User:Kukkurovaca

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कुक्कुरोवाच

Origin of the name

(from the talk page)

What an innovative choice for a user-name! I am not a master of Sanskrit, but can 'Uvaca' (reserved for revered beings ??) be used with a 'Kukkura' ? Just curious.... Chancemill 09:19, Apr 1, 2004 (UTC)

I was unaware of a distribution of verb forms by reverence; as I understood it, past-tense verbal distinctions were used primarily for differentiating elements like intra-narration and extra-narration time references. But in any case, "kukkurovāca" is totally unresolvable with the dog as the subject, in any case. The only sandhi which will produce that "o" is a+u, and since the uvāca can't be compounded, the only possible sentence is with the dog in the vocative: "O, dog, (some third party) said (something)."

But the whole thing is just a sort of self-deprecatory in-joke between myself and a classmate. What we were shooting for and missed when we invented the term was "kukkuro brute", "The dog said," which is a quote from the Hitopadesha. It was a reference to a sentence I translated as "Dog say: repetition of my business how by you doable"--which should really read something like "The dog said, 'Who are you to worry about my business.'" (Both the error and the original translation are, of course, a function of doing your Sanskrit homework exclusively in all-nighters.)

So, "kukkurovāca" defines my translation style--drastically literal. Or it was supposed to. But given that we forgot both the correct vocabulary and regular sandhi rules, "kukkurovaca" stands as both a testament to my absurd literality and a caution against error-prone laziness. I habitually use it a username because it's unique and I kind of like the sound of it. Plus, I enjoy the anecdote.

Me

Student at Brown University; originally from Oakland, CA. First and enduring loves are the studies of education and religion. My main educational interests are John Dewey (generally) and particularly the problems of philosophy of education which occur in democratic education. My religious interests are broad, though I have soft spots for early Christianity, existential Christianity (Soren Kierkegaard, Simone Weil), Buddhism (esp. Earliest Buddhism, Nagarjuna, and Lin-chi, and the Taoism of Zhuang zi. I've also got three years of Sanskrit and a related interest in Pali and Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit.

Interests

Buddhism, Nagarjuna, Pragmatism, Philosophy of education, John Dewey, Simone Weil, Sanskrit, and sundry.

My Watchlist

Buddhism, Cathar, Chuang-tzu, Chuang tzu, Dharma, Dogen Zenji, Frank Herbert, Friedrich Nietzsche, Fundamental Verses of the Middle Way, Hannah Arendt, Hinayana, John Dewey, Jorge Luis Borges, Karl Jaspers, Madhyamaka, Madhyamika, Michel Foucault, Mulamadhyamakakarika, Nagarjuna, Pali, Philosophy of education, Pragmatism, Quine, Religion, Rinzai, Sanskrit, Satan, Shunyata, Simone Weil, Tertullian, The Passion of the Christ, Theodore Sturgeon, Theodoret, Theravada, W. V. Quine, William James, Zen, Zhuang Zi, User:Kukkurovaca, User:Ryguasu, Wikipedia:Village pump

Quotes

"You can reconstruct the picture from chaos and memory's ruins."-Kay Boyle, The Crazy Hunter

A test of what is real is that it is hard and rough. Joys are found in it, not pleasure. What is pleasant belongs to dreams.-Weil, Gravity and Grace, p.53

Reality comes into view when we see that nature is not only an obstacle which allows us to act in an ordered way but it is also an obstacle which infinitely transcends us.-Weil, Lectures on Philosophy, p.111 (Emphasis added)

The mind is not forced to believe in the existence of anything (subjectivism, absolute idealism, solipsism, skepticism: cf. The Upanishads, the Taoists, and Plato, who, all of them, adopt this philosophical attitude by way of purification). That is why the only organ of contact with existence is acceptance, love. That is why joy and the sense of reality are identical.-Weil, in The Simone Weil Anthology, ed. George A. Panichas.

In the deepest heart of all of us there is a corner in which the ultimate mystery of things works sadly...--William James, "Is Life Worth Living?"

Those who dream of the banquet wake to lamentation and sorrow.

Those who dream of lamentation and sorrow wake to join the hunt. --Chuang-tzu (tr. Giles)

There's a thing that you must know concerning the jewels of laughter. They always turn again to tears a fortnight after.

--Thurber, The Thirteen Clocks

Rather more located http://kukkurovaca.freezope.org/upg/ZwikiTips

Links

Unlikely Glossary

LJ

Needed/In progress

Misc.

Watchclocks

BV-141

Clive Cussler (add Characters, detailed desc's of novels?)

Five Corners

Ferron

Fluble

User:Kukkurovaca/Tlon

Tasp!

* Lucien Lucious Nunn

* Telluride Association

* Deep Springs College

Education

Freire

Giroux

Sizer

CES

Authors

Lethem

Kay Boyle

The Roger Zelazny page is missing any mention of Doorways in the Sand or, much more disturbingly, Dream Master/He Who Shapes--which is easily his most important work!

Madeline L'Engle

Philosophy

Cornel West

Nishitani

Bachelard

Simone Weil--Huh. Needs much work.

John Dewey--More substantive material on non-educational areas of Dewey's philosophy, especially drawing on Experience and Nature; also, discussions of his early work and perhaps some of the insights found in Stephen Rockefeller's Biography-thingy.