Monkey Mind

Picked up the Cyberpunk Handbook: The Real Cyberpunk Fakebook, by St. Jude, R.U. Sirius, Bart Nagel. Goofy cover, but secondhand and dirt-cheap, as in just P5. Got it for laughs and nostalgia, though the Bruce Sterling introduction brought the expectations up a bit. Still, nothing dates like technology, especially when it’s about the purported cutting edge. Published in 1995, in tech terms that’s practically prehistoric, they’re still on dialup and talking about how the Web will ruin the internet.

But one bit stuck: “Haqr mind is NOTHING like Zen mind. Haqr mind is what Buddhists snottily call MONKEY MIND.”

That SO works, total win. Journey to the West, Hachiman, etc. Far as I know, no one’s used that metaphor yet, not Stephen Levy or Neal Stephenson or William Gibson. Always yield to the paws-on imperative! To hell with Zen, bunch of serene bastards. I love the analogy, my brain took the ball and ran with it. Basho’s monkey. Sten from Breath of Fire 2. The Goblin Tinkerer card from Magic.

In other news, putting all my books in a pile on the floor, time for another culling. And time for some inventory, these days I’m getting fuzzy on what books I already have and what I’m still looking for.