Conversations in Process Jay McDaniel

In this episode of Conversations in Process, Jay interviews renowned podcaster and process theologian Tripp Fuller, digging into the more personal side of his faith and theology. Tripp is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Theology & Science at the University of Edinburgh. He received his PhD in Philosophy, Religion, and Theology at Claremont Graduate University. For over 13 years Tripp has been doing the Homebrewed Christianity podcast where he interviews different scholars about their work. In 2020 he published Divine Self-Investment: An Open and Relational Constructive Christology.



In this conversation, Jay asks Tripp to trace his theological development from his formative years, asking what influenced his perspectives and how he grappled with issues such as the authority of sacred texts. Jay then asks of music, and what religious or spiritual role this played and continues to play in Tripp’s life—a topic which led to a number of insights about religious pluralism, the function of symbolism, and the logic of the one. In closing, Tripp talks about how he shares his faith with his children in light of their various phases of life, and the importance of the religious virtue of friendship which he sees as core to the message and life of Jesus.



LINKS:




Tripp’s website



Homebrewed Christianity



Theology Beer Camp: The God Pods Strike Back



Divine Self-Investment: An Open and Relational Constructive Christology



Conversations in Process



The Cobb Institute



Open Horizons











https://youtu.be/mPKeJYyIQoQ

In this episode of Conversations in Process, Jay sits down with Sufi scholar and musician Ali Hussain to discuss potential points of contact between Islamic mystical theology and process thought. Ali Hussain has a Ph.D. in Islamic Studies from the University of Michigan, Department of Middle East Studies. His research focuses on the image of Jesus AS in the writings of Muslim polymath Muhyiddin Ibn Al-Arabi and later Muslim scholars. His other research interests include Islam and Sufism in America, art and creativity in Islam and the creative engagement that Sufi mystics have with Arabic through the mediation of the Quran. He has published a number of books and articles, including “The Art of Ibn Arabi,” “The Metaphysics of Creativity: From the Qur'an into Ibn al-'Arabi,” “Ibn Al-Arabi and Joseph Campbell: The Metaphysics of Creativity and Mythology of Contemporary Art,” and most recently “A Nostalgic Remembrance: Sufism and the Breath of Creativity.”



In this conversation, Jay and Ali explore the similarities and contrasts between the Sufism of Ibn ‘Arabi and Whitehead’s cosmological and theological perspectives. They discuss issues of immanence and transcendence, negative theology, the problem of evil, and much more. Ali shares the intellectual roots of Islamic mysticism, which draws in part from the same Platonic traditions in which Whitehead himself finds inspiration. Jay discusses common process perspectives on the vulnerability of God and the openness of the future, which Ali thinks can fit into a Sufi perspective as well when considered in relation to particular Divine Names. In closing, they discuss the centrality of beauty in both Sufi traditions and Whitehead’s philosophy, connecting the ideas of harmony and intensity with Divine Mercy and an open future. 



LINKS




The Adhwaq Center for Spirituality, Culture and the Arts



A Nostalgic Remembrance: Sufism and the Breath of Creativity



Ali on Instagram



Conversations in Process



The Cobb Institute



Open Horizons











https://youtu.be/zS9y8ShZIBw

On this episode of Conversations in Process, Matt Segall returns to continue the discussion of process philosophy, this time with emphasis on how process ideas can help us navigate contemporary political, cultural, and ecological issues. Matt is Assistant Professor in the Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness program at California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco where he teaches graduate level courses on process philosophy and German Idealism. His recent book, Physics of the World-Soul: Alfred North Whitehead’s Adventure in Cosmology, puts Whitehead’s process cosmology into conversation with various contemporary scientific theories, such as general relativity and quantum theory.



Matt begins by sharing a bit about his own political orientation and how he feels politically “homeless” in the current political scene in the United States. He mentions that he was a supporter of Bernie Sanders, and even as he lives in a very progressive region of the country, he puts effort into getting out of that bubble and pursuing dialogue across various political lines. 



Jay points out that despite political differences, people are still able to come together in community and share joy in the right contexts, citing his own experiences performing music at Toad Suck Buck’s restaurant in a deeply conservative area. Matt adds that many of our contemporary conflicts are worsened by fixating on the political level, and specifically looking to the federal government to adjudicate disagreements. Instead, he suggests that re-localizing politics and attempting to work through cultural issues outside of the political arena would be a step in the right direction, though this can often be a blindspot for liberals and progressives. 



On the topic of liberalism, Matt dwells on some of the issues of the anthropology of early liberal thinkers like John Locke, which can give the sense that human beings are blank slates able to be molded into anything. Matt is critical of this view and shares sympathy with conservative thinkers that emphasize we are born into certain traditions and institutions which provide a much needed structure for human society, and that it can be a great risk to not acknowledge the real benefit of these inherited goods. 



