Maxim’s Reviews > Emptiness and Omnipresence: An Essential Introduction to Tiantai Buddhism > Status Update

I was getting frustrated at the repetitive nature and complex sentence structure of the book, but it may actually be what makes me understand it better. It forces me to remain alert while reading it — which is very tiring — and it repeats the ideas I failed to understand dozens of times in the previous convoluted sentences. Perhaps it also taught me to use dashes right!

Even as I make effort to accept what I read, I am left utterly unconvinced. It is a lot if work to read those sentences and when I unpack what they seem to mean, I don’t see how it could be right. I am struggling with the subject-object distinction (or lack thereof) right now.

I lay down my arms for today. This book is written in simple language, but in very complex sentences. I lose track of what I am reading in the middle of those very long sentences. I did not think I would have to take notes, but it looks like I will have to, given that it is too repetitive to bother re-reading every time and that the important points could be summarised in shorter sentences and bullet points.

It is starting to get clearer. I expect to understand something by the end if this chapter!

I feel so lost in this book! The more I read it the more I understand that my understanding of it is wrong.

It seemed self-negating at first, but it is slowly starting to make more and more sense. The three truths defined as local coherence, global incoherence and centrality is a quite insightful framework to see different perspectives within. I can’t wait to read more of this chapter to see the full picture of this idea.

Expanding the idea of emptiness and the relatedness of “things”. There was a contrast with the Whudat-al Wujud (probably made a typo) which I did not quite grasp given that it does seem similar. However, I know too little about Sufism and the other ideas of the book to any conclusion on that. I like the simple way the book is written in, but it really does inflate the text a lot at times.

Chapter 6 was an insightful explanation of some of the implications of the Lotus Sutra, focusing on Middle Ways. It discussed some other things I did not notice while reading through it. The book does not seem to talk about the later chapters of the Lotus Sutra (beyond Ch. 20). I understand why.