Thank you! There are many "keepers" in there.
I think you are someone who would like Ambrose Bierce's THE DEVIL'S
DICTIONARY, compiled about 1912 of serialized installments in
newspapers of the time. He works his way through the alphabet and
defines words as he sees them, using lots of wit and humorous
supposed "quotations" from authorities, who, and which, he makes up.
Dover has a copy for a dollar or two US, as I mentioned to Kris
the other day (he obviously has a copy, because he quoted me right
back a "definition" from there). You might also find it in its
entirety online, although I don't think the book is in the public
domain without copyright. Amazon prob. has a Kindle copy, if you
have the free Kindle software on your PC, or own the tablet device.
Anyway, I really recommend that little book. I can say it has grown
on me, too, with the decades. And it continues to entertain. Just
open it anywhere.
To keep this post on-topic in a Zen forum, I'll quote one of Bierce's
definitions from the book:
"Nirvana, n. In the Buddhist religion, a pleasurable state of
annihilation awarded to the wise, particularly to those wise enough
to understand it."
I don't think the translations of the Sutras were very good back
then. And, almost no one had heard of "Zen" before D. T. Suzuki's
ESSAYS began to popularize it in 1949 and afterwards.
--Joe
> Merle Lester <merlewiitpom@...> wrote:
> Some really great thoughts here....
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