Speaker 1: Does Zen, let's say, formulate the infinite as relational to
the finite?
Speaker 2: Yes, and so we can enter through emptiness's form form
is emptiness exactly explicitly?
Speaker 1: So, I mean, I know this is going to sound weird,
but then why isn't Why don't people pray in Zen?
Speaker 3: They do?
Speaker 2: So I happen to know is Zen roshi? And he
prays and he chants and so forth?
Speaker 4: What is? What is? What's the infinite? Like? Does it
have humor?
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, Jordan, You're gonna be more precise in what
do you mean by that question?
Speaker 4: Well, you know, one of the things of something that
has a character relationship is that it has a character relationship,
and so the question is something like.
Speaker 3: Well, okay, let me answer that. Let me answer that first.
Speaker 2: Okay, So you know, this is Shallingberg who's an atheist,
but says, what we're talking about, what we're talking about
sacred is you know, it's ultimately real and again not
in the neutral sense and the ontonormative. I want to
participate in it. So that's a relationship term. I want
to participate in it. I want to conform to it.
I want to reciprocally open, I want to be realized
by it as I realize it all of that. Secondly,
it's ultimately orienting, like people reorient towards it, right, And
it's ultimately transformative.
Speaker 3: It causes you know, this deep, deep, the deepest.
Speaker 2: Possible transformation from being egocentric to being profoundly reality centric.
Speaker 4: But about you, that's the question. Does it care about you?
Speaker 3: Why does that matter to you?
Speaker 4: That's a question.
Speaker 5: This is Jonathan Pegel. Welcome to the Symbolic World.
Speaker 6: So hello everyone.
Speaker 1: I am here with Jordana Hall and John BRAVEKEI all
of you know them very well. I am really excited
and a little befuddled, and we're wondering what's gonna happen
because John Braveke wrote both of us said, I watch
our your conversation together and I really would like to
have a discussion of the three of us. And so
I'm definitely looking forward to seeing what it is that
he's scheming in what's going on in his mind. But
before we start, we're making an announcement today. In a
few weeks we'll put the links in the description that
you can go see on our website.
Speaker 6: But in a few weeks.
Speaker 1: John will be teaching a class on cognitive science and
Ritual for the symbolic world. And so he's going to
go into his own ideas and his own research and
all all the way that he connects his study into
in cognitive.
Speaker 6: Science with ritual.
Speaker 1: And then in the last episode he's going to go
through the theory and then the last episode will have
a discussion together. And so that will be of course
live like the other classes. You can join live. You
can also buy the class and watch it later if
you don't have time to join live. But we'll have
Q and a's and everything the same way we're doing
our other classes. So before we start, maybe John, you
can tell us give us a little something about about
the COSI class.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so, first of all, deeply appreciative of being here
and also very appreciative of you inviting me to teach
on the symbolic world. I'm very excited about this, especially
the fact that it'll at least have a diological culmination.
I think that's just wonderful. It goes with a lot
of things that I believe in and stand for. So
there's lots of theories of ritual out there, but there's
very little theory of ritual that actually covers what you
might call the cognitive dimension of ritual.
Speaker 3: So I'm not going.
Speaker 2: To be offering that would be pretentious and hubristic to say, I'm.
Speaker 3: Going to give you a comprehensive account.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's socioeconomic, there are historical, there are cultural,
there are philosophical, there are theological aspects of ritual, and
I'm not here to comment on them, and I'm not
here to deny that they exist or that they're important.
All I'm saying is there has been a missing dimension
a lot in a lot of the discussion of ritual,
which is the cognition of ritual? Is ritual a way
of knowing? For example? Is that a reasonable question to ask?
And there are and there's a lot of work on that.
And I want to bring all the work I've done
on the imaginal, the relationship between the imaginal and the
rational and the reasonable and the relationship you know what
it is? What kind of knowing are we talking about?
And is there is there a rationality to ritual? Those
are all the things we're going to be talking about.
The quick answer is, yes, there is cognition in ritual,
and it's a very powerful and important form of ritual.
And it's bound up very deeply with I think a
more proper understanding of what we mean by rational if
what we mean by rational isn't merely logical, but being
reasonable in a much more comprehensive sense.
Speaker 1: All right, well, we are definitely looking forward to that.
So Jordan, good to see you. And we want to know,
I mean, I want to know what it is in
our conversation John, that that sparked this discussion.
Speaker 6: So you have to start us off.
Speaker 2: Well first of all, because you know I'm going to
do a few things that will be provocative, but you know,
as as is my want. But obviously I'm not doing
anything ridiculous like attempting a refutation. I loved the conversation.
I love both of you. I consider you friends that
I respect and have a lot of affection for. And
so it was like, yeah, but what about this? What
about this kind of issue? It wasn't like, well, I
think it's not that okay, so and and I think
it's fair to say there was a lot of John
Raveaki running through the conversation.
Speaker 3: So I don't want to be ungracious or anything like that.
Speaker 2: So I just want to frame very quickly where I'm
coming from and what I'm trying to do here. I'm
trying to be socratic. I'm not trying to be a skeptict. Okay,
So so i'll if I could, I'll lay out what
I hurt, what I and of course you'll you'll be
free to correct me when I'm done. What I thought
I heard around a central thing I want to talk about.
We don't have to stick on that topic. This is
just where, but this is what brought me into I
want to talk to you two about it. Right, So
there was a discussion of pissiness as faith, and then
there was there was very much moves I agree with,
like moving it off belief, at least in the sense
of asserting propositions without evidence or argument. You both said
something along those lines, and then there was there was
a movement to trust, and then I would want to
I would have wanted to slow down a little bit there,
because the problem with the word try is it's very equivocal.
Speaker 3: There's two different meanings of trust.
Speaker 2: There's one meaning of trust is based on empirical observation
and inference. I come to a conclusion about the probability
of somebody's competence, so I trust that if I give
this to Peter, he'll do a good job. That's not
particularly relevant to your conversation in any important fashion, because
that's just how we sort of get about the world
where we can't operate with certainty, which is like everywhere
then you mean it, So I just want to make
clear that that's not what we're talking about, to my mind.
And then you moved to something which was deeper, and
I'm going to use a little bit of my own language,
and we can.
Speaker 3: Play with it if you don't like it.
Speaker 2: But it was something like, because you were trying to draw,
to my mind, you were trying to draw together notions
of participatory knowing, because that was invoked a lot, and
it's something like, you know, participation in sort of primordial presuppositions.
These are presuppositions that you can't get outside of. They
are presupposed in the very act of trying to make sense, uh,
make judgments about what's intelligible, et cetera. And so like
there's their primorgile in that sense. To doubt them would
be to invoke them, to try and doubt them kind
of things. And so although you can't give an argument
for them, there is no place you can stand to
call them seriously into question, and this is this is
a good model. By the way, it's not unique to
me or to both of you. Alvin plantinga has who's
an important Christian philosopher, has a very similar kind of
you know, presupposition model of what's going on. And I'm
a little bit different than him on this. But so
that that's cool. So so far, so good. I think
everybody's nodding and smiling.
Speaker 3: But then so a couple issues came up to me.
Well one is okay, that's fair.
Speaker 2: But and for me, that's great because that sort of
grounds the philosophical silk road really wonderfully because we it means,
you know, that we're not all automatically we can't dismiss faith.
Speaker 3: We're bound at this level.
Speaker 2: I think Jordan, you even said, you know, even the
atheist has to have this kind of faith in some sense.
You said something to that degree, and that's a great strength.
But it also opens up this question that means at
that level of the argument that both the Buddhists and
the Christian have equal faith because if they equally have
right a set of primordial presuppositions, that makes the world
fundamentally intelligible to them in a way in which they
can profoundly participate. They both have faith. This is why
I think it's a philosophical silk road move. Now what
when I then wonder? So again, that's why I'm posing
it to you. It seems to me you need an
additional argument for talking about faith in the specific Christian content,
because that faith doesn't follow from the argument you gave,
because as the argument you gave is a properly pluralistic argument. Okay,
Now there's potential moves available to you, and I'll lay
them out how I see them and what I find
problematic about them, and then I'll stop talking.
Speaker 3: Okay, So one move you can make is.
Speaker 2: To say something well like, I mean, you know, well,
Christianity makes the most sense, or something like that, that's problematic.
I'm not going to repeat my thousand arguments and publications
and videos about intelligibility grounds and relevance realization, and relevance
realization is properly pluralistic. Right, you can't in and we
just published a paper on this. You can't give an
there's no way to give an opera ROI formalization of
relevance realization that allows you to say, this is the
optimal final.
