Lectern Live Q&A (2.4.26) — The "Underground Man" Problem, Dissociation, and Prayer as Re-centering

36:45That have roles to play, skills to enact, beliefs that are held, perspectives that are held. And scopes of engagement with the world. Yeah. Yeah. I call those ways of being, right? So those all come together to form pretty much the story of your life, right? But when I say story, I don't mean, you know, writing it down, but as in a lived experience. experience. Your autobiographical self, the sense that you can identify with the four-year-old and you're concerned about the 75-year-old. Yes, exactly that. You're a temporally extended agent. That's what a self is. And you're also extended into levels of reflection, which you can stand back and look at yourself.

37:30That's what happens in a good story. There's levels of construal, there's development of agency, et cetera, et cetera. I love that you named that because we're going to come back to it on the back of Lauren's question which i think is absolutely fantastic so in a in in dissociation what's happening is we're putting this the the story of your life including everything that's packaged with it um such that it forms the agent into a liminal space so that it gets it can it can break out of the box right the ways of being that one is it's got a certain way of framing the world it's got a certain way Yeah.

38:07And so the idea is that it can break out of that box, discover something new, and then make a bigger box. Right. So, hone that back in. Is that fair? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, exactly that. I mean, the idea is that dissociation, disruptive strategies, entropy introduction are part of, an irremovable part of development. Yeah. So can I ask, how does that, this is part of the philosophical end of it, how does that relate to being and non-being? so what it does is it actually shows the interweaving of the being of the self um and and it's non-being um that contrary to what we want to think that there's being and then there is non-being as a dichotomy it actually says no no no non-being is interwoven into the very dynamics of the being, of the self, of the agent, of the person.

39:21Yes, yes. Even the doubt that you are real is real doubt. Yeah, and the Buddhists have a metaphor for this, is that, and I tried to talk about this when I was talking to Lex Friedman, that your mortality is not a future death. Your mortality is that you are constantly vulnerable to dying and that you need that or else you can't properly grow. Jesus talks about this too, right? The seed has to be placed in the ground and die in order for the plant to be born.

39:59This is so good because what you're offering gives me like two paths to choose in terms of the question. Because I think they're both relevant. What, what? Well, let's thank the Buddha and let's thank Jesus because this is where, these are the people I'm drawing on to try and to come up with an answer to your question. And Carl Friston as well.

40:24Carl wouldn't want to be placed in the same category as Jesus and the Buddha, but yeah. Well, okay, let's do this. Choose your own adventure style. Would you like to step into the religious practice end of things or would you like to step into the relevance realization camp? The religious practice. Great. Let's do this. So this is Luke's question. How can prayer and other rites be abstracted from a relational ritual context into a removed resonance chamber or a realm of regret and reprimand? And he says here, my lack of respect for prayer as a ritual has to do with its role in reinforcing really repugnant behavior.

41:08Is that just me? Brent Cooper distinguishes between vicious and virtuous abstraction. So how can meditation, prayer, contemplation, confirmation, communion, confession, and other practices go right and wrong? What kinds of abstraction are good? How do we practice them? Yeah, I think this is very good. And there has been a movement on Cynthia Beauregard is, you know, one of the main figures. Again, a woman. I will keep doing this. I will keep flagging how women are taking a leadership role in the advent of the sacred. That this is not a coincidence. Everybody, when you get a chance, keep dipping in or maybe even following you, because I can only dip in.

41:55And Britt Hartley and the journey she's on is really, really interesting and really impressive. And Britt, if you happen to see this, you and I will be talking again, no doubt, soon. But I want to encourage you to keep going. Your work is a tremendous benefit. So Cynthia Beauregard has basically pointed out that there are different types of prayer. And this can get very complex. But one of the main differences, and Lewis, I don't want to be presumptive, but what I'll do is I'll say how you're discussed lands for me. Okay. So one distinction that people make is between petitionary prayer and between what is called centering prayer.

42:41It actually would be better called de-centering prayer if we used McNamara, but she calls it centering. You're getting centered in God. So the point of the prayer is not to ask for anything other than to ask to be re-centered, to be de-centered, and so you become less egocentric and more ontocentric. So that God, it's interesting because it's a kind of abstraction from egocentrism that is then taken back up as the sensed presence of God, right? And so that's how it doesn't just become vicious abstraction. It doesn't just become the Hamlet thing. You abstract out of egocentrism, and then ontocentrism is not an abstraction.

