Hi Roger and David and everyone else
On 23 Feb 99, at 1:15, David Buchanan wrote:
> I appreciate the attempt by Horse to give equal time to the mystics and
> rationalists, although I suspect alternating months might be tough to
> do. We can't ask a scientific thinker to affect a mystical point of view
> any more than we can ask a Rush Limbaugh fan to pretend he's a liberal.
> I think the trick is to raise questions that can be answered from many
> perspectives. Then the sum of the conversation can be greater than ....
I honestly hadn't thought of it in terms of equal time for anyone, although the notion is
interesting. What I would like to do would be to pick a topic, and then approach it from a
particular point of view. I wouldn't have thought that any thinker, scientific or otherwise,
should be unable to adapt to a particular mode of thought for a while. It all depends on
their willingness to try and see things from a different perspective.
I've been following the "Zen and the Intellect" thread for a while and it would seem that
there is an amount of confusion as to what constitutes Mysticism and what is entailed in a
Rational point of view. No-one is asked to pretend that the approach that they are using is
their normal bias just an honest attemp to see things from anothers point of view and put
that into words. It's amazing what you can discover about your own beliefs when you try
to see things through an alternative or opposing set of beliefs.
On 23 Feb 99, at 0:06, RISKYBIZ9@aol.com wrote:
> Horse,
> Your post came while I was typing my "Teton" notes.
> I absolutely love it. It is different . We can argue for universal love one
> month (is arguing-for-love a Koan or an oxymoron?) and chat about complexity
> and Bell's theorem the next.
> Oh.....Do you think a month is a bit long? People seem to lose steam after a
> few weeks around here. How about switching every two weeks?
Well, there's no need to impose either a minimum or maximum time limit. We should just
take a suck it and see approach. It doesn't need to be overly structured with rules or
limitations either. We could suggest a bunch of topics, vote for one of them and dive in.
The only thing we need to keep in mind is the approach for the topic - Mystic or Rational -
which should also be borne in mind when choosing the topic. The topic could be a quote,
a page or a whole chapter from Zen or Lila or something from one of the essays in the
forum. One thing that has intrigued me for ages is the quote at the beginning of Chapter 32:
While living,
Be a dead man.
Be completely dead,
And then do as you please.
And all will be well.
Actually Rog, from reading what you've said above, another suggestion could be to pick a
topic, say one which would normally be considered Rational and examine it from a
Mystical point of view. That might be more challenging.
The reasoning behind all of this is to provide a focal point which people can dip into as
they please, but instead of the often antagonistic approach it could provide a unified
approach, in the spirit of the MOQ. Which is why we're all here - isn't it?
Any thoughts anyone.
Horse
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