Term Paper Pressure
May 13, 2008 at 12:57 am
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The process of writing a term paper is always painful in a way. You’re writing a paper for a class in which you wish to get a good grade and the paper is almost always at least 50% of the grade (75% in my case). That’s a little pressure. In my case, you can add to this pressure the fact that the class is taught by a professor that you admire and whom you’d like to be your dissertation advisor (if you are even accepted into the doctoral program).
If I completely screw this paper up, it isn’t going to make a good impression on him and if I don’t work with this professor, I’m unlikely to be accepted into the doctoral program with my areas of interest (there are only a few people in the entire country who specialize in Japanese esoteric Buddhism, most are only vaguely aware of its existence).
So, it had better be a good paper, eh?
I’ve spent my third or so day in a row pouring over the history around the Mahavairocana Sutra and the Susiddhikara Sutra (apparently, it doesn’t work to call them the “Mahavairocana and Susiddhikara Sutras” collectively). I have about eight pages of double-spaced text and 33 (!) footnotes, documenting statements. This outlines the purpose of my paper (about two pages) and the history of these two texts, their travels and translation in China, and how they wound up being connected to Shingon and Tendai.
At this point, the next week and a half or so will be going back and forth through these two texts, summarizing the ritual content in general terms and some specifics, and then comparing this ritual content between the text. Even my professor, Dr. Payne, admits that I may not get a lot useful out of it at the end but, as he wrote in all caps, “YOU CAN’T KNOW THE END OF THE PATH UNTIL YOU WALK IT …The very fact that you can’t see where this is leading is REALLY GOOD. If you already knew, why would you be doing this work?”
Let’s see how this goes. Maybe I’ll fly! If nothing else, I have my charming career in software to focus on. I hear you can get decent jobs at that still.
Two Years!
May 12, 2008 at 11:50 pm
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I realized today that it had been two years, to the day, since I quit Microsoft. In most ways, it doesn’t seem like it has been quite that long but in others, it has. This means that we’ll have been living in the Bay Area for two years next month as well.
I still miss the trees, fog, and chilly rain though.
Playing Zendo
May 10, 2008 at 12:47 pm
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Last night, R and I went over to the house of friends who have a regular game night. Other than a general interest in playing games with people, we went over in order to learn to play Zendo. Zendo is a game played with the Icehouse pyramids available from Looney Labs. These are hollow, translucent colored pyramids that are stackable and come in three sizes (small, medium, and large), fitting within each other.
With Zendo, one player takes on the role of “Master” for the game. Everyone else is a player. The Master determines a rule for the game and then constructs two “koans” from Icehouse pyramids. One koan exhibits the rule and one koan does not exhibit the rule and they are marked with a white and black stone, respectively, to represent this. A koan that represents the rule is said to have the Buddha-nature, while one that does not meet the rule’s criteria, does not have a Buddha-nature. The players are not told what the rule actually is though. (It can be simple or complex, such as “A koan has the Buddha-nature if it has at least one green pyramid and exactly one upright pyramid.”)
Here is the example of the beginning of a game we played with the initial two koans from the Master set up and marked:
It looks simple…
The players each take turns in order. In a player’s turn, he or she builds a koan from the unused pyramids, arranging them in any manner. The player then calls out “Master” or “Mondo.” If the player calls “Master”, the Master examines the koan and then marks it with a white stone if it has the Buddha-nature and a black stone if it does not. If the player calls “Mondo”, then all players at the table, using a black or white stone hidden in their hand, make a guess as to whether they think that the koan in question has the Buddha-nature. Those that guess correctly, are giving a green “guessing stone.” At the end of any player’s turn, that player can spend a guessing stone, and give the master their guess of what the rule for the game is. If they guess correctly, they win the game. Otherwise, their guessing stone is spent and the game continues to the next player.
A game in progress…
The job of the Master is to create a good game and to select koans that will be fun for the skill level of the players. In this regard, the Master is more like the game master in role-playing games and is not an opponent.
Our first few games went fairly quickly. R and I had never played before and we had two other players who had only played a few times. One of the fellows one two games in a row and I managed to win one. We then switched masters and the rule created by her turned out to be very hard for our table. After about 40 minutes of play, we were nearly out of available pyramids and everyone was still clueless as to the rule. That game wound up being a draw. The Master pointed out that it wasn’t even that hard of a rule (which is true in retrospect when we found out what it was) but we all went in the wrong direction with it.
We definitely had a good time and I like the game. Unfortunately, since you need at least three people to play (and five or six seems to be optimal), we won’t get to play it very often.
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