American Buddhist Net

Review of "Life and Death are Wearing Me Out", by Mo Yan
Translated from the Chinese by Howard Goldblatt

Sunday, May 25, 2008
Reviewed by Steven Moore

To encompass the ideological insanity of Mao Zedong's policies and the unimaginable horrors he inflicted on the Chinese people requires a boldly unconventional style. That need has been filled by this wild man of Chinese fiction: Mo Yan -- a pseudonymic phrase meaning "Don't speak." Over the last 20 years, Mo Yan has been writing brutally vibrant stories about rural life in China that flout official Party ideology and celebrate individualism over conformity. (How he has escaped imprisonment -- or worse -- I don't know.) He also flouts literary conformity, spiking his earthy realism with fantasy, hallucination and metafiction.

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There's a cold rain falling today, so it seems appropriate to post a piece of classic Russian literature. The religious themes in "A Living Relic" should be of interest to anyone who bothers to visit a Buddhist website. For the politically inclined, this story will take you back to a time and place in history where the ownership of human beings by other human beings was open, explicit, and officially sanctioned. In America today, slavery is alive and well, although in perhaps a subtler form than that of Russian serfdom. Robyn
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From "A Sportsman's Sketches" (1852-1874)
by Ivan Turgenev
Translated from the Russian by Constance Garnett

‘O native land of long suffering,
Land of the Russian people.’
F. TYUTCHEV.

A French proverb says that ‘a dry fisherman and a wet hunter are a sorry sight.’ Never having had any taste for fishing, I cannot decide what are the fisherman’s feelings in fine bright weather, and how far in bad weather the pleasure derived from the abundance of fish compensates for the unpleasantness of being wet. But for the sportsman rain is a real calamity. It was to just this calamity that Yermolaï and I were exposed on one of our expeditions after grouse in the Byelevsky district. The rain never ceased from early morning. What didn’t we do to escape it? We put macintosh capes almost right over our heads, and stood under the trees to avoid the raindrops.... The waterproof capes, to say nothing of their hindering our shooting, let the water through in the most shameless fashion; and under the trees, though at first, certainly, the rain did not reach us, afterwards the water collected on the leaves suddenly rushed through, every branch dripped on us like a waterspout, a chill stream made its way under our neck-ties, and trickled down our spines.... This was ‘quite unpleasant,’ as Yermolaï expressed it. ‘No, Piotr Petrovitch,’ he cried at last; ‘we can’t go on like this....There’s no shooting to-day. The dogs’ scent is drowned. The guns miss fire....Pugh! What a mess!’

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May 7th, 2008
By Don George

Life on the grasslands of Inner Mongolia is hard and brutal, but it embodies an edifying nobility and symmetry too. That's one of the central themes of the electrifying Chinese novel Wolf Totem, written by a publicity-shy, 61-year-old former political science professor at a Beijing university, under the pseudonym Jiang Rong.

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Friday, 2 May 2008
Reviewed by Justin Wintle

Clever writers know how to add perspective to their narratives, much the same way good draughtsmen create depth to their drawings. TH Barrett is a clever writer. At the beginning of The Woman Who Discovered Printing, a study of what may have been the pivotal role of the Tang dynasty Empress Wu in the early development of printing in China, Barrett boldly depicts the Venerable Bede (a contemporary of Wu) having an imagined dream in his Jarrow monastery. The ecclesiastical historian sees a Chinese monk bowing before the Empress with a printed Buddhist text in his hand. Wu is embedded in the grandeur of her palace, and the inference is that the text has been commissioned by her.

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Thrilling New Novel Looks at Relationship Between Genetic Science and Prophesized 'End of Times'

Wednesday April 2

AMERY, Wis., April 2, 2008 /PRNewswire/ -- The discovery of 12 ancient stone tablets in Africa -- part of a 30,000-year-old secret of epic proportions -- sets the stage for action, adventure and incredible revelation in the thrilling new "End of Times" novel from James Rutledge, "Arrival of the Prince"

A groundbreaking look into the possible relationship between genetic science and the much-heralded arrival of the Antichrist and end of the world, "Arrival of the Prince" follows famed epigraphist Dr. Gideon Law as he ventures to Egypt to decipher the unknown and very sophisticated language found on the mysterious tablets. At the same time, powerful cosmic events have begun to signal religious leaders around the world that humankind has entered the "End of Times," and when Dr. Law announces that the alphabet of the ancient language correlates exactly with the organic structure of human DNA, worldwide fears reach full throttle.

