From: Dan Glover (daneglover@hotmail.com)
Date: Fri Aug 20 2004 - 04:14:43 BST
Hello everyone
>From: David Buchanan <DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org>
>Reply-To: moq_discuss@moq.org
>To: "'moq_discuss@moq.org'" <moq_discuss@moq.org>
>Subject: RE: MD PhD Viva Questions
>Date: Sun, 15 Aug 2004 10:57:21 -0600
>
>Dan, Scott and all Moqers:
>
>Dan said:
>The MOQ would say a self, a human being, consists of four levels of value
>plus undefined Dynamic Quality. Buddhists practice to kill the intellectual
>self through meditation and mindfulness while sustaining the social self
>and biological self.
>
>Scoot Roberts replies:
>Some Buddhists may see it that way, but not all by a long shot. I quoted
>Robert Aitken (a Zen master) on this recently. The purpose of meditation
>and mindfulness is not to kill the intellect but to improve it, by learning
>to silence monkey mind. One also, as a Buddhist, learns logic and applies
>it to oneself not to kill the intellect but to rid the intellect of
>limiting beliefs.
>
>dmb says:
>I think there is a great deal of misunderstanding on this matter and one of
>the most common mistakes revolves around it. As Wilber puts it, a person
>with no ego is not a saint, but is a psychotic. The mystic has not
>abandoned
>the ego or the intellect entirely. Its just that she no longer identifies
>with her ego. Intellect then becomes transparent, so to speak.
Hi David
Please tell me where Wilber says this. I'd like to read it within context.
I thought Robert Pirsig suggested in LILA that a bishop indeed sees a saint
as a psychotic, a dangerous person who can unbalance church business for
centuries. I think RMP identified the saint more with Dynamic Quality, in
that their behavior is unpredictable and erratic.
I would suggest that ego can be seen as one's intellectual self. I think ego
can be identified as well with the internal discursive dialogue that is
constantly telling us about the world and how important we are to it and how
important we are in it. I see the ego as at odds with the social level self,
the one that imitates and conforms. When that internal discursive dialogue
stops a rather dramatic effect takes place which corresponds with the
"death" of the intellect. But it always starts up again, at least in my
experience.
>Pirsig
>describes the same mistake with respect to the beat-poet version of Zen...
>
>"The Hippie rejection of social and intellectual patterns left just two
>directions to go: toward biological quality and toward DQ. The
>revolutionaries of the '60s thought that since both are anti-social and
>since both are anti-intellectual, why then they must be the same. That was
>the mistake.
>American writing on Zen during this period showed this confusion. Zen was
>often thought to be a sort of innocent 'anything goes'. If you did anything
>you pleased, without regard for social restraint, at the exact moment you
>pleased to do it, that would express your Buddha-nature. To Japanese Zen
>masters coming to this country this must have have seemed really strange.
>Japanese Zen is attached to social disciplines so meticulous they make the
>Puritans look almost degenerate."
I don't believe the quote applies in this case. RMP clearly states the
hippies rejected both social and intellectual patterns. If you read my words
you will note I said killing the intellect while sustaining social and
biological patterns. I don't believe it's the same in regards to the
confusion on zen either. Again, RMP clearly states "without regard to social
restraint." In addition, as I said to Scott in an earlier post, I used
"kill" figuratively and not literally, more for dramatic effect.
>
>And then there is the matter of having to "return to the marketplace". The
>idea here, I think, is that its irresponsible to permanently kill social
>and
>intellectual patterns. We get them out of the way, we put them to sleep
>through mastery in order to see beyond them, to see through them, and then
>act accordingly.
I don't know that one has to return to the marketplace. That seems more a
matter of personal preference. Among other choices, one can choose to return
to a life of service to humanity or one can choose to spend a life in quiet
seclusion. There is no one to judge and no rewards await a person in the
afterlife.
Thank you for your comments,
Dan
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