Reimagining a Socrates for our time and place

New Zen images for your consideration

Think of the image as the question. How would you answer these images?

Concepts by Shawn Thompson and generated by AI

See more zenful images of the author at https://www.deviantart.com/zenful88/gallery

See also chapter 10 on this website about the difference between fantasy and mystery: https://socraticzen.com/when-is-a-mystery-not-a-fantasy

What are they drawing? What wouldn't you expect?

What do you think this means?

What do you think this means?

What do you think this means?

What do you think this means? Can you be more precise?

What do you think this means?

Have a question or feedback? Reach out personally to the website author for discussion.

Connect with the Socratic Zen forum and agora

Socrates as he would be today in the city

Readers talk back: conversations in the digital agora

Can animals have a Zen nature?

I want to share an amazing portrait of an orphan dog after I posted on a Zen Buddhism site asking if a dog can enter a Zen state. It's not an easy question. The answer could be DOGmatic, superficial and unthinking. But one woman responded to my question with a very sensitive portrait of her dog which I want to share because it is so interesting. This dog gets noticed for who he is in the household somewhere. Here's what the woman said about her pooch:

"His name is Buster. He had been "dumped" on the highway at 9 years old, where we found him a year and a half ago. He is a complete opposite of our other dog, who really is a pretty typical dog. We did his DNA: he is beagle, poodle, and a little dachsund. He loves absolutely everyone, human and dog, but also has good manners so he isn't forcing himself on anyone. He doesn't mind at all being at the vet or the groomer, and is completely calm about cooperating, even when I can tell he doesn't want to. He is extremely aware of my feelings and needs, and he tries to do the appropriate thing. He watches, making eye contact a lot. He can get his feelings hurt, but he is easily reassured and bounces right back. During major work on our cabin, he strolled through the rubble to be part of the work, never bothered one bit by the chaos or noise. So you can see he is very serene. He was dominated by one dog once, but he just went limp and waited until it released him, then walked away cautiously. His fur is a bit long and horribly scraggly, so grooming can be a long, painful chore, especially when spiny seeds get stuck in his fur or cactus in his feet, but he just goes limp and waits for it to be over. He is patient and always peaceful, always happy. In several areas his doggie instincts remain powerful, so of course he isn't perfect! His idea of love with another dog involves humping (he is neutered), he desperately wants to go after cats and squirrels, and his beagle nose is very powerful and compelling for him. He dislikes fights. When he sees dogs fighting, he goes right over and does what he can to distract them and stop the fight."

Great reading in the spirit of Socrates, Zen and the Greeks

The Socratic Method: A Practitioner's Handbook, by Ward Farnsworth, 2021.

The Socratic Method of Psychotherapy, by James Overholser, 2018.

Socratic Questioning for Therapists and Counselors, by Waltman, Codd, McFarr and Moore, 2021.

Bring Me the Rhinoceros, by John Tennant, 2008.

The Light Inside the Dark: Zen, Soul, and the Spiritual Life, by John Tennant, 1998.

If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him: The Pilgrimage of Psychotherapy Patients, by Sheldon B. Kopp.

The Rebirth of Dialogue: Bakhtin, Socrates, and the Rhetorical Tradition, by James P. Zappen, 2004.

The Faith to Doubt: Glimpses of Buddhist Uncertainty, by Stephen Batchelor, 2015.

Zen Koans, by Steven Heine, 2014.

Opening Mountain: Koans of the Zen Masters, by Steven Heine, 2001.

The Crow Flies Backwards and Other New Zen Koans, by Ross Bolleter, 2018.

The Greeks and the Irrational, by E.R. Dodds, 1951.

Socrates and the Irrational, by James S. Hans, 2006.

A More Beautiful Question, by Warren Berger, 2014.

Discourse and Truth and Parresia, by Michel Foucault, 1982 and 1983.

The Courage of Truth, by Michel Foucault, 183-1984.

The Dialogic Imagination, by Mikhail Bakhtin, 1981

Altered Traits: Science Reveals How Meditation Changes Your Mind, Brain, and Body, by Daniel Goldman and Richard Davidson, 2017.

Tragedy, the Greeks, and Us, by Simon Critchley, 2019.

Come and explore with author Shawn Thompson a sense of curiosity and inquiry fed by a passion for asking questions.

By way of introduction, the person who made this website - which is me, in the black-frame glasses and greying beard to the left - has made a life out of publishing books and articles and teaching in a smallish university in the mountains.

Along the way, this person - me again - has interviewed diverse people from politicians, to scientists, to lawyers, to federal prisoners, in locations from Europe to Southeast Asia to the United States and Canada, trekked through jungles and been chased by wild pygmy elephants in Sabah in northern Borneo, slept inside the Jakarta zoo, sailed on a navy submarine, tracked down a fugitive from the police to a villa in the Dominican Republic, wandered inside a giant bat cave in Borneo, got married in the Philippines and was an expert witness in a trial in Buenos Aires. It was an unusual trial. The judge was ruling whether an orangutan as an intelligent creature should be kept in captivity. The orangutan won, despite some outrage from Argentinian authorities, and was sent to a sanctuary in Florida. There has been some consulting on wildlife documentaries. Combine those adventures in writing and journalism with teaching in a university for 25 years where the academic tribe has strange rituals and odd abstractions and that's exposure to a diversity of points of view - and you get me. I have no idea if that is a formula of some kind. I might not be able to do it again if I tried.

So, that's all nice, but what's the connection to the topic of this website?

In my 20s, I was writing a PhD thesis on the Romantic visionary poet and artist William Blake, then swerved sideways into journalism, then swerved sideways from journalism into teaching in a university. That illustrates the point of this website: I made a career out of not knowing much besides being able to read and ask other people questions. When I came to teach interviewing techniques to others, I realized that I didn't even know as much about asking questions as I thought. I plunged into reading the professional literature on asking questions and found most of it lacking much depth, except for psychotherapy and Zen Buddhism. So now I needed to think about the lessons from those who ask the best questions and the way to do that.

Am I qualified to do that? That's for others to decide. Others have been Buddhist monks. Nice, I wish I'd done that, but I haven't. Maybe in another incarnation. Others have a PhD in philosophy. Nice, I wish I had one of those, but I don't. A bit too academic for my taste even for my academic side. But what makes anyone qualified to do anything? How much of the qualifications that we achieve is what is learned from the experiences and thoughts of others?

In this website. I want to explore ideas about how to enrich our lives by learning to ask deeper, more original, more authentic questions. I'll interact in ways that I learned from Michel Foucault, Mikhail Bakhtin, Martin Buber and Bill Maher, all long dead except for Maher for the moment. I wish I'd had their intelligence, but I don't. I have to manage with what I have.

You can join me. I am not hiding behind a digital wall. My email is out there on this website. I will do Zoom consultations as a writing coach for anyone writing for a good cause to help people, wildlife and nature.

I have to ask. If you read this far, why, why, why? What is it that you are seeking? Honestly, ultimately, you find that within yourself, not within me. Good luck on that, fellow traveller. May you find what you seek and much, much more.

Shawn Thompson, on the grey side

More books

With two friends at the Singapore zoo, having a look at the orangutan photos in the author's book. The small orangutan is touching a photo of an orangutan in the Singapore zoo that he may recognize.

Exploring Socratic Zen Questions

Articles