Speaker 3: Version of relevance realization.
Speaker 2: Relevance realization is non computational, to put it in a phrase,
and that's really important because that grounds meaning and life,
That grounds a lot of the stuff we're talking about,
but that also commits you to certain consequences of that. Now,
what you could do, and you could make use of
James Filler I'm talking to him tomorrow, by the way,
and he's got a second book outcoming where he's got
the critique of substance ontology, so I'm looking forward to that.
And then you could say, oh, well, what we could
do is we could make a move where say, you
could say, intelligibility or information are properly relational and therefore
we should go to a.
Speaker 3: Worldview.
Speaker 2: I'm trying to use a neutral term here that gives
the most proper place to relationality and doesn't commit to
like a substance ontology or something like that. And then James,
as you know, maps that into the trinity. The trinity
is the most powerful symbol, according to James, of pure relationality,
and therefore it's a great symbol for ultimate reality. And
that's why it makes the most sense, and it seemed
to me that arguments along those lines were being made,
and you know, push back when I'm done and we're
here as friends. But then the concern that I had
with that is, well, the problem with that is and
we'll see what James says about this. I have a
critique of James, which is his main argument. To cut
it short, and I won't make the argument. I'll just
give you The conclusion is, you can't get relations out
of lada.
Speaker 3: You can't. There's nothing given.
Speaker 2: If you start with things and substances in the real
Statolian terms, you can't get relations out of that. And
if you can't get relations, you can't get intelligibility, et cetera,
et cetera.
Speaker 3: That's the core argument that he makes.
Speaker 2: The problem is there's an exactly symmetrical argument, and Jonathan
will probably recognize this. This is a neoplatonic argument. You also
can't get relada out of pure relations. You can't get
the arguments are exactly symmetrical. So pure relationality doesn't mean
at the bottom there's relations. Pure relationality means at the
bottom there is that that is below both relations and
relata and makes them both possible. And of course this
is the neoplatonic one. Right, It's not a relation, it's
not a relata. It's what makes relations and relata possible.
Or it's something like zenata, which is okay, Now, what
does that mean for the mapping onto the trinity? Because
I could say, well, Zen does a really good job
because Zen prioritizes nonduality and that's the central message, not
the trinitarian nation and nature of relationality. And this goes
into the deeper argument. This is a mapping function, and
the problem with mapping functions is that reality is culbinatorially
explosive and there is no perfect map. What kind of
map do you want? Do you want a contour map,
do you want a geographical map? Do you want a
political map? Do you want a thermal map? It depends
pragmatically on the goal you're trying to solve.
Speaker 3: So there is no way of.
Speaker 2: Saying that's the absolute best map of reality. It can't work. Now,
you may think, and I'm trying. I'm gonna use all
these terms with deep respect, so I'm not being dismissive.
Speaker 3: Okay, But you said, well, I can.
Speaker 2: Map Yahweh, the God of Israel, and Jesus of Nazareth
and the Spirit of Pentecost, which I take to be
at least one way of understanding the Trinity. There's a
mapping going on there, and it's like, I think that's great.
Speaker 3: I think James' is great.
Speaker 2: But the neo Platonists have a way of mapping, and
there's other maps, and there's no there's no, there's no.
Speaker 3: What at stand to say this is the absolute right map.
Speaker 2: And so we keep coming back to, we keep coming
back to a proper pluralism for which I don't understand, Like,
I don't see why you come to a particular faith
in right as opposed to just having and I'm sorry,
this sounds silly having faith in faith itself. And I
don't believe that. You obviously know that, But do you
understand what the gist of the argument is, because there
was the reason why this matters, because it has existential
import because and you know, and Jordan matters to me
a lot, right, Jordan was talking about what led him
into Christianity, not what led him into faith, and that's
what I was trying to understand, Right, So I think
it's fair to me to bring up this set of
problems Okay, how is that was that?
Speaker 3: Okay?
Speaker 6: I think I mean, I think I did definitely understand
the different arguments. I know, I think Jordan, you you
should have the you should start.
Speaker 4: Okay. I'm mindful of the concern Jonathan you mentioned earlier.
Jonathan mentioned that he's he's concerned that when he and
I talk it maybe yeah, maybe too abstract or two
high level. And I think it's fair to say that
when we add Ravaki into the conversation and where he's
actually bringing a point that is very, very precise. So
I think maybe the thing do we say, say forgive me,
but there's nothing that there's nothing I can do about
the fact that this may be at the borders of intelligibility.
So let's see. Yes, this notion that there can be
no map that is the funny, that is the ultimate
map is actually the same as the critique I have
of metamodernism. And so the answer is something like, is
there something that is more fundamental than mapping that is
primordial in the sense that it is prior to all
possible maps, which is not itself defined as a as
a map, but is a protom map. There's the process
whereby maps are formed at all and constrains and defines
all possible maps.
Speaker 7: If such a thing we're we're able to enter into
relationship with it, by the way, and also in point
number two, then that's the thing, that's the thing that
we would ultimately have to be looking at.
Speaker 4: Okay, roman number number two. In this kind of a conversation,
it's beautiful that all three of us are. This won't
be controversial, but in this kind of a conversation you
have to be very particular about the fact that we
cannot bias any particular quality of relationship, meaning in this
specifically intelligent or semantics or cognition narrowly understood, but actually
be saying what we're seeking to do is to enter
into relationship with that thing which is primordial or prior
to all possible maps, with the wholeness of our capacity
to enter into relationship at all. And maybe then just
to add that the third piece, and I really do
think it was you who added this piece to a
conversation we had years ago. Oh oh, yes, I can
say it in with it's differently yours, which is reciprocal opening, yes,
meaning that this is also in a live relationship that
in entering into this quality of holistic relationship with this
primordial Both we and our capacity too are in a
continuous reciprocal opening. I notice what's happening in all this, right,
So that is what I think Christianity is.
Speaker 3: Okay? Uh uh yeah?
Speaker 2: So I mean I I'm like, there's two ways in
which you could be meaning that. One is Christianity is that,
and so is uh you know what, Let's play fair.
We're not going to compare good Christians to bad Buddhists
or some We're going to say the best of a Christian,
the best of a Buddhist. We'll play We'll play fair.
It seems to me that I can say everything you
just said. The reciprocal opening a transformative relationship to ultimate relationality,
the one in Neoplatonism or shunyada that makes all relationality possible,
that is also available to the true, the good faith Buddhist,
the good faith Taoist, the good faith Neoplatonist. And of
course the trick here, of course, is Philler relies on
Neoplatonism even to make his argument right.
Speaker 4: I'm gonna pause for a moment because I feel like
there's something has to happen at the level of dio
logos for this to work properly.
Speaker 3: Oh, I hope I'm not being stultifying. I'm not trying
to be.
Speaker 4: No, No, the opposite. I think that there's something like
to be able to respond to this properly, we have
to come into a quality of communion that it affords
a vastly greater capacity than we have as individuals and
have yet cultivated.
Speaker 3: Good I'm open to that.
Speaker 2: Like I said, I'm not here to refute things that's
not my that's not what I want. I want to
get this because I want to look what I don't
what I don't see in the two of you. Let
me maybe saying this will help to do what you're
talking about, Jordan, I don't see a simplistic sort of
liberal tolerance. And I mean that in a pejorative sense. Well,
you have your Christianity and I have my Buddhism or
what and we all just live together and that's all
wonderful and a sort of relativism.
Speaker 3: And you know, I don't I take it. That's not
what you're saying.
Speaker 2: You're right, good, So we're in agreement, and I want
right and I so I'm trying to say, tell me
how you address these issues and yet keep the depth
from just just degenerating into well, I like you and
you like me, and we like that we like each
other and all that sort of stuff that really doesn't
help with what's going on in the world right now.
Speaker 1: So maybe while you're Jordan, while you're meditating, maybe I'll
throughout the things that came to my mind when you
were talking John. So a few things came to my mind.
One is we've talked about this before. When is that
the map that Christianity proposes is eschatological. Yes, uh, And
it's presented in a manner that is actually not a
specific map, right, It's presented with language that is mythological,
that that is structural, you know, like a city with
with something something which represents the top of the hierarchy,
the son of Man, a king figure, something which represents
the bottom of the my hierarchy, the sacrifice lamb which
you're joined together as the light of the city.
Speaker 6: And then that gives way to a world where.
Speaker 1: There's balance between the natural world and the art and
the human world, and the artificial world and the human world,
and and that all multiplicity can can bring its quality
into that participation right, so all the kings bring their
crown into the into the into the into the city.
