The journey... relative to what? 

Richard Alan Wermke is many things to many people, and nothing to many more.  Born and raised as an American, I was gifted with the yoke of liberty--with all of it's attending privilege, responsibility, and arrogance.  Twisting and turning, my thread touches many others as it is woven into the tapestry of all that is today.  While the past unravels behind us and the future is yet to enter the loom, witness the fabric of now.

How many others have discovered or will discover this cloth?  What teachings of others can or should I draw upon for the weaving?  Or, is what I must learn to achieve enlightenment only available along my path?  Can we truly share a journey or are our paths simply coincidental?  And what of the non-incidental paths?

The thoughts that surround and shape my questions are bigger than my language to describe them.  The more precisely I try to define a thing the more focus is lost on the larger imagery.  This is a depiction of my life, with symbols and images that are impermenant.   The journey is my mandala.

Pragmatism

Pragmatism is a philosophical movement in the early 20th Century (the first quarter) which may be America's prime contribution to philosophy. However, like all movement, it is difficult to pin down what pragmatism generally represents. This is because we have no way of defining the ideas of pragmatism in a way that would satisfy all of its proponents. Each pragmatic thinker would conceive of pragmatism in a different way--and would handle the problematic of the movement uniquely.

Many people often take the mental and physical for granted because they don't realize that these are merely nominal concepts that were invented to help solve specific problems. This causes metaphysical and conceptual confusion. Various examples are the "ultimate Being" of Hegelian philosophers, the belief in a "realm of value", the idea that logic, because it is an abstraction from concrete thought, has nothing to do with the act of concrete thinking, and so on.

Pragmatism does not represent me.  I do not represent pragmatism.  I simply proceed from the basic premise that the human capability of theorizing is integral to intelligent practice. Theory and practice are not exclusive properties; rather, theories and distinctions are tools or maps for finding our way in the world. I agree with the principle that,  there is no question of theory versus practice but rather of intelligent practice versus uninformed, stupid practice.  I'm still wrestling with the notion of intellectualizing practice instead of practicalizing intelligence. Theory is an abstraction from direct experience and ultimately must return to inform experience in turn. Therefore, a thing in an environment is sufficient grounds for pragmatist inquiry.

The idealist and realist philosophy tends to present human knowledge as something beyond what can be defined or reconciled to a point where language permits conceptual sharing. These philosophies typically resort to phenomenology or to correspondence theories of knowledge and truth.  Unlike some pragmatists, who want to reform philosophy or bring it more in line with the scientific method, I am interested in drawing upon it's potential contrarian approach to help bring order to tangential influcences that affect moral dilema and internal conflict.  Thus, I'm inclined to criticize idealism for its a priorism, and realism because it it takes correspondence as an unanalyzable fact. While I might accept that pragmatism could range beyond psychological and biological exploration, I am an opponent of the teleological argument. I simply appreciate how pragmatism tries to reach between knower and known 'works' in the world.

Middle Way

In general, this is the Buddhist practice of non-extremism.  The Middle Way refers to transcendental ways of approaching seemingly antithetical claims about reality.  The Middle Way also presents a path of moderation away from the extremes of indulgence and self-mortification and toward the practice of wisdom, morality and mental cultivation.

Neither hedonist nor ascetic are to be imitated, for the Noble Eightfold Path weaves its way through life avoiding both these unenlightened lifestyles. The perfection of the Path (that is, the Middle Way), is the ripening of the spiritual life; it becomes a fruit ready to drop into the infinity of enlightenment…forever.
 
Living the Middle Way can take many different forms but all are ultimately intent on its original and continuous objective: Nirvana. To cultivate a right lifestyle – hand in hand with a mindful meditative practice – is to walk the Middle Way, which gives vision and understanding. We need to see things as they are – rather than as we want them to be. This understanding is the knowledge that in the things of the world there is no salvation or enlightenment.
 
The Middle Way is the realization that beyond erroneous egos and puffed-up personalities; we are the Buddha.

To truly walk the Middle Way is to traverse this world in the knowledge that we are already enlightened – we just have to enlighten ourselves to the fact! Openly reflecting on the Way is to share with all sentient beings this wondrous hidden truth, helping us to let go a little of our greed, hatred, and delusion, the three poisons that tie us to a life of suffering.

Zen

The aim of Zen practice is to discover the Buddha within, through meditation and mindfulness of daily experiences.  The Zen practitioner is provided with new perspectives and insights on existence.

• Zen asserts that all sentient beings have a Buddha-nature.

Zen de-emphasizes reliance on religious texts and verbal discourse on metaphysical questions.

VATICAN CITY (AP) - The Vatican Thursday cautioned Roman Catholics that Eastern meditation practices such as Zen and yoga can "degenerate into a cult of the body" that debases Christian prayer. [snipped]

The 23-page document, signed by the West German congregation head Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, was believed the first time the Vatican sought to respond to the pull of Eastern religious practices. [snipped]

But, it said, such practices "can degenerate into a cult of the body and can lead surreptitiously to considering all bodily sensations as spiritual experiences."  Attempts to combine Christian and non-Christian mediation are "not free from dangers and errors," the document said. [snipped]

AP-NY-12-14-89 0937EST (C) Copyright 1989, Associated Press.  All Rights Reserved.

Zen holds that these things lead the practitioner to seek external answers, rather than searching within themselves. Zen has also itself paradoxically produced a rich corpus of written literature which has become a part of its practice and teaching.