43:30It is a sensed presence. and you get faced and called and placed by God. And I've talked about that and seeing God again for the first time, making use of the excellent work of Mark Wynn. And we're trying to get Mark Wynn to come on the lectern. Mark, if you see this, I absolutely adore your work and I think it is brilliant. I hope we talk. I've reached out to Patrick and I think his work is fantastic and we're going to be talking soon. And one of the great privileges of this is I get to talk to, interact with these people. And so I think prayer, insofar as it's a centering or de-centering, or perhaps now a better word is a re-centering prayer, what we're doing is we're re-centering the locus.

44:19And what happens is we start to realize reality as what Nishitani would say, sort of circumcensual, that anything is the center of everything else. And so God, this is the Neoplatonic tradition, God is the intelligible sphere whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere. And this affords you opening up holographically while emptying out of any, trying to bind it. So nothing is excluded and nothing is enclosed. that's a kind of abstraction that feeds back into an exaptation so that you get a sense presence and i think that's um that's and the fact that it's dialogical in nature is just because the self is dialogical in nature and this is where mcnamara and my work converges quite well a lot of other people's work and all and the parts revolution that's going on and the psychedelic renaissance that's happening all of this are pushing pushing us towards this model because you get ego death and psychedelic experience etc leatherby and others so the way of putting this all together is lewis can you think of prayer as dialogos uh with not a person but it's nevertheless a personal knitter makes this really good in his book uh because i've been talking about this a lot.

45:50Without Buddha, I couldn't be a Christian. He talks about how, right, this sense of it's dialogical and it's personal because as the child is to the adult, the adult is to the sage. So your agency is being exacted in the selfhood. Your selfhood is being exacted in the personhood. And it's personal because your personhood, and you don't leave these behind, the self is nested within the person and the agent is not. The personal is being exacted towards the saint or the sage. And so it's a personal process of re-centering. It's a dialogical, it's a dialogos. Something faces you and calls you and places you beyond your personal egocentric self and agency.

46:39And that's what the prayer can be. So I pray that way. An example of trying to do this, you can do it very concretely. So I've been trying to, I'm reading an excellent book, The Philosophy of Jesus is a Way of Life. and I've been talking to Bishop Maximus periodically is that I have committed to, like I only understood Socrates when I internalized and practiced Socrates. I only understood Siddhartha to the degree to which I understand either one of these individuals when I internalized and practiced and I've done those. I need to do this. And it's obviously deeply challenging for me because of my path, but I'm endeavoring to do this with Jesus, right?

47:24And so, and I'm particularly influenced by Marshall Davis, another person I want to talk to, because he has, he's got an interpretation of Christianity and Jesus in terms of non-duality, and it's brilliant. His exegesis, he wrote a little book called The Gospel According to Jesus, which is the gospel told from the perspective of Jesus. And it's just, oh, anyways. So one of the things is, and you can hear the Greek worry here. The Greeks got terrified when they realized their gods were only immortal and not eternal. This is one of the sparks of philosophy. I pray. So there's an impulse that comes up in me, comes up in all of us.

48:09If only I could live forever. Right. And this, this is for Buddhism, this is the thirst. This is the deep attachment. Right? So when that comes up, I let it swell up and we, as it's about to be spoken, may I live forever. I turn it, it's like Tai Chi. I play with it. Yeah, I morph it. And it comes out as, may I live so deeply that I don't want to live forever. right and this is a re-centering prayer this is a re-centering prayer um so lewis i've tried to i've tried to give you a theoretical explanation i've tried to give you a concrete example of of how it works it's a is luke's question by the way john oh luke i'm sorry lewis i'm sorry i'm sorry Luke.

49:06I'm sorry both of you. I misheard. I apologize. Small technical thing I want to add to this. I think staying closer to the mic would be very helpful because I think we're starting to get into that place where I don't want any nuggets to fall through the cyberspace. Just to address something that Luke had mentioned as well in the question around. So I wanted to address something that Luke had named in terms of like communion and and community. And I was just talking to Nicole Barden yesterday and she and I have developed the kind of mutual kinship. At least I hope it's mutual. So Nicole, if you're watching this, I want you to know I hope our kinship is mutual.