And so I think that that is one way of
answering the question of the of the absolute map, or
like the perfect map, is that the perfect map is
given as something which is coming but never comes, or
at least doesn't come in the way that we think.
Speaker 6: I mean, I'm not saying there isn't.
Speaker 1: An eschatological moment, but that eschatological moment cannot be measured
by the measurements of time that we give to the
time now, like it's the end of time in the
sense it's the purpose of time. It's the end of
history in the sense that it's the thing towards which
all things are moving. And I and I think that
in terms of that's a map like a if we
talk about the idea of of mapping reality. I think
that that's important to always remember is that Christ is
the one who came and the one who's coming, and
when he's coming in the end, that which he will
offer is a new heaven and a new earth that
is not the one that we have now. Everything that
we have now is although we don't want to say
that it's it's it's it's arbitrary, it's not arbitrary at all.
But it's a glimmer. It's always a glimmer and a
kind of small participation in something which which which is coming.
Uh you know, and you know there are there are
sometimes you can you can read there are mysterious ways
in which you know, for example, like the Saint, we'll
talk about when you take communion, you are already in
the esketon. You're right, you know, but it's something which
when you're in the esketon, you're also not in regular time.
You're not in the normal time, you're not in in
in in the way that the world.
Speaker 6: Is laid out. And coming back from that.
Speaker 1: In some ways will always is relativize and make things
imperfect and you know, and and somewhat somewhat off from
the And so I think that that in terms of
the idea of that Christianity offers a map for reality.
I think we always have to remember that that that
eschatology is a central part of how we understand that
how the logos manifest themselves in the world, because the logos,
it's the fullness of the logos has not yet been seen.
The fullness of the logos is coming, It's over the hill.
It's come, Lord Jesus, right, the sense that we're calling
it into.
Speaker 6: Being, but it never it doesn't. It doesn't arrive in
the way that we expect it.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: Even in the Book of even Christ says, if if
you say here he is, here he is, you know,
don't listen to those who say there he is, Like, that's.
Speaker 6: Not how it's going to. It's going to it's going
to happen.
Speaker 1: So in terms of mapping, that's one of the things
I want to offer, and the other the other part, though,
I want to offer, in terms of relationality, in terms
of the trinity, is we always have to remember that
the that the trinity is not just relationality.
Speaker 3: It is one, yes, of course, right.
Speaker 1: It's you always have to keep that a poor ya
present for it to for it to be the the
So it's both the one in some ways of the
new Platonists, but it also is the fullness of of
of relationality in the multiple. Right, So it's it's those
two things at the same time. But it avoids it
avoids the problem of gnosticism, and right the problem of
the the degenerate of the degenerate manifestations. You could say,
right that manifestations or or or or things that proceed
from the one are immediately you know, degenerate for that,
for that, for that reason anyway, So there are a
few things I wanted to offer, but it's mostly Jordan.
Speaker 6: You have to.
Speaker 1: I think you're the You're the A lot of it
was was about the things that you said, so.
Speaker 4: Go ahead, yeah, when you said about the logos, so
what I was noticing was perhaps the CrOx precisely, the
y yeah is known as the hypostatic union because the
logos incarnate affords a different quality of relationality than the
logos in general. That's so if I'm Laos Sue endeavoring
deeply to come into relationship with the way, there's so
far I can go, you know, if I'm a neoplatonist
contemplating the one, there's so far I can go. But John,
now you the apostle. John actually meets Jesus, and that's
a completely different kind of thing. It's very different.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 4: It's as similar as saying, my ability to know my
wife by virtue of reading her biography and by virtue
of actually loving her directly, and so the ability to
actually enter into a human scale relationship with the logos
incarnate is a qualitatively different kind of thing. And I
think there's a lot going on there, and it's the inverse,
and it very powerfully bound inverse than the Crucifixion, and
these things are yoke together powerful as also. Jonathan, mindful
of the talk you gave at the Symbolic World Conference
in the Son of Man, I've seen whatever images were
coming to me when you were talking. Then I was
seeing those images coming up when jama was speaking earlier.
So I mean, ultimate we're really talking about is Christ.
Ultimate we're really talking about, obviously, and sometimes the thing
that differentiates Christianity as a way of doing this sort
of thing is Christ, and Christ is the incarnation, the actual,
not just the logos as an abstraction that we can contemplate,
which the Greeks do at the highest level, and l'ao
suda is at the highest level the way the logos,
but the fact that there's something about the particularity of
the eruption of the eternal into the chronological in a
particular moment in space and time, and what that does
in terms of affording our ability as in fact quite
distinctly finite beings, right with the very limited capacity to
enter into relationship with the ultimate in terms of affording
that what would be called the hyposthetic union. Right, This
this paradoxical a poia that happens at that level of
how the finite and the infinite can actually grow in
that relationality.
Speaker 2: I want to properly pause here in case either one
of you want to say some more, because that was
a lot, and it was good when it was rich.
Speaker 3: I am.
Speaker 2: So the escatological that the map is incomplete. That is
of course also not unique to Christianity. Buddhism has Matreya,
the coming Buddha, and there is no map. So the
the eschatological sense is again found elsewhere. That's just one
example I can give others. And so although I think
I hear an argument building, Yeah, all these things are
found elsewhere, but you can only find all of them
in sort of your one stop enlightenment shop or something
that's Christianity. But maybe that's the argument that's building here.
We'll see if.
Speaker 3: That's what we're working towards. Now.
Speaker 2: The idea that the logos is incarnate in a specific
historical person, well, Buddha nature was present in Sadhartagatama, and
people met him historically, and that's how Buddhism was founded,
and and and and so that's not the Christian doctrine
of incarnation. But that's not fair. You can't say the
Buddhist don't have the they have that the Dharma was
embodied in a way right that ignited a religion, right,
and and and so again that would be the case, Jonathan.
I agree with you about the rejection of gnosticism and
many versions of neoplatonism. But as Filler himself argues, if
you properly understand neoplatonism, it doesn't have the one and
the relationality are always held together in the notion of
ultimate reality. It's not the one and relationality. And because
it's not a numerical one and it's not a substantial one,
it's the oneness of intelligibility in that sense. You So,
now you may say, but what I have I want
to I want to do this very carefully, you mate,
You might be saying that, but in some sense you both.
Speaker 3: Feel that's the wrong word. Sorry.
Speaker 2: You both sense that you have had this personal relationship
with Jesus and I'm not saying that in a dismissive fashion.
You understand that, please, Okay? Is is that what this
is coming down to ultimately, because I.
Speaker 6: Just it really depends what you what you mean by that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, fair enough, fair enough, fair enough.
Speaker 1: Because I I've heard versions of that that are that
I wouldn't identify with.
Speaker 6: Let's just say, ah.
Speaker 2: Well, let me say let me let me help you there,
because you know, here's here's where, here's ways in which
it doesn't work for me. Because people will say I
feel the presence of Jesus and he's telling me to
do X, and then this person over here says, I
feel the presence of Jesus and he's telling me to
do not acts. And it's like, oh really, oh this
makes no sense to me whatsoever. Like that kind of
stuff does isn't going to track as an argument because
it just doesn't line up with the with the facts.
Speaker 3: Okay, So.
Speaker 4: Go ahead ahead, dere Yeah, so, and I knew this
about you, Jonathan, But I imagine, for example, when when
you have an actual experience of profound grief, utterly shattering
right well again, well beyond maps, well beyond any notion
deeper than your faith and a grief deeper than your faith,
and you notice that there's something there. You're not alone
in that grief. There's nothing else that you can imagine, right,
but you're beyond mind, You're definitely beyond meditation. And you
as you're into that, you noticed that that something has
qualities and a way of naming those qualities is love.
So that's that would be an example of what that
means like when you, when you really, really really go
to the experience of a profound relationship with how loss
works and the shattering of your ability to enter into
identity at all, you notice that non duality is not
the actual thing that's at the bottom, that there's something
more fundamental than that, and the only way we can
talk about it would be the thing that is called love.
The same thing happens, by the way, from my point
of view, if you go all the way to the
highest level. But that's a little bit trickier from my experience.
Speaker 2: So can you say that last thing, because I so,
first of all, thank you for that.
Speaker 3: That's a powerful and rich thing to say. So I'm not.
Speaker 2: You're aware that it's deeper than non duality. You're invoking,
You're invoking spatial metaphors, which of course are transcended by
non duality. So I'm trying to get out what that
so I might have a sense of what you're talking about.
