Body Thinking , Story Thinking , Religion

This essay offers two novel thinking-modes, “body thinking” and “story thinking,” both intrinsically interrelated, as alternative reasoning to usual analytical logic, and claims that they facilitate understanding “religion” as our ultimate living in the Beyond. Thus body thinking, story thinking, and religion naturally gather into a threefold thinking synonymy. This essay adumbrates in story-thinking way this synonymy in four theme-stages, one, appreciating body thinking primal at our root, to, two, go through story-thinking that expresses body thinking to catalyze religion, to, three, reach religious living in holistic nisus to the Beyond. But then, four, religion is surprisingly harder than expected; we require a strange adult detour to come back home to body thinking in story thinking. These four themes are body-thought through many stories, some of which are argumentative. Thus this essay itself body thinks in story thinking.


Introduction
This essay offers two novel thinking-modes, "body thinking" and "story thinking," as alternative reasoning to analytical logic, and claims that they facilitate understanding "religion" in the Beyond.Both modes are "novel" only in academia today, for both have been routinely practiced worldwide since time immemorial, and eminently exhibited in China for millennia.Body thinking, story thinking, and religion make a threefold synonymy.This essay is a vignette in story-thinking in four theme-stages, one, body thinking primal is at our root, in, two, story-thinking to catalyze religion, three, in holistic nisus to the Beyond.But, four, religion is kid's homecoming to body thinking story thinking.Thus this essay body thinks in story thinking kid-fresh

Body Thinking as Primal
"Body thinking" is thinking acts of the primal body, in thinking, in body.First, we engage in the so-called "philosophy of religion" that is a misnomer.This essay thinks story-way of how fitting body thinking in story thinking is to religion our ultimate living, which is essential, so this essay is significant.It is natural to extrapolate from here to story-elucidate how essential body thinking story-thought is in all thinking, including non-religious thinking, but this general theme requires another essay.It should be thinking in religion.In "philosophy," the thinker is up in eternal logical canons to handle objects, but "religion" is not an object but the ultimate beyond all, including the thinker, who is judged.We must philosophize in religion as religion, not as object; "thinking in religion" involves the whole person thinking, to wit, body thinking.
All this revolutionizes usual "thinking."Nicodemus, a high Jewish scholar, offers his highest estimate of Jesus.Jesus bluntly said he himself must be born again from above into a new baby (John 3:1-8)."Anothen" (John 3:3) means both "again" and "above" (Brown, 1966: p. 130).This is the most detailed commentary on this Gospel.This revolution is total; it is "body thinking," whole body-life thinking, root-revolutionizing objective manipulative analysis.Religion is ultimate, to signal totality, to be body thought; philosophizing in religion is body thinking.Actually, all thinking involves primal body; "body thinking" is natural thinking.The radical "revolution" mentioned here is really a homecoming to our original nature shown by the authentic children.This point of adult detour back home will be considered in the last section IV to end this essay.This conclusion brings us to "body" thinking.
Moreover, I exist primarily as my body "primal total."Sadly, the West typically splits to separate "mind" from "body," to be "logically clear" as analyzing an object, split into parts (Spicker, 1970).Spicker (1970) surveys many Western views of the "body" and Reeves (1958) portrays body as alive, but criticizes no mind-body split, and even such a book is rare in the West.Both scholars describe the situation, but do nothing on its problems.Sadly, perceptive thinker Fuller (2008) still takes "body" as empirical and physiological.Now, disembodied mind is ghost without matrix, as dis-en-minded body is machine without operator.But mind-only activity is empty; mindless body is less than a useless machine.The human self must be a mind-body union, but union of body-less mind and mindless body makes "ghost in a machine," unintelligible, monstrous.Fuller (2008) has to insist on "biological body" as self-integrative toward living well.Biological body is efficient cause acting toward final cause and extended to the ultimate, whose agent biological body is.There is no other way to describe the biological aspect of religious spirituality.Thus his "biological body" is no "mechanistic materialism" described here (Fuller, 2008).
In desperation, (German) idealism insists on mental logical coherence to create a cosmos.(British) empiricism insists on physical perceiving as understanding separate from logical coherence as ideas.(French) physical materialism sees the self as a walking physiology.(Russian) Marxism insists on economic fatalism.And endless wrangling ensues.The chaotic debates are euphemized as "root metaphors" (Pepper), "organism" (Whitehead), "naturalism" (Santayana), "instrumentalism" (Dewey), and so on, all originated in mind-body split.
In contrast, primal body is integral, to tend forward beyond here now.Kids fight monsters; adults fight for dreams to fly.Stories will soon be told of both.And then our body forwarding absorbs pain.Freud's mouth cancer prompted his writing.An amputee feels itches in his leg-no-more (Merleau-Ponty, 1962).My body thinks to survive even physical death (Chuang Tzu).Chuang Tzu's stories of Lady Beauty happily kidnapped by Barbarian Chief "Death" (2/79-81), dreaming to be "butterfly" fluttering between life and death (2/94-97), and a roadside skull happily doing vast seasonal rounds (18/22-29), among many others, come to mind.Primal body thinks alive to do wonders.
Once the mind-body split vanishes, our life world has no separation of mental from physical, sciences from humanities, understanding from explaining, rational from emotional, fatal from free, spontaneous from contrived, private from public, culture from nurture, etc. Body thinking is body-whole to heal splits back to the wholesome whole self; here is the new world of primal body alive.Body-homecoming must be behind Cousins' proposal to end civilization, to end its atomic destruction (Cousins, 1845).
In this world, we are back body-home, all of a piece dynamic, alive."How 'all of a piece' is my life now?"you ask.All right; now, listen to this real story.My tiny Peter casually came and dropped a bombshell, "Dad, I have three names, 'me, myself, and I'." Wow! Isn't it so?I can freely objectify "me" and reflect on "myself," because I am alive as "I," all of a piece.I can then freely objectify things and be aware of myself with them, inter-thriving.My Peter plays all this, body-full gutsy, body thinking."Gutsy" is "all of a piece" in me body-full, to be so among myriad things.
In other words, in the primal body, "mind" is naturally embodied in "body" that is en-minded.Mind thinks in body-matrix, manifesting the total body thinking.Thinking is body at work, timed ongoing all over, as the body is alive, ever growing changing beyond here now.Body thinking sings life to dance lifeworld, constantly changing beyond, as we change mind and body growing dawn to dawn.We are all of a piece alive.
All this is thinking as body-acts heart-beating thinking, breathing thinking, living-total thinking, constant, body-felt, body-adjusting to itself and to its milieu, and such inter-adjusting cannot help but spread cosmically.Merleau-Ponty (1962) punched out this body-cosmos connection in his book Phenomenology of Perception.All this body thinking homocosmic is an alternative to disembodied logic that analyzes and splits what is already existent (not spreading beyond here now) according to logical rules eternally set eternally valid.

