A thoughtful and thought provoking piece. We are what we do, a result of a lifetime, however short or long, of interactions, with other individuals and circumstances. I am flawed because I am human, a learning being, constantly changing and refining my understanding of the people and circumstances I am in. Hopefully, gaining an understanding of the things I react poorly too and the things that bring the best from me. Not peeling back the layers, but re examining the events in my life and others that have made me who I am... The good, the bad and the ugly. Meditation and reflection can help that process I think.
Thank you so much for your insights and fine analytics.
Wow Mark it was a delight to read that article this morning as I venture to the midwales hills above Nantmel to help lead a retreat group for 3 days. It would be a real shame if participants leave without the possibility of finding out who they truly are in thought, word and deed.
Thank you. Mark. A wonderful mind-opening piece - especially the first half in which you undermine any stable notion of self in body or mind - careful and persuasive.
When it comes to choices, 'performances all the way down' doesn't sound to me like 'nothing'. Isn't it the many performed movements, flows, relationships which constitute the onion? Is not this the matrix of energy, love, or even 'Christ' in which everything that exists is merely a disturbance, an ocean wave, owing its existence to that love, that Spirit? I think Iain Gilchrist puts this wonderfully in 'The Matter with Things'.
I suspect this may well be what you are already saying, in different words. I love the idea that we are 'word-formed' but I am inreasingly gripped by the comprehensiveness of the incarnation. The Word did not become more words, but flesh. Now there is no location, within or without ourselves, which Christ does not point to and say: 'this is my body'. By sensing, seeing, hearing, touching we encounter 'the Word of life', and in this ocean of relating we find ourselves, our true, mysterious, totally relational selves.
This is of course the key insight of René Girard, first elaborated in Mensonge Romantique et Vérité Romanesque (translated as Deceit, Desire, and The Novel): the Romantic deception of the True Self - a serpent's apple. Whereas our perception of (our)self is founded on Mimesis.
These are insights which it can also be very profitable to bring to a contemplation of the Buddha's teaching of Non-Self, anatta. Perhaps the liturgical enactment of Buddhist faith teaching and practice is also often overlooked...
He's nothing like that! He said of himself, that his thinking was viewed as 'French' everywhere, except in France. Michael Kirwan's 'Girard and Theology' is a delightful introduction. (You see that I am an Evangelist! It's so frustrating he is so under-appreciated - not least in political life...)
A thoughtful and thought provoking piece. We are what we do, a result of a lifetime, however short or long, of interactions, with other individuals and circumstances. I am flawed because I am human, a learning being, constantly changing and refining my understanding of the people and circumstances I am in. Hopefully, gaining an understanding of the things I react poorly too and the things that bring the best from me. Not peeling back the layers, but re examining the events in my life and others that have made me who I am... The good, the bad and the ugly. Meditation and reflection can help that process I think.
Thank you so much for your insights and fine analytics.
Wow Mark it was a delight to read that article this morning as I venture to the midwales hills above Nantmel to help lead a retreat group for 3 days. It would be a real shame if participants leave without the possibility of finding out who they truly are in thought, word and deed.
Thank you. Mark. A wonderful mind-opening piece - especially the first half in which you undermine any stable notion of self in body or mind - careful and persuasive.
When it comes to choices, 'performances all the way down' doesn't sound to me like 'nothing'. Isn't it the many performed movements, flows, relationships which constitute the onion? Is not this the matrix of energy, love, or even 'Christ' in which everything that exists is merely a disturbance, an ocean wave, owing its existence to that love, that Spirit? I think Iain Gilchrist puts this wonderfully in 'The Matter with Things'.
I suspect this may well be what you are already saying, in different words. I love the idea that we are 'word-formed' but I am inreasingly gripped by the comprehensiveness of the incarnation. The Word did not become more words, but flesh. Now there is no location, within or without ourselves, which Christ does not point to and say: 'this is my body'. By sensing, seeing, hearing, touching we encounter 'the Word of life', and in this ocean of relating we find ourselves, our true, mysterious, totally relational selves.
This is of course the key insight of René Girard, first elaborated in Mensonge Romantique et Vérité Romanesque (translated as Deceit, Desire, and The Novel): the Romantic deception of the True Self - a serpent's apple. Whereas our perception of (our)self is founded on Mimesis.
These are insights which it can also be very profitable to bring to a contemplation of the Buddha's teaching of Non-Self, anatta. Perhaps the liturgical enactment of Buddhist faith teaching and practice is also often overlooked...
I really need to read Girard one of these days. He has long been on my list but I approach French philosopher in much the same way as I do dentists.
He's nothing like that! He said of himself, that his thinking was viewed as 'French' everywhere, except in France. Michael Kirwan's 'Girard and Theology' is a delightful introduction. (You see that I am an Evangelist! It's so frustrating he is so under-appreciated - not least in political life...)