People talk about a sensed presence which is neither objective
nor subjective, neither emanating nor emergent, but deeper, and that
you don't know it by You don't know it by
other than participating it and being it. But what I
don't mean in a logical identity sense, when you're very
when you're deeply in love with somebody in an a
gopic way, Is that what you mean? And I again,
I'm not trying to do a Judo move on you.
I'm trying to understand.
Speaker 4: No, I get it. I mean people we're talking about here,
talking about doing neuves surgery, which is perfec This is
where this is where we are by the way I
mean we meaning the species, where the species is actually
here that we gotta get this shift figured out. There's
no more knocking around, beating around the bush. We have
to take the level of care and precision and actually
embodied love and clarity. It's necessary. So let's see hm
hm m hm ah man. What I noticed is that that,
Oh okay, nice. So what I'm gonna do is I'm
gonna say something and it's actually going to be trick, okay,
but it's it's the best thing I can get out
of my mouth right now, and an endeavor to laborably
get there.
Speaker 3: I'll take it charitably, Jordan, I promise.
Speaker 4: And by the way, I'm gonna reinforce it. It has
to be this has to be three. Yeah, you're you're,
you're participating. Hmm. So if we go towards the direction
of joy and so joy and grief being gates to
this relationship. What we notice when we get to profound
levels of joy is a feeling of the presence of
the infinite, like a proximity towards something which is of
the nature of the transcendent yet in the realm of
the Internet, and something that is something that we are
able to experience, but is increasingly accelerating beyond anything that
could actually be present or contained within experience, within the finite.
So we accelerate in that direction, and as we move
in that direction, what we begin to notice is that
we do not actually dissolve into that, but rather are
embraced by it and that's the key. The key difference
is that the relationship between the infinite and the finite
is not a mistake. There's nothing about the way the
creation is that is not good, and that there's the
ability for us to be in a relationship that is
governed by that as a fundamental is howm I say, Hell,
they I can't. It's not my words. Somebody else has
to say it.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 1: I think that the thing that comes to me when when, when,
when you're saying what you're saying, is that the Christianity,
I believe Christianity really does in its highest instantiations, really
does have a sense that the source of reality is
is nondual.
Speaker 6: Right, that the way that we.
Speaker 1: Describe God as a trinity is a way, is a
way to describe the infinite. Right, not a way, but
it's a it's a manifestation of the infinite in a
in a type of a porea that joins unity, emulcility together.
Speaker 6: You know, sam Maximus says things like God is being
a non being, you know he language.
Speaker 1: Now, I think what what Jordan is bringing up, which
which I think is is really important in in the
vision of Christianity, is that Christianity deeply understands that that
nondual is not is not in other it's not a
vortex that swallows the world into it, right, that's not
something that out of that wants to call you out
of being, that wants to call you of reality into
into into some like infinite uh bliss or whatever that
in that In fact, what it does is that it
affords all of reality in it, but in a specific way. Right,
there's a specific manner in which it makes the world exist,
you know, And and that way it is surprising at
the outset because that in that way is something like
self sacrificial love, and that the self sacrificial love is
the mode of existence. And so Christ manifests that in
the extreme. I manifest that in the you know, in
a way that is kind of almost unbearable to to watch.
But it becomes it becomes an image of how it
is that that we can participate in non duality without
without escaping the world. We're not escaping our desires, we're
not escaping our bodies, we're not doing any of that stuff.
We're not we're not denying any of the goodness of
the world. And what that looks like is that image
I think it's that image that I that I mentioned
in the in Revelation, which is the King and the
sacrifice together right, the highest and the lowest going together
and one of them affording the other.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: The reason why Christ is king is because he was
on the cross, and you know, and and vice versa,
that image of Jesus on the cross with the sign
above that says the king, this is the king, folks uh.
And I think that that that all of Christianity is
about that, and that's why everything that Christians argue in
the first centuries about the nature of Christ, about preserving
his divinity, preserving his humanity. You know, all of these
questions are about the way in which none the transcendent
is actually the that which makes the the imminent exist.
And that's the that's the balance that that Christianity brings
brings about.
Speaker 6: Now, I don't know if there are other.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm not I'm not an expert on all
world religions.
Speaker 6: I don't know if there are other forms that have that.
Speaker 1: You know, that that anchor right, that that hold.
Speaker 6: What I see in many other religions.
Speaker 1: Is is a tendency to emphasize the escape right. We
have to and Christians, by the way, follow them that
all the time. And Christians actually will tend to say
things die and go to heaven like that kind of language.
It's it's actually profoundly not Christians. It's such a it's
such a habit that humans have to want to want that.
But when you look at even the Bible, or if
you look at the way that the Fathers talk about Christianity,
it's not it's not at all that type of it.
Isn't that escape right, It's like the Kingdom of Heaven
is not the same as Heaven. It's that it's that
joining together.
Speaker 4: Right. Yeah, So again, I'm I'm actually gonna be playing
with wooden knives right now that you're gonna get that.
I think this might get there. So an invitation to
break the wheel of karma, a vow not to the
real crime until every other conscious being, sentient being has
done so, sentient sentient being, compared to an invitation to
get on your cross. That the proper orientation and the
transcend it with the inminet is to pour itself into it,
to actually so utterly love creation and this, yeah, this
is this is it. So it's the key is like
man Christians get this wrong all the time.
Speaker 2: By the way, can I just interject it and very
one phrase. I respect the fact that you're demonstrating genuine
reasonableness of entering into self criticism. I just wanted to
I just wanted to appreciate that. So please go, please
go ahead.
Speaker 4: Yes, I think actually in some sense you maybe speaking
for the comments as well. Everybody. John just said, this
is genuine reasonable. It's not just in common. Okay, let's see.
So it's it's it's almost like the reverse direction, this
notion of escape versus immerse right. The call is not
to alleviate suffering. The call is actually to recognize that
the world is so rich that suffering is intrinsic and meaningful.
Something like that, that God, the actual transcendent, you know,
Buddha nature, but in this case comes into reality and
lives directly with other people and suffers, in fact, not
just suffers, but allows himself to take on the fullness
of suffering, not to have us escape it, but to
remind you that that's actually the thing we are not.
It's not like, oh man, suffering was an error. Tell
you what, guys, I'll give you a suffering band aid.
So nobody ever suffers anymore. That's not the thing. It's rather, no,
the way this thing is supposed to work is you're
descending into a deeper and deeper capacity to suffer, because
that's what engagement with reality actually is, is to undergo,
to undergo reality experience, and to grow and to mature.
And so instead of dying and escaping, what happens is
you die and you enter into even deeper capacity to
enter into a relationship with a large and ever expanding reality.
In this again, this is the opposite of a naive
notion of non duality, which is an elimination of difference,
right right, It's actually no, no, it's an embracing of
difference and a deeper wholeness that produces a deeper capacity
for differentiation in an ongoing unfolding.
Speaker 2: Okay, this was really good, and none of these compliments
I'm giving you are facetious, so I'm trying to put
a couple of things together. You got that this is
like an extended version of the reciprocal opening what you
just did. So you're acknowledging that that's good, and I
take it that that's what you mean by joy. The
problem when people hear joys, they just mean they think
intense pleasure, and that's not what we're talking about here.
And of course you can forgive them for that, because
we have this stupid word enjoyment, which just means intense pleasure,
which really messes people up. Okay, So we've got that,
and we've got the idea that this reciprocal opening can
be very Jonathan was pointing to, like there's a universal
temptation to misunderstand, misconstrue the reciprocal opening as escape. Rather,
it's an entering into deeper and deeper relation, is right,
And that's properly a gopic, right, because it's anagogic, a
goopic together.
Speaker 3: Is that landing fairly? Okay?
Speaker 2: And then the idea here is that what Christianity offers
is an alternative in which onto normativity being as fundamentally good,
not ethically good or aesthetically good or even epistemically good,
right beyond the true and the good and the beautiful,
it's just good being is good in this in this
ontological sense. And that's what I heard you saying, in
some sense, is that is that fair? Like you're getting
a sort of a reading of Genesis, God looks at
the world is good.
Speaker 3: He does.
Speaker 2: He's not making a moral judgment, he's not making an
aesthetic judgment, he's not making an epistemic judgment because he's God, right,
so he's he's saying something else. He's saying that being
is intrinsically good. Qua being just by being, it is good.
So that's why escape is fundamentally wrong, because if being
is intrinsically good, seeking to escape from it is intrinsically wrong.
Speaker 3: Am I getting your argument correctly?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, And that's it's interesting too about for example, Christian Christian.
Speaker 6: Theosis, like the notion of Christian theosis is.
