there goes any free time I may have had // life - Lograh — LiveJournal

9:36 - there goes any free time I may have had // life

who'da thunk it? Turns out the CSUS library has a nice little section of Buddhist books tucked away around the corner and along the back. A section of the library stretching on farther than I ever had cause to discover (my major didn't require much in the way of library visits, and when I would go there to get books for serenica69 (as they give me a rather generous check-out duration -- significantly more time than the students get) the ones she needed were much closer to the front). But yesterday I was poking around on Google Books and figured I'd use it as a kind of "to-read" list, being that they had a few listed and the ability to search for which ones contained which passages was quite handy. After tossing a few entries in there I noticed a nice little "borrow this book" link, which lets you search for any libraries in your area that have it available. Figuring it was a long shot I typed in the CSUS zip and discovered that they actually did have one I have been wanting to read!

Turns out, they don't. Though it is listed as being on the shelf, reality it would seem differs considerably from this. But due to the joys of libraries having all the books in the same area of interest lumped together I was able to find many other books worth the time. I found more by Thanissaro Bhikkhu (previously), one of which I checked out that night. Also, while I didn't find the specific translation of the Dhammapada I was looking for I did find an older one that was nice enough to give the Pali alongside the translation (outside of Amazon, Gil Fronsdal's translation seems to be hard to come by). The best part, though, is that our library has a couple of volumes of the English version of the Tipitaka! They seem to be older editions, though I don't know if the newer ones actually have any changes in the translation. But still, there are about twenty-some-odd volumes covering the more heavily referenced books (the full Tipitaka, so I've read, includes over 40 volumes), reasonably translated to English. It's nice to know that when I'm ready for them they'll be there. All told, I think there were something like four shelves full of books directly related to Theravadan Buddhism. I spent about an hour and a half just browsing through them the other night.

In other news, I still haven't found a way to sit (without a cushion) that doesn't put at least one of my legs to sleep within half an hour (usually at around the 17 minute mark). With a cushion, I can sometimes manage a careful pose that will let me sit 45 minutes without loosing my legs. Longer than 45 minutes I'm simply not up to mentally yet -- I'm still learning. I try not to worry about my legs falling asleep, but there is the nagging in my head that perhaps repeated loss of blood (if that is the reason this is happening) isn't the best thing for my legs and could lead to something serious in the long-term.

yes, I lead a life of excitement and adventure.

edit:fixed bad html
further edit:fixed spelling errors