Stuff

The semester is in full swing now. I'm TAing again, though without grading papers; I just have to meet with groups in the Intro to Philosophy class who will be giving presentations, to make sure they know what they're talking about and have some sort of way of presenting it which can result in a decent grade. It's not a paid position, but it does yield credit toward graduation.

I also am about ready to turn in my thesis proposal. My more specific thesis topic now is a study of D.T. Suzuki's presentation of Zen, and more recent criticisms of it (especially insofar as they run against his claims to be an enlightened Zen practioner, and hence above dualistic thinking, in which he nonetheless indulges in the forms of nationalism and a reverse orientalism (e.g. The East is spiritual, intuitive, and what not, and the West is mechanistic and analytic and this is all bad).)

In other news, I feel like I've made a breakthrough in my own life. I've been feeling like I have to know the truth, that this is of vital importance, but that at the same time to know anything one must know everything. How many arguments which look watertight can be blown apart with a single observation? So this put me in the not-too-comfortable position of only being able to do a less bad job rather than to actually do a good one, but where not trying at all is worse.

But, going off of some stuff I posted 2 posts ago (on logic and mysticism), with some help from William James (thanks, Scott), I've been able to turn around my view of the world. It is now for me a place of wonder and exploration; if views can be more or less insightful as practical partitions of reality, but none of them is completely true*, then I don't have to worry about getting it all right, but there still is benefit to understanding.

The problem is, this probably puts me outside of conservative Christianity. Not that I would consider myself a liberal, mind you; I just think that the mental demands which many conservative strands of Christianity make are unrealistic when actually followed through to their conclusion (at very least for the average person, though maybe even moreso for the scholar). As I was writing about in the one poem below, it almost makes a virtue out of gambling with your future and the message which you pass on to others. Trying to hold to all of those beliefs without closing my eyes to the realities in the world was itself the root cause for me of turbulence, frustrations, and impatience with others; if the fruit has anything to do with the tree, that can't be what faith is about.