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Alex Kerr Books

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“Gyo 行 ('practice' and also 'to practice') is what monks undergo in their training inside the temple; it's an ordeal, a trial to be mastered. And it never ends. You practice; you reach a new level; and then you practice again.”

HeartBuddhismSutra
Book:Finding the Heart Sutra: Guided by a Magician, an Art Collector and Buddhist Sages from Tibet to Japan
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“Sunyata, in contrast to rupa, is the realm of pure spirituality, hovering beyond everything material. It's quiet, pure, empty. It's the nothingness that seems to be at the core of subatomic particles; it's the big blank that's left at the moment of death.”

HeartBuddhismSutra
Book:Finding the Heart Sutra: Guided by a Magician, an Art Collector and Buddhist Sages from Tibet to Japan
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“It is not, of course, only the Japanese who find flat sterile surfaces attractive and kirei. Foreign observers, too, are seduced by the crisp borders, sharp corners, neat railings, and machine-polished textures that define the new Japanese landscape, because, consciously or unconsciously, most of us see such things as embodying the very essence of modernism. In short, foreigners very often fall in love with kirei even more than the Japanese do; for one thing, they can have no idea of the mysterious beauty of the old jungle, rice paddies, wood, and stone that was paved over. Smooth industrial finish everywhere, with detailed attention to each cement block and metal joint: it looks ‘modern’; ergo, Japan is supremely modern.”

DesignArchitectureJapanUrban PlanningJapanese Culture
Book:Dogs and Demons: Tales from the Dark Side of Japan
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“Why has pachinko swept Japan? It can hardly be the excitement of gambling, since the risks and rewards are so small. During the hours spent in front of a pachinko machine, there is an almost total lack of stimulation other than the occasional rush of ball bearings. There is no thought, no movement; you have no control over the flow of balls, apart from holding a little lever which shoots them up to the top of the machine; you sit there enveloped in a cloud of heavy cigarette smoke, semi-dazed by the racket of millions of ball bearings falling through machines around you. Pachinko verges on sensory deprivation. It is the ultimate mental numbing, the final victory of the educational system." - Lost Japan, Eng. vers., 1996”

CultureEducationJapanEducational SystemSensory DeprivationPachinko
Author:Alex Kerr
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