49:47And we were talking about Dukkha. So what happens when someone comes and they are, let's say, trapped in their parasitic processing, they're off center because that's what dukkha is that the center of the wheel is off right and you know i was asking her well you know how do you as a as an abbot approach that how do you hold them that and you know she's amazing she was talking to me about the exactly the same terms that you're that you're just using like centering within the compassionate eye and then both wheels turn together in the studying of the Dharma and it is in the turning which I see as what you are naming as the Dialogos, when that starts to move, then the person is re-centered, so it's no longer off.

50:43And the fact that, I mean, we've talked a lot about Zen Neoplatonism, but I just love that you brought in the Neoplatonic poll and I can sort of bring in the Zen a little bit to sort of meet. Nicole's amazing. I also want to speak something here. Because, again, I mean, I want to do this very carefully because I don't want to take any credit away from you. So please hear that. But it's also gratifying for me that one of my students, and in some ways you are one of my students, you're also a peer, but at the theoretical level and to some degree the practice level, you're one of my students. that that has enabled you to enter into a resonant diologos with somebody like Nicole, that's fantastic.

51:32I mean, that for me, that for me, that's a kind of, I think, virtuous confirmation that I'm teaching well. Because if it affords my students to be able to interact with people like Bishop Maximus or Nicole Bodden in a way that is mutually resonant, um i'm just first of all i want to thank you and i want to express gratitude because for me that's like yeah that says something i'm i'm sort of struggling to articulate but it says something yeah in fact you know i i take that and i really appreciate it because it surprised me as well like yeah you know we've we've talked twice now and we we go on like a house on fire um and you know this this oh oh i just want to say one more thing i want to give credit to nicole too i like it's like yeah i just like she has that ability to to connect to people sorry sorry for interrupting but i didn't want to leave that exactly but that's that's the thing that was that was really surprising to me where i it previously would have been um in a way like i wouldn't have been able to perceive it i won't be able to feel it wouldn't land with me but But I think rightly so due to what we're sort of explicating and what the work that we're doing, I cannot ignore the surprise, the way it's different and the reality of what is.

53:03So even when we were talking about teacher-student relationships in the context of a monastic setting, you know, I also named to her that like, in a lot of ways, I see you as a teacher, but I also orient myself, so it's not just unilateral, but I orient myself to learn even when you're not trying to teach me anything. That's good. That's really good. So this is, but this also folds in, I think, a thread into Lauren's question. So just as a kind of, in a way it's trying to fold in the conceptual right where at least what was talking about brought in a question around the phenomenological Luke's bringing in a question around the practical Lauren brings it I think quite a powerful angle which has to do with the way in which you know predictive processing and relevance realization are always at work that also means the act of listening to us have this conversation, the act of conceptualizing any of this at all is playing into the very experience of the advent of the sacred.

54:19So she's asking primordial and ultimacy. Will you please discuss primordiality and ultimacy in the model of religio and the sacred symbolon? I'm seeking a more representational understanding of these terms. These two terms in the context of this model are still abstract to me. So here are my thoughts on this topic. What is the primordial in the model of religio and the self-seeking sacredness? Is it the essence of the self? Maybe. Is it what we fundamentally are and is also our optimal grip and resonance with our environment and the large world? Is the self's primordial religio static? Yes and no.

54:59The spark of the person, the essence of who she is, it seems, would not change. But largely, it seems like the self's primordial religio would be constantly changing because in the very act of interacting with her environment and the large world, the way she behaves and thinks about herself, her religio, her optimal grip would necessarily change. Is it the person's orientation? I think this is part of it, but not all of it. There's more here but I have to, I'm trying to capture the essence of the question as much as possible. So she says here, I'm trying to articulate how the self and the sacred necessarily interact for transformation in each individual's life.

