From: Jonathan B. Marder (jonathan.marder@newmail.net)
Date: Wed Dec 04 2002 - 07:25:23 GMT
Hi Rick and all,
RICK
It has come up on this site before that the word "Lila" has some Hindu
connation (something about a dance, if I recall right). However, Pirsig
has
expressly disavowed knowledge of this, claiming he only heard about it
after
the book was published.
It is hard to believe Pirsig about this. From my own limited reading, I
am lead to believe that "Lila", together with "Maya" are the is a key
concepts that define the ontology that underlies Hinduism. Pirsig claims
to have spent several years studying at Benares, so surely must have
known.
I previously (some years ago) posted a passage from "The Tao of
Physics" in which Fritjof Capra describes the relationship between Lila
and Maya. Here it is again, with my own comment:
CAPRA
"The basic recurring theme in Hindu Mythology is the creation of the
world by the self-sacrifice of God - 'sacrifice' in the original sense
of 'making sacred' - whereby God becomes the world which, in the end
becomes again God. This creative activity of the Divine is called
*lila*, the play of God, and the world is seen as the stage of the
divine play. Like most of Hindu mythology, the myth of lila has strong
magical flavour. *Brahman* is the great magician who transforms himself
into the world and he performs this feat with his 'magic creative
power', which is the original meaning of *maya* in the *Rig Veda*. The
word maya - one of the most important terms in Indian philosophy - has
changed its meaning over the centuries. From the 'might', or 'power', of
the divine actor and magician, it came to signify the psychological
state of anybody under the spell of the magic play. As long as we
confuse the myriad forms of the divine "lila" with reality, without
perceiving the unity of Brahman "underlying all these forms, we are
under the spell of maya. Maya, therefore, does not mean that the world
is an illusion, as is often wrongly stated. The illusion merely lies in
our point of view, if we think that the shapes and structures, things
and events, around us are realities of nature, instead of realizing that
they are concepts of our measuring and categorizing minds. Maya is the
illusion of taking these concepts for reality, of confusing the map with
the territory."
JONATHAN
There you have Capra's definition of the mystic (Brahman is supreme) and
logical positivist (maya is supreme). Pirsig really has introduced
something new with DQ (lila is supreme). - Jonathan B. Marder
Regards to all,
Jonathan
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