The Beyond Negative
Interestingly, we think as primal body in negative way also.All religions lie between two extreme religions, non-being Buddhism and being Christianity.So, considering these two religions would typify considering all religions.In Buddhism, King Milinda came on an ornate cart for wisdom, only to be bluntly "instructed" to be bodily radically deconstructed into many skandha-elements, which in turn must be "awakened" into vacuity that is what it really "is" (Davids, 1969).King Milinda was told somewhat this way.
"You see your fancy cart, and take yourself as coming here, for you think these wholes-your cart, you, and your coming-are greater than their parts.But without these parts, these wholes do not exist.So, only parts exist, and the so-called 'wholes' of cart, etc., do not exist.But, then, the parts are 'parts' because they are parts of the whole, and since the whole does not exist, 'parts' do not exist, either.Thus nothing exists at all.
And then, since no whole or part exists, none of their coming or going takes place, and even being told such things and realizing these are told, are all illusions, for telling and realizing and coming can happen only when wholes and parts exist, and they do not.Nothing exists no-where no-when; meanings of where and when depend on wholes and parts existing that are nothing.All ceases in calm Bliss of nothing."Such body-deconstruction is body thinking in a negative direction.
"But this approach commits the fallacy of composition, arguing illicitly from the whole to the parts and then from the parts to the whole, for the whole is not the parts," we would of course protest.Well, Buddha the Awakened One would then calmly respond, "Your fallacy-talk is itself fallacious, deserving of being deconstructed, for there exists no whole or part to begin with." "All I did was to slide from the so-called 'whole' to the so-called 'parts,' and slid back-I did not argue; I played with argument, to awaken you that your 'fallacy talk' assumes that wholes and parts are real, and this assumption is an empty dream.Still, such playing with argument argues tightly in its playing, as here shown.This meta-arguing by playing with argument is beyond logical parsing.We call it 'body thinking.'When you are awakened from your 'fallacy talk' here, all turns calm in Bliss of no bliss."(Davids, 1969).That talk is the Beyond-all at the negative supreme.

Concretized
"All this is confusing and bewildering to me.Give me concrete clues to body thinking, will you?"All right, I will concretize this whole bit.Incidentally, the last section IV will consider how to do body thinking ourselves.On how to do story thinking ourselves, we let body thinking come out; we try not to try, and pack to simplify, to turn straightly seeing-through.Now, here are three concrete clues to body thinking: describing body thinking, contrastng with logical thinking, and spotting body thinking.They are concrete as body thinking is; not doing body thinking, we cannot be concrete.Logical thinking is abstract, trying to disembody itself for "universal validity," sadly in vain.
One: Description of Body Thinking: As I shout on seeing you, "Now this, at last, is the bone of my bones, the flesh of my flesh," that is the first body thinking in Eden (Genesis 2:23), when I mean as I shout; I think bodily when I mean what I say.I then see the mother focusing her whole attention on her sick baby, as I think on you, focusing my attention on you present, and missing you when not (Waley, 1938).I also intend as I think of something; intention is idea, written in one character, "intended-idea 意." So, my flesh and bone, mother watching, thinking on you, and intending idea, show body thinking.
K.-M.WU In the West, Kierkegaard urges us "to will one thing," to commit all life to that "thing," as "purity of heart," total body thinking.This body-thinking sentiment is the core of "existentialism."(Kierkegaard, 1948)."Being merciful" is Jesus in visceral pain, and Mencius' whole-hearted pain unbearably toward those in pain 不忍人之心; humanity is humane, as "I hear you," pondering on your situation."Spanchnizomai, viscera-pain" is used by and on Jesus alone (New Testament, 1997: p. 693).It is not easy, though, and so people take short cuts, and do not mean their words but chatter "for information," in half-hearted duplicity, uninvolved, to be "objective, respecting your privacy."Such situation leads us to contrasting body thinking with logical thinking.
Two: Contrasts with Logical Thinking: All these easy routes are neatly logical, arranging what goes on to make clean efficient sense; body thinkers are erratic, wasteful, and insane.Martha is busy preparing meals for Jesus their favorite visitor, and cannot stand her sister Mary just sitting listening, doing nothing.Jesus has to remind Martha that Mary's total focus on his soul-talk is the best welcome, in give-and-take of body thinking "one thing needful" (Luke 10:38-42).
Similarly, "loving parents" is feeding parents to keep them full, useless "respect 敬" satisfies no hunger!Alarmed at this logic, Confucius alerted us that our parents would then be no different from dogs and horses we feed (2/7).Our filial love is much more than the logic of keeping our parents well-fed, but this "more" of our respectful love cannot be logically calculated.
People's struggles for rights are a nuisance as the dictator can logically regiment them into use.The Utopia of "Erewhon," nowhere backward, is an idle dream when we can pound people into parts of Hobbes' "Leviathan."(Butler, 1985;Hobbes, 1985).Kids idly wandering must be shaped by logical training called "learning 學," says Hsün Tzu 荀子.Making love is bothersome in casual sex among consenting adults.Aren't all these logical?
Mother's touch is tough labor; onlooker gawking is easy.Soulful listening is hard, useless; distant overhearing is clean, uninvolved.Intensive look is laborious empathy; we just meet by chance and talk.Thus the contrast between body thinking and neat logical arrangement is alarming, significant.
Three: How to Spot Body Thinking: "But then, the above examples show body thinking as involved with logical thinking.How can we spot body thinking while logic is all over today?"Its answer is not far.I act out what I think, but my act can also show its lack."Observe his wherefore, perceive his wherefrom, discern his whereat!How can he hide himself?How could anyone, indeed?"Confucius sighs (2/10).Such intensity shows body thinking.Body thinking spots body thinking.Confucius was body thinking, contagiously turning into the greatest pedagogue in China.

A Roundup
"It is clearer now, but what is body thinking?"All right, I will round up all above with my tiny Peter's quip, "I have three names, 'me, myself, and I'." First, I deal with "me," brushing teeth, wearing clothes, in I-It.Then, I discern "myself" elated or tired. in I-Thou.Finally, the "I" do them.I cannot see the "I" doing, as I cannot see my seeing in "me" or feel my feeling in "myself," but bask in the I-Milieu.So, "I have these three names."This is "body thinking" Peter lives.
Thus only in this body-thinking-way, Confucian-positively, Buddhist-negatively, can we approach the Beyond, in "religion" in which we think whole, bodily.Now we must see how body thinking expresses in story thinking, via which religion appears on the ultimate horizon.

