Paper Finished and Summer Plans
I finished the first full and largely complete draft of my term paper for my esoteric Buddhism class today. It came in at 28 pages but one must remember, since we’re using footnotes for citations, that anywhere from a half to full inch at the bottom of many pages is taken up by footnotes.
The paper is off with my editor now (which means that my wife consented to look at it and catch the typos that I haven’t caught after ten minor redrafts for some reason and to see if it reads like a real paper). Once it gets past her and any mistakes she finds, I’ll send it in. With that, I’m done with this class and just in time for Summer!
This summer is shaping up to be fairly busy. I’m still quietly doing an online course with the Buddhist group that I work with for our education program. Those will continue one after the other.
R and I took a little time off today and drove down to Half Moon Bay to go horseback riding. I hadn’t been on a horse since I was a kid (which is shameful since my dad’s family owned a horse ranch of sorts in Wyoming). R had done horse camp as a kid but that was a long while ago. We did an hour and a half trail ride with a guide along the ocean, which was rather nice. I spent much of my ride trying to convince my horse, Chico, to quit eating flowers and shoots and to keep moving along. I had the “no riding experience” horse so he pretty much did what he wanted much of the time. I’m glad we went but my ass is pretty sore right now. I would like to do some more riding in the future though this wasn’t particularly cheap to do.
Beyond my continuing education work, R and I found out that Emeryville (which is a block West of us) has a Taiko dojo with regular open classes. Since we’re both interested in drumming (especially Taiko) and like joint activities, we’ll probably try out the classes there when the new series begins in two weeks. Learn to drum the Japanese way! They have their own Youtube channel as well if you want to see the local group in action.
We’re going to Seattle next week, where I’ll be seeing the Karmapa in his rockstar tour of the United States, as well as my daughter, grandparents and a few friends.
At the end of July, I’m going to Canada for a week for the Mozilla Summit with my co-workers. I’ll come back from that for four or so days and then head off to Las Vegas Black Hat and Defcon, again for work (since I’m the QA lead for security releases).
At the end of August, R and I will be going to Burning Man again. I went last in 2006 (she in 2001) and we’re looking forward to it.
Oh, and we are planning our Fall vacation trip (when we normally try to travel) to Egypt for late September or October for a couple of weeks.
21 Pages of Term Paper Written
I have 21 pages of my term paper written for my class at the Institute of Buddhist Studies on Esoteric Buddhism. It is a 20 to 25 page paper but that’s fairly rough.
I decided to remove my discussion of the Susiddhikara Sutra because after writing my introduction, the history section on it and the Mahavairocana Sutra, a short introduction on esoteric Buddhist terminology (mandala, mantra, mudra, etc.), and then summarizing the ritual content of the seven fascicles of the Mahavairocana Sutra, I had 18 pages written. If I had added a summary of the ritual contents of the Susiddhikara Sutra, it would have been another eight to ten pages and then I would had to have written my comparison and conclusions. A 35 page term paper is half or a third of a Master’s thesis and I’ve already done one of those…
So my paper is now a discussion of the history of the Mahavairocana Sutra and its ritual contents with some discussion of modern uses (like in the Juhachi-do) mentioned at the end. I ran this by the professor and he had no issues with it. I removed the Susiddhikara Sutra material and then worked on stuff a bit more, taking it up to 21 pages. I have to rework/finish my summary of the last fascicle of the Mahavairocana Sutra, which is really a ritual manual, and then write my conclusions. This is due in a week and I have a three day weekend coming up so I’m in fairly good shape, all things considered.
Going over things today, the paper actually reads fairly well right now, which makes me happy. I tend to start an evening’s or afternoon’s writing on papers by going over what I’ve already written. This helps me rewrite or redraft constantly and also helps make sure I’m consistent in tone and not repeating myself. It also warms me up for the new writing at the end of it. Unfortunately, I can sit down to do this, as I did this evening, and spend two and a half hours reworking existing material and not writing that much which is new.
This is what the floor next to my desk (also heaping full of things) looks like right now. I’ve never been a tidy person but this needs to end soon:
Term Paper Pressure
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.
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