<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=us-ascii"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">Aha moment!!! Thanks Steve<div>Peace....Wanda</div><div><br><div><i><font color="#0056d6">In the Q & A , it is a discourse to find out what's so and make what<br>is actually so clear to everyone present: the student, the teacher and<br>the audience.<br><br>It is said to be how "Stones polishing each other" and learn to speak<br>clearly & wholehearted. "Stones" also do real work besides real<br>discourse.</font></i></div><div><font color="#0056d6"><i><br></i></font><div><div>On Jul 31, 2012, at 7:22 AM, steve har <<a href="mailto:stevehar11201@gmail.com">stevehar11201@gmail.com</a>> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite">I got a 1 to 1 note from Joyce asking what's up with this Wiegel &<br>Harrington exchange about questions.<br><br>I'm guessing she's worried there is some kind of animus in our<br>back-and-forth -or she thinks one or the other of us are in deep weeds<br>of confusion.<br><br>Just to be clear: I have no animus or upset going what so ever.<br>I actually like Wiegel's questions.<br>I'm thinking he is trying to open up some more powerful more lively<br>discorse in this dialogue.<br><br>Personally I like the idea of<br>-sharper questions that move texting forward<br>-sharper questions that cause interesting answers<br>-koans, and cross-word puzzles that make you do an Arsinio Hall<br>reaction like..."Makes you go hmmm?"<br><br>I enjoy obscure references to our common and uncommon literature.<br>Surely Wiegels carp quote [is he carping]? is out of the book the Ronin.<br>So is my retort, by the way: "neither does the severed branch leave the tree"<br>Didn't read the Ronin? Worth it and cheep on Amazon. I think Jack<br>Gilles may have a list of the sections that used to be read as a bed<br>time story in LENS seminars.<br><br>I think Wiegel is on to something by inviting edgy questions and a<br>more focused dialogue - especially in a year celebrating 50 years of<br>past and envisioning 50 years of ICA future.<br><br>By comparison, in the Soto Zen community there is a tradition called<br>"Dokusan" where there is a public, pregnant exchange of views between<br>the teacher & student about what is real and what is important. It<br>often takes the form of Q & A but at a deeper more existential<br>levels...almost anything goes that engages what is ready-to-hand in<br>the exchange.<br><br>Shunryu Suzukii's famous quote comes from this tradition: "In<br>Beginner's Mind there are many possibilities, In Expert's Mind there<br>are few. It implies that fresh questions and real inquiry create fresh<br>answers; which in turn loose their freshness.<br><br>Two short personal examples of teacher-student encounters<br><br>Some questions become life-long inquiries. For example one time Kaye<br>Hayes asked: "Steve, what is one thing that grounds you in history? I<br>said immediately: Satyagraha: Gandhi's term for something like firm<br>grasping for the truth." I'm stilly carrying around that question. It<br>is still alive for me.<br><br>Another time the Sarpanch of Maliwada asked me a question when Chan<br>and I came to visit and to see what Maliwada was -long after the<br>project was over. He offered me tea and I refused to drink it. He<br>asked: "Steve, you came all this way and I see you refuse to drink my<br>tea, why is this? I knew the answer immediately but couldn't say so I<br>bowed Namaste fashion in silence. What I couldn't say but saw<br>immediately that I was afraid to drink the tea boiled in water for<br>fear of becoming ill. It was a foolish fear of course, but the deeper<br>point, I was just just being a tourist in my own life at that moment,<br>just passing through, full of thinking but very little being, very<br>little doing, not much integrity -the kind of integrity that JWM<br>called Maliwada Integrity where what you say and what you do actually<br>fits together, you know you are not a tourist in your own life, just<br>passing through on a tour.<br><br>So in a Soto Community "Dokusan" type encounter, anyone can claim<br>either the role: student or teacher. Often the student asks the<br>teacher a question or offers an assertion, the teacher responds. Or it<br>is the other way around the teacher asks, the student self-selects and<br>engages the question. there is an 800 year tradition of recording<br>these encounters with respect poetry, commentary and picking up the<br>question again and again to squeeze new wisdom out of it.<br><br>In the Q & A encounter people listen for the wisdom point not for<br>animus, not for logic either. The Q & A proceeds until either the<br>student or the teacher bows and steps back realizing the last point is<br>the wisdom point and acknowledging it. The other listeners often "get<br>it" too and write it down.<br><br>There really is no "make wrong" no shame-making or cynicism, no<br>animus, no snarky drive-bys.<br><br>In the Q & A , it is a discourse to find out what's so and make what<br>is actually so clear to everyone present: the student, the teacher and<br>the audience.<br><br>It is said to be how "Stones polishing each other" and learn to speak<br>clearly & wholehearted. "Stones" also do real work besides real<br>discourse.<br><br>In non-poetic lingo some kinds of discourse are performative not just<br>"words. See: "speech acts": <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._L._Austin">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._L._Austin</a><br><br>What IS the "proper" form of dialogue in the dialogue?<br><br>What possibilities do you notice?<br><br>More like this:<br>-acknowledgement of the life and energy of colleagues? Yes<br>-announcements? yes<br>-personal epiphanies and realizations? yes<br>-ICA hopes and dreams? yes<br><br>Less like this [I say]<br>-flights of wistful nostalgia for the past? Boring<br>-ORID in a texting sequence? Meh. In text ORID is horrid. Gets<br>processed in my in box not my heart<br>-aimless chit-chat? Drivel. It drives people away like Wayne Elsworth<br>-people opining more layers of self-referencing abstractions? Thank<br>you Dr. Descartes, who thinks thinking comes 1st before being and<br>doing which might come later [or not]<br><br>Not every dialogue needs whole-hearted intentionality, of course.<br><br>Returning to Joyce's question: what's up with you guys in the dialogue?<br>It is a good question.<br><br>My answer is polishing stones, learning to ask and answer wholehearted<br>questions with wholehearted answers. I think this is what Wiegel might<br>be up to. Anyway it is what I'm up for.<br><br>Joyce's Q is like Brian Stanfield's story from Courage to Lead from<br>his own acknowledged teacher Joe Pierce who had something to say at<br>the Lusaka airport.<br><br>The customs official asked: Have anything to declare Mr. Pierce.<br>Mr Pierce answered the question full-out and whole-hearted.<br>The official stepped back.<br>Stanfield doesn't say if the customs official bowed - or not.<br><br>Do you have anything to declare Mr. Wiegel?<br>[heh, heh, heh]<br><br>Steve<br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br>--<br>Steve Harrington<br>_______________________________________________<br>Dialogue mailing list<br><a href="mailto:Dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net">Dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net</a><br>http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/dialogue-wedgeblade.net<br></blockquote></div><br></div></div></body></html>