[OSList] Organising a Buddhist Way

[Bhavesh Patel]

Hi Friends,

I was reading the attached article and loved the way they articulated 'open
space' and wanted to share it with you below. The whole article is attached.


Smiles Bhav...

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*Page 15*
I want to use the term 'light structuring' to make a contrast with forms
and practices that could be described as already knowing and already fixed.
What I am calling light structuring gives more space for emergence and
improvisation (see, for example, Barrett, 2006; Clegg, Kornberger and
Rhodes, 2005; Weick, 1998) or unfolding. One might say that light
structuring makes space for 'being in the now' rather than 'in the know'. I
see light structuring, in this sense, as an important aspect of dialoging
and participatory ways of knowing. Light structuring might mean that
participants are invited to try to follow certain guidelines that help them
to learn whilst practicing what Isaacs called the 'collective discipline'
(Isaacs, 1993) of dialogue. These usually include guidelines such as: do
not interrupt, do not attempt to persuade others, use respectful language,
ask questions only for clarification, listen to your listening and so on
(e.g., Chasin, Herzig, Roth, Chasin, Becker and Stains, 1996).

Such 'minimal' or 'light' structures help to block or interrupt already
solidified patterns and, in this way, can help to open up new possibilities
and what I have called 'soft' self-other relations. The idea is to provide
enough but not too much structure: to provide a container, so to speak,
that invites and supports the gradual emergence of slow, open, coherent,
in-the-present-moment performances. In this way it becomes possible to be
'relationally responsive' (McNamee, Gergen and associates, 1999) to
whatever comes up in any particular moment and possible to make space and
be open for multiple, ongoing, local realities.
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