Story Thinking as Twofold Catalyst
Story thinking catalyzes in body thinking and religion, to shape both to join both in the Beyond.Telling stories performs to elucidate these catalytic activities; we would now think story-way to understand story thinking.Not in syllogistic logic, story-thinking thinks in concrete story-coherence of living bodily.
One: Body thinking is ingrained in human nature, as we behave fittingly each moment to milieu shifting as we move.Stories then grow from inside into life-shape (Welty, 1978).As life thinks, story thinks to tell of it.Our body thinking goes as our heartbeat rhythmic constant, to appear as thinking in talking, to make story.
Body thinking thus appears as story thinking, as my tiny Peter tells me his story, "Dad, I have three names, 'me, myself, and I'," intuitively body-thinking as he is story thinking aloud, to provoke my body thinking that I put down into a story.Thus story thinking catalyzes body thinking to appear as thinking primal body way.
Two: Story thinking in the primal body appears as storytelling to link my thinking to matters beyond me.No Western philosopher can avoid thinking about mind, sensation, and objects, to cover both thinking subject and objects thought; subject-object covered is body thinking, to cover the cosmos that includes thinker.My body thinks body-wise to think cosmos-wise.
Difference connects; no difference, no connection.But noting difference must not miss connection.To do both, we must play one against the other, playing arguments on both sides together, dia-logically.Body thinking is dynamic dialogue between bodily partners, I with me, and I with others, human and non-human.The baby plays with her fingers and sucks her thumbs, and then mumbles, "I'll marry you, my tea-cups," while my body dialogues with my doctor.Dialogue is inter-thinking dia-logicizing between bodily partners, beginning at me talking with me, called "thinking," as Socrates noted (Campbell, 1980, Theaetetus, 189a-190).
These dialogues take place in time to cohere into stories.Story thinking dialogically links me to myriad things and to the cosmos, in three modes, fables, parables, and metaphors.Chuang Tzu (27/1) says of "words lodging" home in things, "paralleling them," to "tilt to" them to beckon us in.Lodging words 寓言 are metaphors, paralleling words 重言 are parables, both are tilting words 卮言 as fables to tell (fari) stories of this world beyond this world.Such beyond-nisus of story thinking is turned into awesome logical complexity of "analogy" (Swinburne, 1986).It is possible to still raise logical objections to it; objections catalyze logic to go beyond.
All these wording-modes are story-words telling fables to parallel as parables our living, to metaphor beyond.Existence stands out ecstatic, as it "story ex-presses" itself.Such story thinking delights us, enlightens us, to ex-press our body thinking to myriad things soaring Heaven and Earth and beyond.Story thinking brings us beyond us homo-cosmic, and beyond.Ecstasy standing-out can be tragic.A young man gunned down K.-M.WU 20 school kids and then killed himself, to die with them; he stood out as ahungered after companions.Kids are great deathcompanions-to Herod, Hitler.Kids are most precious and easiest to kill, to kill their killers (Matthew 26:52), the young man and Herod with messy death (Richardson, 1996).God is here blinding dark, wailing with so many Rachels at Ramah, Connecticut, for that was why Matthew recorded it (2:18; Brown, 1993).Three terrible points are here, though.
One, anything can kill, car, medicine, even drinking water.But they are not meant to kill.Guns are meant to kill, as gunner is gunned down.Scorpion bites, that's what it does; gun is man-made scorpion.Two, gun-control opponents have been blocking effective laws and researches against guns.These acts loudly tell of their guilty conscience.They are effective because they are powerful.Three, but why are they powerful?They must be supported by the "silent majority," we ourselves.But why do we support man-made scorpions?Do we have deathinstinct in us?I am my enemy.I shiver.Luckily, Chuang Tzu has Chapter 30 on sword, expanding its cutting efficiency to cosmic dimension of cosmopolitalism.
Fables, parables, and metaphors symbolize-throw together, syn-ballein-what is beyond me into me.Story thinking thereby makes me aware that the Beyond enables me to live on, as Mom nurtures her Peter living Mom.As I am aware of living the Beyond, I come to be aware of the Beyond, and this awareness is "religion."It is thus that story thinking in fables, parables, and metaphors symbolizes to catalyze religion.
Three: "You have been touting the Beyond, but I don't see it."Of course the Beyond is invisible; it is beyond seeing, even logically."The Beyond is out of this world," you say, but amazingly, lifeworld is part of the Beyond.Existence exits "here now" that goes beyond now here.God is larger than life that is larger than logic, so God is larger than logic (1 Corinthians 1:18-25).It is declared by Paul the profound scholar.Swinburne (1986) is intent on "coherence of theism," which is logically incoherent.Defying this obvious situation put him in straitjacket out of theism that is open, beyond us."Future" and "omni-"-words are words that are open; Swinburne's (1986) logic kills both; he does not know that "rigour" and "clarity" he claims are much subtler beyond logical analysis.

The Beyond
Elucidating the Beyond story-tells how story thinking shapes body thinking into religion, all tacit.Jesus shows so; he "descended into hell" of all honors, atrocities, gently smoothing the mess.He then came alive silently, asking, "Children, have you any food?"baking fish and bread at lakeshore (John 21:5, 9).He came back alive as mother to support us stealthily, as we think we live on our own!"Matters achieved, people all say, 'we self-thus'," Lao Tzu mumbles (17).
The Beyond is invisible but essential to the not-beyond.Living in a house, we see no builder, whose imprints are yet everywhere.People gather to listen to Jesus, who said, "Look at the farmer sowing seeds."They now see the farmer because Jesus pointed.He is tacitly invisible in the farmer.
The father, alarmed, used upaya-expedients to trick his children out of the burning mansion 火宅 (Sudharmapundarika, Chapter Three).Father Buddha's calm is now ours as he is invisible in it.Buddhas unbeknown are walking on street.The Beyond hid is essential in daily ongoing; those in the Beyond spread wings soaring beyond, running not faint.Berkeley (1992) denied "matter," for it cannot be perceived.Matter enables-"supports"-perception, so matter cannot be perceived, as Hume cannot perceive the "I" who perceives.Berkeley shows how natural science can go on without "matter" (pp.126-138); common folks also tell Einstein that they can go on without his "relativity" they cannot perceive.Of course they can go on and, so can science, as if I can perceive without me perceiving!But "me perceiving" is Berkeley's "God"; he banishes matter to let in God.His move tells how we need the Beyond, if not as matter, then as God.Tommy is right saying he "can do anything"; he is all free, tacitly aware that he is free because he is under Mom and Dad's invisible, story-thinking in body thinking.Body thinking, story thinking, and religions are at one alive.

China
"All this is so bewildering, too abstract to me"; I hear you, my pal.Do you want to see all this actually?China has long been practicing primal body thinking homo-cosmic, in story thinking in history and literature, poetic narrative, factual fictive.China's ideograms portraying sense and sound of matters is congenial to body thinking in story thinking; they are "body language" to cover bodily sounds and sights, personal and public, intimate and homo-cosmic, all expressing primal body.But body language is invisible, not in dictionary.Two perceptive descriptions in the West of Chinese writing are Creel (1037) and Watts (1975).
Body-language originates principles, "sounding to cover sense 音以蔽義" by "voice inevitably being-with intention 聲 必兼意" and "form and voice to meet intention 形聲會意."Sounds and shapes of Chinese ideograms echo to reflect shape and sense of what is intended written.Sincerity 誠 is expressed 言 to make 成 the world, says The Doctrine of the Mean 中 庸.Body language is thus hidden at the base of all languages.
In this tacit way, China is religious, sensitive to the Beyond as "heaven 天," intensely feeling the "decrees of heavenly destiny 天命," chanting "Heaven sees from my people naturally seeing, to hear from my people naturally hearing," Mencius reports (5A5).Still, "heaven" is all-silent, visible yet no one knows it, as the tacit Beyond.Thus, this story of China shows how story thinking catalyzes body thinking into religion.
In short, body thinking is by nature expressive, inter-thriving through time.I self-exist as body thinking, by body-acting with non-self as my alter-ego.Body thinking cannot help but express itself "bodily," not contrived, separative-analytical, to wit, not "logical," but naturally in the body's self-expression, storythinking.

