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Marking my Dharma Books
Yorkshireman
Explorer
I've always been a keen underliner, highlighter, and margin note taker.
But from what I understand it is not the done thing to mark Dharma books. Is this true.
Sometimes I get such a desperate urge to underline certain passages so that I don't forget them, but whenever my pen nears the page I worry I am doing the wrong thing. Am I being daft?
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Comments
If it is your own personal copy I don't see a problem.
There are several traditional do's and don'ts with Dharma books.
You don't for example put them on the floor, or under another book.
You don't simply throw them away if they become damaged..you bury them or burn them or put them in a river.
When you have finished reading and you are going to put the book away you tap it lightly on your head first to show respect..
The observation of any of these is entirely optional.
Many people find that little rituals actually have a deep effect over time.
I both use highlighters and tabs, and my expensive fancy nikaya books I have the hard tabs you can write on so I can easily go to a sutta you want. I personally like what Ajahn Brahm says about the content and the container. The container can be destroyed and is not all that important, it's the content that matters.
@Citta you are educational once more, I've never heard of all these things like tapping it on your head and such, guess its a tradition difference.
Precisely what 'Dharma' books are you talking about?
We can get a little too 'precious' about things, and if you think about it, they have no permanence... even the shiniest Pink Cadillac off the production line will one day be a hunk a-hunk a burnin' scrap-metal...
One of my books is so highlighted, it's hard to see a piece of original text!
Please, don't fall into the trap of 'sanctifying' what is after all, just a wad of bound paper....
@Yorkshireman
If you plan to pass it on to others, and don't feel they'd appreciate the modifications, then don't modify it.
Otherwise... they're just books.
An argument against highlighting or underlining is that it only reflects ones current understanding of what is important or significant - that may well change over time.
I prefer to take notes in a notebook/binder. But, it depends on the book. It is one really wonderful thing about using ebooks. On my kindle, I can highlight and bookmark whatever I want without marking anything up, and it's much MUCH easier to find the passages than by flipping through a 900 page real book, that's for sure! But some book I for some reason just need to have in actual copy. It's rare that I mark them, but that's just my preference. So, I take note separately instead
At the Temple I asked for my own copy of our chant book so I could make short hand notes....and they happily provided me one. It's all written all over...hahaha...but I love it.
Books by authors...it depends on me too. I just came into the reading tech world late...hahaha...and got a nook about a month ago. I also love the ability to highlight separately like karasti described. Hardbacks....yep....I usually highlight in certain colors for quick subject/concept references. Blue-rebirth...yellow-compassion...pink-impermanence....things like that. I tab with post its for an easy flip.
Same here.
I add notes to Sadhanas all the time, so I know what to do and when. It's also good for me to add annotations that help with specific meditations, etc.
I mark up texts used in my Guru's study curriculum with highlighters andd short notes.
I had a friend who used every color of highlighter made. His study texts are a kalidescope. He had a remarkable gift for study. A mind like a steel trap. His study texts reflect that. They're treasures. Had he lived longer he would have been a great teacher of Dharma.
I used to mark spiritual-interest books as a means of remembering one passage or another that really hit home. The trouble was that when I went back and read the book over again, like as not it was the passage just before or just after the already-highlighted passage that got to me. And each later reading produced the same results.
Finally I got what I considered to be the message: "Look dummy -- if there's a piece of wisdom you need to know, then, whether you remember it or forget it doesn't matter ... it'll return to knock on your door either way."
My books, when I still had any, became a lot neater after that.
I like that, @genkaku, as I myself am a 'leaky cup'.
That refers to 3 things that can foil dharma study.
Upturned cup: not open and thinking you know (or cannot know)
Leaky cup: hear but don't remember or put into practice
Poisoned cup: hear but overwhelmed by negativity
You leave a book in my hands, chances are the poor soul will go heavily underlined, marked and tagged to exhaustion. Even my friends who lend me books don't mind my habit. Dharma books are no exception. My theory is, the best service you can do to a book is to give it the impression that is has not passed in vain through your life.
When I bought a book on Green Tara in Singapore years ago, the seller was totally dismayed to find I had placed my purse on the book while juggling with the credit card. "You don't put things on sacred books," he said. In my centre (the teacher is Gelukpa), you also have to be careful when handling books with sacred content.
I respect everyone's little rituals, but I love marking books. I don't lack respect to the book, I don't lack respect to the material of the book. It's all in the head.
I agree with your assessment Genkaku, and I feel the same way but I haven't reached that point where in the back of my mind it doesn't say " well just mark it anyways because even if you never go back to this spot you know you remember things better when you mark them/write them down". Hah I'm getting there slowly but surely.