Beyond liberalism, nationalism is also an ascendant political ideology of our day, and Matt suggests that process thinking can help offer a measured response to this phenomenon. Here he suggests that the nationalist impulse isn’t fully off-base, as there does need to be some collective substratum on which a society grounds itself, but at the same time this can easily become oppressive and lead to worrying constraints on individual autonomy and the persecution of certain groups considered outside the bounds of how the nation defines itself.



Matt proposes that Whitehead’s thought provides resources for balancing between individuality and collectivism. Through emphasizing the interconnectedness of reality, those seeking a deeper aspect of community find encouragement in Whitehead’s philosophy or organism, while at the same time the self-direction of the actual occasion towards its subjective aim encourages those looking for a justification of their individuality beyond communally-defined roles.



Jay and Matt wrap up this conversation with a discussion of “earthism” and the contemporary climate crisis. Matt thinks that unfortunately the situation is likely to continue worsening before humanity really commits to a holistic and thorough response to ecological issues, but this will require a deep reorganization of the structure of post-industrial societies. However, Matt is confident that the earth community at large is deeply resilient and that out of this crisis creativity is likely to flourish, and perhaps in this wake humanity will be able to establish new modes of living and social organization that are earnestly grounded in ecological realities.



LINKS:



Previous

On this episode of Conversations in Process, Jay McDaniel and Jared Morningstar are joined by Brendan Graham Dempsey to discuss metamodern spirituality and possible connections with process theology. Brendan is a podcaster, author, community-builder, philosopher, and poet whose work focuses on the meaning crisis and the nature of spirituality in metamodernity. He has a BA in Religious Studies from the University of Vermont and an MA in Religion and the Arts from Yale University. Brendan lives in Greensboro Bend, Vermont, where he runs the holistic Sky Meadow retreat center and hosts metamodern gatherings.



In this conversation, Jay, Brendan, and Jared discuss metamodernism and its relationship to various other intellectual/philosophical modes—such as modernism and postmodernism—and also consider its relationship with process thinking and contemporary religiosity.



The discussion begins with Brendan’s own journey with metamodernism and how this was intricately intertwined with his own spiritual path of deconstructing and eventually reconstructing a religious worldview. Based on his work in his pseudonymously authored book Building the Cathedral: Answering the Meaning Crisis through Personal Myth, Brendan explains the centrality of narrativizing and personal myth-making in a metamodern spiritual project.



Jay builds on these ideas, introducing process ideas such as Whitehead’s “consequent nature of God,” showing how not only our own religious sensibilities are in process, but actually so is the Divine itself. However, there is still the question of communal and collective spirituality and myth-making, and Jay wonders if the collectivity involved here may even be beyond our merely human communities.



The conversation closes with a discussion of the relationship between metamodernism and the established religious traditions. Jay asks, “can a Methodist be metamodern?” and Brendan beautifully responds in the affirmative, stating that these traditions have the potential to be expressed and understood in a variety of different moods, from pre-modern to metamodern and everything in between. The goal of a metamodern standpoint, however, is to accept all of these different moods for what they are and the value they bring, and weave a coherent whole of this diversity, without losing the unique individuality of the various standpoints.



LINKS:



Brendan’s websiteBrendan’s book Building the Cathedral: Answering the Meaning Crisis through Personal MythA conversation with Brendan, Layman Pascal, and John Vervaeke: “The Artful Scaling of the Religion that is not a Religion”Matt Segall on Brendan’s Metamodern Spirituality podcast: “Process Philosophy and the Metamodern Metanarrative”Sky Meadow RetreatThe Cobb InstituteOpen Horizons










https://youtu.be/2iWelOi0fQ4

On this episode of Conversations in Process, Jay McDaniel and Jared Morningstar are joined by Kazi Adi Shakti to discuss her provocative and nuanced essay “Buddhism is Basically Useless”. Kazi is an artist and theorist whose theoretical work primarily consists in the study and creative synthesis of process thought, Madhyamaka Buddhism, Western Marxism and Eco-feminist ethics. She graduated with a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art, where she majored in Interdisciplinary Sculpture with a focus on computer modeling, 3D scanning and digital fabrication and currently works as a scanning specialist and digital artist in the 3D digitization industry. In addition to this, she also blogs regularly at her site www.holo-poiesis.com.



In this conversation, Kazi discusses her essay and why the idea of Buddhism being basically useless is in fact a positive. She describes that one of her aims with this piece is trying to get people to question their attachments and the identities they create—even identifying with traditional Buddhism. So to assert that Buddhism is basically useless is to acknowledge the emptiness of the religion and to resist taking it as an object of clinging.



Jared asks what kinds of Buddhists Kazi was trying to reach with this critical article, whether it was more Western Buddhist modernists, or if she meant this critique to cut against traditional Buddhists as well. In response, Kazi shows how her argument can be critical of either, even as there are important differences between the dispositions of these two kinds of Buddhists. However, she also finds inspiration among all these different ways of being Buddhist, stating that even secular Buddhism has some important insights in recognizing the emptiness of myth and traditional doctrine.