Story Thinking, Dialogue, Naming
Body thinking expresses coherently in storytelling to storyunderstand, dia-logic.Socrates in marketplace dialogically thinks back and forth to enlighten one another; thoughtful storytelling-dialogue begins at myself thinking (Theaetetus 189e-190), and all his thinking is put in dialogues by his student Plato dialoguing with teacher Socrates, as Confucius teaches in dialogues.In fact, all good writings consist in dialogues back and forth through history.
"But Socrates has tons of logical analysis; it is not dialogue, is it?"Well, then logical analysis of points at issue is part of story-thinking, continued in later philosophical systems, and story is dialogical."But you said 'logical analysis' is wrong.Now you say analysis is part of dialogue."I mean analysis is wrong as an overall mode of thinking.Analysis can be part of an overall flow of thinking, by distinguishing points to clarify, to unclog thinking flow; still, analysis can tear down to destroy when used all over.Analysis is a sharp scalpel; be careful how we use it, so as not be overrun and get hurt.Besides, analysis trains us nimble for life-complexities, but its rigid one-track exercise 24 hours ruins our healthy subtle sensitivity.I asked my tiny Peter to fetch me a watch, and he could not find it right before him.We then found that it was because he did not know the name "watch."Name is the story that body-thinks dialogically to bring about the named.Story thinking names to bring out body thinking in lifeworld.
Story thinking thus begins body thinking to begin religion to create the world.Hsün Tzu 荀子 obliquely noted that naming brings about reality, saying (in 正名篇 22/21-29), Name has no fixed reality, it [name] is contracted to designate reality.Contract stabilized common is called 'real name,' etc." Sadly, he was shortsighted, confined to sociopolitical control of naming he called "righting name 正名," to seed disastrous dictatorship of Legalism 法家 in his students Han Fei 韓非 and Li Ssu 李斯.As the primal peoples have been practicing for ages (Frey, 1995;Jest, 1998;Nerburn, 1999), words naming in story thinking create the world; section III on religion will explain this point.Sadly, the deep basic Christian story-theology is nowhere, yet.Body thinking and religion via story thinking are the rich synonymy of my being in the Beyond; the Beyond incarnate is so rich that the world cannot contain its stories, as John said to end his Gospel stories that cannot end.

The Beyond
Thus it is that story thinking tells stories primal-body way, to extend beyond to the Beyond."Religion as ultimate" is, not living at the limiting situation such as death, but living in an unlimited open horizon of the Beyond, beyond death.The Beyond is understandable as beyond understanding, as "God" is God beyond God (Tillich), "Nirvana" is "nothing" beyond negating negativities, "eternal life" is life beyond life in time, and so the Ultimate is the last beyond all "lasts." "In other words, when we try our last best, do our very worst to death, it is when the Beyond begins, right?"Wow! Very good, my friend!God is here, devil is here, Nirvana is here, and kids are here in all playful bliss bottomless sky high, beyond!We who live the Beyond "shall mount up with eagle's wings, run not weary, walk not faint," gloriously Isaiah concludes Chapter 40; we trudge on with eagle-wings, ever beginning underfoot (Lao Tzu 64).We begin to begin, to yet to begin.There exists a beginning; there exists yet beginning to be a beginning; there exists yet beginning to yet to begin to begin" (Chuang Tzu 2/49).
It is kids in the Beyond resilient, as ends are endless (Dewey); the Beyond is even instrumentally apposite."This statement is a surprise!"Look."Ends are endless" says that this proposal to do, this end, is for the sake of the next proposal, next end, and so on; here, "for the sake of" is what goes beyond endlessly, and this thrust to the Beyond is religion.
The proposed ends in religion are often unexpected.Jeremiah (25-29) proposes, one, never fight the big bully Babylon, keep the status quo, and two, clean up inside Israel, religiously (rid of Baalism) and morally (be just, care for the helpless).Bully Babylon is Yahweh's rod to cleanse Israel.All this is surprising.Babylon is an enemy to oppose, Baalism is nature-cult, and the helpless are to be used.Jeremiah's proposal is divine prudence beyond reason!Religion is instrumentalist beyond Dewey.
Instrumentalism is life's logic timed to the Beyond the time-stream flowing beyond here now, while here now.Here we "trudge amassing half-steps to reach thousand miles" (Hsün Tzu 荀子 1/18), as "Thousands mile walk begins underfoot" (Lao Tzu 64), for "In leveling the land, even depositing a load makes advance; I'll go ahead," insists Confucius (9/19).Now Dewey, Isaiah, Hsün Tzu, Lao Tzu, and Confucius are all here storytelling the Beyond.The Beyond is instrumentalism, Taoism, Confucianism, and Judaism rolled together unlimited, soaring up to the Nirvana-horizon invisible far, as Father Buddha the Awakened patiently trains his son lost in poverty, step by step, into his vast riches, to vanish in the Beyond (de Bary, 1972).Again, all books in the world cannot contain such enormous stories, as John's Gospel on Jesus cannot end.Jesus shakes hand with Buddha, standing opposite, being to nonbeing, inter-smiling.

Religion
Buddha and Jesus guide us to "religion."As our access to the Beyond, religion is beyond numbers, one and many, as "religion" is one name yet exists in fact as many, as religion is the "I" writ large.The "I" is claimed by me, "I am that I am," one only, and claimed by many "I"s, to make many "here now 當下" to extend the "I" changing, "I will be that I will be," ever in season out of season.What "I am" consists in how "I will be," as how "I will be" composes what "I am" (Noth, 1962: pp. 43-45).The "I" is a beyond-nisus ever alive.
Lao Tzu sighs (58), "O woe where weal leans!O weal where woe lurks!禍兮福之所倚!福兮禍之所伏!"He mentions "woe" first; we must be cautiously bravely optimistic, as woe and weal interchange in life's seasonal rounds."Don't you like the weather?Wait a minute" (Mark Twain).We must take the train of days, living their rhythmic beat, lest we run, hurt, after the train.Our gutsy common sense is primal body thinking at life's story thinking, shifting in season out of season.
Thus, "day to day are good days, 日日是好日" (Zen Buddhism), to wit, "Day to day is new, again day new, 日日新, 又 日新" says King T'ang's bathtub (Great Learning 大學 3), as time flows to clean days, as his bathtub cleansed his days till ours.So, naturally, "Day to day are good days" (Zen); days dawn as tiny Peter and Tommy guide us forward.It is religion cleansing inside out.

Stories
All these stories tell us that tiny children are far ahead of us, growing beyond themselves to guide us going beyond to throw body thinking beyond, and static logic that examines and analyzes what stays cannot handle our primal body being thrown beyond, ever pro-jecting forward.Body thinking must tell stories to allude beyond itself to the Beyond to point to what is beyond story-told.Storytelling adopts fables to tell and parables to throw fabled stories beside what is pointed to.All religions are filled with fables of parables to ferry us over, to metaphor beyond what is actually said in this shore.
Religion thinks bodily story-way in fables and parable to metaphor us beyond to the holy.Heaven and earth join in story K.-M.WU thinking, via which the Beyond is understood in the not-Beyond, and not-Beyond in the Beyond.Bodies are married in heaven, to create heaven-blessed children, as the Beyond is time-thrust of the body, as stories tell.This excitement is played lustily in children shouting fighting growing, as their stories tell.Story thinking is kid-excitement joining the Beyond to not-Beyond; the joining is religion.

