Bill!, It's my training in Philosophy and formal logic talking.
A concept may be rational -- in every sense -- even if no empirical proof or demonstration is yet available for it. For example: "String Theory" in modern Physics may be a rational theory and "strings" may be a rational concept, even if experiments to demonstrate the existence of strings have not been devised, or have thus far shown negative results. Those Physicists working on "strings" think they are being UTTERLY rational and that their science is rational, even if, perhaps, they've been wasting their time for the last 35 years in the development of the theory, or find, finally, that it is un-testable. Of course I know where you're coming from with regard to Zen practice and to our lived experience, especially in regard to realization. I hope I'm coming from there too! ;-) But my Philosophical training sometime asserts myself and wants to see the world adhere to technical understanding and use of Philosophical technical terms. ;-) I know it's "unreasonable" of me. But, hey, my education was very expensive and pretty painful! ;-) Just wait until somebody tells me that I or somebody has "a VALID point": drives me up the wall! ;-) Strong practice, now, --Joe --- In [email protected], "Bill!" <BillSmart@...> wrote: > > Joe, > > Right, sort of. > > To be a 'rationalist' is to be someone who depends on rationality which is > clearly illusory. > > As someone who practices zen which is based entirely on experience I would > hope I would be an 'experientialist' - or a 'realist'. ------------------------------------ Current Book Discussion: any Zen book that you recently have read or are reading! Talk about it today!Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Zen_Forum/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Zen_Forum/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: [email protected] [email protected] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [email protected] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
