That does sound ike a transcendant breakfast, Dave.
> The problem with your last statement is that it waters down the meaning of > transcendence almost to point of anything new to you, me, or anyone is > transcendent. My breakfast this morning was a new experience, only by a > huge > stretch of imagination was it a transcendent one. Even though I thought it > was a "good" breakfast. (French toast made with home-made bread using > vanilla ice cream as the egg extender served with real maple syrup and > fresh > brewed Café Verona coffee with a dollop of vanilla ice cream in it. > Yuuumm!) > The way I usually use the term transcendant, is normally an intellectual process. It's where you abstract the patterns present and think about them. Ultimately, thinking about "think about" is a transcendant experience. Going beyond "thinking about" is Transcendant in the mystical sense. Going beyond intellectuality. Going beyond abstraction. I think that's what the Zennies are all about, not religion. > > Next are you going to claim that Zen Buddhism, or any type of Buddhism for > that matter, is not a religion? Yes. Alan Watts makes a very good case for that claim in Psychotherapy, East and West. For instance, religion makes metaphysical claims and Buddha avoided those. > And that an integral part of their religious > experiences are not practices specifically design to evoke mystical > experiences and understanding them? And are you then going to deny that a > majority of all mystical experiences reports are linked by the people > experiencing them to either depression (think James, maybe Pirsig) or > religious practice (think Buddha,Mohamed,Moses, Brigham Young et al)? > > I'd say that philosophical mysticism is of a different kind than that Brigham experienced ( or faked experiencing, depending on who you talk to) You seem to be equating mysticism with the supernatural, whereas philosophical mysticism is more along the lines of the metaphysical position that reality is beyond knowability. > And further that according to the MoQ, mystic experience is the most > dynamic, the highest and best way, to experience reality. Based on this > they > are morally superior to all static patterns and automatically have the > right > to dominate, over rule, any of them. > > In my view, assigning DQ to mysticism is the wrong way to go. I think Pirsig ultimately rejects this horn. It's attractive, because we have a category to put the question, "where do hypothesis come from?" But ultimately, it just doesn't quite work. > How is this different from all religious claims made down through the ages? > > Dave > Religious claims are based upon knowability - the creator force brought into knowable and predictable patterns. All religion is ultimately idolatry. John 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/md/archives.html
