I'll begin by quoting the core of it, which is really all that needs to be said and was well-said by Robert:
Observing the limitations of reason is in this area making best use of reason. We never said don't well learn Buddhism, Zen, and Daoism, and observe that again and again we bring our knowledge of those subjects with us and that we reason from our understanding and from significant authors. Pointing out the limitations of reason is exactly what Buddhism, Zen, and Daoism themselves do and your readership should know it - you underemphasize it, from our position, and then you accuse us of being unreasonable when we point out what Buddhism, Zen, and Daoism actually say.
That's it right there in a nutshell. However, since that won't be accepted and contention and disputation will continue, let me address a couple of other things:
First of all, let's resolve one possible issue by noting that I don't address anything written by Kelly Jones - the simple reason being that she is a few sandwiches short of a picnic and there's nothing to be gained by engaging that sort of dynamic.
As for David, while the same is quite demonstrably (and diagnostically) true, to refuse to address him would make posting here kind of pointless, since he is (and always has been, in my experience) the backbone of the "QRS" mentality.
That being said...
On the other hand, I don't believe this sort of ambiguity presents much of a problem to those who are intelligent and flexible enough to know how to think deeply and fluidly about things. Problems really only arise when people become emmeshed in biased, limited views, such as Nat getting sucked into the view that consciousness of the Tao depends on the cessation of thought.
Ah, here is the typical and totally detached, non-egotistical implication that David's opponents (namely me, in this case) are stupid and inflexible, among other things. Duly noted.
Consciousness of the Tao, of course, does not depend on the "cessation of thought" (as if any such thing could ever even occur) but rather on the
transcendence of thought. There is a world of difference, not that David would notice or care. Strawmen are his favorite things to knock down, because they are so easy to demolish and provide so much ego-boosting mileage in the eyes of the faithful.
This kind of bias immediately backs them into a corner, leading to the creation of all sorts of dilemmas.
Whatever dilemmas David imagines to exist in my thinking actually exist only in his. They are his fantasies, conjured up for the purpose of dismissing me (and all opponents) as confused, "unenlightened" beings - in opposition to his Lofty self.
Some of the dilemmas that flow from Nat's bias, for example, include the unmistakeable spectacle of Lao Tzu thinking and reasoning and conceptualizing all throughout the Tao Te Ching; the fact that his own mind is always conceptualizing in every single moment of his conscious life, even during the mystical experiences he has; the fact that every single view he expresses is generated out of a particular conception of the Tao, or the world, that he has; and so on.
Not a word of that is true, but please do carry on. Clueless and egotistical psychoanalysis is amusing.
In order to deal with these dilemmas, he has to involve himself in all sorts of convoluted maneuvers. For example, he is forced to depict things like knowledge, rationality, conceptualizing, etc, in an extreme and contrived manner.
Yes. That "extreme and contrived manner" is called Taoism and Zen, among other things.
"Knowledge" is contrived to mean exclusively "the accumulation of concepts" or "bookish learning" , and "concepts" are restricted to mean the sterile, lifeless things of academia.
Ha... this is the biggest howler yet. Everyone who knows me knows that I despise academia.
He even has to invent bizarre terms like "hyper-rationality or "trans-rationality", just to try and disguise the fact that he has used, and is still using, rationality in the formation of his beliefs.
Those "bizarre terms" are accurate representations of the Zen/Taoist epistemological position.
Yours aren't - nor do I suspect you even know what "epistemology" is beyond the dictionary definition.
Convolution piled on top of convolution, all of it stemming from a simple initial delusion.
Yes indeed. The delusion, no doubt, that David Quinn is a pathological blowhard rather than a fully-enlightened spiritual peer of Laozi, Zhuangzi, and Nagarjuna. In other words, the cardinal sin of Quinnology - the delusion that man can live by the bread given by legitimate spiritual authors rather than by every word that proceedeth from the bearded cake hole of David Quinn.
I live in a tub.