Religion as the Beyond the Ultimate
We now sum up our harvest before going to religion with a new approach, body thinking in story thinking.Body thinking is thinking holistic, natural, rooted in our primal body acting out thinking, as an alternative to logical thinking separating thinking mind from unthinking "body," and separates thinking from objects thought, with an unnatural mind-only surgical logic; body thinking bodily follows what is happening, to understand it by not dissecting it but discerning it, bodily meeting 體會 it, as China says.
Story thinking then naturally thinks body thinking story-way.A story is told in a coherent sequence that is yet open to twists of events story-conveyed.Thus story thinking develops surprising turns, playful.Such story thinking as coherent, open, and unpredictable is an alternative to analytical system-building closed in on its network, examining and arguing about the objects thought about.
Religion is at home expressed in body thinking story thought, as religion is authenticity "with all your heart" of being (Jeremiah 29:13), meditating into Buddha-Enlightenment (Blackwood, 1982)."Verses 12-14a: The essence of the prophecy is in a sentence.Not priestcraft and ritual, not the minutiae of the law, not residence in a holy city, not pride of lineage, but the dedicated heart is the way to God." Andrew W. Blackwood Jr., Commentary on Jeremiah (1977), Waco, TX; Word Books, 1982: p. 207.This is a perceptive book.So religion requires body thinking as primal thinking at our root, and root-thinking is authentic.The authentic religion is irrelevant to manipulative analysis.Besides, religion of the Beyond must be conveyed by metaphors of bodily stories of parables and fables beyond literalism logically parsed.
Story thinking catalyzing body thinking is a fitting "vehicle" to the various "vehicles of Buddhism," to carry us from this world-shore to the Beyond.Stories are thrown-beside (paraballein) the point beyond them as parables, to symbolize religious truth by throwing-together (syn-ballein) our self with the Beyond.Body thinking story thought is a fit vehicle body-alive for religion our access to the Beyond alive.
"All this is too far out and abstract for me."All right, let us begin at the concrete beginning.Random matters pop in and out, the dark and the bright come and go.Such brute chaos is unlivable, and so it must be named, for upon naming, "things" appear as "such and such" named stable.Naming-appearing is a naming activity of my body-telling of stories.Story thinking awakens body thinking, to realize that it has been the "I" that has been creating the "I" and the not-"I" world of things, by naming them as one mode of story thinking.
Thus, in the beginning is the "I" who names, in body thinking and story thinking, to create the world, and in the beginning that begins this "beginning" is the Beyond-all in religion that creates body thinking story thinking.A version of Western "nominalism," insisting that things are only names, is a fallacy teetering toward an extreme.Name is an indispensable catalyst to existence (as Peter's failure to see the "watch" tells us), but not existence as such.Messenger cannot replace her message.Luckily, "nominalism" usually refers to the status of universals, not of common things (Reese, 1999: p. 525).Tiny Peter's three names of "me, myself, and I" must first be named by the Beyond named in religion.Thus, body thinking in story thinking reaches religion.Now we cam be guided by body thinking in story thinking toward understanding religion.

The Beyond-Nisus
"Toward" and "beyond" that often appear in the above description express the timed thrust of body thinking in story thinking, constantly changing beyond status quo.Time goes on, that instant going beyond this instant, as existence exists by standing out of itself toward others.Such is body-story-thinking that is action of the "I" objectifying and dealing, constantly body-active beyond here now.
The "I" in body thinking is by nature religious, changing beyond-itself, thinkable only in stories.And then, to realize so leads the "I" to realizing that all existence is cosmically religious, as "I" exists by standing-out toward the non-"I," heart to heart (as Jesus' "good shepherd"), and breath to breath (as with trees here with me).And so, if the "I" is religious, then the myriad things are religious, constantly changing beyond here now as the "I" does.Now, we have two strange twists here.
The first twist is this.In famously taking "religion" as opium, Karl Marx warns us that the usual "gods" of conventional religions are too small, unwittingly chiming in with the Anglican Bishop Phillips who translated the New Testament into today's English (Phillips, 1960).It was a quiet bombshell and, for all its popularity, its explosion was not as dramatic as Marxism.Marxism spread as Communism to have had its rise and fall in so many nations so dramatic, historic, and worldwide.The so-called "death of God theologians" also take humankind today as having grown out of the traditional gods, but these theologians simply declare "no god," not replacing the dated gods with a new one as Marx did, and petered out.Dietrich Bonhoeffer's "adult Christianity" tends to the similar fate.Marx warned the world that such small gods would lull us totally decrepit to death, as opiate does us.Marx offered his passionate "religion" of economic Utopia where the belly is the base-god of our body-living.This story tells of Russian Marxism.
Here is the second twist.Sadly, this Marxism itself rotted into manipulative tyrannical oppression of proletariat laborers, to whose welfare the Marxist Utopia arose to devote.This oppressive outcome was now worse than the opiate of religion, as George Orwell laments in Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eight-Four (1949).Every "communist nation" operating on the basic "people's belly" must take to its heart the lesson of this story of historic rise and fall of Communist Russia.Now, such learning from history is of course story thinking toward religion that constantly goes beyond itself to the Beyond, as history always goes beyond its original story, quite surprisingly, as religion does.Body thinking in story thinking is imbued with the beyond-nisus alive, to elucidate religion, as religion ultimately supports primal body thinking in story thinking.
Religion elucidates body thinking this story-way.Christianity and Buddhism, two extremes of being-religion and nonbeing religion, urge us to revolutionize our total life so radically as to be born again from above, so as to even envisage the K.-M.WU Other Shore of Nirvana and the divine Kingdom.Both religions with all religions constantly use story-thinking in fables, parables, and metaphors to symbolize this urgent truth of revolution essential, ultimate, and bodily.Discursive theorization in Buddhism is not for its own sake, as in Western philosophy, but is a symbol to Buddhist truth, in fact, used as Buddhist fable and parable.Buddhist theorization is religious.
Mind you.We have learned all the above from tiny Peter's wise "I have three names, 'me, myself, and I'." Religion says that our dealing objectively ("me") and reflectively ("myself") must be totally overhauled into the new "I" reborn from above, as Jesus says to the scholar Nicodemus (John 3:1-8), and all this while, our tiny Peter is playing outside, for he is already in that "new 'I'" in need of no new birth.
The Nicodemus-story reminds us of Shen-hsiu 神秀 who poetized that we must sweep dust clean to attain enlightenment, while Hui-neng 慧能 responded that there is no dust anywhere, so need no-sweeping to attain enlightenment, and got the official seal to become the sixth patriarch of Ch'an Buddhism (Hui-neng, 1978).We are impressed with such a story, unaware that Zen turns contradictory when turned into "Zen school." "Zen" is open vacuity unlimited, but "school" closes itself into a set system of doctrines and institution to exclude "others."Hui-neng had to leave the monastery at once, to avoid disputes in lethal jealousy.His move, typical of "Zen school," opposes Zen all-open, when tiny Tommy saunters in, totally devoid of such adult-contrived contradiction.He was just out of a martial arts session where he closed his eyes to "clean" his "mind." Upon entering our room, Tommy just grabbed a tiny bag of sugar-for-coffee."Aha!" we say, "He cleared his mind only to steal sugar."But he did not steal.The sugar is there for anyone to take, and he just took it, after undergoing the motion of "cleaning the mind" he does not need, being totally pure always.He took the sugar and ran out to play.He is so clean he needs no cleaning.He cleans us!He is now playing over there, far ahead of Hui-neng stunned, vainly staring at the dust he-no-dust is kicking up.All Zen follows him.
Look.Illiterate people are kids with odd fixations; kids have no fixation, far beyond them.Moron Charlie charms us precisely with this quality of Tommy taking sugar to run out to play, dustless freely kicking up dust, so messy so clean, in Alice's Wonder Kingdom absolutely Zen divine (Keyes, 2005).The Zen Kingdom of God is all Tommy's, in need of no rebirth or mind-cleaning.Tommy is right here as our Zen master, and he could not care less about all such stuff.He just wanted a tiny bag of sugar to run out to play, nothing else.Wow! Zen is right here now, with Jesus smiling beside.

