Re: CHAT: Tao Te Ching

>From: John Cowan <cowan@...>
> > Amen to that!  (BTW - does anybody know the etymology of Amen?  I read
> > someplace that the word amen had a common Indo-European heritage as
>Sanskrit
> > om - can anybody confirm or deny this? and are there any other similar
> > words? in other IE descended languages?)
>
>It's Hebrew, not IE at all.  IIRC the triliteral root means "confirm".
>The "verily" in Jesus's sayings ("Verily, verily I say unto you") is
>a Greek representation of (an Aramaic relative of) "amen".
I thought it sounded suspicious that they might be related...

>
>I always found it fruitful when reading Zen stories about so-and-so
>becoming enlightened (usually some monk or other) to understand that
>he broke out into a big laugh.
>
Heheh - yes - what else can one do when one finds enlightenment?  LOL

Actually - there may be solid psychology behind this.  Most jokes hinge on
some kind of disparity or paradox (eg. in the real world people don't
usually get hit with frying pans, and nobody would ever actually sell
someone a dead parrot, etc.)  For some reason when we realize this paradox,
we find it funny.  A joke is an insight problem and the humour is some
interesting form of the experience of insight.  A study I read described
humour as "the experience of escaping from the tyrany of automaticity"
(automaticity being loosely defined as cognitive habit).  "Enlightenment"
must surely be another form of the experience of insight - it must at least
be cousins with humour.

Andy





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