The longest books I have ever red: "Anatomy of Hatha Yoga" - the emerging hope

In this last entry of the series about long and tricky books that engage your time in such a degree, that it changes the course of your life, I wanted to tell about my recently finished translating project.

The book "Anatomy of Hatha Yoga" by H. David Coulter, was one of the positions, that I got interested in during the four years in which I visited several times (staying for longer or shorter periods) the Finnish capital Helsinki. As you can probably imagine, at that time I was already acknowledged to a large degree with the practices of hatha yoga, so I decided to check for myself how is the yoga in this small but interesting city. I was not at all disappointed, I got to admit. And I discovered a tiny shop with yoga books and artifacts. There it was, when I bought some missing books by B.K.S. Iyengar, and there was when my attention was drowned by this one written by dr Coulter. Of course, I havn't got any idea about how difficult it was to read...

And so it was how it started: when I showed this book to my old friend - also a yoga passionate - he, almost at once, proposed me to translate the book into Polish. I thought - why not? After all, it was an opportunity to better understand this extremely difficult, but also very important book. Today, when even the book's cover is done, and we are all waiting for the last few amends to take it to the printing house, I don't regret any second spent on translating it, but it took me an entire year and a month of work (starting January the 1st 2007, until the end of January 2008) , day by day, more than 10 hours a day, on weekends, with no vacation, to turn this:


into this:




Now that everything is ready and heating the engines at the printing house, we just start to feel how important is this project for us, and for the whole yoga in Poland. We hope that it's power will enable a new point of view on the old problems, and turn many new faces to the light of yoga..

The longest books I have ever red: "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" - a life written by a book

Hi. It is a long time ever since I have posted my latest post, and it is also a long time since I have red the book, that I wanted to write about today. More than 15 years have passed already, since I have taken the thin, inconspicuous book from a shelf in our living room. I do not remember now, what was my main interest in it at the beginning, I think that it belonged to some series of books, that I wanted to read all...

Yet,

was quite a different book than any other that I have red before. I decided to include it into this series not because it took me years before I have finished it. Not at all. The reading was quite fast, as expected from the book's slim body... The reason is, that I still see this book as one which time lies "on the other side", within myself - just like if it related my own story; at least that was the impression that I still guard within my memory, after all those years after reading it. Let me explain. Usually, when you read a book, the action (time) of the story is taking part in the outside world; if it is quite interesting and absorbing, you can engage your imagination, and even forget for a while about the reality of the world surrounding you, and dissolve your mind into the action. It is sometimes more like watching a movie than reading. But when I was reading "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" I rather felt like it was the book that was reading me. I managed to identify so strongly with the main character (Stephen Dedalus), that I came to believe, that what I lived and experienced as a child and a youngster was very similar if sometimes not the same as his. Now I can wonder, if there is really something, which you could call "a pattern of personality", or if it was just the magic of this man:



Mr. James Joyce, which made me interpret my recollections in such a way, that I believed that they made a similar path, that this of the Joyce's hero? Anyway, it was an amazing experience, and I still can feel a trace of that past enchantment deep within.

Raphael Gadomski

The longest books I have ever red: "The Teachings of Don Juan" - the magic of a blameless warrior

I've started my adventure with C. Castaneda's university of magic, maybe 5, maybe 10 years ago? Of course the first sparks of interest were fanned with the wave of general consumption of drugs, which at that times, (I think it was rather 10 years ago), was a very popular pastime. The need for some philosophical excuse, and maybe a universal necessity, maybe even hunger of knowledge have pushed me and some of my friends to study literature connected with drug consumption. There was "Cinnamon Shops" by Bruno Schultz, "Narcotics; Unwashed Souls" by S.I. Witkiewicz and, among others, we have discovered the magical world of Carlos Castaneda, the disciple of Yaqui Master Sorcerer (Nagual) and a Blameless Warior - Don Juan Matus. Unfortunately I couldn't find any pictures of Don Juan, but those two can give you an approach, of how he looked like:
















The stories of encounters of Castaneda with his "master", (so called only, because, as Don Juan says, the Warrior can't be a Master, and no Warrior has a Master), are embedded in the picturesque scenery of Mexican Sierra, and abound in disarming sense of humour. At first we were deeply impressed with the Castanedas adventures with The Pipe and Mr. Mescalito, but soon it became visible that it is something more than just "high". Indeed, I wouldn't recommend those books, (because it is a whole series of books), to junkies, because they are all about magic. And magic could be dangerous. Even one's life could be in danger if, as Don Juan says, his or hers Tonal is self-destructing and you indulge too much... The Nagual is not at all a funny guy. It is really scary.

And so it was, that to understand the principles of the Magic of Don Juan, one has to grow up to it. And it could take years, but it is worth more than anything else in this life, to discover the Separate Reality. And what started here



is really an adventure which has no ending... Although some people say that Teachings of Don Juan is an invention of Castaneda. I have read somewhere, that he was deprived his Ph. D. in anthropology, and have heard an opinion of a Polish Professor, who met Castaneda personally, that he copied his system from Tybetian Buddhism. Was she right? Did Castaneda invent everything? Maybe... But he didn't invent Magic, and he wasn't the only one to follow the blameless path of a Warrior. Invented or not Don Juan and Don Genaro are always characters which you would miss... My adventure with the Knowledge of Don Juan has just started, and I'm always at the beginning, no matter if it's 10 years ago, 5 years ago, or today...

The longest books I have ever red: "Wole Soyinka's Collected Plays" - The rarity of an exotic genious.

How many of you know this gentleman?



Mr. Wole Soyinka. Would it be surprising, to call him the most largely known African in the world? Undoubtedly - the most largely known African writer in the world, and one of the few African Nobel Prize Winners (1986 Nobel Prize Winner in Literature).

