Welcome to zendao
Thanks for showing up:-) I spent a long time thinking about this stuff, and wanted to share it - if it strikes a chord with your own thinking, great, if not I've kept the pages short so no harm done.
Trouble is, I'm one of those people who find it impossible to accept what i don't understand - this is great for technical writing, but hopeless for fellowship groups and disastrous in churches - even the Quakers were like a swarm of angry bees - imagine that. So i've put my puzzlement and what i've done with it here instead.
The basic idea, as I've said, is to try to share some of the discoveries I've made that help to clear up some of the confusion engendered by mystique in spiritual and personal development. The confusion, of course, is all mine: many people don't have a problem with it at all. On the other hand, while I haven't yet met many of them, I'm sure there are plenty of people who share my puzzlement about these things.
Mystique is not the same as mystery. Mystery is fine. But mystique obscures the mystery, making it impossible to enjoy. A lot of the mystique is just plain confusion, peppered with received wisdom which is not fully understood and feels threatened by awkward questions. When someone responds to a question with rudeness or a putdown, it doesn't matter what their credentials are, they've lost my attention.
Why zendao? The Taiji diagram (the yin-yang circle) has for a long time been for me the ultimate symbol for the Universe, long before I discovered the martial art which uses its name. I've always been a sucker for elegance and simplicity, and Zen and Dao are so marvellously uncluttered in their outlook that they are a perfect touchstone for cutting through mystique, including the puzzles that abound in the Western spiritual traditions. But there is plenty of mystique in the Oriental traditions too.
I should also mention that after the site went up in 2001, i became a full-time wage slave and so i'm not around much, but i do pick up my home e-mail occasionally. If i don't reply for a few weeks, mea culpa and please don't be offended, it's not personal.
