We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
Ten Zen Koans Translated from Japanese, Mandarin, Wu, Vietnamese, Thai, Fujian, Korean, Tibetan, Hakka, Javenese, Mizo, Nepal Bhasa, Khasi, Buryat, Malay, Paiwan, Burmese, Ryukyuan, and Okinawan by Jackson Bliss.
- Authors
Bliss, Jackson
- Abstract
In this satirical short story about Zen poetry scholarship that explores the limited and often impossible process of linguistic and spiritual translation, the primary text does not exist at all, making this piece both a spiritual embodiment of Zen according to the writing of many of its most dedicated practitioners and devoted scholars, but also a textual and spatial oxymoron since footnotes are obviously ancillary information used to elaborate and contextualize arguments made on the primary text, which, in this case, does not exist; this poses a basic question: can there be footnotes without a primary text? The footnotes, in their own way, mock any attempt to transliterate a spiritual state of being or a school of thought such as Zen Buddhism since language is constrained by itself from adequately describing the very process that the text actively prevents the reader from doing at all.
- Subjects
ZEN poetry; OXYMORON; ZEN Buddhism; CONTEXTUAL analysis; TRANSLITERATION
- Publication
MELUS, 2020, Vol 45, Issue 4, p46
- ISSN
0163-755X
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1093/melus/mlaa049