voidmoth

Moira/Mallory/Magpie/Molly

Electronic literature, tool-building, poetry, games, puzzles, &cet. 29.


Itch.io
m-campbell.itch.io

Kazuaki Tanahashi's book on The Heart Sutra might be the best Buddhist "manual" I've encountered. There are a lot of "so what's the deal with Buddhism" sort of books, many of them good, but by their nature they tend to be more of a review, touching on or elucidating concepts but not really giving you a lot to grip on in terms of developing Buddhist activity in your own practice. By focusing on a very important short text in Buddhism and spinning out hermeneutically in various different ways, you get a book that's both a really compelling academic/historical study of the sutra and a really great breakdown of the spiritual character of the text and how it relates to Buddhist practice. It's much more specific in nature than a general "Guide to Mahayana" type book, but because he's reading through one of the most popular sutras and dissecting its ideas, it essentially is that and more. Hermeneuticism! It's good!

Also surprisingly trans affirming so far tbh! When Tanahashi is talking about the idea of things being in flux he mentions gender as one of the things an individual can choose to change about themselves, and at the end of the first section he's talking about conceptualizing the boddhisatva Avalokiteśvara as a goddess and, in response to the hypothetical objection "I'm a man, I can't embody a goddess!", basically says "get over yourself" in a nicer and more Buddhist way.


You must log in to comment.