On my planet, to rest is to rest — to cease using energy. To me, it is quite illogical to run up and down on green grass, using energy, instead of saving it.
Spock, “Shore Leave”, stardate 3025.2
Dear Readers,
Wishing you all a restful end of year, and a happy 2025!
I am going to take the next couple of weeks off myself and recharge, spend time with the family and so on. But, I also have a personal to-do list I made for myself to capitalize on the downtime and get some things done, including:
- Finishing a novel I’ve been reading
- A bit more Buddhist practice
- Finishing the next installment of the Journeys of Xuan-zang (part 5 is interesting, but taking way longer than expected to finish)
- A couple bonus projects if I have time.
- A bit of studying
So, unlike Spock, I’ll be probably busy, but also productive on a personal level. I mostly gave myself some really easy “softball” goals so I don’t burn out on my time off, but then again, maybe I should trim this list down and have more time to just space out.
I’ll let you all know in 2025. Until then, take care!
P.S. Related post from a few years earlier.
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Doug – weird request here … but I have been searching EVERYWHERE (and I mean EVERYWHERE) for a copy (or just the raw text) of ‘Traversing The Pure Land Path’ … which — based on your posts from years ago — sounds like something you have a copy of. If I sent you $$ via PayPal, would you be willing to (I know this is an odd request) just take your smartphone and take pictures of its ~170 pages and send them my way? Or, if you no longer need the book, can I buy the book from you (I’d pay for S&H too, even if it’s coing from overseas). If you go the image route, the images wouldn’t have to be great quality or even cleaned up – I just need them visible enough where I can read each page – maybe ~15-20 min of work to take all the pages’ photos. …….I even tried contacting the publisher in Japan directly and they just directed me to the Japanese Amazon site, which is out of stock. I even scoured sketchy PDF sites and places like Singapore- and Denmark-based businesses looking for a copy. I even contacted one of the authors through the only site I could find for him and never herad back. I’m trying to get my hands on a good amount of English-based Jodo Shu-related content for personal practice reasons and this one is particularly hard to access and it’s not even 20 years old. If you’re willing to do this, I can send you $$ directly or donate directly to one of the causes you have listed if you prefer that instead. You can reply here or via email on file/associated w/ comment. – Thanks, Scott
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Hi Scott, I appreciate you contacting me about this and I am sorry that your efforts to find a copy have been so difficult. I checked online too and was surprised to see the book is virtually non-existent now.
That said, the other book “Honen the Buddhist Saint” is very similar in content and is much more available.
The “Traversing” book is a mostly repackaged version of Honen the Buddhist Saint, with some extra biographies in there, most of which have been put on Wikipedia in the past by me and other contributors.
So, while the book is gone, and I simply can’t devote the time to photocopy it, you can find 95% of the same material elsewhere.
If you’re willing to go the extra mile, learning Japanese can really help deepen your access to Jodo Shu resources as well.
Good luck!
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Thanks for replying back and I hope you had a good holiday. I didn’t know so much shared content was in Honen the Buddhist Saint. I actually ended up finding a foreign proxy service person to buy a copy of the book I found on a non-English site, but it will likely some time to arrive. I wish more older Jodoshu/Shinshu books/academic papers/etc. (in English) were easily and publicly available to read. Thanks again for writing.
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Of course. Happy to help.
The other book I used to read often was Raft from the Other Shore which is mostly scholarly lectures on Jodo Shu practice and outlook. It is a pretty good book and likely still around.
As to why Jodo Shu resources dried up, from what I can gather, the JSRI (Jodo Shu Research Institute) outreach program discontinued about ten years ago, for reasons unknown.
Once that happened, foreign outreach of Jodo Shu just dried up. The JSRI websites gradually shut down and so on. You can find them via the Wayback Machine though. Much of the content from Traversing the Pure Land Path is on there as well.
Good luck!
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