TRANSFORMATIVE RECONTEXTUALIZATION
These broadening perspectives can help free us from our default, more narrow points of view, and this can in turn transform our interface with ourselves and the world. To describe this experience we have borrowed the phrase “transformative recontextualization” from Brook Ziporyn (Being and Ambiguity: 2004) who uses it in a different, though to our thinking parallel, context.
MYSTICISM WITHOUT METAPHYSICS
This recontextualization is transformative in more than simply a cognitive sense. It involves a new experience of our being in the world that goes beyond intellection. This we define as mysticism, though we are careful to distinguish this from traditional definitions of mysticism that seem obliged to make reference to substantive metaphysical realities, whether it be God, Dao, qi, or any other number of supposed entities. Zhuangzian mysticism is innocent of all metaphysical belief. Indeed, its very point of departure begins and ends in an appreciation of our fundamental not-knowing.