Playing with Arguments
Peter and Tommy are so happy playing, and playing can never be seriously argued about.Our argument here, if any, can only be played with, to chime in with Peter and Tommy playing, to match up to them so happy."How do you mean, to play with arguments?"Well, to begin with, play and taste cannot be argued about, as they are activities of the prime body heart-beating, body thinking.
And so, then, it is quite natural to play with argument-bits in story-bits, as kids always do (Wu, 1998(Wu, , 2014))."Do we have to, though?"Well, Peter is actually embodying and presenting authentic religion.What is amazing is that Peter does all this without even trying.He just could not care less!That is playing naturally authentic.His unity of natural-play-authenticity makes it an adult-imperative to play with arguments in story thinking, as he is always at play thinking and saying things life-wise.

Cash Value of Play
"But play is so frivolous.I see no cash value in it at all," you protest.But Yes indeed, play has an enormous cash value.Play is unique, indispensable, and important in serious praxis alive.Here is a telling example.Nothing is more important than being alive, and so it is most important to probe what being alive means.And yet, amazingly, we cannot do so.While alive, we must probe the unknown (being alive) with the unknown (while alive), and we can no longer probe being alive when dead.The most important "being alive" is beyond probing by serious thinking.
If serious thinking cannot handle being alive, then story thinking eminently can show being alive, for being alive freely tells stories, as kindergartners so alive toddle out show-and-tell.They always play, and free storytelling plays with stories, and "argument" is a storytelling.They play with story-bits to show and tell, to show being alive.Not a long story that digs into nerves, but story-bits hopping to tell various life-vignettes, in story-thinking alive.Chuang Tzu the master-teller of story-bits began Chinese aesthetics.
Chuang Tzu plays 遊 with bits of tall tales, soaring and roaming 逍遙 all over, in Chapter One, "逍遙遊," and then plays with argument-bits 論, up and down among all things 齊 物, in Chapter Two, "齊物論."Such play-dancing with a cleaver with an ox of things feeds at our life-prime "養生主" in Chapter Three, playing with this story of living, precisely in cleaver-suffering.The player hops and skips, to touch and go.The player touches the spots essential, to pique our curiosity.We want to ask, and he is already over there, skipping to another essential, then to another.Gabriel Marcel is the only Western philosopher who dramatically practices such life hopping.
Such is playing with story-bits in argument-bits.We are stunned staring far behind at the playful dusts unsettling, left to ponder the scene, ever yonder, open, far ahead, continually provoked to move on.All these movements by the player's to spread to ours express our wonder wandering, to spell being alive.Thus Chuang Tzu is deep frivolous alive, egging us alive; we forget he is 2500 years young, still hopping playing, moving us, right here now.Thus it is that being alive is at play, and playing shows being alive, to draw us in alive, to continue play as Peter is playing.
No serious thinking can pull off such a stunt of presenting being alive so playfully profound, for being alive is at play, spontaneously presenting alive.Nothing is serious to the play, as no one alive seriously tries to be alive.Being alive is elusive because it is so simple.Oscar Wilde told the truth, saying, life is too serious to take seriously, as kids serious about playing not serious.
"What do you mean by 'simple' here?"Well, being alive is playfully scattered, one day at a time, hopping from this moment to next, connected without rhyme or reason, to create new rhyme and reason.Creation cannot be planned; it just happens.This "just" is elusive and simple, and alive.No one says, "Look at how alive I am!" as no one has ever thought of such show-off.
K.-M.WU "Simple" is "no show-off," just alive.That is body thinking presented in story thinking, in frivolous play, freely, simply.
Religion displays this fabulous freedom frolicking in the "feasts of fools" since medieval days, as kids dancing all over with Muslim dervishes swirling around (Cox, 1969).All religious sages are laughing Buddhas clowning, as Jesus blesses children, cuddling them to announce that their Father's perfect divine Kingdom is theirs so wobbly imperfect, and so chocolate-soiled "out of line" so frivolous.
Jesus' announcement so astonishes three Gospels as to record it identically (Matthew 19:14; Mark 10:14; Luke 18:16; John 3:3).Yet these kids could not care less about such serious bit, being "serious" only about shouting, and playing and "fighting monsters" for fun.All religions adore children so "out of line"-"Can't they quiet down a bit?" granny says, as she cannot help smiling herself-ever having fun, thriving in primal body thinking as they story-think monsters, to frolic and fight in their own story-way.This is where the Beyond is, also smiling.

Things False
Now, fighting monsters for fun is of course having and dealing with "things false," and such dealing is extremely significant.The Wright Brothers were accused of toying with false illusion so impious, for "If we were meant to fly, God would have equipped us with wings," people proudly reasoned.Yet the Wright Brothers persisted in defying the accusation, and metal is routinely flying today.We now realize that God has equipped us with wings after all, the wings of "1% inspiration and 99% perspiration" that no bird has.But we know so today because the Brothers persistently toyed with their "false dream."The orthodox view of their days is now turned "wrong." It is strange.The Wright Brothers did not learn from their failed "experiments" to quit dreaming to fly; they did not adjust their "hypothesis" to fit their failed experiments, whatever adjusting means here.They simply persisted in their "false dream" to fly.They ended up dying for their "impossible dream," but their latecomers took over their dream, and now metal is flying in the "friendly skies," due to these "crazy people" fighting their favorite "monster dream" to fly! "But the Wright Brothers did adjust their 'plane' to begin to fly, and later followers improved on their plane to make today's great planes to routinely fly.Science does make progress."Paradoxically or not, "progress" is seen retrospectively; what is said above is made prospectively.So you are right, pal.What is said above as valid is in tension with what you say now, also valid, and this tension makes our many-tracked story-thinking on our life, alive forwarding to the Beyond.
"Now, would this formerly right view now turned 'wrong' be turned right again, though?"Great point you made, pal!We must leave open this possibility!After all, we cannot physically fly without going into that metal piece, "air plane."The earth is flat in our view in grassy field, no matter how the picture from outer space "proves" otherwise.It all depends on the perspective and the gestalt.
Thus the notions, "false," "failure," and "wrong" are part of our thinking-gestalt today, our "mythology" as much laughable as the accusation on the Wright Brother in their days, Newtonian cosmology before Einstein, and Mesopotamian cosmologies millennia ago.Mythology for mythology, we humans must need all these mythologies to shape and live lifeworld.Mythologies are our "monsters" hated in others, loved in ours!
What is important here is to realize this fact and be liberated from our holier-than-thou chauvinism of proud "cutting-edge modernism today."This chauvinism is as disastrous as "witch hunt," "heretic hunt," and "crusades," all of which have resulted in the Auschwitz ovens that burnt Hitler away with his victims.These disasters were not too long ago, we must recall and tremble.We simply must recognize "monsters," ours and others', and "fight them in fun" as kids, and with enthusiasm as the Wright Brothers.Monster-mythologies are worth fighting for and against, in fun! "You use 'monster' in several senses.What is 'monster'?"A good point you raised, pal.I adopt the word "monster" by following the unconquerable children who simply love to use it and love to fight it."Monster" is so monstrously beyond us that we do not understand it.Yet, sadly, "fighting monster" is not to our adult taste.We hate what is beyond us, for we want to tame all objects and control them under our safe handling.In contrast, kids simply love what is monstrously beyond them, and love to fight them without controlling them at all.
We take other people's strange hang-ups as our hated monsters, but we also have our own pet ideals we do not quite understand, and we love to fight out for our monsters as the Wright Brothers fought for their monsters flying Supermen.The Wright Brothers are incurable kids who teach us three points.One, we must dream beyond dreams, to have monsters.Two, we must embrace beyond embrace, to "love monsters" as kids do.Three, we must "love to fight" monsters, to tackle and struggle with them, for and against.Monsters are ours and others'.
Such fighting with monsters beyond is religion, as Jacob fights with an unknown monster till dawn, to be granted with "Israel," a new person, fighter with the Beyond his monster.God loves a prayerful fighter, as prayer fights the Beyond, Forsyth assured us (Forsyth, 1916).The mysterious story of Jacob fighting with the unknown, to be awarded with the prestigious new essence, "Israel," is in Genesis 32:24-30 (Miller & Miller, 1959).Religions are where monsters are beyond our wildest dream, "mythologies."Our rigorous science is today's mythology, as ancient "mythology" we laugh at was strict science of ancient days.All fights between science and religion are futile in myopic fixation of misplaced view on chronology.
In other words, "fighting monsters" for fun is powerful, thanks to which we fly metal in the "friendly skies," split grains of sand into cheap nuclear energy, and go out into outer space unlimited, all because of our kid-play with monsters.Kids, play, and monsters religiously create the brave new world far ahead beyond our wildest dreams.A Berkeley researcher Alison Gopnik's (2012) "Why Play Is Serious" seriously misused "serious" in this context of kids playing."Serious" should have been "crucial." Three points are here.One, it is thus that kids and their make-beliefs do lead our adult way ahead.Escher and books on imaginations are our "fun kids today" waiting to explode anytime into novelty (Escher, 1999;Hofstadter, 1980;Page & Ingpen, 1987;Manguel & Guadalupi, 1999).Two, mythologies and monsters belong to religion, to create the new world, as children fight their monsters for fun.Three, Escher and the people of imagination are in an odd kid-minority often laughed off as frivolous, out of line.Section IV will consider this sad fact.

