Motley Kamuka

Can't seem to power my way through Rob Burbea's Seeing That Frees . I like his insistence that sunyata is a vehicle for freedom, helps you to let go of negative fabrications. I'm reading it slowly. I'm still podding my way through Megha Majumdar's A Guardian And A Thief.  One bad thing after another, but it's also about triumph over all those problems, so far. I fear the ending. Mary Oliver's Devotions is something I occasionally pick up. Her neo-transcendentalism and love of nature is really grand. Lama Govinda's Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism.  He explains how it's quite impossible if you go deeper into it, to be Hindu and Buddhist because the worship is different. Sangharakshita also talked about Hindus who believe Buddhism is just an offshoot, not different. I'm not around that, so it seems far off to me, in time and place. The Gujarati women in my neighborhood don't come at me with that. Only a few speak English, they mostly keep to t...

I'm reading Mobius Book by Catherine Lacey, and I came across this word in the title, paraclete , and it means (in Christian theology) the Holy Spirit as advocate or counselor (John 14:16, 26). Wow, a new word.  Most of the time I read difficult stuff, but I can really flow over the words here without knowing I'm not skimming. I haven't enjoyed reading a book so much in quite a while.  I have a struggle with the second part where she's in the relationship with a dominating and controlling man, but actually it's not very long and she's back in her intimate loss mode, writing about loss in the age of Covid.  My one question is, if you break up with someone, does that entitle you to paint them negatively for a whole novel? Why not leave him sooner? Actually he left her, she didn't even leave him, so horrible, she spends a whole novel painting him as a subtle monster. Maybe she's just talking about the dynamic of growing up with an angry father, who mostly ...

Reading Megha Majumdar's A Guardian And A Thief  for a book club.  Why am I just noticing Calcutta is now spelled Kolkata? It was changed in 2001! I need like spelling updates on Bluesky, except Bluesky has only really existed for me November 2023.  My experience reading this book is one of horrified anxiety. What terrible thing is going to happen next? I hope to connect to my hope, that they will surmount these trials, but I'm not so sure. In a way it's perfectly set up to tug at my heartstrings. The father is off working in another land. The mother cares for a little girl and an elderly father in a starving Kolkata, where all ethics is out of the window as people steal food. There's a fragile preciousness as lots of things almost happen and the horrors build.  I don't like the title, it makes you focus on who the thief is, but that is the point of the book. Beautiful cover art. The first apocalypse novel I read was  Lucifer's Hammer . I remember thin...