Hello John,
I hope you are well?
In a message dated 12/5/01 7:08:11 AM GMT Standard Time,
beasley@austarnet.com.au writes:
<< But the mystics are asking us to take a bigger jump in unlearning, and this
is where Squonk is actually pointing in the right direction, when he advises
us to go and lie in the grass. The problem for Squonk's theory is that
beginner's mind is not something that rises up the moment I attend to the
sunset.
If one attends to anything then one experiences static quality.
It is in the attending to nothing that one comes closer to dynamic reality.
See Pirsig's little story on 'Cruising Blues and Their Cure,' which
I only discovered this week.
The word, 'Little' reveals your contempt for the man and his ideas.
As he says "depression ... is inevitable". "You
can see just so many beautiful sunsets ... and you become adjusted." Pirsig
goes onto describe what he calls "the learning of virtue" "that rises out of
a slow process of self discovery", where the person, who would rather do
anything than confront his "vanity, cowardice, boredom, self-pity ... " is
forced by his situation to do this inner work. "I think it's in the
day-after-day, week-after-week confrontation of this person that the most
valuable learning of virtue takes place." To which many a Zen master, (and
perhaps not a few 'religious'?), would say 'Amen'. >>
The static extrusions of our experiences, (and this includes our biological
nature) are those we have to work around.
While 'in the moment' we are perhaps, and rather ironically, at our most
dynamic, because that which is static has not yet crystallised.
That means shut up and stop thinking, (or attending as you put it).
If one can learn to 'do' while holding ones beginners mind then one may
create well?
And one may create ones character well.
Much of your intellectual hotch potch is extruded experience of a most
confusing and non-useful variety. It moves you further and further away from
that which you could use well more of.
I have discovered that the more i read you, the more you have a negative
influence upon my well being.
You see, like a Sunset, i pay the complement of attending to you.
Like a Sunset, i rather hope you disappear for a while.
All the best,
Squonk.
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