Читать книгу The Gatha of the Idiot Who Plays Ball. An Absurd Zen Story - - Страница 2

This book is my first work in the Buddha-Rilke series. The fantasy story it contains is small in volume, not overloaded with great meaning, and “brewed” like a single cup of unpretentiously light tea, so that it is not even read, but rather “digested” leisurely – in two or three carefree sips. And yet I hope that the aftertaste of such a “frivolous” book will remain with the reader for a long time.

The semantic centre of the book is “The Song of the Idiot”, one of Rilke’s paradoxical poems. I have to admit right away that my translation of this poem looks like a very free and clumsy interpretation of the original text. However, despite this shortcoming, I sincerely hope that I have managed to keep the spirit of Rilke’s Idiot alive and to integrate this character harmoniously into the story of the book.

To give the book a more expressive look, I decided to dilute the text with funny pictures – amusing Zen drawings by the acknowledged masters of this genre: Hakuin Ekaku (1686—1769), Sengai Gibon (1750—1837) and his friend Saito Shuho (c. 1768—1859).

I would like to point out that all images used in my illustrations are in the public domain.

Readers new to Zen vocabulary, as well as some textbook Zen characters and plots, will benefit from a small reference section at the end of the book. But first it is worth knowing what Gatha is. As Master Tho Idi once joked, “Gatha is an irrefutable demonstration of Emptiness in the mind of the idiot.”

Paula Modersohn-Becker, R.M. Rilke