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March 31, 2008

Pettigrew, AK (PRWEB) March 31, 2008 -- In the spirit of Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales," author How Kuff explores the current state of humanity through the happenstance meeting of seven world travelers in his philosophical novel "Changing History"

..."Changing History" examines the biggest issues of the 21st Century through the travelers' compelling first-person narratives. Their diverse backgrounds vary greatly across age, gender, culture and race, bringing a wide variety of viewpoints to their reflective conversation. The travelers' emotionally charged tales expand on the nature of their relationships to the world around them and share their personal struggles with self-expression, discrimination, politics, economics, religion, love and war.

When it becomes clear that their stories are all connected on a metaphysical level, the travelers begin to develop a new understanding of humanity. Taking insight from Buddhism, quantum physics and deep ecology, "Changing History" promotes the idea of world citizenship and the innate interconnectedness of all living things. "We are intimately connected to all that has occurred before and to all that will occur in the future," Kuff says. "We have tremendous power through our present actions to change the past and make the future."

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After returning from a long mountain bike trip through Tibet at the turn of the millennium, How Kuff began working on Changing History, a modern day genre-spanning philosophical novel. In the spirit of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, Changing History develops from a happenstance meeting in a snowstorm in the mountains of Tibet of seven global travelers who stumble upon and spend the night in a teahouse with a Buddhist monk and nun traveling between monasteries. During the night, the seven travelers tell tales of circumstances and events that drove them to question fundamental aspects of their lives and led to their presence in the teahouse.

In the fast-paced and compelling character stories, the protagonists engage in real world struggles with war and terrorism… ethics, religion and monotheism… and politics, economics, the environment and social cohesion. Their tales extend across race and culture, sex, age and nationality. The round-the-world character tales return to the land and mountains of Tibet, to the deep knowledge of the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, and to the horrific crimes of China against the people and land of Tibet.

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Victor Pelevin's The Sacred Book of the Werewolf is set in a Russia of shapeshifters, says Olivia Laing

Sunday March 9, 2008

The Sacred Book of the Werewolf
by Victor Pelevin, translated by Andrew
Bromfield

In this strange, frenetic and beguiling account of a Russia plagued by werewolves and vampires of various natures, the heroine is a fox whose name (A Hu-Li) unfortunately translates in her adopted homeland as something approximating 'what the fuck.' A Hu-Li has the appearance of a luscious 14-year-old girl, the mind of a particularly sly Buddhist monk and an endearing habit of name-dropping all the famous people she's met over the past 2,000 years. Originally from China, she's now plying her vulpine trade at Moscow's National Hotel. But A Hu-Li's version of turning tricks is not exactly conventional. She hypnotises her willing victim, feeding off his energies with the help of her secret weapon, 'a fluffy, flexible, fire-red' tail.

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Plots can only thicken when set in the Hermit Kingdom of North Korea.

Reviewed by Richard Lipez
Sunday, February 3, 2008

Their settings are all over the place, from Pyongyang to Brooklyn, but what these mystery novelists have in common is panache. Fans of other genres should be so lucky.

THE GRAVING DOCK By Gabriel Cohen | Thomas Dunne/St. Martin's Minotaur. 296 pp. $23.95

It's fitting that a Buddhist nun comes to play a key role in the life of NYPD detective Jack Leightner because the enduring feature of the Brooklyn neighborhoods in this dark, lustrous police procedural is impermanence -- a central tenet of Buddhist belief.

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...The speculations which might possibly induce a skeptical or rebellious attitude are killed in advance by his early-acquired inner discipline. The first and simplest stage in the discipline, which can be taught even to young children, is called, in Newspeak, crimestop. Crimestop means the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought. It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimical to Ingsoc, and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. (1984, p. 174, 175)

Crimestop, in short, means protective stupidity. But stupidity is not enough. On the contrary, orthodoxy in the full sense demands a control over one's own mental processes as complete as that of a contortionist over his own body. Oceanic society rests ultimately on the belief that Big Brother is omnipotent and that the Party is infallible. But since in reality Big Brother is not omnipotent and the Party is not infallible, there is need for an unwearying, moment-to-moment flexibility in the treatment of facts. The key word here is blackwhite. Like so many Newspeak words, this word has two mutually contradictory meanings. Applied to an opponent, it means the habit of impudently claiming that black is white, in contradiction of the plain facts. Applied to a Party member, it means a loyal willingness to say that black is white when Party discipline demands this. But it means also the ability to believe that black is white, and more, to know that black is white, and to forget that one has ever believed to the contrary. This demands a continuous alteration of the past, made possible by the system of thought which really embraces all the rest, and which is known in Newspeak as doublethink. (1984, p. 175)

