Academic writing everybody can enjoy: Zen and the Art of Insulting People!

ZEN IN THE ART OF INSULT

NOTES ON THE SYNTAX AND SEMANTICS OF ABUSIVE SPEECH IN LATE MIDDLE CHINESE

Highly recommend! Even if you don't like academics!

Most of this paper is quotes from Zen Masters! All of them insulting!

And it is a really short paper! https://biblio.ugent.be/publication/2099432/file/6770124.pdf

With the usual caveat that he seems to have swallowed the Buddhist Apologetics, making claims with zero evidence about how sayings texts are fake:

• "seem to be stylized and edited" - no evidence offered
• "Recorded Sayings are not merely transcriptions of dialogues" - no evidence offered
  • Often Buddhists will cite a lack of records as evidence that there weren't any records.
  • These are the same Buddhists who hold up their own oral tradition, in the absence of any written language at all, as "really accurate".
• "Recorded Sayings skilfully recreated (or sometimes more accurately created)" - no evidence offered

Otherwise, very short and entertaining reading! The author, Anderl, is really good at making the complexity of translation both transparent and interesting! Nobody does that, like, ever!

Seriously! Click the link! You'll thank me insult me for it later!

https://biblio.ugent.be/publication/2099432/file/6770124.pdf

Submitted January 20, 2020 at 08:29AM by ewk https://ift.tt/2G2e2N8