I can also recommend "What the Buddha Taught" by Walpola Rahula. It is from a Theravada perspective, but I think it is a good start to get to know the core of Buddhism based on the Pali cannon.
Can you break that down? I am eager to learn about Buddhism, because to me, it has some "practical" aspects, but so far every book I have read has been a 100 pages of fluff and a salient point or two.
What makes this book good?
Just to be clear, I am genuinely interested, but I want to know more as to why you are recommending it.
Since this is an introductory text, it covers things you probably already know about - four noble truths, eight fold path etc.
However, there are some practical advice which I found to be nicely explained,
- Book has a chapter on meditation and I think it does get to the point without fluff, for example. It talks about Samatha (such as focus on breath) and Vipassana meditation.
- Talks about some important sutras such as Kalama sutra which is all about how to live your life as a Buddhist as a layman (as opposed to a monk).
Cool, thanks dewaka, will look into it, though there is a good chance I am familiar with most of it; it would still be nice to have a good introductory test - I don't know of a single Buddhist book I feel comfortable recommending to others, maybe this will be it.
It's fascinating (to me) to think that the medium influences the script - something I had never considered. I wonder if we can find medium-based influences on other scripts, say, Roman and Arabic.
My Archaeological/anthropological knowledge doesn't even extend to spelling those words correctly (thank you Chrome spell-checker), so I can't do more than wonder unless someone here... (nudge, nudge)
Cuneiform script (/kjuːˈniːᵻfɔːrm/ kew-nee-i-form or /ˈkjuːnᵻfɔːrm/ kew-ni-form), one of the earliest systems of writing, was invented by the Sumerians.[1] It is distinguished by its wedge-shaped marks on clay tablets, made by means of a blunt reed for a stylus. The name cuneiform itself simply means "wedge shaped".[2]
I remember reading about it in Social Studies in school :) - along with the Indus Valley civilization and maybe one or two others.
> I wonder if we can find medium-based influences on other scripts, say, Roman and Arabic.
Two examples:
Serifs on Roman letters originated as a way to clean up the ends of the characters when carved in stone.
When I was a kid in California, you'd regularly see gang graffiti painted in square block lettering that imitated what it would look like carved in wood (e.g. a park bench).
Runes are the most obvious example I can think of. Runes have vertical lines and diagonal lines, but no horizontal lines. This is because the normal medium for runes were narrow wooden sticks, or staves, and horizontal lines would go with the grain and would therefore be hard to see, and while carving a horizontal line you could too easily get stuck in a groove and mis-carve. With the added difficulty of carving curved lines, you necessarily get runes’ distinctive angular style: ᚠᚢᚦᚨᚱᚲ
This[1] is a fascinating book that delves into this subject in an interesting way. In addition to looking at each letter of the modern Latin alphabet and its history and evolution, the author extrapolates the evolution of each character into three possible future forms that are influenced by different writing implements. It's also quite beautiful in its layout, typography, and presentation of information. Unfortunately it looks like it may now be out of print.
In Sri Lanka earliest writings (which were mostly religious) were preserved first in the mediums such as Palm leaves, and the alphabet clearly shows that influence. As the top comment points out, making sure that you do not damage the script was a pretty important concern, and rounded letters certainly helped. If one studies the evolution of Sinhalese (and Tamil) alphabet it can be clearly seen that things got curvier as the alphabet developed from earlier Brahmi scripts [1].
Roman block lettering avoids curves because it was often curved. That's why the U and V sounds were represented by the same letter, and only later diverged. Norse runes are similar, and lack curves entirely.
It doesn't really avoid curves, though, even when carved into stone. Look at the inscription on Trajan's Column [1], f'rinstance; yes, it's got the classic U written as V, but the C, D, O, S etc are all as curvy as you could possibly want.
The Romans wrote most ephemeral stuff on wax tablets which could be smoothed over for re-use; this is where the phrase "tabula rasa" comes from. Some examples survive and also show curves [2].
I moved to ConEmu: https://code.google.com/p/conemu-maximus5/
from Console2 at work. I find that to be even more feature rich than Terminator for Linux which I use at home.