[Winston] had no difficulty in disposing of the fallacy, and he was in no danger of succumbing to it. He realized, nevertheless, that it ought never to have occurred to him. The mind should develop a blind spot whenever a dangerous thought presented itself. The process should be automatic, instinctive. Crimestop, they called it in Newspeak. He set to work to exercise himself in crimestop. He presented himself with propositions -- 'the Party says the earth is flat', 'the party says that ice is heavier than water' -- and trained himself in not seeing or not understanding the arguments that contradicted them. It was not easy. It needed great powers of reasoning and improvisation. The arithmetical problems raised, for instance, by such a statement as 'two and two make five' were beyond his intellectual grasp. It needed also a sort of athleticism of mind, an ability at one moment to make the most delicate use of logic and at the next to be unconscious of the crudest logical errors. Stupidity was as necessary as intelligence, and as difficult to attain. (1984, pg. 229)

Posted by
American Buddhist Net News
02/14/07

Chapter IV

Perfer et obdura; dolor hic tibi proderit olim.
(Be patient and tough; one day this pain will be useful to you.)

Uther stood by the hearth in the center of Merthen’s woodland compound. The boy raised up his bow and removed an arrow from his quiver. Merthen looked at the Uther’s hands, each with a cluster of white spots. They were lean and muscular stone-throwing hands. Tree-climbing hands. Catch-a-toad-and-set-him-on-a-throne-made-of-sticks hands.

“Wait till he looks away,” whispered Merthen.

The rabbit took half a hop. The arrow spiraled through the air. It punctured its target through the ribs.

Uther scampered off towards the kill. “He looks kind of scrawny.”

Posted by
American Buddhist Net News
02/02/07

Chapter III

Potest ex casa magnus vir exire.
(A great man comes from a hut.)

#

Uther shuffled out the doorway of the round thatched-roofed hut that stood in the center of the clearing in the woods. He leaned his broom next to the rest of hand-carved tools and wicker baskets that rested against the low earthen wall of the cottage.

Merthen crouched over a smoldering fire pit. Its smoke rose into the high mountian air. He placed thin slices of gingerroot onto a raised circular frame.

Chapter II
Equo ne credite, Teucri. (Do not trust the horse, Trojans.)

Ambrosius sat on a bundle of wool next to the docks, and watched the meadows of sea grass along Carmarthen Bay undulate in the wind. A pair of sandpipers dipped their sharp oblong beaks into the mudflats. He removed a strip of smoked rabbit from his purse and bit off a chunk.

"Well look what we have here!" said a jovial voice. "By Ajax's teats, could this be the Wizard of Britannia?" In front of Ambrosius stood a raven-haired hunchback with one gray eye and one black. He was wearing a yard-long stocking cap, draped off to the side. It was red velvet. Ambrosius' eyes followed its tassel down past a twisted arm and on to a shriveled leg, tipped with a toeless foot.

This is the first part of a new novel by Jacob Asher Michael in which the Wizard Merlin is a Buddhist monk and King Arthur is an orphan boy he takes under his wing. We plan to serialize the entire novel and will add new sections every few days. ABN
__________________

Posted by
American Buddhist Net News
01/10/07

FORWARD
Vis consili expers mole ruit sua.
Brute force bereft of wisdom falls to ruin by its own weight.

During the 5th Century CE, the ethnic identities and nation states that now make up the British Isles were not yet clearly developed or differentiated. The geographic boundaries of the region were still described using terms created by Roman provincial governments, regardless of the tribal societies who actually lived there. Thus, Britannia extended through most of present day England, while Cambria covered much of Wales. Scotland, north of Hadrian's Wall, was Caledonia. The entire island of Ireland was Hibernia. Most of the countries in present day Europe simply did not exist.

