From: Ian Glendinning (ian@psybertron.org)
Date: Mon Jan 03 2005 - 14:00:56 GMT
Paul, careful with his words,
He does not say
"There are no things-in-themselves."
"The primary 'reality-in-itself' is nothingness."
He says (in the quotes you provide)
Primary Reality (things in themselves, out there) are not independent of
value or relationships, in fact they are relationships.
He doesn't say they don't exist.
He is saying they don't exist in an independent SOMist way.
Ian
----- Original Message -----
From: "Paul Turner" <paul@turnerbc.co.uk>
To: <moq_discuss@moq.org>
Sent: Monday, January 03, 2005 12:33 PM
Subject: RE: MD The MOQ and Mysticism 101
> 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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