Background: The most important Zen scholar of the 1900's was R.H. Blyth. Even D.T. Suzuki thought so. Blyth's annotated translation of Wumenguan is now out of print (available electronically over at Terebess), and while still the obvious best first text for Zen students, it is somewhat dated in parts, Blyth uses Japanese names for stuff, the characters are hard to read, much of the print is too small, and the vast majority of Zen scholarship including translations came out after the book. And it's out of print. And the publisher went out of business.
For example, Blyth refers to BCR and BoS, which were untranslated at the time.
Out of admiration and affection and because Blyth is an eccentric old bumbling academic, I've wanted to fix everything and update it and make it available in print again. But there are so many problems, including I just don't have the hardware for the task. Which means I don't have the software either. I've started and failed several times now, but my newest strategy may be the winner! Linux forever!
I'm going to do each of Blyth's Case/Chapters as a different file, then hire an editor with a big fancy computer to merge them and typeset it and all that stuff. At least that's the plan. Not having ever hired a professional editor there is no telling what that experience will be like.
But, all that aside, I present to you the draft second chapter of this project: Case 24!
I note that I got great edits from the last post, but nothing at ALL you lazy bastards about the content of the project. This guy is the greatest Zen scholar of the 1900's! And he wasn't even enlightened! Come on already! He wrote this in a war time internment camp. The least you can do is read it.
https://www.mediafire.com/file/b9vyttcio175evv/24_draft_pdf.pdf/file
What I wrote is all in the footnotes.
I added references to other translations, either inserting them directly into blyth's text in the Case of alternate translations by JC Cleary or footnoting. Note that this time I included a "ewk hybrid translation" which is a bit contentious. I could footnote that instead of inserting it. There are only five or six cases where I think the translations all fall apart on the poem.
There are a number of formatting challenges, particularly the "Bermuda Triangle Footnotes" where I was forced to footnote a footnote, and then footnote that footnoted footnote. So clarity might be a bit of a problem.
Clarity being the least of our worries.
https://youtu.be/xyhR6OobZnU
I don't know anything about this guy, I'm not recommending him, he's been on my cupboard-behind-the-back,-burner list for years.
https://terebess.hu/zen/sengai.html
He drew lots of pictures and people in here have talked occasionally about is in another mediums and so I thought somebody might be interested.
You want to talk about that Nanquan chops the cat picture that'd be interesting.