Part Two Chapter 2

The rusty old van climbed the hill slowly, rattling and shaking against the steep grade. Below and behind it the vast panorama of Death Valley opened like a spacious parody on nothingness, for it was beautiful in its emptiness and comforting in its severe loneliness. The bumper and windows of the van were covered with stickers that seemed out of place wherever they were, but even more so here. THE PUNISHMENT SHOULD FIT THE CRIME said one with a faded yellow background. IT TAKES A WHOLE VILLAGE TO DESTROY A CHILD said another. DON’T BLAME IT ON KARMA said a third. Jagged spots of rust on the sides of the van were in harmony to the sides of the highway, which were covered with crushed stones and wild flowers whose slender roots grew almost horizontally under the tarmac where the earth remained moist longer than elsewhere. Jack sang loudly, modulating his voice to conform to the throb of the laboring engine. “Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a BMW. I have been good, Lord, and long in loving you. Point the way to heaven and I’ll drive right on through. If oh Lord you only buy me a BMW.”

PART TWO

Chapter 1

“I don’t fucking believe it,” said President Gregory Cush as he leaned back in his chair and hissed with intense irritation. Twin dark blue curtains hung with weighty importance, framing the window behind him. A grey carpet with the deep blue seal of the United States of America covered the floor.

“It’s true,” his Attorney General, Jerry Ashcart, replied. “We have proof.”

“Look,” the president said, his eyes narrowing along with his lips, “this is the United States of America and I am the President and not on my fucking watch is something like this ever going to happen! It will not stand! Not here! Not now! Not ever!”

“But it already has, sir,” the Attorney General replied almost calmly, the folds and segments of his face well-composed and hardly moving with the effort of speaking. He was standing on the edge of the Great Seal of the United States of America. His black shoes shone on his feet, and appeared rather small for his height and weight.

Chapter 11

"Jimmy! Come here!" Her voice admitted no refusal.

"What is it?" he asked, approaching her as she sat hunched before the computer screen.

"I know her!" Sonya said, leaning back, pushing herself away from the machine as if to distance herself from the face of the dead woman on Manny's yacht. "I know who she is! She works at Qantum!"

"Oh..." Jameson said almost inaudibly.

The face on the screen was blue and looked as if it had been torn from some alien depth by the glare of the camera's flash.

Chapter 10

Sonya had a gut-wrenching feeling that Manny's Alpha Logic activities were connected to the Alpha Logic project at Qantum, and yet none of the details matched. Manny's venture happened at night, involved things that were delivered, and hinged on a single email contact, while Qantum's happened in the day and in an office with many people working together under the auspices of a large and successful corporation. The two projects were the same only in that both of them were secret. And yet even their secrecy was different. Manny's activities were shadowy, while Qantum's were based on more or less normal industry practices. She wondered if she were straining unconsciously to reach pre-determined conclusions. As a scientist she knew that her conclusions must be driven by facts and not the other way around.

Chapter 9

As he rode toward the marina, Jameson reviewed in his mind what he knew about Manny Caldera. Though he would have called Manny a friend since they had known each other for over fifteen years and had consistently treated each other with amiable familiarity, Jameson was aware that Manny had shared few of the details of his life with him, and that he, in return, had been much the same with Manny. They had spent time together and had enjoyed a species of camaraderie together, and yet neither of them had ever entirely opened the depths of his mind to the other. That was OK, Jameson thought, for they had gotten along just fine as is, or was.

Chapter 8

Sonya was not surprised to hear her machines chime a hit. She looked at her watch. Her system had broken Manny's server's code in less than two hours. She sat down and surveyed a cache of all of Manny's emails from the last two years. As was common practice in small outfits, Manny's server had saved all of his correspondence, both in-coming and out-going, for the past twenty-four months. She selected all of it and uploaded it to her machine. The transfer took just seconds. When she had everything safely on her own system, she checked the server's log and deleted the record of her actions. No one would have any way of knowing that she had successfully broken-in and copied all of his mail. The burglary had taken just a few minutes and no record had been left behind. Sonya congratulated herself, even though the security system at Manny's server had been obsolete for at least two years. She had been a hacker since her early teens. The break-in had literally been child's play to her.

Chapter 7

Jameson put on a pair of gloves before he opened the front door to Manny's office. The reception area was shared by a number of small businesses which were situated along two corridors that led away from it.

On one side of the dim room was a curved reception desk with a pair of empty chairs behind it. On the other side was a darkened window and a couple of couches that faced each other across a low table that held a potted plant and a stack of magazines. Faint light issued from the corridors and from a few small bulbs behind the reception desk.