In my previous post I started out by quoting Yanagi's position that a
principal of Modern art is that "Free" beuaty boils down to irregular beuaty.
This at first sounds like DQ. But Yanagi digs deeper and casts some doubt on
this assumption. "True beauty in
Tea cannot lie in either the perfect nor the imperfect, but must lie in a
realm where such distinctions have ceased to exist, where the imperfect is
identified w/ [ie. identical to] the perfect." (Yanagi)
Yanagi writes that the tea bowl's beuaty comes out of "a
world that existed before this dualism begain -- or rather, not 'before or
after', but in a world where dualism is irrelivant." (This is the same
problem Kant had when he said the Nominal realm *causes* the phenominal
realm because that built in a time relationship he didn't want.)
Yanagi first caught-on to his freedom=beuaty mistake (the mistake
he says underlies Modern art) on a trip to Korea (which is where the Zen
bowls were first made. Ch'an spread to Korea well before it intered Japan
because Shintoism ewas so strong in feudel Japan.). I'll quote this whole
section; bere w/ me.
____________________
The pine block [a Korean craftsman had set on a lathe] was so fresh that
turning it made a wet spray, which gave off a sent or rasin. This
perplexed me very much because it is against all common sense in lathe
work. So I asked the artisan, "Why do you use such green material? Cracks
will come out pretty soon!"
"What does it matter?" hwas his calm answer. I was amazed by this
Zen monklike responce. I felt sweat on my forhead. Yet I dared to ask him,
"How can you use something that leaks?" "Just mend it", was his simple
answer.
W/ amazement I discovered that they mend them so artistically and
beuatifully that the cracked piece seemes better than the perfect one. So
they do not mind whether it crackes or not. Our common sense is of no use
for Koreans at all. They live in a world of "thusness", not of "must or
must not". Their way of making things is so natural that any man-made
rule becomes meaningless. They have neither attachment to the perfect nor
imperfect.... So this asymmetry is but a natural outcome of their state of
mind, not of conscious choice. That is to say, their minds are free from
any attachment to symmetry as well as assymmetry."
___________________
The Korean potters (unlike their Japanese counterparts) made
things w/o any polerized catagories in their heads such as beautiful/ugly.
This is a kind of beuaty that is, by nature, undefined. Even
static/Dynamic don't seem to be appropreate.
Yanagi goes on to say that this beuaty (this "Romantic" beauty we
might call it. "Romantic" meaning 'directed towards the whole beach and
the man in it as one, not towards the individual sandpiles over-against the
man who has sorted them.') is the very opposite of the beauty discovered by
the Greeks (which dominated Western art from Rome 'till Picasso/Matisse).
Greak beuaty does not permit irregualrity and asymmitry. But the Jappaneese
and the Moderns both made a mistake by trying to turn irregularity and
asymmetry into "the program." "In fact it can be said that the pursuit of
freedom has led to the prison gates."(Yanagi) DQ is always retreating from
us, leaving sq in it's wake.
Enlightenment in Buddhism is being free from all opposition -- becoming a
"Non-dual Entity" (which Yanagi prefers to "One" because "one" is still the
opposite of many-ness whereas Non-dual Entity is a parodox: on the one hand it
is the opposite of a dual entity, but if it is, then it, by definition, is not
a Non-dual Entity and thus the basic paradox of Buddhism). Simmilerly, if we
say "Dynamic" as opposed to "static" or "Free" as opposed to "attached" then
we are still setting ourselves up to fall short of *muso* (the Non-dual realm,
sometimes termed 'Void'). From Yanagi, again:
_______________
Another illustrative anecdote concerns the great Chinese Zen monk
Kuei-shan.... One day, while engaging in training his disciples, he drew a
circle on the ground saying: "If you step into this circle, I will strike you.
If you stand outside it, I will strike you just the same. What are you going
to do?" By this seeming paradox, the monk hoped to show that so long as a man
persistes in the dualistic realm of "in" and "out", he cannot possibly attain
Buddhahood.
________________
Buddhist *do* frequently use the word *muge* -- literally "liberation," but
what they are liberated from is duality. This is NOT liberation as opposed to
confinement, or freedom as opposed to captivity, or dynamic as opposed to
static.
A lot of people keep asking "Why is freedom better? Why is dyanamic more
virtuous? If a kid goes on a shooting-spree in his school cafeateria -- well,
isn't that 'dynamic?' It sure as hell isn't very rutine!" I think that there
is an error going on in what 'Dynamic' means -- and Yanagi's interpritation of
the asymmetrical, crude, unsystematic art of Japan/Modernism vs. the crude,
irregular art of Korea and the 'primatives' Picasso studied, highlights this
missunderstanding.
Pirsig puts DQ in cap's and not sq. Anthony asked him why and he came back w/
a kind of put-off, "Because God, or the Absolute, or Brahman is usually
capitalized." It should be made more clear that DQ in this sense is not
dynamic as upposed to static! DQ in this sense is beyond that duality.
_____________
"True freedom must mean liberation from both one's self and others: it must
not be in bondage to itself nor may it be restricted by others. Everything
that is beautifull is, in one sense or another, a manifestation of this sort
of freedom (*muge*).... True beauty exists in a realm where there is no
distinction between the beautifull and the ugly." (Yanagi)
______________
This is what not only Rigle missed w/ his "Does Lila have quality?" but
Pheadrus also missed the central point, I think, w/ his answer, "No, Quality
has Lila." That's a cop-out that doesn't clear things up much.
Finnaly, w/ regards to time, Yanagi writes: "All art movements tend to pursuit
of novelty, but the true esence of beauty can exist only where the distinction
between the new and old has been eliminated." DQ IS the "newest,"
leading-edge of experience -- the present --, but only so far as we recognize
that all that exists is the present moment. The past exists only in memory
and recapitualtion; the future only in hopes and predictions. But ultimatly,
ontologically, there is just the Now. The sq--->DQ, or old--->new point of
view is only aplicable w/in sq -- as social/intellectual moral patterns. From
the point of view of the Buddha, where DQ is taken to mean the whole beach and
the man in it as one before he (S) sepperates himself from the sand (O) by
picking up a handfull of sand, calling it reality, and begining to sort it.
Well, There are numerous other pearls of Quality I've been gleaming from
Yanagi's book pretaining to "freedom" vs. *muge*, and I might share some more
in the future (is there a demand for a "Dynamic Quality (3)"?), but this is
long enough, and I'm hungrey, so I'm stopping here.
TTFN (ta-ta for now)
Donny
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