55:47Primordial and ultimate as used in this model are still abstract for me and I sense there's a level of understanding about the self or sacred interaction that I'm missing because of this, how do the concepts of primordial and ultimate inform the model of the self and the sacred? Okay. So, first of all,

56:11I'm continually surprised in a good way by the sophistication of my students. For those of you you who might not know, Lauren has been taking a course. She's been, she'd been taking, seeing God again for the first time. So I'll just give a little bit of background. I was making a proposal for senses of the sacred that the sacred has. Well, let's do it. There's a sense of the sacred, and this is emphasized in Taoism. Lauren, initially, this will be abstract because I just, I'm just trying to set the context. And then I'll, I'll address your question. Where does the functionality and the phenomenology actually show up.

56:49Okay. So the sense of the sacred, like in Taoism, the sacred is the primordial. It is that from which we are born. It is that which makes us possible. It is that which we are always presupposing as what we have to take as granted because we can't grant it to ourself. So for example, I can't, as we said in the beginning, I can't stand outside of predictive processing and relevance realization. There's no way where I can get outside of them and then look at them and say, ah, that's what's wrong with my relevance realization by predictive processing. I always, whatever I'm doing, I'm always relying on the capacity of predictive processing and relevance, realization, to self-correct, which I can participate in.

57:40So it's a process I'm always presupposing. If I try to make any concept, any categorization, any argument, any proposition, any theory, acquire any skill, undergo any change in how I understand myself, I am presupposing these things. They are primordial to me. Now, how does that show up in my experience? That shows up in my experience at, in the sense of my intuition, the sense that other things are coming up for me that I, and I know not how I know them, but they're, they're making possible for me. And so for many people, they use a term for a dimension of selfhood, for trying to talk about the depths that they experience as intuitive interruptions into their everyday narrative.

58:34They call that their soul. And so I think that when people are soulful in this sense, not that they're talking about a Cartesian substance, but when they say, and notice where you place, where do you place your intuition? It's in your guts, right? Why not your knees? Why not your feet? Because you're trying to get at this sense of, right, that's the primordial and it wells up in me. It wells up in me. And the intuitions can be very minor and the intuitions can be very, very profound. And you often note that the intuition, when it's one of those profound intuitions, people will experience it archetypally, to put a Jungian phrase on it.

59:25They'll experience it as being, oh, this is deep. Listen to the word. This is deep. And it's, right? Okay. There's that. But ultimacy, ultimacy is, right, the sense that there is, I want to use my words very, very carefully here. You have a sense of normativity that transcends you, that is beyond you. That if you could make the true, the good, and the beautiful, and the real, they would not be true, good, beautiful, and real. You have to defer to them. Listen to the language. We look up. We look up. Right? And for many people, that sense of uplifting, looking up, the sense that we are being called by something greater, something that is skyward for us.

1:00:25in an imaginal sense, that's the spirit. And so when we feel that we're being uplifted, when we feel that the self is moving into its spiritual functions, that it is being called to something more true, something more beautiful, something more real. So when you listen, and notice how a great work of art, right? Notice these two different senses of sacredness, and how great work of art. So, you know, you're listening to the Moonlight Sonata. For me, this is an example by Beethoven. And stuff like the primordial is, it's just because it's music, it reaches into my guts and it's coming up. But I'm also getting a sense of a beauty greater than John Verveke than can generate.

1:01:13And it's resonant and it's calling me beyond my, so there's a spiritual uplift with, And it's the moon. It's the moonlight. The moon is above you, but it's eerie in the nighttime. It's in the dark and it reaches into the darks and the depths. Like, don't you get almost like a shiver and it goes up your spine. And that's the sense of the sacred as the central, that the binding, that charge, the centrality. And you sometimes experience it literally in your spinal column that binds the primordial and the spiritual sense of sacred together. And you get this. And then that, right, that gives you the place from which you orient.

1:02:04That is how you placed. This is the axis mundi that gets, right, that everywhere you could be, this is where you are. You are insofar as spiritual uplift and soulful intuition are charging you, giving you that sense of a radical, weird, in the good sense of the word, weird connection between the primordial and the ultimacy, the ultimate. And you can get it in great works of art, like the Moonlight Sonata. And it's called the Moonlight Sonata for a reason. You can get it in great poetry. So the archaic bust of Apollo by Ilka, he's looking at this sculpture, and intuition is welling up in him. This sexual and artistic eros is welling up in him.

