> [Michael] > If you are going to claim it is, you'll need to defend it historically. > > [Arlo] > Theism is a subset of Zen that relies on "theoretical knowledge" and religious > texts to describe a god (or gods) that exist in a separate realm from human > experience. Zen sees theistic responses as shortsighted (I agree) and instead > posits not a "god or gods" but a transcendence in everyday lived experience. > Zen realizes that all theistic responses miss the forest for the trees (miss > the Void for their g*d). But Zen is primary, as it describes the actual human > experience that has given rise to the fabrication of theism's narratives. That > is, everyone experiences Zen, but a few seek to isolate and constrain that > experience into theism. MP: Theism, in pure, does not need texts. Theism also predates Zen, historically and culturally, it cannot be that theism is a "subset" of Zen. It may be that in your mind what *you see* in Zen is *of a higher quality* than what *you see* in theism. That I cannot deny. But Zen is no less a cultural response to the human need for transcendence than theism, in fact, I'd say more so in that it is specific in its prescriptions where theism is merely the belief in a god or gods, absent the prescriptions associated with "religions" built on theism.
But you will not find argument with me that Zen Buddhism is of a higher MoQ Quality than most theistic religions. I just don't see that this in anyway makes the theistic religions "subsets" of Zen. Zen is still just "another" face man puts on the Void (or however you phrase it.) Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
