/lit/ - Literature

tl;dr

Seriously, you can't expect us to care about your meandering navel-gazing essay. Get to the point.

you've got a pretty big plot for a guy who hates plot

"
Theoretically there is a perfect possibility of happiness: believing in the indestructible element in oneself and not striving towards it.

The indestructible is one: it is each individual human being and, at the same time, it is common to all, hence the incomparably indivisible union that exists between human beings."


- What a discovery! This man had truly discovered something. This man speaks like the enlightened masters from the East:

"Truth is indivisible, hence it cannot recognize itself; anyone who wants to recognize it has to be a lie."

----

So, now I am resolute to try to get into his work. I come here for advice. Based on what I told you above, which work of his would you recommend?

I read only Metamorphosis in school.

Really I think I found the writer I was looking for all this time.

Thanks in advance, /lit/

PS: forgive my English errors, not Native

>>3970688

Sorry. I got to the point, see:

>>3970693

>>3970688
omphaloskepsis

>>3970693
For someone who studies a line of thought which seeks to diminish the ego, you sure like to talk about yourself.

#sage
/sage

tl;dr

>>3970701

"Diminish the ego" - I follow a line of thought that recognizes it is impossible to diminish the ego. It says that the very desire to diminish the ego is an egoic strategy that really increases the ego.

>>3970693
try the judgement and a hunger artist. then the castle and reread metamorphoses and look up nabokov's thing on metamorphoses. i've got to warn you, i dont think kafka travels very far in the direction you're looking. you might find some of arthur rimbaud's theories interesting, achieving a certain sensual enlightenment within and through the boundaries of poetry and being able to tap into that state in his work by having travellde to it through substance abuse.

>>3970722

That was the answer I was looking for, thank you.

>>3970728
you're welcome

>>3970722

>enlightenment within and through the boundaries of poetry

Rimbaud is great and all, but this is the poet OP should be spending serious time on.

Dostoyevski was a known TERRORIST!!!
Think about it?!
Why would a Russian eat cupcakes?
It doesn't add up!!!

>>3970717
so instead you let your ego overflow with a hell lot of common places?
also, all art is inherently more philosophical -ontological- than philosophy, realising it after ten years of reading is quite a big failure.

>>3970918
not necessarily

>>3970918
Beware of
>DA MONSTA!!!!

>>3970918
I think what he is saying is that ego as we think of it doesnt exist (not in a metaphysical sense, just a conceptual one). He isnt saying hes humble, just that the ego, as a concept, doesnt exist

>>3970940
no, he says that ego exists and rules every human interaction, therefore there is no need to pretend to hide it.

>>3970951
I dont think what he means by ego is what you mean by ego, and I say this because of your attempt to show that he is a hypocrite

i just wish there was a /phil/ board so we wouldn't have to deal with assholes like these

>>3970722
bs

>>3970728
No it wasn't, just the standard line you get when someone asks what of Kafkas work he should start with.
Read 'Beschreibung eines Kampfes' (Description of a Struggle) instead.

Another reader of philosophy writing shit that you won't read. Most plots bore me unless they got a good elabored message and not to your face.

Loved Kafka, his prose is detallistic, to the point that he crosses the line, but he really describes everything well. Dostoievsky, though... pff, I could be playing and getting adiccted as well, at least I would have some fun. Don't get me wrong, escapism is shit, but realist novels without good prose, or a meaning are fucking cancer. And giving it existentialist undertones that are not there is not gonna get it better. Never understood why is he so celebrated

You should read the book "Conversations with Kafka"

You'll love it, OP. It's about some 19 year old who followed Kafka around trying to get him to talk because Kafka said great things.

Lots of great anecdotes about Kafka.

>"There is nothing besides a spiritual world; what we call the world of the senses is the Evil in the spiritual world, and what we call Evil is only the necessity of a moment in our eternal evolution.
>One can disintegrate the world by means of very strong light. For weak eyes the world becomes solid, for still weaker eyes it seems to develop fists, for eyes weaker still it becomes shamefaced and smashes anyone who dares to gaze upon it."

how can you hate Jews when they consistently produce great literary and spiritual men like this?

