Andy Lowry @AndyLowry@qoto.org

@Staceys55
Though less goodlooking. 😉

@jayarava
I was hoping for some of your trademark wit and, shall we say, "sharpness," and am not disappointed. ("...if it were a cheap perfume then we would detect notes of neoplatonism and Vedanta, on a base of Theosophy" is a good example, along with others.) 😃

Was delighted by the poke or two at Suzuki; have never been able to figure out why he's considered such a big deal. Soyen Shaku had far more interesting (and more traditional) things to say in his address to the first World Congress of Religions in 1893, and his "dharma grandson" Sokei-an Sasaki was writing and teaching Zen in NYC in 1930 before Suzuki became the hot new thing. (On the former, I did note Victoria's depressing discussion of Shaku and his ilk just as you mention, but the chronology is still worth a mention.)

Thanks for reading the Conze autobiography so I don't have to do it myself-- your sacrifice is appreciated. 😉

When it comes to Zen generally, there's such a long history of blatant fraud that even the well-meaning (which I reckon Conze was not) manage to get dragged into an inescapable mire, e.g. Red Pine's and Tanahashi's work on the Heart. The tendency seems to have started with Shenhui's made-up nonsense about a probably fictional Huineng and just never got any better. Though I have yet to regret my (lay) vows, there have been a despairing moment or two as Yampolsky and Cole and Adamek slapped me upside the head. Personal experience shows me that there is a there there, but with rare exceptions it often looks like it's deliberately hidden and obfuscated. Most of the "big names" do it. I'm unable to even guess why that is. Early Chan at least has the excuse of the corrupting influence of political power, but that was a long time ago and it's a shame to still be suffering from it.

I'd likely be helped by the Academia article, as it discusses the sensory abandonment issue I'm so allergic to, but prefer not to create an account in order to read it. I'll poke around and see if there's a way I can bypass that.

Thanks so much for your article! It was both greatly entertaining and informative, as what I've read of your work tends to be.

@jayarava
Thanks so much for the notice! Will have a look right now.

@natt
Huey, Dewie, Louie, and Fig.

@ginny
GEOCITIES LIVES

@emwalker@scicomm.xyz
Though I wish it were otherwise, I can only partly agree with your noble sentiment-- there are some of us who have an incurable block when it comes to the necessary mathematics. 😉

@abitofzen
But don't let your doctor catch you doing that unless you want to face a battery of neurology exams. 😉

(Sunim seems to have been ignoring the fact that most events have a natural velocity. Sure, kinhin at a 0.5 kph might be instructive in many ways, but a butterfly or hummingbird is going to run into some serious trouble.)

@PatriciaColley @TexasObserver @startelegram @NYTimes
It's her fault I first started pronouncing
"business" as "bidness" as a joke. It got wedged into my head so firmly that I still say it that way even when not joking. Which would be fine if I still lived in Texas, but I don't and haven't for a long time.

@znuh
It HAS started working out that way for me. I see it, I skip it. Get back to me when you can just post like a normal person. 😉

@HansvR
Great to meet you and glad you're here! The nerd contingent (yes, I am) can use all the support it can get.

@TonyStark
Although this Arizonan is pleased by the rulings regarding Lake and the junkpile barrier, I shudder to think how long it will take for the area around the stacks of containers to recover ecologically (if it ever does). The Sonoran desert might LOOK like all is still and nothing is going on, but there's all manner of biological activity that is now degraded. Over centuries, that type of terrain takes on a thin crust of patina that is essential to the well-being of everything there, both biological and not. The damage might not look as dramatic as cutting down an ancient redwood, but the result is not dissimilar.