Thurman on religious experience

Howard Thurman was a friend of MLK’s father at Morehouse College and eventually went on to mentor MLK and a number of other civil rights leaders.

Thurman is a compelling voice in terms of bringing mysticism back to the Christian experience.

Here he is talking about religious experience:

“Once a religion is stated in terms of dogma…it can become the source of propoganda, it has something, a handle.”

There are strong parallels to Thurman’s ideas on religious experience with Bruce Lee’s anti-style ideas behind JKD.

For Lee JKD was an evolving project that stay just one step ahead of formulation/reification:

Do remember, however, that “Jeet Kune Do” is merely a convenient name. I am not interested with the term itself; I am interested in its effect of liberation when JKD is used as a mirror for self-examination.

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On the religion front, Karen Armstrong is doing some interesting work in terms of mining religion for its power to transform behavior while avoiding the trappings of dogma and creed.

Here is her TED talk: