Читать книгу Zen Master Rilke: Seeing It All As a Whole. From the Buddha-Rilke Series - - Страница 3

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Some Notes on the Booklet

This book continues my Buddha-Rilke series, in which the outstanding poet, mystic and visionary Rainer Maria Rilke (1875—1926) appears as… a Zen master.

The booklet contains three short etudes which, from different angles, reveal the poet́s spiritual formation during the period of his ́Middle Waý.

The first and third etudes are the poet́s dialogues with Gautama Buddha on the great unity and right understanding of things, the way of the bodhisattva and the five meditations of the heart. In the second etude, the poet appears as the protagonist not only of his famous poem ́Buddha in Glorý, but also of the great Tantra of Tibetan Buddhism, The All-Creating King.

Rilkés voice is authentic in all the dialogues. All his words are quotations from his letters; they are given in my translation. The sayings of Gautama Buddha are taken from The Gospel of Buddha by Paul Carus (1852—1919), Project Gutenberg, and are quoted with the characteristics of the original.

To make the text easier to read, speech marks have been removed from all the dialogues.

The booklet contains a large number of varied and thought-provoking illustrations, among which I would like to mention the public domain works of Odilon Redon (1840—1916), the remarkable French Symbolist artist. Among my own drawings, the reader will find some Zen-like fantasy portraits of Rilke. One such portrait appears on the cover of the book.

All the images used to create the collages in the book are in the public domain, including photographs from the early 20th century, except for those from my personal archive.

I hope that this booklet, like all the others, will surprise the reader and show the great poet in a new light.

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The books from Buddha-Rilke series:

Zen Master Rilke: We Are the Bees of the Invisible, 2023.

Zen Master Rilke: There Are No Teachings, 2023.

Zen Master Rilke: The Gatha of the Idiot Who Plays Ball, 2023.