Jay then asks Kazi about an important idea running throughout the essay that Kazi uses in a number of different ways; namely, the notion of touching oneself. She charts a continuity between physical self-pleasure to intellectual self-knowledge and finally to self-reflexive gnosis—a manifestation of the awakening experience so central to Buddhist spirituality. In all of these, Kazi notes how there is no medium for the interaction beyond oneself, contrasting this perspective with views in Western philosophy such as those of Immanuel Kant where all perception and knowledge can never get directly at things in themselves. For Kazi, Buddhism is at its best when it is able to facilitate this direct self-touching in these various meanings, but none of these are ultimately dependent on the religion hence why Buddhism is useless in one sense.



Kazi’s essay concludes with a sudden switch to an almost devotional tone, mentioning the “infinite loving-compassion and boundless luminous-vision of the uncountable multiplicity of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas”—a stark contrast from the critical mood of the article up to this point. Jay notices this shift and asks about Kazi’s intent with this sudden change in direction. She explains that she tries to mix the perspective of critique which acknowledges the emptiness of all things with a more positive, constructive standpoint more grounded in a vision of dependent origination. More than just trying to balance these two perspectives, Kazi attempts to show how they are in fact inseparably bound to each other, evoking the Daoist image of the yin and the yang where both opposites actually exist within each other.



This wide-ranging dialogue concludes with a discussion of what Whitehead’s thought could potentially bring to this conversation, particularly through his aesthetic theories. This prompts Jay to consider what the ideas discussed might look like were they communicated by some medium other than language, such as visual art or music.



LINKS:



Kazi’s Essay “Buddhism is Basically Useless”Kazi’s Blog Holo-PoiesisThe Cobb InstituteOpen Horizons










https://youtu.be/YDyjJnUKGZw

On this episode of Conversations in Process, Jay is joined by the Cobb Institute’s operations assistant, Jared Morningstar. Jared is a writer and educator with academic interests in philosophy of religion, Islamic studies, comparative religion, metamodern spirituality, and interfaith dialogue whose work in these areas seeks to offer robust responses to issues of inter-religious conflict, contemporary nihilism, and the "meaning crisis" among other things. He has BAs in Religion and Scandinavian Studies from Gustavus Adolphus College, where he graduated in the spring of 2018. 



In this wide-ranging conversation, Jay and Jared discuss the issues of navigating religion in modernity and some intellectual and philosophical resources that could be helpful to this end. Jared begins by sharing his personal spiritual journey, growing up in a culturally Christian context which he rejected in his adolescence before discovering traditional religion for the first time through an encounter with Buddhism. 



This transitions into a discussion of religious pluralism in modernity, which Jared claims is distinct from the pluralism one could find in pre-modern times, so developing a sophisticated response to this phenomenon is critical. To this end, Jared discusses the problems of religious exclusivism and exceptionalism, both of which he argues present serious challenges to living peacefully in the landscape of contemporary pluralism.



Jared claims that various forms of “traditionalist” religious identity have weak philosophical bases and can lead to various dysfunctions. Here he distinguishes between the “Traditionalist school”—a 20th century school of philosophy of religion with representatives such as Frithjof Schuon and Seyyed Hossein Nasr—who have a robust understanding of religious pluralism, and a more general “traditionalist” attitude that has been gaining steam particular amongst young Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, and Muslims which is often very intolerant of other faiths and modernity more generally.



In response to this precarious situation, Jared shares two philosophies which he has found personally helpful in this context. The first is the Japanese Buddhist existentialist philosophy of the Kyoto School. These Buddhist thinkers gracefully weave together Western religious and philosophic sources with traditional Zen ideas to arrive at deep answers to life’s perennial questions and to the unique problems of our age. 



The second is the Sufi-inflected imaginal philosophy of Henry Corbin. A 20th century orientalist-philosopher, Corbin draws on the insights of Sufi and Shi’i mystics, putting these Muslim sages into conversation with contemporary phenomenology, existentialism, and depth psychology. Like the Kyoto School, Cobin’s cross-cultural thought offers robust perspectives for navigating the variety of religious forms of our day.



The conversation closes with Jay drawing connections between these two perspectives and the process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead. While there are a number of points where these thinkers may be synthesized and integrated into a cohesive hole, Jay stresses that these philosophies can also stand on their own and need not be reconciled for their intellectual contributions to have profound impact.



Kyoto School Resources:



YouTube Playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLW5F4Z2xe27hX7BC3eQcodVHL8c1BaSAfThe Kyoto School of Philosophy website: https://thekyotoschoolofphilosophy.wordpress.com Keiji Nishitani’s Religion and Nothingness: https://bookshop.org/books/religion-and-nothingness-1/9780520049468  



LINKS:



Jared’s website: https://jaredmorningstar.com‘Alif: Traditional Wisdom in Review: https://alifreview.comThe Cobb Institute: https://cobb.instituteOpen Horizons: https://www.openhorizons.org












https://youtu.be/tdCQJHVumWc