The Ecumenical Cruise and Other Three-Legged Chicken Philosophy Tales

A Chinese philosopher in the Fourth Century BCE was known for his claim that "a chicken has three legs." He was not hallucinating, nor are Chinese chickens different from the chickens of other nations. What the philosopher understood was that this "third leg" was the mental leg or concept of "chicken leg" that tells an observer that what he or she is seeing is a "two-legged chicken." This "idea leg" is in the mind of the beholder, and it is a paradoxical synthesis of perception and conception, of seeing and not seeing, of the possible and the impossible. Each story in this book is a three-legged chicken story that starts with statements found in philosophical and religious traditions from around the world, and then examines a "mind egg" that such a chicken might conceivably lay. All similarities to poultry--living or dead--are purely coincidental.