Grand Seiko SBGW295

 

Castles

 

Iconic

 

Vvardenfell

 

はっぴいえんど〈さよならアメリカ さよならニッポン〉

Interview with George Steiner

Chalk River

 

Kintaikyō: Iwakuni’s Historic Arched Bridge

Stories from a Burning House

 https://burninghouse.substack.com/

Creation of the Gods

Tsukioka Yoshitoshi - Tsuki hyakushi ("One hundred aspects of the moon")

 

Free to read Modern Japanese lit in translation

 https://readjapaneseliterature.com/free-to-read-modern-japanese-fiction/?frame-nonce=063406ba8b

How to pronounce Vincent van Gogh

Morrowind modding

 

A Sound of Thunder - Ray Bradbury

The Kalashnikov

 

Getting a Cat by Lu You

 

The ancient Na-khi Kingdom of southwest China

Buddhist Poetry of China

https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/display/document/obo-9780199920082/obo-9780199920082-0202.xml




Buddhism entered China sometime in the first century CE, first in relatively small communities of foreign merchants, only to take hold among the elites in the following centuries. It should be no surprise, then, that it soon interacted with the indigenous poetry of China, the most highly regarded literary art of the elites. Comprised of multiple broad terms, “Buddhist poetry of China” eludes easy definition, which has led to some scholarly confusion. In this bibliography, we define “poetry” as any rhymed verse form (including but not limited to shi 詩); “Buddhism” as the institutions, practices, people, and texts that located spiritual authority in a Buddha, especially the historical Buddha Siddhārtha Gautama; and “of China” as works written in the Sinitic languages as they were used in the polities that claimed continuity with the Qin and Han dynasties (thus excluding much noteworthy Buddhist Sinitic verse composed in Korea, Japan, Vietnam, and elsewhere). Chinese poetry intersected with Buddhism in a variety of ways, which varied considerably by time, place, and social setting. Some poems drew upon Buddhist scriptures for stories and images, some were composed at Buddhist settings, some passed on Buddhist teachings, some were informed by Buddhist doctrines, some were written by or addressed to Buddhist practitioners, some were recited during Buddhist rituals or sermons, and some were designed to perform Buddhist practices themselves. Buddhist institutions were ambivalent toward poetry. Canonical scriptures warned against excessive indulgence in literary and other arts, and later monastic rulebooks shared many of these concerns. At the same time, Buddhist institutions recognized that facility with literary language could be a powerful tool for expression and proselytization, and that certain kinds of aesthetic refinement was important for ritual efficacy. Individual Buddhists held all kinds of attitudes toward poetry—some monks denounced it as a dangerous, slippery slope toward laicization, while others obsessively wrote thousands of poems, sometimes justifying it in Buddhist terms and other times not. Most seem to have come to peace with poetry as an integral part of the Chinese cultural sphere that could not be completely proscribed. The Buddhist poetry of China remains a vibrant, living tradition to this day. This bibliography focuses on English-language studies (but includes some in other languages, especially Chinese) and is arranged by the categories typically addressed in existing scholarship: Buddhist poetry by literati, poetry by Buddhist monks, poetry by legendary Buddhists, practical and didactic Buddhist verse, and the influence of Buddhism on poetic theory

StarWind

 

Tolkien narrates the Ride of the Rohirrim

The Electrum Archive

 https://www.electrumarchive.com/

Vista of the Aurelian Walls near Porta San Paolo (Porta Ostiensis) & Caio Cestio pyramid c.1864 by Carlo Baldassarre Simelli

 

“55 Miles to the Gas Pump” — Annie Proulx

 

Oriental archive Quarterly Journal of African and Asian Studies

 https://kramerius.lib.cas.cz/uuid/uuid:7ce49844-addc-4091-a9d2-abdbd8a0a853