A COSMOPOLITAN LAWYER: JUST SOME READINGS I HAVE ENJOYED LATELY

First, this blog replaces my previous blog, thecosmoplitanlawyerblogspot.com . Second, unlike that earlier blog, the present one is primarily meant as a record of my readings. It is not meant to suggest that others will be or should be interested in what I read. And third, in a sense, it is a public diary of one who is an alien in his own American culture. A person who feels at home just about anywhere, except in his birthplace . . . America.

Sunday, February 12, 2012

"I HAVE BEEN A VAGRANT MONK"

Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki, Manual of Zen Buddhism (1935) (Charleston, South Carolina: Forgotten Books, 2007) (From Yoka Daishi's "Song of Enlightenment": "46. Since early years I have been eagerly after scholarly attainment, I have studied the sutras and sastras and commentaries, I have been given up to analysis of names and forms, and never known what fatigue meant; But diving into the ocean to count up its sands is surely an exhausting task and a vain one; The Buddha has never spared such, his scoldings are just to the point, For what is the use of reckoning the treasures that are not mine? All my past achievements have been efforts vainly and wrongly applied--I realize it fully now, I have been a vagrant monk for many years to no end whatever." Id. at 84, 95.).