This is the best version of Tales of Slot Machine Bodhisattvas available. Months have been spent in ediiting to correct the countless errors that are typically found in mythology books of this type. The works are difficult to write and the process of dealing with such archetypes and prototypes is stressful; and so such styles of writing tend to have an inordinate number of typographical errors. (These types of stories are often the product of mania, which itself creates editing, publishing and design problems.) Similiar books, even ones thousands of years old which have undergone hundreds of editing processes, are still to be found with many errors or badly-constructed sentences.
Properly laying out such a work, and giving each piece the look and feel it deserves, is not easy. In this edition, you'll find fourtheen-point type and lots of white space. Some stories toward the end were removed and should eventually be placed in a forthcoming edition of "The Third Diamond," which is itself slated for expansion and additional editing. New epigraph pages have been added, and some duplicate works have been removed. At least one piece has never appeared in print before. Additionally, the face-size has been increased to 7" x 10", giving the book an imposing look. The cover has also been redesigned to give it a less stody appearance. All of this was done in hopes of creating a more relaxing and spacious reading experience. (Note: If you already have an earlier edition of "The Triple Diamond Sutra," you already have most, but not all, of the material in this book. If you have a copy of "The Scroll of Hi Nu," you have all of the epigraphs in this book but hardly any of the stories.)
The flow of the document is unhurried; and this text is meant to be read just a few pages at a time. It's perfect to peck at during a coffee break or while having a sip of tea on the patio. (If you enjoy alcohol, tobacco or marijuana, this book can sometimes enhance one's state of consciousness even further. The large face size and minimalist cover design are all designed to make the book inviting rather than burdensome, to create an opening. Some philosophers have said that the clearing of physical space creates a psychological clearing too. I'm confident the reader will discover all of these here.(Note: This book is the second book in "The Triple Diamond Sutra tradition" going way back to the "Zen Buddhist Scoundrels tradition." Readers unfamiliar with these works are advised to see the book descriptions in earlier versions of "Zen Buddhist Scoundrels" and "Slot Machine Bodhisattvas.")
The first of these stories began emerging in the early 1990s during the pre-Facebook era when one of the dominant forms of social media was called Tribe; and Tribe initially grew in the San Francisco Bay Area, much of its early membership being centered in the Burning Man crowd. Tribe might have continued to be dominant, but not long After Facebook arrived, almost everyone abandoned Tribe and ended up in other forms of social media. However, as the author of Zen Buddhist Scoundrels struggled to explain his beliefs to his large group of followers on Tribe, he found it natural to continue writing more and more of these myths. Eventually those myths were collected and started the series of books which are a part of "The Triple Diamond Sutra," a book which is still not collected fully in a single volume (the current volume missing perhaps a hundred or so pages of the total work in this "tradtion").
