[Buddha-l] Re: Greetings from Oviedo

[jkirk]

>
> This week I have been reading with my students one of the best
> expositions on Buddhist theory and practice I have ever read anywhere,
> namely, Bhikkhu Bodhi's The Way to the End of Suffering," which can be
> found at   (http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/bps/misc/waytoend.html) .
> Bhikkhu Bodhi makes the following interesting observation:
>
> \begin{interesting observation}
> The traditional exegesis of abstaining from idle chatter refers only to
> avoiding engagement in such talk oneself. But today it might be of value
> to give this factor a different slant, made imperative by certain
> developments peculiar to our own time, unknown in the days of the Buddha
> and the ancient commentators. This is avoiding exposure to the idle
> chatter constantly bombarding us through the new media of communication
> created by modern technology. An incredible array of devices --
> television, radio, newspapers, pulp journals, the cinema -- turns out a
> continuous stream of needless information and distracting entertainment
> the net effect of which is to leave the mind passive, vacant, and
> sterile. All these developments, naively accepted as "progress,"
> threaten to blunt our aesthetic and spiritual sensitivities and deafen
> us to the higher call of the contemplative life. Serious aspirants on
> the path to liberation have to be extremely discerning in what they
> allow themselves to be exposed to. They would greatly serve their
> aspirations by including these sources of amusement and needless
> information in the category of idle chatter (samphappalapa) and making
> an effort to avoid them.
> \end{interesting observation}
>
> By sheer coincidence, I happened to watch Martin Scorsese's documentary
> on Bob Dylan just after reading that. The documentary is filled with
> numerous clips of an interview with a painfully inarticulate Bob Dylan,
> along with numerous clips of Dylan whining the unintelligible gibberish
> that he foisted off as lyrics back in the 1960s. The documentary filled
> me with a kind of wonder, as I marvelled at the fact that people
> actually used to enjoy listening to Bob Dylan. Hell, even I used to
> enjoy it. But why? His material was so lacking in substance that it
> can't even be called shallow, let alone profound. So why did so many of
> us like it? Mass delusion? Quién sabe? (Sorry, but my keyboard does not
> make those upside-down question marks that Spanish writers use to warn
> the reader that a question is about to be posed.)
>
> While reflecting on the question of what it was that a generation of
> Americans saw in an incomprehensible poet who started his career by
> telling everyone the lie that he grew up in Gallup, New Mexico, I also
> began to reflect on the equally puzzling question of why I used to enjoy
> writing on buddha-l, even though I really had nothing of consequence to
> say. Things change.
>
>
> With a passive, vacant and sterile mind, I remain, for the time being,
> Richard
>
> -- 
> My Unitarian Jihad Name (http://tinyurl.com/6valr ) is:
> The Logging Chain of Loving Kindness
> You can get your own at http://homepage.mac.com/whump/ujname.html
=================
I briefly looked at the same documentary on Dylan and was again struck by 
how much I
never liked his singing, and how predictable TV documentaries are. Sound 
bite formats, too much background music noise, aso.
Thanks for the Bhikku Bodhi contribution....wondering if the Pali term 
samphappalapa might not be onomatopeic?-- and the glorious Unitarian Jihad.
Joanna