Hi Rich, Roger & Group:
Perhaps the answer to Rich's question. "Who the hell is a 'living being'" is
the following:
"There is Lila, this single private person who slept beside him now, who
was born and now lived and tossed in her dreams and will soon enough
die and then there is someone else-—call her lila——who is immortal,
who inhabits Lila for a while and then moves on. The sleeping Lila he had
just met tonight. But the waking Lila. who never sleeps, had been
watching him and he had been watching her for a long time." (Lila, Chap.
1)
Not only is each of us a confluence of the four static quality levels, but a
vessel of Dynamic Quality.
Later on Pirsig uses a different metaphor to express a similar idea:
This Cartesian "Me" is a software reality, not a hardware reality. This
body on the left and this body on the right are running variations of the
same program, the same "Me" which doesn't belong to either of them.
The "Me's" are simply a program format." (Lila, Chap. 15.)
I like the first explanation better than the second, but each describes the
dualistic nature of a living being—a self that is unique and dies, and a
self that everyone shares and lives forever.
Platt
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