From: Elizaphanian (Elizaphanian@members.v21.co.uk)
Date: Sun Nov 24 2002 - 18:14:42 GMT
Hi David,
> I have to confess that your theology lesson made little sense to me, but
> thanks for expanding my vocabulary. And I don't see how the exercise you
> described has anything to do with mysticism.
I was trying to explain where I'm coming from; ie from a tradition which
takes the teaching of, say, Meister Eckhart, seriously. Of course, you're
welcome to say that this isn't 'mystical experience' but that is part of my
point - the Christian mystics had a completely different understanding of
the nature of 'mysticism' to that current today, of which you are a paradigm
representative.
My larger point is that there is difference between Christian mysticism
(Eckhart, John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila, the Cloud author etc etc) and
what often passes for contemporary 'mysticism' (not all of it, just the
'Jamesian' understanding dominant in the West, which may or may not be that
which Pirsig holds). We could then have an argument about which one is
'best' but I don't think that would be particularly fruitful. That was why I
named this thread 'traditions of mysticism' - I wanted to articulate the
difference between those two.
Still, I think I've said enough about this for now. Other people (Mari?) can
come back about the substantial post if there are elements they want to
explore. Hopefully in a week or so I'll get cracking on a 'starter' post
about ritual and the intellect. Unlike you, Pirsig sees ritual as fourth
level ;-)
Cheers!
Sam
www.elizaphanian.v-2-1.net/home.html
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sun Nov 24 2002 - 18:38:06 GMT