Quote:
Originally Posted by buckman View Post
"I didn't know being gay was a religion."
Reply by Sea Dangles:
"The church has demonstrated otherwise."
Jim, you have to understand that Dangles is a sort of Zen contrarian. If he thinks you are in need of elevation into a higher form of consciousness, he will respond to what he considers your unenlightened statements with his peculiar type of koan. You know . . . his version of what is the sound of one hand clapping thingy. When you rationally respond to it, he again gives you back nonsense. And the more you try to rationalize his nonsense, the more you repeat, and the more nonsense is thrown back at you. Eventually rationalization and nonsense meld into comedic senselessness, the hope being that since there is no rational answer to the koan, you will achieve the deeper understanding--the gray area that Dangles refers to. Not unlike the Zen wisdom of Rumi in this quote by him:
“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
and rightdoing there is a field.
I'll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass
the world is too full to talk about.”
― Rumi
I know this personally, as I learned when he Zen beat my weary brain not long ago in another thread so that I now wander with bliss in the gray area. I now see what was once invisible. I now understand what was once unknowable. Once, having learned all this, you will know how to respond to his koans. Speak back to him in the fullness of the unknown--with even more nonsense. Try it. It's fun. It's enlightenment. And will probably end the string of Zen provocation.