>>3970674
you arent supposed to like the underground man

>>3971141
>reading books for their 'messages'
leave

>>3971186
a lot of fabrications in this book.

>>3971221
That's what "they" say, but it's such a great read.

I dunno how could have made it up.

>>3971213

"I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we are reading doesn't wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for? ...we need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us."

This guy's read the philosophies of civilizations all across the world... but can he thin why chins love Thinnamon Toast Hair?

>>3971004
>>3970951
>>3970940


OP Here, I'm back. - You're both right:

I do think that egocentrism is behind every aspect of our existence. And most likely I am a hypocrite.

The line of Buddhism I follow (True Pure Land School, Japanese school founded by Shinran) maintains that we are too foolish, evil, and stupid, to be able to liberate ourselves.

So we are to abandon every effort and just rely on Other Power. Every effort to change ourselves to become better people just fuels the egocentrism further.

That's not a license for evil, though. But yes, once you see this, you become your foolish self again, since you see how every attempt to escape egocentism is a strategy of that very same egocentrism.

Then, what follows is a life of jinen (jap word for "naturalness"). - We believe there's an underlying reality called the Dharmakaya, the true body of the Buddha (not his corporeal form) which will lead all sentient beings to Nirvana and realization of emptiness of all existence.

But one must first give up all ideas that one can do it on his or her own. The first step is to see how deluded, worthless and evil you really are. How even your spiritual attempts are nothing but masked egotism and greed, spiritual materialism.

So, even though one can be saved in this life, we do not believe it's possible to become a Buddha in this day and age. We believe we will all die foolish and evil beings, but saved - meaning, in a timeless sense, we have already been saved. So we have a glimpse of Nirvana in this life, and upon death, we will enter Nirvana assuredly because we have given up self-power and decided to rely on Other-Power.

This is - as far as I am concerned - the culmination and highest point of Buddhism. I learned about it when I lived in Japan. 80% of Japanese subscribe to this form of Buddhism.

But in the West, Zen is more popular. Because it is the hardest way, and Westerners tend to be proud so they pick the hardest practice. Every Westerner thinks he will become a Zen Master like Rinzai after hearing a lecture of Alan Watts :) In fact they walk in the opposite direction and only add to the pride and arrogance at the bottom of the wastelands of their hearts.

>>3971261
Correction: 80% of Japanese BUDDHISTS, not Japanese overall. Most Japanese are atheists.

>>3971233
It has been conclusivly shown that a lot of it is made up.

>>3971261
> So we are to abandon every effort and just rely on Other Power.
So, it's just social-political adestration?

Joseph Conrad.

>>3971036
i picked judgement as a proper introduction to kafka, being one of his earlier stories, for its sort of rawness, and along with a hunger artist, having a more metaphysical bent rather than the political focus he's known for. then I suggested the castle and metamorphoses so he could understand kafka better, because there's a reason he's known for his explorations of alienation and government structure more than the "aphorisms" in the OP. I've never actually read nabokov's lecture on kafka (or is it an essay?) but I've hear it's a fairly comprehensive and intelligent look at metamorphoses and kafka as a whole. why do you suggest description of a struggle? I've never read it.

>>3971197
>>3971326

>>3971407
Because it is his most spiritual work, even though often discarded as still immature (I think it is his earliest 'real' work). You're right concerning his others work, they probably wouldn't fit exactly what op, who's a faggot, is looking for. Here Beschreibung eines Kampfes and his aphorisms are more appropriate.

>>3971300
I agree with this but not all Conrad i proper. Heart of Darkness is really good at this. Secret Agent isn't

>>3971270
citation needed

>>3971617
Eduard Goldstücker
Hartmut Binder
Josef Cermák

I don't know whether their work is available in english translation. But I found this link, albeit only very short. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2008/oct/23/kafkas-unreliable-friend/

If you liked Beckett and Notes from Underground try Thomas Bernhard

>>3971279
No.

>>3971446
fair enough