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[url=http://www.dhammatalks.net/Articles/Bhikkhu_Thanissaro_Alumni_Interview.htm]Being A Monk: A Conversation with Thanissaro Bhikkhu[/url] by Rich Orloff wrote: Are you allowed to read for pleasure?
You get so that you're not interested in fiction. The only fiction that I read nowadays is by my friend Jeanne Larsen [Class of 1971, the author of three historical novels set in China] and Harry Potter.
Why Harry Potter?
I thought the books taught good lessons about loyalty, integrity, and such things.
So Harry Potter's okay, Robert Ludlam's not okay?
I have to use my judgment. Is what I'm reading getting in the way of my meditation? If I find myself closing my eyes and seeing visions that are not helping me at all, then it's obviously something I should be not be reading.
Do you keep up with the world?
Only in the last year or two. I get The Nation and The Guardian Weekly. I really liked all those years in Thailand when I didn't get any news. For my first eight years, the only international news that came out to the monastery was "Elvis Presley died" and "Skylab is falling."
Paulo Coelho teaches sensual passions.Mao wrote:Well, not the entertaining tabloid or seventeen or some teen fiction, but whatabout good fictional that somehwat teach about human value, something like from paolo coelho? or anys suggestion
Why? Are they not in this world, dealing with people, teaching them? Besides truly good literature has profound ideas that can open one's outlook, question and probe deeper into matters. It can in fact assist liberation.binocular wrote:I also think that to a monk, worldly literature would mostly be too boring to bother with it.
Because it's just the same old, same old regurgigated greed, anger and delusion; granted, each time (in each book or author) in a somewhat new variation, but the same old anyway.Dan74 wrote:Why?binocular wrote:I also think that to a monk, worldly literature would mostly be too boring to bother with it.
Do you find that for this, they need worldly books and films etc.?Are they not in this world, dealing with people, teaching them?
Can you give some examples?Besides truly good literature has profound ideas that can open one's outlook, question and probe deeper into matters. It can in fact assist liberation.
Wow, I am not quite sure where to begin... Are you really saying all the books you've read have been regurgitation of greed, anger and delusion?binocular wrote:Because it's just the same old, same old regurgigated greed, anger and delusion; granted, each time (in each book or author) in a somewhat new variation, but the same old anyway.Dan74 wrote:Why?binocular wrote:I also think that to a monk, worldly literature would mostly be too boring to bother with it.
Do you find that for this, they need worldly books and films etc.?Are they not in this world, dealing with people, teaching them?
Can you give some examples?Besides truly good literature has profound ideas that can open one's outlook, question and probe deeper into matters. It can in fact assist liberation.
Hi Binocular,binocular wrote:Because it's just the same old, same old regurgigated greed, anger and delusion; granted, each time (in each book or author) in a somewhat new variation, but the same old anyway.Dan74 wrote:Why?binocular wrote:I also think that to a monk, worldly literature would mostly be too boring to bother with it.
Pretty much, yes.Dan74 wrote:Wow, I am not quite sure where to begin... Are you really saying all the books you've read have been regurgitation of greed, anger and delusion?
Really? Those books are - in their nature - "fanstastic eye-opening moving and profound"? And I'm just too blind and too dumb to see how they "really are"?Whether Shakespeare, Kafka, Calvino, Tolstoy, Borges, Dostoyevsky, Hesse, Blake, classics like Don Quixote, Faust, the Divine Comedy, these and many others are fanstastic eye-opening moving and profound works.
There's an old Charlie Brown cartoon where the conversation goes in roundabout like this:beeblebrox wrote:I've found that good books are conscious of these. (This consciousness being from the author, or the reader, not the book itself.) These books could help us to recognize these three things, in all different possible configurations... which is helpful in preparing to recognize them in the real world setting.
There's a difference between discerning and jumping to conclusions (if this is what you mean by "discrediting").This doesn't mean that the Bhikkhus have to read them... but it doesn't make any sense to try discredit books.
I could equally say 'were these people but pointless fools who spent their lives scribbling nothing of use or interest to an enlightened personage like binocular?'binocular wrote:Pretty much, yes.Dan74 wrote:Wow, I am not quite sure where to begin... Are you really saying all the books you've read have been regurgitation of greed, anger and delusion?
Really? Those books are - in their nature - "fanstastic eye-opening moving and profound"? And I'm just too blind and too dumb to see how they "really are"?Whether Shakespeare, Kafka, Calvino, Tolstoy, Borges, Dostoyevsky, Hesse, Blake, classics like Don Quixote, Faust, the Divine Comedy, these and many others are fanstastic eye-opening moving and profound works.