Tag Archives: existentialism
Jottings: ‘The abstract is not life’
I came across an interesting old book called The other side of silence in the university library this week. A lot of it was over my head but the basic subject was the confrontation between self-expression and the limitations of language; taking in the lives and work of figures such as Coleridge, Rimbaud, St John of [...]
Introspection
For some time I’ve been quite persuaded by Sartre’s critique of ‘introspection’ (see below); an analysis that seemingly resonates with the Buddhist deconstruction of the ‘self’ concept. Whilst feeling this way however I travelled all the way to Japan last winter to undergo a type of retreat the name of which, ‘chomon’, is usually translated within our [...]
‘Confession of a Buddhist Atheist’ by Stephen Batchelor
Impressions of ‘Confession of a Buddhist Atheist’ by Stephen Batchelor (Spiegel & Grau 2010) Last month Ray kindly gave me a copy of Stephen Batchelor’s latest book. Previously I’ve had mixed reactions to Batchelor’s writings; I sympathised with his outlook in Alone With Others but found his writing rather lifeless, was left completely cold by [...]
Post-Chomon Reflections (1)
Just before I went to Japan I read a passage in Annie Cohen-Solal’s Jean-Paul Sartre: A Life (p.xii-xiii) which elicited a strong emotional reaction from me, a response that proved a foreshadowing of my chomon experience. The passage in question describes a parable found in Sartre’s unpublished adolescent novel ‘Une Défaite’: “[The parable is] the story [...]
Zorba: Nihilism and Buddhism
OK more on Zorba the Greek! A couple of things stuck in my mind after I wrote my last Zorba post. Firstly I made the claim that the Buddhism of the ‘Boss’ was not really Buddha-dharma but a kind of nihilistic 19th Century interpretation, and secondly Jon responded to the sample quotes in the comments [...]
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