Zen and Gebser Rick Muller, Ph.D. Poudre Valley Health System Fort Collins, CO 80524
Introduction Before we begin I want to offer a broad framework from which to view this paper. The goals of the paper were to: Assume the rational, linear perspective and explore how a mythic, circular approach might yield similar outcomes (very rational) Explore the commonalities of Zen, a mythically dominant construct with the Gebserian exploration of human consciousness (a Western rational tradition) Use a more practical, embodied structure rather than a traditional academic research model Write in a more mythic, meandering, circular and seeming fragmented style Explore personal, embodied experience in the context of the communal experience Challenge the assumptions of Western rationality and the use of words like outcomes, options etc. Shift the rational view by grounding the perceived outcomes in practical everyday experience Ask unanswerable questions as a way to force readers to think, ponder and have emotional responses to various statements in the text Move the discussion Suggest that the rational and mythic forces are just different ways (rationally speaking) to achieve a wisdom that is more integral and to gesture at the possibility that the integral is common and not some differentiated new age, consciousness structure (for differentiation is rational) or spirituality although aspects of each are present Suggest that integrality is not something we seek, but rather something we have and that rationality doesn’t often allow for its recognition, experience and understanding because the very nature of understanding is rational Reveal that this paper could be described in one word—self–creation—which is simultaneously mythic, mental, magic, and integral
Zen and Rational Consciousness Every existence in nature, every existence in the human world, every cultural work that we create, is something which was given, or is being given to us, relatively speaking. But as everything is originally one, we are, in actuality, giving out everything. Moment after moment we are creating something, and this is the joy of our life. (Suzuki, 1996)
This sounds almost like something a psychologist on the Oprah Winfrey show would say, or something preached by the latest new age philosophy. It is not. It is Zen Buddhism. Zen and the Art of books attempt to encapsulate a belief, a way of being. But Zen practitioners would suggest those attempts to explain are not Zen at all. For Zen and the
