見通し | Vistas

「どんな研究所かって？そりゃ『正法眼蔵』の研究をやってるに決まってるだろ。でも、ストイックにそれだけっていうのも、なんだかな。ちょっと通りがかりの琵琶法師が一曲弾いていってくれてもいいし、浮世絵師が壁にサッと落書きしてくれてもいい。そのくらい奥が深くて間口も広い「蔵」でありたいもんだ。もっとも、そういうのをWebでどう作ればいいのかは全然わからないんだがね。

「ヒントをくれたのは、この本だよ。Bob Eckstein: Footnotes from the World’s Greatest Bookstores （藤村奈緒美訳『世界の夢の本屋さんに聞いた素敵な話』）。研究所の看板に書いた英語のフレーズも、この本に載ってた〝ギグルズ〟って本屋の看板からアイデアを戴いたものなんだ。いつか行ってみたいけど、チェンナイって遠いんだろうな…」

｜所員 001・談

––– If someone asks me about our Institution, I will say, of course, it is an institution for the study in Shobogenzo, a great text created in medieval Japan. But I feel like the Instituion should be more than that, more than just accumulating knowledge, analyzing the meanings of texts, interpreting them with a modern conceptual frame, and so on. It is not about stoicism. It should be about culture. It should be a “city” in some sense. So it woud be nice if someone just comes to our institute and plays guitar and sing songs in the courtyard, or a painter finds the wall of the institute good to paint and makes it into an art gallery. The problem is, for now I have no idea how I could build an institute like that with the web tools.

––– The inspiration came from a book: Footnotes from the World’s Greatest Bookstores by Bob Eckstein, 2016. I borrowed the idea about the Institute’s subtitle from the bookstore “Giggles” in this book. It would be great if I visit the store someday but I wonder how far Chennai is from my house.

| Talk by Staff 001