Replies

Hi Benjamin,

I very much echo your concern about the balance between intuition and rationality. On this topic I’m quite inspired by the book “Intuiting Life: Process-Philospohical Perspectives on Biology” edited by Spyridon Koutroufinis and Arthur Araujo.

Hi Thom, Tao in Taoism and Confucianism is not out there like an absolute authority. It functions in all the phenomena and also in each of us. or more exactly, Tao and us is one and the same. Although to become conscious of this and the true embodiment of Tao is a long process and a seemingly unsurmountable challenge, it’s after all the belief and the direction. Therefore, it seems to me that the Taoist monks and the scholars of Confucianism traditionally didn’t talk about the “great companion”, “poet of the world” and “fellow suffer who understands”. These terms would personify the idea of Tao, which is not the concern of Taoism and Confucianism. They are more concerned to become embodiment of Tao.

Hi Thom, I think “Heaven” in Confucianism and “Tao” in Taoism have basically the same meaning and they are comparable to the concept of “God” in process thought. I agree it can be understood as constantly creative cosmic force which permeates everything, including ourselves as human beings. As cosmic force, it drives and also lures, as Jay would say, the evolution of the cosmos, of which the evolution of the human life is an integral part. Maybe earthquakes, floods and draughts, and the global warming, whether caused by the follies of the mankind or not, as well as wars and other manmade disasters, all somehow serve for mankind to become wiser and wiser and finally become aware of the cosmic force that is always functioning there in itself.

Hi Tom, I had once participated in a Quaker’s Sunday gathering in Berlin and was very impressed and excited at a Christian gathering in this way. In public life people often try to promote their own opinions, which easily turns into a fight for power, power to influence other people. This is needed to some degree. But as you said, it has to be supplemented with the power of listening, or rather, the capacity to sustain the mutually internal relationship. with that, the true wisdom will rise and make mutual-understanding and transformation possible. There is a quotation from Xunzi (BC 313-BC 238), an important confucianist scholar, which I like very much and find relevant here: to speak with the heart of love, to listen with the heart of learning, and to debate for the public benefit.

It seems to me that an actual entity is God in its primitive sense and God is an actual entity in its fully actualized sense. They are in essence one. but we need both for the consciousness to evolve ……

The most therapeutic contribution of process thought to our days of culture and civilization, as I believe, is it provides a common framework, a cosmology that makes it possible for religion and science to understand each other or at least communicate with each other. That means, the soul/mind and the body start to recognize the importance and validity of each other and cooperate with each other. When they are separated from each other, either of them suffers, as the energy no longer flows between them. And this can have very practical effect upon the healing of physical and mental problems, such as cancer, aging, etc.

Hi Gordon, I’m very much curious that you describe the Church of the Latter Day Dude as a heavily Americanized version of philosphical Taoism. would it be fine that we meet separately via zoom for like around one hour? If you’re interested, could you send me an email? my address is: jinzhenbao@hotmail.com.

Dear Dan, your detailed introduction of your persistent journey of seeking the truth is so moving to me. You and I are exposed to different traditions of spirituality in our life, and our inner thirst for redemption has been manifested in different ways, but the challenges and the sufferings are the same by nature. Luckily we are step by step closer to the true answer, I think, and as a result we can meet together. What a joy.

Hi Jamie, I echo with you in your concern of learning and applying the philosopyof organism to real world experience and problems in the 21st century. my research and interest forcuses on its implication for healing, aging and medicine, and education as well. Look forward to more communication with you.

Hi Eric, your interest in religion, spirituality and philosophy with your background in technology is very much encouraging for me. as an ex-lawyer and ex-lecturer in a university, I have turned my life fully to the understanding of human nature and his/her potential in the past 11 years. This is a radical turn with a lot of challenges. but more and more I’m sure that this is of great meaning for my own life and for this time of human history as well.

Thank you all for responding to my self-introduction. Although I find that our society and culture are kind of too much influenced by the western way of thinking, I think this is an indispensable and unescapable process we have to go through as we need the analytical-discursive cpacity of thinking to develop our relationship with the larger network of society and with the nature and cosmos. in the past days I finished reading “on the Origin of Time” by Thomas Hertog, the student and partner of Stephen Hawking in his late life. Stephen Hawking had totally denied the need of philosophy for understanding the true reality.Physics alone can meet the challenge of finding “a theory of everything”. but in this book it’s said that through his very sophisticated research together with his colleagues, he reached the conclusion that we have to put the human being in the center of cosmological reasoning again. This is a sharp turn. Once the science has fully realized that the analytical-discursive thinking has to work together with our intuition in order to understand the mystery of being, it would become a true revolutionary force at global level.

and also thanks to this very much western-style of truth-seeking curiosity, we come together from different continents.

Hi Chris, I think the combination of process philosophy and the practice of meditation should be able to make process philosphy teachable in high schools, as then the main ideas of process philosophy can be experienced and embodied, and lead to very practical benefits in one’s life. For that purpose, the practice of meditation has to be more integrative, I believe.

Hi Allen, for me, the terms interconnection, interrelation and interaction are not much different from each other, as I think we are definitely changed by all the relations we are exposed to, be it with the nature, with other people or with the other cultures or some ideas, only some are very subtle and some are more obvious and strong, or even intimate.

I think an important challenge when we try to develop our interconnection, interrelation or interaction with any other beings is to maintain the ballance between the need for a self-centered ego and the need for opening-up and having new experiences so that we can grow. For that purpose maybe we first need a vision of a continuously developing ego, becoming more and more conscious of our inherent interrelationship with all the other beings on earth and in the cosmos.This would be a gradual, not radical, way or transformation. with that in mind, it might be easier for us to understand what interrelation, interconnection and interaction means for us and how they should be put into practice in our life, including our relationship with the indigenous ways of knowing.

Hi John, as a Chinese, I had been thinking of being baptized or not when I was at my later 20es and had once been very close to the church. but finally I decided that it’s not possible for me to accept the belief in a seemingly blind way. now I feel I can get settled down in my practice of meditation, study of philosophy, especially the process philosophy and branches of science from the process perspective, communicating with people, and finding beauty and reason in basically all kinds of spiritual traditions and practice. Look forward to more discussion.

Hi David, thank you for mentioning Charles Birch, who seems to me was another professor of biology whose thoughts are influenced by the process philosophy. Recently I’m very much exposed to the application of process thoughts in biology, like Spyridon Koutroufinis and Michale Levin.