Speaker 1: You know, I remember when I was first interested in
Orthodoxiology and I had read a lot of esoteric texts
from other traditions. There was something about Christian theostis which
annoyed me because it was like it wasn't the real,
it wasn't the full thing. It wasn't like the complete, absolute, ecstatic,
you know, elimination of me. And then after that I
thought I realized, well, actually, no, wait a minute, Like
I think that all things are good and so right,
say Maxwell says that we participate, that we become God
to the extent that that's possible. That's that's just the
that's in phrases he uses. Is what he means is
in something like we become God to the extent that
the world can, that you continue to exist, that you
continue because your being is good, as is good, it
has a goodness. You don't want to completely snuff out
the particularity that God has put in the world. And
so and it's when I kind of understood that that
I realized that the image of theosis that Christianity presents
is something like the fullness of all things, right, so
all things are mirrored, are these reflections of God, and
that that is the fullness, That is the fullness like
that that is more full in a very mysterious way.
I don't know how to say it metaphysically, but that
is more full than just the non dual God, right,
just the the the God that transcends all things, that
God that transcends all things, creating the world in love
so that it becomes a transparent reflection of Himself in
a way that doesn't destroy any of that particular but rather,
you know, gathers it in love, in multiplesity and unity.
That that's a bigger vision actually than being a drop
that goes back to Brahma.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm not here. I'm not going to. I'm not
trying to defend.
Speaker 6: No, no, I don't want to. I'm just using example to
say why.
Speaker 1: I think, you know, even my own process of kind
of seeing what what was precious about.
Speaker 2: But I think this is good by the way I
think you're making so like I mean again, I think
this is if I think we're getting into the logos.
I feel like these are good answers that are like,
are provoking me in a socratic way. I feel that,
and I just want to share that that's what it's
happening for me. Okay, so that's good. So now can
I in that spirit? There's two things here, So I
mean this, this issue has been broached in some very
deep interpersonal inter religious, i should say, but also interpersonal
dialogue which goes onto the logos. Uh, there's Cobb's book,
you know, a dialogue, a Buddhist and Christian dialogue that
is mutually transformative. And then even more importantly the anthology
around the work of Maso Abbe, which Christians and Jews
and others replied to, in which he said it's called
emptying God, in which he said, well, what we're ultimately
talking about here is canosis, right, And he basically says, well,
doesn't canosis ultimately require right, the emptying of emptiness itself?
This zen notion and he says, I don't seek Christianity,
getting uh to that in some way and a way
of making this perhaps a little bit more creep concrete
as Jonathan sort as Jordan keeps calling us back to
his I get what you're saying.
Speaker 3: How how do you make sure this isn't.
Speaker 2: Just a crypto egoism, which is I don't want to
I don't want to cease to exist, and that's why
this so good.
Speaker 1: But think about how what it looks like in practice.
But it looks like in practice is I am constantly trying.
Speaker 6: To cease to exist. That's in the sense that.
Speaker 1: That Christianity, the idea of kinosis and of self empty.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, keep going.
Speaker 1: Christianity functions is like humility, self sacrifice, you know, of
giving yourself, giving yourself in love and the surprise or
or or the surprise really that that's the actual anchor
of being, That that's the actual anchor.
Speaker 6: Of how you how you exist? Uh, you know and
the and and the and the resurrection in the end.
Speaker 1: You know, what is resurrected is all my gestures of
self sacrifice are resurrected into me, but me in I
mean obviously in a mysterious way, in a mysterious So
there is something everything about Christianity is this kinosis with that.
Speaker 6: Understanding that you can't understand.
Speaker 1: Any of it, like why is why don't okay, why
do we have all these things? Like you know, it's
like everything about it is this empty that that brings fullness.
Speaker 2: Okay, So you're saying something really good, and I want
to push on it because I believe you're not making
a performative contradiction. A performative contradiction is when you're making
a claim that undermines your ability to make the claim right,
Like if if it is if I were to say
right now, I am completely unconscious. No, no, I have
to be right a performance And I agree with Whitehead
that performative contradictions are much more important than right propositional contrabas.
Speaker 3: Okay, okay, so good.
Speaker 2: So one way it sounds like you're doing is you
sound like saying, well, I'm pursuing this because right I
think this dissolving or disappearing is really good. And then
what I'm trying to do is I follow this is
to try to dissolve and disappear, and that sounds like well, no,
like who are you to make that? Like do you
see why? There's a bind there?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: And you are pushing up against that. I want to
give you space because I agree with what you just said.
I think we're really again good deal logos, We're really
moving into the heart of this. This really hangs on
kenosis or obviously agape, but right it hangs on it
in a really really crucial manner. Okay, so I'm presenting
this as a bit of a paper tiger. I hope
for you it's like, oh, you're not saying that, but
say why you're not saying that more?
Speaker 3: Okay, Well, so Simpaul.
Speaker 1: You know, Saint Paul has this image where he says,
it's not it's that, it's not I that live a
Christ that lives in me. And yeah, you know, it's
a beautiful sentence because it's it capturs the the it
captures the paradox, which he's not.
Speaker 6: He's not actually saying I don't exist anymore.
Speaker 1: Saying it's it's Christ that lives in me, and so
he's affirming himself to the extent that he is a manifestation.
Speaker 6: Of the logos, and that is what is left.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 6: The way to go to get there is to.
Speaker 1: You know, is to shed right, to shed a lot
of the things that I my passions, the things that
I care about, but that ultimately once I do that,
once you do that and you you can experience it practically,
it's not like I'm going to get to the end
of it and all of a sudden, I'm going to realize, oh,
I've been I've been self sacrificing this whole time, and
so now finally it's like you see it happening NonStop,
which is that you when you enter into a loving
relationship with someone and you let go of your just
proper desires and all the things that you want and
you kind of seed way to that, then you realize
that it brings the person you and them together and
what what comes out.
Speaker 6: Of it is more than what was there before.
Speaker 1: And so you're like, oh, wait a minute, it's not
it's not like this one thing that I'm doing, like
you know, I'm stacking all my good work so that
when I died and you know what I mean, It's like, no,
I'm noticing it happen every day every time that I
that I enter into that motive being where I'm where
I'm where I'm not holding on and I'm not grasping.
Speaker 6: Then what happens is I see more come out of it, and.
Speaker 1: I see more of of myself, Like I see more,
I see more of who I truly am right to say.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you're saying you're this you. First of all,
I hear a couple of things here. There's the realization
that the self is inherently diological, not a monad, a
SELFI isolated thing, but it exis diologically, because that's your argument,
I think depends on that. Secondly, you're invoking reciprocal opening again,
and you're saying, if you put those two together, the
self is diological and reciprocal opening. You can move from
being ecocentric to reality centric. But that doesn't feel like
a loss. That feels like a gain. Is that okay
so far?
Speaker 6: Yeah? Yeah, i'd say that.
Speaker 2: Okay, really good, this is very good. So is it
fair to say I'm not trying to be I'm not
trying to be deductive. I'm trying to be diological, so
I'm not trying to be reductive. But is this is this?
Is this the grounding of your faith? Do you know
what I'm trying to say again, I'm not talking about
propositions being derived from more deeper propositions. We've gone through
this thing about how do you get the particularity of
your Christian faith? Is this in that sense? Please be
fair to me. In that sense? Is this the grounding
of your Christian faith? The way I just described it?
Speaker 4: Hmm? Okay, So I'm going to say it back to
you with yes, slightly different way, but I think I
heard you.
Speaker 6: So.
Speaker 4: So all three of us happen to be fathers, yes, children,
and we have the first person experience therefore of the
canosis that is intrinsic in parenting, all the way down
to the color of the hair and your.
Speaker 2: Beard and yeah, and the loss of your life you
lose years for every child.
Speaker 4: Yes, absolutely, And to the unique qualities of possibility of
joy that are exclusively possible in this creative act gated
or mediated simultaneously by both the canosis and the communion,
and the unparalleled degree of new qualities of grief available
also in this experience and in the recognition in yourself
that both in spite of and because of the aforementioned,
it is incomprehensible that you could be even vaguely who you.
Speaker 3: Are absent that right, right, right right.
Speaker 4: That's probably the closest to the grounding of my faith
that I can get to. I have a process where
I go, oh, oh, oh, right, if my grief at
the suffering of my children is ex how much greater
is God's grief as the suffering of all of creation?
