From: Paul Turner (paul@turnerbc.co.uk)
Date: Mon Jan 03 2005 - 12:33:55 GMT
Hi Mark
Msh said:
I long ago recognized that our perceptions (phenomena) are necessarily
and forever out of spatial and temporal sync with noumena, and that
our glimpses of things-in-themselves are mystical and fleeting.
Paul:
That isn't what I, the MOQ, or mystics are saying. There are no
things-in-themselves. The primary 'reality-in-itself' is nothingness.
These statements from Pirsig (both taken from correspondence with
Anthony McWatt) may help clarify what I'm saying.
"Things themselves" is an old subject-object metaphysical presumption.
The MOQ denies there are "things themselves" that are independent of
value. On close scientific examination "things themselves" always turn
out to be a relationship between other things."
"The characterization of the Buddha's world as "nothingness" has been a
source of Western confusion, leading some to consider Buddhist nirvana
as a form of suicide. What is meant by Buddhist "nothingness" is no
"thingness" that is, "no objectivity". Since the use of the undefined
term "Quality", denies objectivity without suggesting some kind of
vacuum, it helps to clarify what Buddhist nothingness is."
Msh said:
But
if you are saying that the "enlightened ones" have come to understand
that everything exists in the human mind, with no external
corresponding reality, then, yes, this is madness.
Paul:
Actually, it's subjective idealism. However, that isn't what I'm saying
either. What I'm saying is that, as with idealism, objects are mental
constructs but that, unlike idealism, mind is a value construct. I am
saying that value is independent of the human mind but that it is not
well described as 'external' because 'external' is a distinction made by
the human mind that only applies to static patterns.
Msh said:
Furthermore, I'm
suggesting that the "enlightened ones" themselves do not believe
this. The Dali Lama wears corrective lenses and sandals, after all.
He must be trying to see SOMETHING clearly; to protect his feet from
hot asphalt and real stones.
So... you wanna fight about that?
Paul:
Not really. Glasses are as real as eyes and hot asphalt is as real as
burning feet. Enlightenment is an absence of conceptualised perception,
not an absence of reality. I speculate that the experience of hot
asphalt would become indistinguishable from a sensation of pure negative
quality.
Regards
Paul
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