Saturday, December 20, 2014

A meditation on not being too clever on the Interwebs

I had to LOL at this NYT piece, "A Meditation on the Art of Not Trying," because it gives me an excuse to explain my email handle "wu-nien" to those who have wondered for decades--and a cautionary tale about being too clever. "Wu-nien" is D.T. Suzuki's translation of the Buddhist concept of "no thought," and the Zen idea of "no thought, no mind," which is that this article discusses. Since my domain was the old "mindspring" (now "earthlink"), I thought a "no-thought" paired with a "mindspring" handle was incredibly clever for a Zen dude.

Turns out NO ONE ever gets it, and there is quibbling about the translation, but I've had the address so long it is hard to change. And thus one more web-naming fail (never go for subtle) and one more thing from the internet you never really needed to know. But this article is still very nice.