1:03:00He's getting the sense of the presence. like, and it's, and it's like, whoa, he's, and then it flips. You must change your life. That's a normative call. You must change your life. And when I first read that, you know, a chill went through me because the ultimate and the primordial were one, not logically one, they were one. And I got that charge and I went, and I was suddenly reoriented in my life and I I recovered my life in a new way. And so insofar as the spirit can feel an upsurge from the soul and it can feel uplifted, the self, by the spirit, these are how it's showing up in the self and how they're showing up functionally and how they're showing up phenomenologically.

1:03:48Just to add one small thing there about conceptually from my own sort of experience. like I had a moment like that to tie it back into sort of the encounter with Nicole. I actually put off messaging her for a long time. I felt like there was something about it that was procrastinating reaching out because I felt like, oh, I'm not a spiritual person or something like that. Like I'm not, or like some idea of like, I'm not spiritual enough to talk to a Zen abbot. So it was a very weird thing for me to think. And then I was playing Hallelujah on the guitar, right? So I'm impressed. And I was, and it was that one, that one.

1:04:37Yeah. Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah. Yeah. So that, and it was that one, that was that one line of, there's a blaze of light in every word. It doesn't matter which you heard. Right. that like i just immediately i felt i was overwhelmed with with emotion i started tearing and just i was trying to sing like for for days i couldn't get through that song um without being moved um and there was something in there that reckons out for me of like uh hearing christopher oldfield sort of in the in the back of my mind um saying yes but all transformation is spiritual. It's always happening anyway, whether you want it to or not.

1:05:22And I felt a pull to just reach over to my phone and WhatsApp. Hey, can we meet? And it's opened up into a wonderful, it really opened up my framing and my world. So there's a way in which when that was happening, I could tag it. Conceptually, I can tag it like, oh, this is an encounter with the primordial. Oh, I'm being called to the ultimate. I know that that's happening. It just gives me language for it, but it doesn't take away from the lived experience of it, the embodied experience of it. No, it shouldn't remove the mystery at all. I mean, let's refine it a little. So intuition and then insight and then inspiration.

1:06:20That's basically how it happens in me. I think when we can, if you'll allow me to play with the metaphor, I think when we get those moments when the North Star of our spirit, the north pole of our spirit and the south pole of our soul suddenly touch each other right um and then we get we get charged in a powerful way um i i i think because for me that is the greatest homing of our finite transcendence our primordiality reminds us that we're finite we cannot give it to ourselves our transcend right our spirit the ultimacy reminds us but we are not trapped we have a capacity to go beyond um we've talked about it psychologically we've talked about it cognitively insight intuition inspiration we've we we've talked about it you know in terms of existential uh you know you get the sense of the binding together the the lived the lived like you're trying to emphasize the lived aspect of finite transcendence those are the moments and here's here's where i would try to end where i feel the most human yeah and for me that would be my the final thing i'd want to say about that would we have time to take questions from the chat?

1:07:54Yes. Great. Yes, very much. I just love that we've like, we like explicated the underground man problem and then come back full circle to like reclamation of finite transcendence. It's beautiful, beautiful arc. Thank you. Thank you for doing that. So, okay. Here's a question from uh george or uh jorge um which is uh does do sports that enable flow um can they be considered a practice in the ecology of practices like tennis for example i think we're talking about bouldering as well to the degree bouldering yeah definitely definitely i mean and the better the sport is at having a philosophical framework around it.

1:08:47What do you mean? So sports used to have a very developed framework. It was called sportsmanship. I get that the term is sexist, but whatever. Right. The idea that no, no, what you're doing when you're in the flow state is you're trying to keep a framework around that, that will afford it transferring. The idea is to become a good sport was something that you then took into your life. And when sports that get us into the flow state are ritualized with that philosophical framework, you can see them cross-culturally. Think of the ball game in Mesoamerica, right? You can see sport becoming properly ritualized exactly in that fashion.

