Category: Symbols Turning

We read the word wondering
what we mean by it.

We read the world wondering
what it means by us.
Continue reading Reading the world

The number of coherent interpretations of a text may be infinite, but not all interpretations are coherent.

Texts frequently say more than their authors intended to say, but less than what many incontinent readers would like them to say. Continue reading Limits of Interpretation

It has been said of Boehme that his books are like a picnic to which the author brings the words and the reader the meaning. The remark may have been intended as a sneer at Boehme, but it is an exact description of all works of literary art without exception.

— Northrop Frye (1947, 427-8)

Continue reading Who means?

A turning symbol turns your attention to the whole time you are now living.

‘The answer is always there, but people need the question to bring it out’ (Cleary 1995, 164). We are always at the turning point; but more important, we are at a turning point now. Continue reading Revolutions

From Zen master Keizan’s Transmission of Light, 11: Continue reading Turning pages

A teacher always penetrates the sutras. To penetrate means to make the sutras the land, the body, and the mind. A teacher makes the sutras a structure for guiding others. Continue reading Dogen on scriptures

How can scripture reading come to pierce an ox hide?

— T’ien-t’ung (Cleary 1997b, 322)

Continue reading Turning how?

If an innovative interpretation of scripture becomes a revelation to a community, it may then become a scripture in turn. New religious movements can arise from radically new readings of established scripture. Continue reading Radical readings