And I noticed that there's something about the these connections
where I can have a sense of real empathy down
and suddenly have a really weird sense of empathy. Uh huh,
I get it. I get it now, I get you
got in a weird way because I kind of now
I get my dad, oh, my actual dab, which I
didn't get before when my kids do something like, oh,
I get it. I get what was going on in
the experience of a being who loves me from the
outside like from before I existed, and understands me in
a certain context. And then through that line there's a
way of having a quality of relationship with Abah and
so that like the rightness of that, the way that
that actually develops the way that grounds everything else, and
by the way we missed out also philosophically and metaphysically. Yeah,
I would say that's probably the ground of my faith.
Speaker 2: So I heard you saying I want to put two
grounds together. If you'll prevent me from I hope I'm
not grinding things. But like so, there was this one,
which is the ontonormativity, the goodness of being, And therefore
any attempt and I'm picking up on Jonathan here, any
attempt to escape is ultimately misguided. And then I'm filling
that commitment to onto normativity yet entering into reciprocal opening,
deep air relationship with the goodness of being, and the
best way I experience that is in the Kenosis understood
as a gope. Because of course, parental love is the
metaphor the paradigmatic example of a gopic love, and Christianity
captures that. Sorry I don't have the right verb here,
but just let me use that word captures that very
well for you?
Speaker 3: Is that is that? Did I say it back to
you in a way that lands well?
Speaker 4: The captures part is not quite right, So yeah, it's
right with it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I don't like it, but something like that, it's.
Speaker 4: More like strengthen clarify.
Speaker 3: Okay, the Fords makes possible and support.
Speaker 4: So Fords is pretty supportant in both pattern matches. But
more than pattern matching provides a model, and more than modeling,
provides the embodied body of the church, right natural living
incarnation of the thing that the model is conveying. That
is real in the sense that all the things that
I know in my deepest wisdom are the right ways
to be in relationship with other people are lived in
the community of my church.
Speaker 2: Okay, So Christaul, thank you for this. You're both being
very charitable to me, and I appreciate that. I do
think there are versions of Buddhism that are committed deeply
to non escape. Zen is a clear example of that.
The idea of nirvana as escape is explicitly, completely, repeatedly rejected.
And then and there is the self emptying aspect in
relationship to that, And then there is the you know,
it's not I who live, but the Buddha nature that
lives in me. All of these, if you'll allow me,
and I'm searching for words, all of these functions, I'm
trying to use a neutral term, are found.
Speaker 3: There equally well.
Speaker 2: Now I'm not saying they're found equally well in all religions.
I'm not saying that. I'm not saying that. Okay again,
I'm I'm I'm You're doing.
Speaker 3: What I'm asking you to do.
Speaker 2: You're showing me why this doesn't degenerate into, you know,
a liberal toleration kind of thing.
Speaker 3: Right, So what would you say?
Speaker 1: I mean, well, does does does Zen let's say, formulate
the infinite as relational to the finite?
Speaker 2: Yes, and so we can enter into emptiness's form form
is emptiness exactly explicitly.
Speaker 1: So so I mean, I know this is going to
sound weird, but then why isn't Why don't people pray
in Zen?
Speaker 3: They do?
Speaker 2: So I I happen to know is Zen roshi and
he prays and he chants and and and and so forth.
Speaker 4: What is what is? What's the infinite? Like? Does it
have humor?
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, Jordan, You're gonna be more precise in what
do you mean by that question?
Speaker 4: Well, you know, one of the things of something that
has a character relationship is that it has a character relationship.
And so the question is something like.
Speaker 3: Well, Okay, let me answer that. Let me answer that first.
Speaker 2: Okay, So you know this is Shallenberg who's an atheist,
but he says, what we're talking about, what we're talking
about sacred is you know, it's ultimately real and again
not in the neutral sense and the ontonormative. I want
to participate in it. So that's a relationship term. I
want to participate in it. I want to conform to it.
I want to reciprocally open, I want to really I
want to be realized by it as I realize it
all of that. Secondly, it's ultimately orienting, like people reorient
towards it, right, and.
Speaker 3: It's ultimately transformative.
Speaker 2: It causes, you know, this deep deep, the deepest possible
transformation from being egocentric to being profoundly reality centric.
Speaker 4: But about you, that's the question. Does it care about you?
Speaker 3: Why does that matter to you?
Speaker 4: That's a question. It might matter a lot, but it's definitely.
Speaker 2: Well, so here's okay, if we let's do that. I mean, I'm.
Speaker 4: Basically trying to do like, what are the dots and
see where the patterns match and if the isomorphic there
isomorphic And this ends up being something that may not
be isomorphic and then we can talk about it.
Speaker 2: Right, Okay, So the the concern there is I would
I guess I'm going to try and speak on behalf
of a zen person.
Speaker 3: That's a little bit tricky.
Speaker 4: But speak on behalf of the Buddha specifically.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, drown will now be the Buddha, the Tathagata, right,
you know. So my concern, and I mean this is
this is and this is not a concern that's like weird.
A lot of Christian theology has been responding to this concern,
which is the anto theological critique. The problem when you
start saying it cares for me or He cares for me,
is it sounds like you're turning God into a person,
and persons are prototypical Aristotilian substances. In fact, that's Aristotle's
primary example of what a substance is a person, which
I don't think is a good translation of hypostasis, by
the way, And it's like that seems to me to
be making a category mistake. If if ultimate reality, I'm
gonna let you use the word God for what you're
talking about, right, because we're trying to see the two meat.
If ultimate reality is pure relationality in this non escapist
form of non non duality that seems to preclude it
from being any kind of thing.
Speaker 4: Mm hmm, so could you could?
Speaker 1: I mean, I think we're using analogies here, but obviously
it's hard to talk about this.
Speaker 3: Yes, it is.
Speaker 1: It is I think the way to understand the Jordan's question,
which which is perfectly legitimate from a Christian standpoint, because
we say God loves me, right and so.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I don't love my child because they love me.
That's the that's not a gope. I love God Spinosa right,
You shouldn't if.
Speaker 1: You genuine then is there a sense of that relationship
with the infinite?
Speaker 6: Like is there a sense that.
Speaker 3: They love it? They love they love If that's what.
Speaker 4: You're as them.
Speaker 3: Why do you want that? You're a gopic You don't
want what you love to.
Speaker 6: I'm not thing what you want. I'm saying, look it.
Speaker 4: Then I need to have the toutality of all possible
elitionality contained within the ultimate, and an ultimate that does
not contain the affordance for relate to for loving John
literally logically is less than one that does. So that's it.
Speaker 2: No, No, because you're engaging to what sounds to my
mind like a performative contradiction. You're involved, You're invoking ultimate
relationality and then pinning it to the existence of a
specific subject that is capable of a predicate, namely loving.
Speaker 4: Okay, good, good good. No, So that's that's that's perfect.
It's called it the This is the Aristotilian error.
Speaker 2: Okay, I like that name. I don't like Aristole, so
go ahead, yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: So what I mean is I don't like the standard
reading of Aristotle that's got taken up in modern plows.
Speaker 4: Yeah. So this this notion that obvious say it right?
For God to love you, God must be a person
in the sense of the substance.
Speaker 3: Not right, Yes, we agree on at them.
Speaker 4: So for love to unfold the infinite qualities that are
intrinsic to the nature of love, it must include within
itself the quality of loving John, in fact, loving all
John sells and all the John's quantum states. Right, but
John specifically is the example, using right now and any version.
Speaker 2: Of love all my quantum states I love that.
Speaker 4: Hey, the infinite is really big.
Speaker 2: That's a actually is not really big. The infinite is
not really big. Canter was going to jump all over
you for that one.
Speaker 4: And so any any way of endeavoring to how do
you say it? Any ontological? That's not right either.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is hard, and I understand that I'm pushing
both really hard. But you're being very kind for me
to me.
Speaker 4: I'm not. Yeah, I don't know about John, but I've
been doing a Monday Wednesday fast and so sorry Friday Wednesday, Friday.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Jordan.
Speaker 4: I thought I'm not going to break fast. I'm ready
to go with John on this.
Speaker 6: You don't have to do a strict fast.
Speaker 4: In the Actually being faint is probably perfect, the perfect
state in my weakness, just strength is.
Speaker 3: Jordan? Can I say one thing that might be helpful?
Speaker 2: Not because I think it's full agreement, but it might
close the distance and give you something to work with.
Speaker 3: I feel.
Speaker 2: Welcomed, enveloped, afforded by a gape by Logos, right, But
I don't I wouldn't say that. I wouldn't want to
create the scent and agape Logos loves me, even though
it's analogous to what it's like when somebody's loving me.
Are you saying that because it's Binosa's fine with that too.
The same love by which I love God is how
God loves himself, and the love by which God loves
me is the same love that I have for reality.
