was Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism: According to the Esoteric Teachings of the Great Mantra, Oṁ Mani Padme Hūm by Anagarika Govinda, and I've been reading this book for years, but I really liked chapter 9. He brings in Rilke.
I was reading This Is What It Sounds Like by Susan Rogers, and Ogi Ogas. And I learned about Shaggs, outsider music. A father made 3 daughters practice music all day, and never gave them a lesson, and then recorded an album in 1969, which is the weirdest thing in the world. The engineers would ask why they stopped, and it was because they made a mistake. The engineers thought it was all a mistake. But it was rediscovered in 1980, reprinted, and went through several reprintings. It's really bad, but authentic. Lots of famous musicians liked it.
I read some more of Rumi's Masnavi book 1, and he's telling a story about clergy who teach the wrong things just to mess with people, and I don't believe it, and I don't like slagging off other religions. I felt ill reading, it's hot and I was low on energy. But I stopped reading and meditated and got my energy back.
6/12
The Life of the Buddha by Nanamoli p. 211: "So it would appear to be a mistake to call the Buddha's teaching either an attempt to describe the world completely or a metaphysical system built up by logic. Is it, then, an ethical commandment, a revealed religion of faith, or simply a stoical code of behaviour? Before an attempt can be made to find answers to those questions, some sort of a survey of the doctrines taught is needed. The material contained in the Discourses seems, in fact, to be rather in the nature of material for a map, for each to make his own map, but all oriented alike. These oriented descriptions of facets of experience, in fact, enable a person to estimate his position and judge for himself what he had better do. The Discourses offer not so much a description as a set of overlapping descriptions. Close examination of existence finds always something of the qualities of the mirage and of the paradox behind the appearance. The ends can never be made quite to meet. The innumerable different facets presented in the Suttas with countless repetitions of certain of these facets in varying combinations and contexts remind one of a collection of air photographs from which maps are to be made. The facets in the Discourses are all oriented to cessation of suffering, the four points of their compass being the Four Noble Truths. Let us try and make a specimen map out of some of this material. In this case, since a start has to be made somewhere, we can start for our baseline with birth, which, like death, is to the ordinary man an everyday fact and at the same time an insoluble mystery."
A brief history of the world in 47 borders by John Elledge begins “The main reason we know of the first recorded instance of a man-made international border is because of its abolition." The distinction went down between upper and lower Egypt.
Reading the introduction for On Spiritual Friendship by Aelred. He was in the Scottish court when he wrote: “And those men who were around me, but who were ignorant of the things which went on within me, kept saying, 'How lucky he is, how lucky he is.' But they did not know that there was evil in me, where only good should be. Terrible was the distress I felt within myself, tormenting me, corrupting my soul with intolerable stench. And unless you had quickly stretched out your hand, not being able to t 'olerate myself, I might have taken the most desperate remedy of despair.“
6/13 The Elledge book has lots of good new words: Nubia, pschent. I really like it that this book starts out talking about Egypt, in which my last book was set.
I get nervous when authors imagine into the Buddha's life, like Sachi Ediriweera does in Enlightened, a graphic novel. Still, it's interesting.
Leigh Brasington's Right Concentration deals with the final step of the 8 fold path, so it's an important book, few people really write about this stuff.
6/16 Back to reading Gravity's Rainbow, which I've had a lot of posts about:
Gravity's Rainbow notes p. 457-468, 468-472, 473-482
Gravity's Rainbow Notes Franz Pokler
P390 quote of Gravity's Rainbow
Un Perm' au Casino Herman Goering
Recent thoughts on Gravity's Rainbow
Recent thoughts on Gravity's Rainbow
Recent Gravity Rainbow thoughts
6/19/25. Not sure if I should continue with the pile, pick a book or what. GR is a bit of a slog at times, and brilliant and amazing other times. I'm attracted to the pile. Do I begin one book group's book, do I wait for the other who has a closer deadline? Will I vote non-fiction, fiction or poem for the next book?!
The next 2 weeks forecast is hot, and I'm not sure how much I can read or if reading will be my best activity. The pile is just not choosing a focus, which is acceptable.
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