You guys are a riot! Really, a spirited response, and far more than I expected.
Cosmic, no I don't need a handgun. I had one but an early sponsor pointed out the
injudiciousness of an alcoholic having one in his home. I sold mine.
The most trenchant critique is the validity of cutting text, as it is at the heart of my method.
By the third pass I cut 300 pages. I am of the opinion that these repeated passes allow a penetration into the text's ideas such that the importance of the ideas becomes relative, lesser and greater. I cut the lesser from the greater as it subsumed by it.
Of the 200 pages remaining I will probably cut another 30? in this pass. Through subsequent passes, and I've never accomplished this, I think it possible to cut the number to 25, fitting the lesser but related abstractions into the larger.
In an interview James Joyce was asked what work he had done that day. He said he had removed a period in the morning and reinserted it the afternoon. My point is that cutting a Hemingway novel predicts large error. But the substance of literature is created by the very individual and highly subjective view of art of the writer. This is a very different matter than the ideas presented in a theological/philosophical work. As a reader I can choose those ideas that are the most compelling to me. You can say that doing so changes Shantideva's presentation. I would say no, I simply separated he greater from the lesser.
Logic is logic and endures through cultural shift. Culture can be interpreted and separated from the pith.
anotherbob's idea of study followed by a one word offering to the universe, not to be seen again, sounds like a great ritual.
musicman captures my method best: "it would seem to make sense to try to distill the teachings contained within to their most fundamental form, in which case this method would be excellent."
A big thank you to all of you for your great responses!