Speaker 3: That's that kind of thing.
Speaker 4: No, No, what I'm saying is that the totality of
all possible ways of entering into the relationship of love,
including the ones that you have with your son, but
not limited to and much more, is contained in love,
which is the name of God.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: But it I mean so again, I tried to say
something and this is a little bit trite. It's something
like saying like and you know, to be fair to me,
Nicholas Ifkuza says this love loves and love is one
with the beloved. He gets the trinity out of love.
There's love, there's the beloved, and there's the loving.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: But he says, there's ultimately just love, and you shouldn't
think of it as love loving, although you can talk
that way. So I'm quoting a Christian here. By the way,
I'm not trying to impose something from the outside. Like
I said, I don't have any problem with the idea
that I I Well, I said it a long time
ago when I talked about agape agape precedes me, it'll
be after me. It is through me, and I am
totally indebted to it, and therefore I feel gratitude and gratefulness.
And of course I mean logos as well as agape.
And for me, that's what it's like to Well, that's
what I hear when people say I'm being loved by God?
Speaker 4: So what about what about something like intimacy?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 4: Sorry quick, I gotta do a rule check. So I
got to go to our resident author, bro. I know
this stuff. Nicolusa a heretic?
Speaker 6: I think is he a heretic? And the orthoctally it's
it's irrelevant. What date is Nicholas?
Speaker 3: Uh, he's what the fifteen hundred?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's irrelevant. It's like it's we don't talk about
that because they're all.
Speaker 4: Here, all heretics. Okay, good, So we could just throw
him out with.
Speaker 2: He's not a heretic in the Catholic Church, which means
unlike and unlike Eckhart, none of his propositions were considered.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that card, even that card, like we don't know
which proposition for questions like yeah, he's being red card
for it has been pretty much re re exonerate, re
exonerated at this point.
Speaker 6: His statements are probably the praises that we're that we're questionable.
They're probably not in his writings anymore. Anyways, we can't.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So the topic that maybe I would put on
there and maybe even leave it there for the moment,
is that there's this notion of the concept of intimacy,
the quality of intimacy that must be present for and
again I'm just sticking here as a straight logic. If
it's if it exists at all in reality, then it
must be an expression of that which is the ultimate.
And the question is is that actually part of this
of the infinite or the one or the ultimate? If
you're if you have a relationship of intimacy, an intimacy
is reciprocal in nature, You're not. You're vulnerable, yes, but
there's also something like a reciprocal vulnerability. Again back to
our the fact that Christ incarnated and actually died on
across for a variety of different reasons. But part of
that is actually there's a reciprocity of relationality.
Speaker 5: Here.
Speaker 4: You're actually entering into into a quality where and by
the way, an actual person, which is important right that
the quality of personhood. It does not define God, but
it's a part of the of something that God is
actually expressing or I agree with you. Of course, the
hypostasis is deeper than persona a. So that's I think
a question is probably worth circling around. Is this very
precise point of what is the essence of the quality
of the relationship of love and where does it sit
in the larger kind of cosmologies and theologies.
Speaker 1: Now, I just want to say something also about about
the idea that God loves us. The way I think
the best way to also understand that is the way
this recip proco reciprocity that we have that you know,
God says, Christ says, love God and love your neighbor.
That's also how God loves you. Right, It's similar to
what you were referring to before John in Dante. You
see it very beautifully. We're actually doing a class on
Dante right now. And the sense that God, the people
that come into your life with with love, that that
you enter into a loving relationship with, they are the
call to love God. They are in some ways the
draw drawing you into the love of God by their love. Right,
you have this beautiful image in the in the comedy
where where basically it doesn't even say that God called
like because it's too high. But there's a sense in which,
you know, the mother of God, the virgin Mary, calls
upon Dante's patron saint, who then calls upon Beatrice, who
then Beatrice then goes and gets Virgil.
Speaker 6: And now Virgil comes to encounter counter Dante.
Speaker 1: And so you have this chain of love which which
moved up right, the ontological ladder into God's love, which
is pulling all these things into him. And so you know,
you know, we can obviously we can experience sometimes glimmers
of the directly God's love. But to say God loves
us is to state is the same thing as to
state that.
Speaker 6: The world is good. It's the same thing.
Speaker 1: It's to say that that that all these all these
aspects of reality are a piece of the ladder. There's
there an aspect of not in a utilityartan way, but
there are a ladder into God.
Speaker 6: They're a step there.
Speaker 1: There's something which is which is possibly revealing God to
me at this moment.
Speaker 6: And if I can be in the.
Speaker 1: Right posture, then I I can climb that ladder. I
can see through the love of those around me through
all the all all of this that's pulling me into
into into God and the and the mysterious, The most
the hardest part of it and the most mysterious part
of it is that sometimes when the love of those
around me is evacuated, where I actually encounter hostility, that
also becomes a ladder for the love of God to
pull me into Him. Because it's as if now it's
a more direct it's a I can, I can I
can have access to a more direct relationship with God
even when I'm being when people when when.
Speaker 6: Christ says, blessed are those that are persecuted for my sake?
Speaker 1: That there's so there's both of those are ways in
which we can have this experience of the way that
God loves us, both through the hierarchy of love of
all the others, but then also when we are when
we are attacked and for for for for wrong reasons,
and you know, for the name of Christ, you can
say you know, and then all of a sudden, the love.
Speaker 6: Of Christ will also pull us into into Him.
Speaker 1: And if you haven't experienced it, obviously it's hard to describe,
but it's something that you definitely do experience.
Speaker 2: So those two those two things Duran's point about intimacy
and what you just said seem to go really well
together in my mind. And I understand, uh, intimacy as
the affordance of reciprocal opening. So I can I have
intimacy if I can in dwell somebody and then they
can indwell me a deep, profound, participatory knowing, and and
then that affords reciprocal opening. And again, I think I
can have that kind of intimacy with what we've already
agreed with ontonormativity, which is really real and I love
it because it's really real, and I do experience it
in like like like Jonathan said in logo, sagape horizontally
with other people and upwardly and downwardly into the depths
and up ontologically. All of that is is the case
I But like I say, and maybe this is me uh,
but I find that I don't deny that I can
whatever everything, I can resonate with that in Christian Jonathan,
I was there on the Gospel seminar, and I made
that clear.
Speaker 3: But right, I also.
Speaker 2: Have that in the depths of Buddhist zen, especially the
depths of Neoplatonism. And and again and maybe this is
ultimately maybe we're pushing on something that is maybe something
that we can't ultimately get out into a formal thing, right,
And I may be, you know, I may I may
be asking for something that I can't ultimately get. What
I hope I've offered is a way of explicating a
lot more what you were saying, Jordan, And this is
a I think this is a much better answer, if
you'll allow me to, Jim, than the one that you
were trying to work out, because I think that's that's
as a friend, because I think this is this is
the kind of thing that is the way you try
to persuade people why you're a Christian in a way
that I think is profoundly has potential to be what
I hope you think it is or wanted to be,
which is profoundly calling to them rather than you know
what I mean. It's like we went down this and
there was a like I thought this was really good.
I thought this was genuine And I'm not trying to
escape now or anything like that, but to understand what
I'm saying, I like there could be a point where
we're looking for a difference that we can't that's ineffable
that like, because I keep saying yes, I have that right,
and and not trivially so because I'll say this and
you'll go, yes, that makes sense, right, And but I'm
not trying to be reductive either. Sorry, I'm now you
can see that I'm running out because I'm starting to
go into a poia, So I'll stop and let you
two respond.
Speaker 3: To what I just said.
Speaker 4: Well, it's interesting. So what I noticed was that I
definitely don't want to persuade anybody. I don't necessarily even
want to call anybody, which is weird because I know
that that's I think, what you're supposed to do.
Speaker 3: But whatever, Yeah, it is kind of.
Speaker 4: All I want to do is tell the truth and
all I want. All I want to do is as
best I can the model that Christ laid down for us,
and to the degree to which you know, the Spirit
puts something for me to do, to do it with
as much skill as I can, which is not much,
because I don't know. It's critical. I don't understand. I
definitely know that it's the weird thing. It's like the
invert that Socrates thing. I am quite certain that I
don't understand how any of this works, and that anything
that I might try to do is definitely a bad
idea in a very particular kind of way.
Speaker 2: And so.
Speaker 4: I'm really glad that you asked us to have this
conversation at a very distinct sense that this is it
will rile a bunch of people up. But you know,
as you said, though it was it called persecuted in
his sake, in his name, But I feel like what
we did was useful in a big way, and good.