It's the same thing for me when i'm doing walking meditation and a great insight or dhamma analogy forms in my head, I get the urge to bust out my phone and write it down so I don't lose it. I know it will always be there in the nether regions of my mind but I feel I will forget it. I keep a running dhamma doc on my phone that I've added to slowly over the years.
Thanks for those insightful comments. I feel more liberated now and am already getting an urge to have a pen or pencil with me next time I read one of my Dharma books.
I think there are some books I just don't want to mark. Maybe they are beautifully bound or old, or special in some other way.
The ones I get the urge to mark most don't tend to be those ones, but the cheap paperbacks. For those latter ones it is clear that it is the words - and the concepts and ideas behind those words - that are important and not the budget paper and printing that matter.
I do just the same thing. Only the other week I had the most amazing insight whilst doing an analytical meditation. In modern parlance "I really got it!!!". Alas, I didn't make a note of it afterwords, and now, for the life in me, I can't remember exactly what that insight was. Hopefully, a seed was planted in my store-house consciousness and a little watering will make it grow.
Look @Yorkshireman, I know I'm a nutcase, but not even a beautifully bound, antique book, will deter my pencil's voracity. I have a large collection of antique and rare Buddhist and Oriental philosophy books and they are as duly marked and tagged as their paperback counterparts.
I am happy to open the books in a near future and know that I can go straight to the concept I need or the idea I thought relevant when I first read the book.
@genkaku good point. There are times I bookmark or mark a passage in a book and when I pick up the book again, I can't find what I even bookmarked it for, or, the passage I highlighted doesn't hold the same meaning anymore. What is a meaningful teaching for us at one moment, the words in a book lose some of their "magic" once they are absorbed and turned into practice. Most books I find worthy of marking/bookmarking are books most worth reading again because they hold a new lesson each time, and only seeking to find what I marked previously can mean I am missing something that would mean more to me now, months or years later. I'll have to remember that, thanks for bringing it up!
I am happy to share my books with you - marked; underlined and used; but not abused!
Mine are not abused. Just savoured and enjoyed... (says my pencil)
There's a book called Only Don't Know by Seung Sahn. In it, someone writes that his young daughter (I think) had eaten a significant portion of his copy of the Dhammapada. He worried about how to reprimand her for such a blasphemous act, and also how he would learn the Dharma without the missing pages. Seung Sahn wrote back saying that the little girl had clearly figured out the most efficient way of absorbing the Dharma and that the man should take a page out of her book. And eat it.
Thanks again for your help and inspiration on this point. I've felt truly liberated this week. Just knowing I can make a highlight if I want to, or underline a section, has probably made me read with an ever keener eye.
(Date the highlights. That way, when you go back to them, you can think, "Oh, is THAT how i felt then....? Well what a long way I have come
....!" )
Another liberation, in the great ocean of liberation
What good is a dharma book if is it kept clean and neat but the words are not understood?
Occasionally I borrow dharma books from friends, and I get a bit irritated if they've underlined or highlighted stuff - it's so distracting!
I can imagine trying to read when other people have marked them must be distracting.
I borrow books from a particular friend all the time. I find it very interesting to read his little notes in the margins about different sections. Granted, they are his books and he has every right to mark them. Perhaps I would feel differently if they were mine.
My favourite book (after Proust and Max Müller's Dhammapada, that is) is a 1939 first edition of Alexandra David-Neel's "Buddhism: its doctrine and its methods." It's an ex-library book which to my utter delight, still has the due date cards glued to the back cover. It has been borrowed several times in 1942, 1943, and so on till the early sixties. There are some pencil scribblings in the margins, to which I have duly added my own, and I just love to think of an imaginary timeline that binds all us readers together through time and space. This library was in England and just imagine someone borrowing this book despite the blitz and the horrors of WWII. I cherish those scribblings as a prized testimony of our humanity, what remains as we become speckles of dust in a new cycle of samsara...
That is a wonderful story. I can see why you would treasure it. And you're right about the Blitz. Just imagine. All that mayhem and of all the books someone chose that one.
Many of the antique books I own have pencil scribblings and yes, that tells some kind of story...
In an 1882 edition I have of James Legge's "Yi King," somebody made scribblings in hindi, and another person noted some very angry comments on the margins against Legge. I get angry at his translation too, so I can empathize with that long lost reader.
A tidy book means a tidy mind...
'Cleanliness is next to godliness'.
.....Only in an Irish Dictionary.
(No offence to the Irish - other dictionaries are also available....)
Underlined books help me find quotations for the site more easily...
The only thing I don't like about marking my books is that sometimes it draws me towards the things I've marked, instead of reading whole sections again and understanding phrases within a context.
Yes, that can be a disadvantage.
A tidy mind is one that has understood.
An untidy book might mean an untidy mind but also a mind that has understood.