My first encounter with the creation of Wole Soyinka was on the first year of my studies on Warsaw University's Instutute of African Languages and Cultures. We thought (along with a female-friend called Milka), that we might persuade colleagues to set up a theatrical circle, and have fun showing some African drama, and as we needed a play, I begun to translate "Swamp Dwellers" into Polish.

It didn't come out anyway but, at least, I started to take interest in Soyinka. I returned to the plays on the third year. I borrowed Collected Plays 1 and 2 and begun to read them:















Surprisingly, (as always, surprisingly), Wole Soyinka was not at all popular at our faculty. Some scholars even mentioned something about the "soyinka schizofrenia". Nobody would read 'em, nobody would wright about 'em. Indeed, a sort of "schizofrenia", if you consider, that Soyinka was the best you could ever get at our faculty... Well... Anyway I must say the reading was not too easy.

The first few plays of the "Collected Plays 1" were difficult, but amazingly beautiful and inspiring. But then it came "The Road". And I got totally stuck. You know why? Because of the language... Wetin be dat? Dat be pigin man... Na wetin be pigin? Pigin be wey dey african tok! Almighty! Dat be dificult tink.

It took me almost two years of daily work to translate those pidgin phrases from "The Road" and other Soyinka plays partially written in pidgin - into English, and make a sense of it, so I could finally understand its content. I finally graduated on that issue, making a dissertation about "Pidgin English in the literary output of Wole Soyinka".

If you will ever face similar problems with Soyinka, now there is a solution. Visit:

Pidgin English in Plays of Wole Soyinka

It is all there, already translated, so you could save some precious time.

And if you are interested in Wole Soyinka, you can visit:

Wole Soyinka. All You Want to Know About.

An obvious work of my love for books.

Cheers,
Raphael G.

The longest books I have ever red: "The Holy Bible".

Probably, I should not ever write any article about this book, since I fell that my reading of it is not sufficient. But how to write a series like this, and not to mention:


What is more, if you live in a country where more than 95% of the citizens are roman-catholics, you are being thought religion since the primary school, and as a kid, you go with Mom to the church every Sunday, it is very easy to get confused about The Bible and its contents.

The Bible is considered by many people all around the world to be the only book worth reading, and indeed many people still treat it like that. I might agree with that, but... I'm The Reader. I read everything... in a way, of course. As far as I consider it interesting.

Interestingly, returning to The Bible, among those 95% catholics in Poland (or more, like some sources state), you wouldn't find as many passionated Bible reader's as you might have expected. People tend to base their knowledge of The Word on: religion classes (thought since the youngest years - most of all in form of stories about events from Old Testament) and from the church (in form of "The Reading" - fragments of the Bible red by the priest during the mass). And that might be confusing. You might find out, that most people do believe in something, and they can what they believe in, and even name the most important people involved, like:


and the others, and they know their stories as well, but they lack the understanding of the details. Even the intellectuals. Not naming the young generation, who very often choose the comfortable mask of secular humanism, or even worse... Of course, it has its negative influence on Polish tradition, and there are some sings of its degeneration... But this is not the case.

Besides, I'm not better. But I believe. And I know, that Believing in God is an important element of Happiness. And I got the passion for books. Yet, reading The Bible is always for me an amazing adventure. And it is not easy to evaluate, what is exactly the influence of reading The Bible on my life. But maybe it is always like that with The Bible? And, yet again, maybe all the books all over the world are The One? And once you read the one, you read them all? Or maybe, all the books are just The Book in it's numerous permutations? After all, isn't "biblia" the Hebrew word for the book? Never mind. I have probably gone to far fantasizing, but what is the real truth? And where you can find it? Well, there is no doubt, that The Bible is the right place to search for it.

The difficult part of reading The Bible is not in what it is, or not, for you or other people, but in that it is indeed an ancient, historic treaty, full of difficult, and often misinterpreted metaphors. I like to say sometimes, as a self-invented metaphor, that "it is not enough to buy a book, you have to read it too". In the case of The Bible you could say it the other way: "it is not enough to read The Bible, you have to 'buy it' too..."

The longest books I have ever red: "Yoga Dipika" - The light that shines on and on.

Everybody reads books. That is true. But there is something about them, a secret, which doesn't reveal to everyone. Most people think, that once you buy a book, start a book, you got to finish it, and that one is over. You start another one. But what if a book has more to read, that you can manage in a year, ten years, or more? Exists a whole species of tricky books, which, for some reason, take hours of your precious time, day after day, year after year. BEWARE!!! I will share with you some of those which I, personally, consider the most dangerous.

The very first one - the magical converter of lifetimes - I wanted to present to you, is "The Light on Yoga" by B.K.S. Iyengar. Probably the most famous yoga text book in the world.



My first encounter with that book was about eight years ago. My yoga master (guru) Marcin Hawryszko presented the book to me, since I was his best pupil, and he came to persuade me, to take off his shoulders some of the responsibility for handling some classes. I looked inside the book - what I've seen got struck me completely amazed and enchanted:




























And so I thought: "Gosh! I wanna do like that guy!" Then like a spell - be extremely careful, the magic was very strong - I was displaced to a completely different land, and my life have changed for good. I begun to read the book. But it didn't contain to much of a stories, most of all some decent pictures and instructions. Once I've started to read the pictures of practices (asanas) and instructions how to do them - I have had to change almost all of my life habits to adjust to them. Still, after almost eight years of daily reading, day by day, few hours a day I came to reach, more or less, the middle of the book. And the further you get, the more difficult starts to be the reading. But I do learn form the tortoise... And I slowly advance. My ambition to read it all has got to be fed completely - before I die... Amen.