1:09:30Yes. And so, but that matters, right? If you, I mean, it's really how are you showing up when you're playing? The ethic and the orientation of sportsmanship, being a good sport, is as much a part of the ritual as the flow state. Because the sportsmanship is what affords the broad and deep transfer of that flow state to other dimensions of your life. So I'm reading, I'm scanning the chat for questions. Well, let's say this is really interesting. How do you, John, personally get back to the perspectival standpoint? And I want to expand, that's all the question was, but I also want to expand the scope of that question a little bit.

1:10:26How do you personally return to the standpoint in a context-sensitive manner. Because sometimes what destabilizes us is the ambiguity in the context that when you recenter, you don't necessarily recenter in the same place to continue on sort of the verbiage, right? But yet we also don't know necessarily having been knocked off center where the point to return to might be. Yeah.

1:11:01So, I return to that perspectival centering. My practice is to seek, sense. It's inventio, so it's seeking and sensing. Sofferson. Because Sofferson is to re-inhabit and re-sculpt my salience landscaping in a way that connects me to, right, orienting to a greater reality. And so for me, Sofreson is the solution to Velman's reflectiveness gap. So Velman proposes flow, the experience of flow, but the problem with flow, as we typically understand at Csikszentmihalyi, is flow is bound to specific domains. And this goes to what I said a few minutes ago. There's the problem of transfer. Sofferson is basically when you're flowing at the level of orientation and agent arena co-identification, that that's what's going on in Sofferson.

1:12:08I'm not forcing myself. I'm being tempted. I like to use, because when you're tempted, who's tempting you? It's you, but it's not you. It's the other that's not you, right? This is why Hermes is a trickster figure, because there's temptation to transcendence, and you often have to get tricked into it in an important way. So Sofreson is, right, can I catch being tempted by the call of the true, the good, and the beautiful? That's how I try to return out of abstract reflection. Can I pick up that sense? and often it helps me. One of the things I'm trying to do is, I call it remember, recognize, acknowledge, and appreciate.

1:12:56I try to remember and recognize, acknowledge, and appreciate when that other that is me, Hermes, helps me to get back. And I will sometimes, this goes to, like I said, the kind of prayer, I will sometimes say, Hermes, help me back. I will give credit. I will do the same thing to Socrates. Oh, now you'll hear me doing that. Well, thank that. That's Socrates. I try to give, I properly acknowledge. And these are ways of, because internalizing the sage and realizing Soferson are bound together. Because my ideal self and my future self are being imaginally integrated with the sage. And that's what's tempting me.

1:13:37That's the other that is me, that is tempting me, that constitutes Soferson. So I'm re-inhabiting and reorienting my salience landscaping. And that gives me that I'm neither a mere wanton caught up in salience without understanding or a mere hamlet pursuing endless understanding disconnected from salience. I've got salience and understanding. When it works, it's Socratically bound together and calling me towards greater realization within and without. That's what I sense and seek for. There's a kind of, it's not a negative, it's a pronounced positive piece. so I'm feeling it right now for example and I like it's it's it's there's a like there's a kind of joy to it which is not the same thing as pleasure joy is the sense of being connected to something that is true good and beautiful real highly meaningful etc so that's how I typically those are the kinds of practices I do to try and bring it about this is why Sofferson is so important I think Sofferson is the existential answer to the reflectiveness gap?

1:14:57John, I'm so stoked for this next question. It will probably have to be our last one, but I am bowled over, and I think what is the implicit proposal, and I can't wait to read it to you. This is from Wild and Shy Moments. Great title, wow. As a 30-year Zen practitioner, mother and social worker i wonder about the underground woman problem inflation of caregiving and collapse of the impossibility of agency to transform others where the underground man problem goes upwards the infinite regress malforming the ultimate i hear i hear wild and shy moments you know proposing that the opposite like down into the primordial i don't know what do you Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:15:48Well, first of all, congratulations on being a practitioner for 30 years. I admire that. And thank you also for this insight. I hadn't considered this.

1:16:01So, I mean, I want to give credit where credit due. This is something Jordan Peterson talks about. I mean, he takes it into political lens that I'm not happy with. but the idea of and we have archetypes around this the all-consuming mother being smothered and people play with that word like I know people that you know, the problem is I didn't have a mother, I had a smother and that sense that one can get drawn that one can be drawn apart fatigued is another so compassion fatigue is also that we get drawn into that, where our agency is consumed. I think that's very, very powerful.

