Hullo Sam and all,
Perhaps we do not have a great deal to disagree about.
(SAM) "Perhaps we could agree on a form of words that would distinguish
between those bodies which represent social-values-but-repress-intellect and
those bodies which represent social-values-but-enhance-intellect. I would a
argue that there are churches that fall under both categories - and indeed
secular bodies which fall under both."
I must agree with you here. Groups like 'Sea of Faith' probably represent a
post-church response to the Christian ethic, and while I find their reason
for existence less than convincing, I respect their concern to find a form
of faith that allows intellectual honesty. But this is not new. John
Robinson's 'Honest to God' filled this role back in the 60s, and Bishop
Spong does much the same today. However, my perspective is that 'religious'
faith as such is today challenged as never before by a resurgent
spirituality that draws on the mystic tradition. If you read 'What Really
Matters - Searching for Wisdom in America", what stands out for me is how
little of mainstream religion is even mentioned by Tony Schwartz. Matthew
Fox, Spong and Funk, to mention just a few prominent American churchmen, get
not a mention. Hameed Ali, probably unknown to most Americans, rates almost
half of the final chapter, and represents perhaps the best of the emerging
mystic approaches. Schwartz says on the last page of this interesting book,
"I feel most moved by the work of people such as Michael Murphy, Jack
Kornfield, Ken Wilber, Helen Palmer, and Hameed Ali precisely because their
approaches are multidimensional and inclusive."
My concern is that if you look at this group, Pirsig's MOQ becomes almost a
sideshow. I suspect that Pirsig is actually closer in spirit to the
traditional churches than to these "more comprehensive approaches to wisdom,
uniting the best of the East and the West" (Schwartz, p 432). To my mind,
and again I am drawing on your presentation of Wittgenstein, there is a lot
in common between theology and metaphysics. Both are concerned to provide a
structured explanation of the mystery of existence. In contrast, I see the
mystic emphasis is not so much on revelation or explanation, though of
course these are to be found in mysticism, but rather on an experiential
path to the exploration of what is. I am very much a beginner in this area,
so speak more as an interested outsider than one with experiential
knowledge, but it does seem that Eastern spirituality emphasised the value
of each individual's search for meaning, while in the West the emphasis has
tended to fall on the church's provision of pre-packaged meaning in the form
of dogma or creeds or theology. Pirsig, sadly, follows this tradition,
though with a metaphysics.
It seems to me that most founders of the major religions appeared to
directly experience the unity of all things that transcends subjects and
objects. Their followers tend all too often to attempt to contain the wisdom
of the founders in teachings and myths and dogma, that seem to me to repress
intellect in the name of faith, and actually reintroduce the subject object
divide that the founders transcended. In Pirsig's terms, static quality has
replaced dynamic quality. Pirsig's paradox is that he clearly values the
dynamic above the static, yet in formulating a metaphysics has tended in
practice to emphasise the static.
The major advance in the mystic world seems to be the incorporation of the
best of the Western exploration of the nature of the mind and the nature of
the world, as exemplified in the various approaches to therapy and science,
(still divided into subject and object domains,) but bringing these together
into the unified domain which mysticism purports to reveal. And doing this
in a balanced way. To return to Schwartz: "The key issue is balance. Do
insights derived from one's inner work lead not just to greater depth and
self-understanding, but also to positive changes in behavior? In short, does
one's inner exploration ultimately enhance the quality of one's
participation in the world?" (p 431)
Here Schwartz uses the Q word in a grounded sense. Quality is not some
abstract 'ground of being', or even the fundamental stuff of our experience.
Quality has outcomes for our social existence. This is what I find lacking
in Pirsig, however inspiring some aspects of his thought are. (I acknowledge
that Schwartz is using SO language, and this could be anathema to some
mystics. What is emerging in America is a mysticism that continues to value
the everyday, and does not abandon morality and intellect by an escape into
'enlightenment'. God knows we had enough of that in the Zen movement, where
sexual and financial exploitation, together with rampant sexism and racism
and so on, were all too often the dark side of the enlightened 'master'.
Perhaps the moral and intellectual involvment of a mystic may also be
transformed, but the public mistrust of self seeking clergy and gurus of all
varieties is itself a valuable form of 'crap-detection'.)
(SAM) "the mystics are (I would say) those who have advanced most
in the education of love, and the ones with most to teach us. Most of them
fell foul of the church authorities, many were condemned as heretics, all of
them are astonishing people. When I think of 'Christianity' I'm thinking of
these great teachers, not the fourteenth century papacy - or those who bomb
abortion clinics today."
I can only agree wholeheartedly, while noting that mysticism is a much
broader phenomenon than the Western variety you point to here.
A form of words for "bodies which represent
social-values-but-enhance-intellect"? I would nominate 'open community'.
Regards,
John B
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