Jim, thanks for the rich continuation of the "practices" conversation.
I've borrowed this term from my limited understanding of Buddhist useage
and find it very powerful.
I want to deal with "naming" on a more extensive level. I used this term
and approach many years ago but it somehow got replaced by other things.
I intend to bring it back to use and see what it will give me in today's
environment. (If you haven't seen it, the "Earth/Sea Trilogy" by Le Guin
is a wonderful novel built around the power of "naming".)
> > In the "reverse", practices
> > engender behavior habits which render naming unnecessary.
I don't think the idea of naming becoming unnecessary is very spooky. I
think its fairly ordinary. That which is included in the physical forms
and the ingrained habits of our selves and our society we no longer bother
to name. For instance, I don't name many of my regular health and
well-being habits, I just do them. I suggest that habits are practices
that have gone out of awareness in exactly this way.
> Two statements of yours, mildly paraphrased, are noteworthy:
> [1] "We have learned to equate prescription with practice".
As you point out, the following statement misses the point, the richness,
the depth, of practice.
> It seems to me that this bottom-most level deals, in some utterly primitive
> way, with the *naming* of things. Where things are not properly named,
> reasoning about them can only generate delusions. The two fundamental
> activities we are engaged in here are a) finding the right names of things,
> and b) reasoning about things rightly named. The very phrase "Learning
> Organization" is a gesture towards finding a better name for something --
> maybe the first time it's been named at all.
I find "the learning organisation" an unfortunate example of naming
because it is descriptive but not distinguishing the characteristic or the
phenomenon itself.
Thanks for the recreation of "Buddhist logic". It shows that masters of
creators of practices, such as Buddhist teachers, are also masters of
theory, logic and rigorous thinking. This is what it takes to invent
practices that will alter the "ground of being" of something rather than
be merely one-for-one results.
Practices are between language and action where the practice will be said
in language but carried out in action and produce results that are not
direct and obvious as cause and effect.
--
Mike McMaster <Michael@kbddean.demon.co.uk>
"Postmodern society is the society of computers, information, scientific
knowledge, advanced technology, and rapid change due to new advances in
science and technology." Postmodern Theory, Best & Kellner