From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Sat Dec 14 2002 - 16:16:08 GMT
For a change of pace from swishing old tea, here are a 101 Pirsigisms,
paradoxes, aphorisms, bon mots and one-liners I've collected over the
years.
A computer is the old testament God, all rules and no mercy.
A philosophy without humor means something is missing.
Art is like life. It's neither true or false, but what it is for me.
Awareness is existence, existence is what you are.
Awareness is what you know before you know anything else.
Beauty is the one value that strikes the senses directly.
Birth is the cause of death
By giving up, letting go, DQ is free to explore.
Cause and effect needs certain conditions, and needs are values.
Cooperation without coercion is a devastating fiction.
Create works with no other purpose than to be admired.
Everyone runs the same "me" program that doesn't belong to anyone.
Evolution is towards greater awareness and versatility, greater freedom.
Excite her sense of quality.
Experiential territory of the mind is every bit as real as external objects.
Explanation requires division.
Eye sees parts. Thought creates groups, wholes.
Eye separates, thought integrates.
Feelings won't feed the baby.
Fittest for what? Fittest for the best, i.e. quality.
Goal of life is to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.
God is the certainty behind the doubt of God's existence.
Great art frees one from the tyranny of the separate self sense.
He who helps holds power.
How many things in a thing? As many as you want.
Humor is DQ attacking static systems of thought.
I don't believe in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.
I know what I like.
Identify with what in every living thing is doing the observing.
If all else fails, lower your standards.
If it lacks freshness, what good is it?
If moral laws are man-made they are arbitrary and no one is obligated to
follow them.
I'm not sure I really need to understand what I'm talking about.
John thought about it and said, 'That's a good dog.'"
Karma is the pain of clinging to static patterns. Let go, let dynamic
quality.
Language is a meaningful system of meaningless elements.
Laughter inclines me to know that man is essentially spirit.
Like art, existence has no meaning beyond its own presence.
Look for the humor in any situation.
Love is the center of life, the greatest pain and the greatest pleasure.
Love transcends but does not destroy separateness. It transcends and
includes.
MoQ attitude: There must be a better way.
Most important division in any metaphysics is the first one.
Need is a moral judgment.
Negative quality is stale, musty, lacks freshness, newness, operating
out of old patterns.
No one can say of a Turner or Homer painting that a child could do it.
No one is obliged to understand anything.
Nothing is a state of being necessary for the beginning of anything.
Now is a constant where nothing stays put. The body is a constant
where nothing stays put.
Objectivity appealed to Victorians because it was anti-emotion.
Of all animals, man is most free to choose.
Only valid thing in art is the one thing that cannot be explained.
Pattern is a stencil laid over experience.
People are ends in themselves, not means to the ends of others.
Physical laws are laws of conduct.
Physical sensing and moral judgment are identical, simultaneous
processes.
Pure awareness, like the nothingness of mystic reality, precedes any
distinctions.
Reality for a maggot is complete. Fish--what ocean?
Rule of life: It's better here.
Sanity is not truth. Sanity is what is socially acceptable.
Science claims life emerged from the lifeless and mind from the
mindless.
Science can't explain why it is good.
Science fosters stereotypes. Doesn't worry about the exceptional
individual.
Serenity is feeling happy for no reason.
Some things must be better than others, else all is equally worthless.
Spirit is, by definition, beyond definition.
Survival of the fittest is a tautology. Fittest for what? To survive.
Take a chance and do nothing. No cost and possible beneficial outcome.
Take care of your goodness, of your beauty.
That which is the most beautiful is the most real. Light, love, laughter.
Theory that all is energy and matter consists of neither energy nor
matter.
Thinking and judging is involuntary, like breathing.
This paper and the seeing of it are two names for one indivisible fact.
Thought is relating perceptions into patterns of meaning so one can act
to enhance life.
Time cannot be created since it takes time for creation to occur.
Time doesn't pass. We do.
To be you is to be different from everything else, but you are nothing
apart from everything else.
To hear value, listen to great music; to see value, look at great paintings.
To others, you are just a subdivision of their experience.
Tool of conversation between society and biology is a policeman with a
gun.
Truth is a high quality set of intellectual patterns.
Universe wouldn't exist unless it included something that could see that
it exists.
Value (the good) is an intuitive, not an intellectual concept.
Value is a choice of what is interesting or important.
Values come before facts because values decide what area to focus on
to determine facts.
Watch for anything that transcends the run of everyday experience.
We divide reality, forget we have divided it, then forget we have forgotten
it.
We divide to survive..
What we have in common is the belief we are apart.
Where is the gratitude from all those we've helped?
Who is the I that knows me?
Whole thing had a lack of freshness about it, operating out of old
patterns.
Within each level is a higher value attempting to escape.
Without DQ the organism cannot grow. Without static quality, the
organism cannot last.
You can drink your champagne out of a jelly glass or fine crystal, but
there's a difference.
You can't say what beauty is, but you know it when you see it.
You cannot deny the existence of value, for you must admit your denial
has the value of truth.
You cannot laugh with your arms folded.
You cannot think yourself out of having a thought.
You'll never know what it's like to be kissed by you.
Your everyday ordinary awareness. That is the Tao.
Platt
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