Monster, Holophrase, Religion
Now here is another stunning story of another tiny Tommy, as only a story can tell of his astounding world-event.Tommy suddenly met at zoo a tall-necked yellow monster so huge!Instinctively pointing at it, he shouted, "Doggie!"It is his holophrastic spurt packed with his body-full surprise.Everyone broke out laughing."Can you say 'giraffe,' Tommy?" Mom giggled."Giraffe" or no, that fantastic "Doggie!" was his world-monster."Monster" is his all-time favorite, provoking Tommy's body-thinking body-storytelling, in "Doggie!" "What is 'holophrase'?"Juicy "holophrase (whole-tell)" says many sentences, typically expressed by kids who typically do body thinking, in wonder poetry (McArthur, 1992).Sadly, McArthur (1992) takes the child's holophrases, to which all languages come home, to which all poetry aspires, as belonging to a juvenile stage of language development.Thanks to holophrases, poetry is powerful punchy, hitting straight at the point, as kids always do.Tommy's "Doggie!" shouts that he is a holophrase one-worder our "primal poet" body-full.But then, trees are bare under the wintry sun to show rugged meaning of raw vitality brightly shining; trees are body thinking storytelling, holophrase-powerful.
"Empirical body" is disembodied, inert, and unthinking.In contrast, Tommy's totality of wholesome primal body comprises flesh and mind interpenetrating; Tommy is Peter's "I."This whole primal body thinks most naturally radically, more than any supposed disembodied "mind" does.Tommy shouts out from his root.How could any one resist Tommy the primal poet shouting "Doggie!" at a giraffe?
When stories are told, thinking expresses beyond itself to be con-firmed by the hearer beyond and the milieu beyond.In his shouting, Tommy shows that body thinking inevitably expresses the body language of story thinking.Tommy's "Doggie" tells the story of his stunned confrontation with the Beyond-him.Tommy loves a monster he calls a weird "doggie" so big and strange beyond him.He loves it lives it, to access the Beyond-all beyond all.Thus Tommy takes to the religious ultimate monstrously bigger than he as fish takes to water far bigger than fish.
"How does Tommy come to take to monster-religion?"Well, it happens as he lives in his primal body."Doggie!" is his story thinking expressing his body thinking whole.Any who lives whole, body thinking, immediately body-accesses things whole, big beyond Tommy; his buzzword is "big."The "BIG" opens his eyes wide as he meets monster so big!He is fascinated and loves the monster to live the Beyond, to lead us to "religion" so big.
Our primal body does not survey analyze what is known, but thinks beyond what is known in stories, fables, parables, and metaphors, to symbolize the Beyond, and story thinking in symbols is religion to the Beyond.Worldly trivial stuff is all parables of the Beyond, its miracle.My excellence points to the Beyond; my pain perfects the power of the Beyond.Tommy jumps shouting "Look!I can do anything!"Tommy is the tiniest mustard seed growing up into the tallest tree to home birds; the tall monster doggie-giraffe comes to nibble at its leaves; tiny Tommy is primal body-metaphor to the Beyond.
##Religion as Matrix so Dynamic: "You take body thinking story-thinking-way to climax in the Beyond.Conversely, though, religion makes sense of body thinking in story-thinking, as religion makes sense in body thinking, wouldn't you say?" Wow!This bombshell beautifully turns around the table homo-cosmic!You are right, pal.Religion makes body thinking; religion all-embraces, a motherly matrix of body thinking that story-thinks.
Christianity is an example.John declares (1:14), "The Word became flesh"; "became (egeneto)" is "created."The primal thinking-as "word"-created the primal body our flesh, as thinking now thinks as body, while body naturally body-thinks, human.
Jesus is the Word made flesh, to become our body-root, to revolutionize Judaism by embodying it.Jesus said to Jewish scholars, "You have answered rightly" (Luke 10:28), and urged us, "Whatever they tell you to observe, that observe and do."(Matthew 23:3); he accused them thinking without embodied deeds.Their thinking is "unclean whitewashed tombs" (23:27).
In contrast, Jesus was impressed-incarnated-by body thinking of some non-Jews, a Syro-Phoenician lady (Mark 7:26-30), the cruel Roman centurions, and despised Samaritans, lepers, beggars, publicans, harlots, and so on who body-thought.Religion is the matrix of body thinking; Jesus lived body thinking as he prayed for those who crucified him (Luke 23:34), and died for them.His resurrection had all his cross-scars; he embodied the whole body thinking of all humans, with all their unsightly scars.
His followers later risked life proclaiming, "We have no other name whereby we are saved" (Acts 4:12) than this name Jesus, the self-emptied embodiment of all human life-thinking, to save the world into body-integrity.He cannot be made into our fetish-idol, for he is crossed-out empty on the cross; no one can idolize the criminal condemned to the cruelest death.So, other religions freely take Jesus in as one of their prophets and bodhisatvas, for Jesus is the Word made religious flesh.
Allowing these religions to take him in as one of their prophets, Christ silently supports them, redeeming their dross.Resurrected with cross-scars for them, Christ tells them to shape up, and, having taken him in, they cannot rid of him, for he is now their thorn in the flesh.Such is a logical mess of the Gospel that restores us to integral body thinking; all religious bibles are logically messy, in body coherence re-creating us.All body thinking story thought in parables, fables, and metaphors is stock in trade of religion.All philosophies in religion are parables to religion.

