~riverflow

Hello, I think we walked through the door here about the same time! :-) ~josh

Two monks were traveling together, an older monk and a younger monk. They noticed a young woman at the edge of a stream, afraid to cross. The older monk picked her up, carried her across the stream and put her down safely on the other side. The younger monk was astonished, but he didn't say anything until their journey was over. "Why did you carry that woman across the stream? Monks aren't supposed to touch any member of the opposite sex." said the younger monk. The older monk replied "I left her at the edge of the river, are you still carrying her?"

Oh, good, then I can add to the confusion!

To come from a Buddhist perspective here: In Buddhism, "void" isn't mere nothingness-- emptiness (sunyata) signifies that nothing has any independent self that exists by its own power. Everything is connected in an infinite network of interdependence. That, in a nutshell, is sunyata. It has nothing to do with the obliteration of self. This is an all-too-common misunderstanding of "no-self" and "emptiness" in Buddhism. Selflessness-- at least in the Buddhist context-- doesn't mean some sort of opposition to the ego: one does not attempt to rid oneself of one's self (which is impossible to do, and besides, its just creating yet another duality). Rather, one seeks to realise that an independently existing self was an illusion all along. And yet, one still "chops firewood and carries water." We divide ourselves from the world, and ourselves from ourselves and we believe these to be permanent entities with permanent characteristics. One does not need to transcend the physical world, one need only transcend one's own reifying concepts upon the world and upon ourselves. In a sense, there really isn't even anything "mystical" about it. There is no place to go but right here: this.

Each moment is all being, each moment is the entire world. Reflect now whether any being or any world is left out of the present moment. ~Dogen, "Uji" (from Shobogenzo)

I have a tonne of books, almost all directly related to philosophia (mostly Buddhist, some Daoist, then writers like Thoreau, Nietzsche or Camus), and some indirectly related (haiku, other poetry, John Cage, books on wabi sabi). My only problem is where I live, I couldn't even GIVE my books away. I do plan to donate a huge chunk of my Buddhist books to a sangha or two across town at some point-- some books I have no problem selling, but not those books. I am quite the minimalist (no furniture except a desk, chair, bed and three small-ish bookshelves -- and no TV) except when it comes to books and music (at least the music is almost all digital). As far as internalising the contents of many books-- well, I'm a slow learner, so I find I have to read and re-read. And there I have one bookshelf where I keep certain "essential" books that I return to again and again (Dogen's Shobogenzo, a rather large collection of Zen koans, my R.H. Blyth books on haiku, a couple translations of the Daodejing, and just a few other books). One of these days I may manage to finally get rid of most of my books. I don't see books as material objects however, since it's not the books but what is in them that I find so invaluable.