ericgerlach79
Gerlach is German and rhymes with bear-lock. I was born and raised in the Haight Ashbury of San Francisco, moved to Berkeley for college and grad school, with an MA in History of Religion from the Graduate Theological Union of Berkeley, and now teach Philosophy and the history of human thought at Berkeley City College. I have taught Intro Philosophy, Ethics, Logic, Asian Philosophy, Greek Philosophy, Modern European Philosophy and Social & Political Philosophy there for the past several years, and it has been a joy.
Thought Itself 
November 6, 2020 at 3:31 am
No, no, no! They aren’t coming out fast enough, Eric!
I never knew joshu’s comment, “a ship cannot moor where the water is shallow” from case eleven of the mumonkan, was from Zhuangzi! I believe you said that in the last video? Did I hear that wrong ?
If not, we just went over this recently on the podcast, it’s a shame I didnt know! I could have sounded better read than I am!
That said, I don’t know the significance of the saying exactly..
Anyway, good stuff! These thirty minute lectures though leave me wanting! Also excited for the demonstrations of logic in the Alice in wonderland lecture!
November 6, 2020 at 1:17 pm
I will have my new set up ready over the next few days, and will start getting videos up faster. I have been keeping videos under 40 minutes, after talking to students, so I am going to put out as much time but in focused chunks. Next semester, I will work on having a video for each life, and each major work or idea, as I can, with a few videos for each thinker.
I take the line, “Ships can’t sail where the water is too shallow,” after reading Daoist and Zen texts, to mean that clearing out the mind allows more mind, less thoughts mean simpler, better, “bigger” thoughts. David Lynch says the same in his book about TM, that meditation allows you to catch bigger mental fish. I think he gets his wisdom from TM gurus, not Daoists, but Zen is quite Daoist, and emptying the bowl so you can fill it at will is a featured Daoist belief in Daoist texts, and the Zen folks play much on how the point of meditation is not meditation. There is much in Joshu that suggests clearing out the self is not about keeping the self empty, or running away from anything in life, which is very Daoist, as he quotes Zhuangzi, in this and at least one other place, I believe.