Music
Now, music is part and parcel of religion, and music is story thinking wordless.Religion is home to music that shakes all our body to tune us to heal us; when tired of living world-wearied, we must come home to music.So we tell ourselves, and this telling practices story thinking.We have just story thought on body thinking to revive, restore and be reborn into ourselves, all in music.
All musical activity is religious quite amazing.We are now sustained with eagle-wings, mounting high on "the wings of song" as Mendelssohn composed, saying that music is the primal language, direct beyond roundabout languages.Mounted on wings of song, we run daily not weary, we walk not faint, on and on beyond "here now." Our running and walking are our eagle-soaring miles high on the ground.We are now music-on-wings humming life singing lifeworld onward.If all this music-dynamics is not religion, religion is nowhere.Religion, music, and story thinking body-

Sad Adulthood
Sadly, we timid adults dare not soar in Tommy's humming adventure beyond, but proudly prefer to survey, analyze, and examine what we already know, and even despise soaring adventure as "kid-stuff," insisting that adventurous fables, parables, and metaphors are puerile nursery rhymes, and "Kids need to grow up!"We shrink back crawling "examining practical status quo," locked in logical analysis and precision, impossible in the ongoing novel unknown.We are no longer able to spread kid-fresh wings of primal imagination, mounting up high with monster-eagles.
We mature out of religion, munching on "God is dead.""The Beyond" is now not in our life-inevitable "five year plan" soaring to the Beyond; we try to deny what we cannot live without.Our adult sophistication goes in separative duplicity, no more child-pure in power all of a piece.
Our daily living has no see-through innocence of Mozart's wind chamber music, as spontaneously lived by Peter and Tommy.Their body thinking gets cramped in our silly sophistication.We must be reborn into Peter and Tommy, to live in Peter's "three names of the self" and live in monster-religion as Tommy naturally shouts.It is our sad adult situation that leads us to the conclusion as follows.

Surprising Difficulty
"Now, how do we practice gutsy primal body religion?"This is an important query; we meet a surprising difficulty, as coming home to living in body thinking story thinking requires a strange detour.This detour, radically strenuous and tragic, is part and parcel of religious living.This is because full-bodied riches of "Doggie!" are dispersed in later schooling in discursive analytical disputation, as in Western logicism; we grow up monstrous under "tiger mothers" all over the world.Oddly we grow less and less mature!Later, aware of being in the wrong somehow, our decades of struggling finally reach the wine of thick wisdom, in Tommy's full-bodied "Doggie!" shouted at the monster giraffe, with powerful implications unlimited.Still, Tommy's shout primal immediate is a long way off from our "adult sophistication."We are lost far, away from our home, our Peter and Tommy; life must take a long journey home to the immediacies of the primal power of child spontaneity.
Here shines the alarming truth of body thinking in story thinking at human root in the religious ultimate, in awestruck detour told in the story of, e.g., "Go away, Lord!I am a sinner!" mumbled by Peter Jesus' fisherman disciple, awestruck at the enormous catch of fish.A Buddhist story tells of the "lost son" who avoids his unknown father's splendor by living far in shacks of the squalid poverty district (de Bary, 1969).Luke 5:1-11 has the story of fisherman Peter.
All these stories tell that the intimate natural is the goal of struggling asceticism, as life-revolution, as painfully shown in Jeremiah's tragic stories.The revolution is radical, requiring being reborn from above through elusive wind and flowing water so ordinary, John tells (3:1-8).The extraordinary "Doggie!" must be reached in the common daily routines practiced by body thinking as story thinking.
All this detour-story is told to underscore how precious the root of humanity-body thinking in story thinking-is, so common as the highest essence of all religions.The present essay is one such detour, itself an exercise in futility, full of adult-shame of explanations, at the feet of dearest Tommy and Peter.Our confession is that our essay journeys, following their body thinking in story thinking, their "holy of holies." Still, this essay on body thinking, story thinking, and religion has obviously been delightfully written in kid-innocence, wishing that our dear readers have no less enjoyed it, to continue to yarn their soul-full body-stories beyond here now to the Beyond, playful spanking new as children at dawn.All of us have just begun to begin anew, afresh world without end.We all are embraced in sheer bliss of the Beyond of those shouting kids.

What We Can Do and How
"What can we do, after all this?You have not told us how."Oh, sorry.Here are two big points, our adult-difficulty and its resolution.Only after appreciating our difficulty can we look for resolution, right?These two points should enlighten us on how we should live into the joys ineffable of the religious beyond, via our gutsy body thinking story-thought lived by kids.
Our Adult Difficulty: Buddhism points us to "No Door Pass 無門關" as our way out into the blissful Beyond.This Pass is tough (Ding, 2002(Ding, : p. 1085).But such historical occasion is bypassed here, in line with Buddhist vacuity of all.Confucius alerted (6/17), "Who can out, not from door?"; if we have "no door," how can we go out?Still, the Pass to go out into the Beyond exists, door-less.To enter this Pass, we must not try without even trying, for here is "no door" to try entering.
To change metaphor, we are to be all here now 當下 (Zen), in self-so 自然 (Lao Tzu 17), tathata as such (Sanskrit), "I am" (Exodus 3:14) (Johnson, 2009, p. 322).All this is in life's river enjoying tiny fish enjoying swimming, as Chuang Tzu did to conclude his chapter, "Autumn Flood 秋水."I am present at present.Presence stays not staying, alive as kids.
Zen says, "Day to day is good day 日日是好日" at dawn anew."But how could it be?" we retort sadly.Everyday gives headaches; nothing is good in routines.Saying days are good rubs against our headaches to worsen days.Doesn't Buddha tell that life is a sea of suffering and a house on fire 火宅?Still, Jesus nods to Buddha, saying, "Look at the sower sowing.The kingdom of God is like a smallest mustard seed sown grown into the biggest tree.""So, what else is new?" we wonder.Jesus would say, "That is the point!"Nothing is new, as all things all over are parables to the kingdom of God.
But then "all things" obvious and common trouble us.We can look only at something specific, but not at "all" at once specific (all thing are thing) and not specific (all things are all over not-specific).Jesus said, "Those with ears, hear!Those with eyes, look, and see!"We all have ears and eyes, to hear and see, but we do not see or hear this "all", or much less "all" as parable to this kingdom of God.We are blind with clear seeing eyes, the "seeing blind 明き盲," as Japanese says.
Nothing is more frustrating, if not insulting to our sanity, than this odd difficulty.All this "all things" so common is so hard, for all this "things common" is so easy, and therefore it is so hard.Thus we have just appreciated our difficulty; it is so strange a difficulty we all encounter, everyday, on everything!Our Resolution: Now we look back.We met difficulty be- K.-M.WU thought are the trinity of the Beyond.This trinity is kids alive music-playful; different religions are kids shaking hands playing exploring together what is unknown beyond.