From: Paul Turner (paul@turnerbc.co.uk)
Date: Fri Aug 27 2004 - 15:40:39 BST
Hi Ilya, Mark
I've been following this thread with interest and it's been good to see
a willingness to listen positively to each other, which isn't always the
case on this forum, my own contributions included.
Mark had said:
It does make sense to say, "MORE or LESS open to DQ" because a Crocodile
is an evolutionary dead end which has remained virtually unchanged for
millions of years. This particular biological static latch has been so
successful it has virtually stopped responding to DQ altogether.
Ilya responded:
Is it so? I would say instead that Crocodile's DQ didn't require
Crocodile's static patterns to change. Crocodile's static patterns
perfectly well fitted Crocodile's DQ for millions of years.
But doesn' matter! I don't like this interpretation of mine for the same
reason I don't like the above interpretation of yours: we both consider
DQ and static patterns as conceptual opposites. But as Paul in his
recent post "RE: MD The individual in the MOQ" showed it is not right to
do so!
Paul:
>> ...the second truth of Nagarjuna has the consequence that this whole
>> static world is ultimately identical to Dynamic Quality,
>> that there is really no division between static quality and
>> Dynamic Quality. Quite simply, if Dynamic Quality is undivided,
>> it can't be divided from static quality!
This is the very notion I had in mind when I wrote in my last letter
that static patterns cannot be closed to DQ by definition. I just
couldn't put it into words with such striking clarity as Paul did.
Patterns are not separate from DQ and therefore they cannot be closed to
DQ. And they cannot be MORE or LESS open to DQ either.
Paul:
If I may say a couple of things about this:
-- this is my application of Nagarjuna's Logic of Emptiness to the MOQ
so please don't take it as anything else, and certainly not anything
that Pirsig has said.
-- the first or "conventional" truth, "emptiness," is a pragmatic tool
to end excessive emphasis on conceptualisation. The "ultimate" or second
truth of Nagarjuna is to end excessive clinging to emptiness itself.
However, this doesn't mean that we should, or even could, stop thinking.
The Middle Way of Nagarjuna thus suggests that we "appease
conceptualisation" and recognises that with thinking comes
differentiation and so we still need the conventional truth of emptiness
i.e. Dynamic Quality.
-- the MOQ is itself a conceptualisation of experience, and so from a
conventional, pragmatic, static point of view, static quality is
different from (but not independent of) Dynamic Quality. This is the
point of view from which LILA is written and is the point of view from
which Mark's "coherence" is operating (I think).
-- As I understand it, Mark's employment of coherence *does* recognise
the relationship between static and Dynamic Quality as being
co-dependent. However, I won't intervene in this part of the discussion
any further
"In the language of everyday life, reality and intellect are different.
From the language of the Buddha's world, they are the same, since there
is no intellectual division that governs the Buddha's world." [Pirsig,
LILA'S CHILD, p567]
Regards
Paul
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