Dear Struan and Group:
Just dropped in to answer an Struan quip which I see no use in repeating.
Simply because I use reason doesn't mean I cannot advocate mysticism.
Pirsig remains a perfect example of that. To believe in mysticism requires
that one acknowledge the domination of the mystic quality over static
intellectual quality - the domination of intuition over reason, art over
logic, etc. Yet many falsely believe that the two are completely mutually
exclusive.
Let me put it this way: if you consider yourself an intellectual (and a
highly qualified one at that) please defend your practice of eating food.
Doesn't this imply the domination of the biological level over the
intellectual level, to use your rationale?
I propose instead that we need every level to reach for Dynamic Quality -
without intellect, we cannot find our way to mysticism. Even as the
Undivided Reality remains ineffable, we still need a word for that mystical
It, that is, we still require a metaphysics. To be human requires reason;
thus, to reject reason appears to me an attempt to reject one's humanity
(as irrationally as would be the attempt to stop eating food). Instead we
need to transcend reason by realizing that mystic quality still dominates.
That's why Pirsig's labeling of his own metaphysics as "degenerate" seems
to me incomprehendsible. I realize he thought he was attempting to
encapsulate a higher level of quality into a lower one, but isn't that the
purpose of lower levels? They arbitrarily divide reality when in Dynamic
truth we see that reality remains Undivided. This doesn't mean we abolish
lower levels, but that we recongize the false divisions. I still think
Pirsig's confusion starts when he doesn't create a mystic level - having
done so he would have seen that there exists nothing so sacred about
mysticism that it can't co-exist with reason, society, biology, and
inorganic existences. Indeed that co-existence enriches our lives, without
it, reality would bore us. But with limitations there's the uncertainty of
existence and there's the struggle for advancement. What fun!
Also, Struan and Platt - I wrote many things in the heat of argumentation
which I am not proud of. Rich said that one of the key aspects of mysticism
is love and I have ignored that for too long. Indeed love is everything
about mysticism because love is the desire to unite with Dynamic Quality.
Love allows one to care about everyone (and everything) because in all you
see that same Buddha-nature, the same Undivided Reality that you and
everything else composes everything else. So it seems quite funny (and
simulatenously sad) that two or three divisions cut from an Undivided Whole
should argue so vehemently about who's bio-chemical brain reactions
correspond the best to reality. Either way, I apologize.
Sincerely,
Kev
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