Greetings All:
For those who haven’t yet read Pirsig’s letter to Bodvar Skutvik
now on MOQ.org, please do so. There you’ll find more challenging
ideas in five or six paragraphs than in many books.
Here’s a statement from Pirsig that I found especially provocative:
“The question, ‘How do you justify the statement that Quality
equals reality?’ was the best one. The correct answer from the
MOQ perspective is, ‘by the harmony it produces,’ but this answer
is only for people who already understand the MOQ. Those who
don’t can’t see the harmony and for them the answer is
meaningless.”
By coincidence on the same day I read Pirsig’s letter there
appeared in the Sunday New York Times Arts & Leisure section
an article about three concurrent shows in New York featuring
Asian calligraphy. Here from the article is what I found relevant to
Pirsig’s challenging statement.
“By the twelfth century, calligraphy had taken on an almost moral
significance: the glorious poet Su Shih wrote of a friend’s
calligraphy:
‘His characters, both oblique and lopsided, strain toward
equilibrium.
Even when playful, he remains true and honest.
He executes details with a large and open heart.’”
I saw this as getting close to the ‘MOQ perspective” which seeks
‘harmony’ (equilibrium) and morality (true, honest, large and open
heart).
The article continues in the same vein:
“In the fifteenth century, the artist Chu Yun-Ming wrote of the artist’s
being fully present in his brush strokes:
‘When one is pleased, then the spirit is harmonious and the
characters are expansive.
When one is angry, the spirit is coarse and the characters blocked.
When one is sad, the spirit is pent up and characters are held
back.
When one is joyous, the spirit is peaceful and the characters are
beautiful.’”
Rigel came to mind with the words ‘angry,’ ‘coarse,’ ‘blocked,’
‘pent up,’ and ‘held back’ while Pirsig came to mind as more
‘harmonious,’ ‘expansive,’ and an artist ‘fully present’ when he
wrote Zen and Lila ... and such passages as this:
“He stopped for a second by the beach and just stared at the
endless procession of waves moving slowly in from the horizon.
The south wind was stronger here and it cooled him. It was
steady, like a trade wind. Nothing interfered with its flow toward
him over the huge ocean. "Vast emptiness and nothing sacred." If
ever there was a visible concrete metaphor for Dynamic Quality
this was it.” (Lila, Chap. 30)
I’ve written before that the next great evolutionary leap will be
recognition that intellect alone, while incredibly beneficial, is
nothing without morality, harmony, peace—and that the greatest
scientists already recognize this and will, along with a resurgence
in the arts, carry us –kicking and screaming -- beyond mere
intellect to a higher level where the values of our better natures
reign. The MOQ gives us the intellectual foundation needed for
that next leap.
Platt
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