Radio address for April 12, 2014. What it means to do low-focus podcasting in a high-focus world, and how to keep it going that way.
I mention my recent haphazard writing on mystic experience and religious conversion. The extended quote in the middle is from Shunryu Suzuki’s book Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind.
The ending music is On My Way by The Melodic. (There’s also the album version, but it doesn’t have nearly enough kick compared to their live performances.)
Comments
Arlan #
People don’t usually accuse Buddhists of being sociopaths, but I will. What else shall we call the abolition of Other? I’ll tell you: we’ll call it the abolition of Self!
One does not merely express oneself. Expression is the movement from one place to an Other place – perhaps the ejection of an Essence into the World. Merely Self Expression is an unreachable point, but the closer we approximate it the less we express and the more we self. If we are not everything, than we contaminate something with our expression of self; if we touch nothing, we express nothing.
Self expression is mere when compared to self-actualization. Self actualization subjects Being to Self. Self expression offers self to Being. But the Being of self can belong only to one. Self expression does not fully or adequately describe our response to God’s Being (it could be only a defiant, pathetically impotent form of self-actualization), but self expression at least is not fundamentally opposed to God’s Being.
I sound a little vague. Well, in plainer speech, I congratulate you for abandoning your Mission in Art, but I warn you that you are not merely expressing yourself; and it is an insult to your audience to suggest that.
Keith #
I feel small for not continuing the low-focus discussion. But, please allow this high-focus point from a huge fan of your low focus meandering.
Please… please… lose the typewriter audio background.
While listening to a dose of Dueck, I should be peacefully pondering the meaning of life. Instead, I’m pondering taking a sledge hammer to a Smith Corona.
Thank you for this indulgence.
We now return to our regularly scheduled program.
Arlan #
Well, I like the typewriter. But not enough to argue with a man with a sledgehammer.
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