Speaker 3: Very good, well, thank you.
Speaker 2: I mean, this is this is, if you'll allow me,
this is I'm trying to and I'm showing up in
good faith. So this was an instrumental or anything I
have affection, I showed up in good faith. But this
is this, this is the philosophical selk road I'm trying
to get to where we can get into these deeply
mutually transformative right the logos about relationships to sacredness, such
that it's reasonable to believe in the Blaban sense that
we're affording the advent of the sacred, We're helped, we're
affording its presencing in people's lives in a way that
could matter to them. And so that's what I wanted
to do. I wasn't, and I hope I showed up
that way. I wasn't trying to refute anything I was.
I wanted I wanted to get the juice out, if
I can put it that way.
Speaker 1: Sorry, I think there's there's also something that this is
and I want to be careful that people don't take
this the wrong way, because I really am a Christian
in every way. I really believe Christianity is the is
the fullest revelation. But there's also a more practical aspect,
which is that there's a real practical aspect to the
to the idea that that we can't be meta like
there's no, we're not meta practitioners. And I think that
that's what that's That's that's important.
Speaker 6: Too, is that.
Speaker 1: Now the reality of being a Christian is not it's
not lived in asking you know, how better is it
from zen?
Speaker 6: Let's say, right, it's it's lived in your.
Speaker 1: Morning prayers and going to communion and to confession and
to you know, and and living it with your family
and your community. So that's also like a that's something
that can be completely ignored right in the discussion that
although there are probably better people than us to argue
like the fine points of theology and of of you know,
and the differences, let's say, in the metaphysics of the
different systems. At least I know that there are better
people than me to do that. But there is also
that other part, which is which I think is important,
which is like I said that.
Speaker 6: The Christianity I live is that's it.
Speaker 1: It's like I go to church on Sundays and and
I live my life in relationship with God, and it's
something that's real and existential and and.
Speaker 6: And I actually, although it has happened in my life
where I've had.
Speaker 1: To ask myself that question, you know about different systems
in moments of crisis, let's say that is definitely not
something that feeds my every day life.
Speaker 6: Like I don't. I don't ask those questions.
Speaker 3: Most of the time, you know, I don't want to truspass.
Speaker 6: Most people don't either, because they live they live in
the world that they live in.
Speaker 2: And I'm not trying to trespass on that at all.
But but but you don't want that to become a
justification of insolarity. No, obviously, because that we I mean,
and this is part of I think we're Jordan, and
I still agree the world needs to form a some
kind of common unity or else we're on a lot
of trouble and it's not going to happen. Now we're
in the practical domain. Now, so we've all agreed with
left down the theology, it's not going to happen by
converting the world into christ Christianity at least you've been
trying for two thousand years. It hasn't happened. And so
I have a good inductive argument. And so I think again,
we now agreed that we've moved into the practical domain.
At this practical domain, trying to afford this kind of
deep the logos is I think what is pertinent now
in that practical domain.
Speaker 1: Well, I think there's there's always there's always room for
learning from each other, you know, And I think that
that's not that I don't think that's that's not a
problem at all.
Speaker 6: I don't see that as an issue, you know.
Speaker 1: And you can even learn from other people's you know,
you can you can meet a Muslim, meet a Zen practitioner,
meet a Jew, meet someone who's not in your religion
and find deep admiration of their moral strength, of their
of their faith, of their you know, of how they're
transformed by by.
Speaker 6: Something that is beyond them. And I think, at least
in my opinion, I don't think that that's an issue
at all for me. And so I think that there
there there has to be ways that we can.
Speaker 1: Encounter others and learn from each other and see what's
good about other other world without it being trying to
formulate constantly which world is better.
Speaker 2: Like, no, you see what I'm saying, Like you just
articulated the philosophical silk Lad that's exactly the philosophical silk
Lad project as you just particulated.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it definitely isn't ideological, right you can say if
it's certain there definitely has nothing to do with competing
ideologies or the desire to create a totalizing, universal meta ideology.
Definitely not that.
Speaker 1: And even eschatologically, you know, if you look at the
way that's described in Scripture, the idea that all people
are going to become Christian is just not there.
Speaker 6: It's just not just not in the it's not in
the story like it actually seems to go the other way.
It actually seems to go like, you know, a bunch
of people.
Speaker 1: Are gonna become Christian, and then people are gonna hate
you and they're gonna persecute you.
Speaker 6: So it's not gonna it's not gonna play out like
in this. I think that that Islam has a more
might have a more more of.
Speaker 1: A a tendency to think that we're just gonna get
everybody's gonna become this thing. Although Christians have you know,
definitely you're evangelized, But I don't I don't see how
how even in the Christianity's own cosmo cosmology, you can
imagine that at some point everybody's just going to become
Christian like in the Eschaton, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean again, I mean there there are Eastern
Orthodox David Bentley Hart who are universalists.
Speaker 3: He's not.
Speaker 4: He's not a universalist in Kronos, Yeah, if you.
Speaker 6: David.
Speaker 1: I love Daved ben Ley Hart. I loved his writings
for many years. I thought he was amazing. I think
that I think sadly, I think he's he's slipping into syncretism.
His universalism is pushing him towards uh more of a
syncretic approach, and so I think that that's kind of
that's kind of too bad. A lot of his ideas
are still really useful, you mean.
Speaker 2: Bad syncretism, because all religions are syncretists in some fashion, yes,
but they're not.
Speaker 3: They're not.
Speaker 1: So every everything that exists is syncretous to some fashion,
and then it finds unity in the multiplicity. But if
you when you fragment, what I mean is that when
you formulated as syncretism, like when you formulated as a
kind of as a as as that kind of multiplicity,
that that isn't joined. That has to be joined in
some kind of unitary practice. And I think that that's dangerous,
like Hodgepodge.
Speaker 8: I think that, I get what you're saying is very
non That would be temptation, right, temptation which is the
inverse of community, that which brings a multiplicity into a
false unity that is actually just a con what's that
called in material science?
Speaker 4: Like we think sand, sand is actually not actually a
whole thing. So something that's interesting just to think about
is the agree to which we each have particular callings
from friends and I think becoming better friends, which is
really fun.
Speaker 3: I love it.
Speaker 4: And those callings are distinct. Right, John is called to
this this philosophical sad road, and that's a thing that's
a role it's a critical element of what's going on.
And Jonathan is, you know, clearly just getting better and
better and looking really good on the Internet and embodying
beauty in a way that is just you know, impossible
to avoid new luck. Right, My calling is to retire
peacefully and quietly in the mountains of North Carolin and
eat barbecue. So it's very liberating actually, I think to
recognize that if we live the way that we're living,
following our calling and entering into relationships that are truly
grounded in this requirement to love one another, then whatever
else is happening, we're doing the right thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm happy with that, and I think it's fair
to say that was my intent from the beginning.
Speaker 3: It was to try and do that.
Speaker 2: I'm sort of done the problematic I wanted to bring
and have you two respond, and again I think you
both responded very well. I genuine idea logos. I got
to places I couldn't get to on my own, and
that mattered to me and make me think.
Speaker 3: Deeper.
Speaker 2: On a more personal note, I'm on a long journey
of a kind of reproach mall with Chris Janity, and
this has been not I'm not saying I'm going to
become a Christian or anything like that, but this coming
to a place where I think I can, as much
as possible, will be healed from just a traumatic apprehension
of Christianity. So I wanted to thank you of that.
Speaker 6: Oh happy we can we can play a role in that.
That's wonderful.
Speaker 1: And so I think I think this was the time
we were where we had allotted to our solid I
think we came to a good spot.
Speaker 6: As you know, these conversations they're always the beginning. It
can go on forever. And so thank you both of both.
Speaker 1: Of you for your time and you're your forthright. Uh,
you know, stance. I really always appreciate it. It's it's
wonderful and uh. And yeah, remind everybody by the way
that I am going to be in Florida with Jordan
Hall also.
Speaker 6: Uh and so there might still be tickets to that event.
I don't know.
Speaker 1: We'll put a link to it if there are tickets
to it. But we're gonna spend a whole weekend together
with a few people, having feasting and drinking wine and
having wonderful discussions.
Speaker 6: It's going to be absolutely great and don't forget.
Speaker 1: That John will be doing a course on on the
Cogsaive Ritual and I'll be part of that as well.
So so so let's let's let's keep, let's keep finding
reasons to speak to each other and and work together.
Speaker 3: So here, here, here, here, all right, everyone.
Speaker 6: Thanks, thanks for your time.
Speaker 3: Take care,