1:16:55So for me, sorry, this is very transitional for me. This is something that, I mean, everything for me is transitional, but I mean, this is something that's recent for me and still very liminal and raw. And I mentioned earlier, I've been trying to take up, I've been trying to internalize Jesus the way I've internalized Socrates and the Buddha. And one of the things I'm trying to do, the book, The Philosophy of Jesus as a Way of Life is particularly helpful about this, is to try and see Jesus as somebody who is able to draw upon the well of compassion without drowning in it. and there's something there I think we would agree he is a sage of compassion he exemplifies it and yet he doesn't seem to suffer many of the things we're worried about here there seems to be no if we're going to use the tropes because they were already introduced by the question He doesn't seem to lose the masculine, even though he is deeply drawn upon the feminine.

1:18:15This intrigues me profoundly about him. I'm feeling called by that. I'm feeling, how can I be simultaneously called into deeper compassion without that, as you've rightly posed in your question, undermining my agency? And what seems to be doing that, right, is that he has this relationship that, like he talks about it in the Gospel of John, I'm in the Father, the Father's in me, so you can be in me and thereby in the Father. Like he goes deeper into the primordial while going deeper into the ultimate in a way that counterbalances drowning. If you allow a metaphor, he's got a lifeline to the sky that allows him to go very deep into the well, but he can always resurface when he needs to.

1:19:17And I'm sorry, this is kind of inchoate because I'm struggling to get this. But this is something really, really... And so there's this tremendous compassion. People are in him, but he's then in God and God's in him. When I was talking to Hermes, this came out in a really powerful way, is that Jesus is different for me than the Buddha and Socrates. Notice the word I said. I didn't say better. I said different. Because unlike the Buddha and Socrates, Jesus has gone into how I see God and how I experience God and how God comes into me in a way in which the Buddha and Socrates have it. That's probably because of my upbringing.

1:20:06It's probably because I'm in the West. I'm not trying to make any absolute claims about Christianity. I'm trying to say that Jesus is more than enlightened. and I think I'm picking up on that and that is his way. I hadn't put this together, so thank you for this. Nitter talks about, he passes over into Buddhism in order to return into Christianity and your question is helping me to do that really profoundly, Zen and come back, and how compassion is deeply wedded to wisdom. Wisdom is the re-centering in ultimacy so that we can draw deeply from the well. The Tao is a well that is never used up, right, without drowning.

1:20:53And that's how the compassion and the wisdom come together. And so not to try and ridiculously convert you or anything, I recommend taking a look at the sage Jesus because he seems to be the person who is really providing a strong model, a role model, that for me is answering the question you posed. And like I said, Marshall Davis's work, where he has a non-dual interpretation of Christianity, would be particularly resonant for somebody like yourself who comes from a Zen tradition. and then the book the philosophy of jesus is a way of life which is practice right it gives you how to practice um i think it's by colburn i might be misremembering the name anyways um profound question um and this is how it's working itself out in me and how i see it working itself out and people like knitter and davis and the author of the philosophy of jesus is a way of life Fantastic.

1:22:06One amazing note to end on, John. I think that's all the time that we have for today. Thank you all so much for participating, for submitting your questions. As always, we welcome them. The next Q &A will be on February 28th, I believe, with Mark Miller, who, just to repeat, his course is on the lectern at the moment. It is called Generations of Joy, the cognitive signs of happiness and well-being. So please head over to lectern.johnvakey.com and then take a look and we'll see you next month. Thanks so much, John. Thanks so much for an amazing Q &A. Thank you, Ethan. Thank you for all the great questions, both from my Lectern supporters and from people on YouTube.

1:22:51Very much appreciated. I have a pronounced aesthetic and existential sense for good questions. I mean, a sense of appreciation is what I mean. in both senses of the word appreciation, understanding and valuing. And so I really want to thank everybody. The questions were ecstatic for me. They drew me beyond myself. And I really, really appreciate that. Please take a chance. Sorry, please don't miss the chance, this great opportunity to study with Mark Miller. I promise you, you will not regret it. Thank you, everybody. Thank you.