From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sun Jan 09 2005 - 04:33:31 GMT
MSH, Chin, Scott and all MOQers:
Here is Pirsig in LILA page 377:
"He thought some more about Lila's insanity and how it was related to
religious mysticism and how both were integrated into reason by the MOQ. He
thought about how once this integration occurs and DQ is identified with
religious mysticism it produces an abalanche of information as to what
Dynamic Quality is. A lot of this religious mysticism is just low-grade
'yelping about God' of course, but if you search for the sources of it and
don't take the yelps too literally a lot of interesting things turn up."
The following two statements are from Pirsig. Both are taken from
correspondence with Anthony McWatt by way of Paul Turner. (Thanks guys):
"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."
Here is Pirsig in Lila's Child p.348:
"Quality in the MOQ is monistic and thus is not the same as Kant's
"thing in itself" which is the object of a dualism."
"In Zen training, meditation is used to dissipate static intellectual
blockage. Complete removal of all static blockage constitutes
enlightenment." [Pirsig, Sept 16th 2004]
Pirsig in ZAMM p143:
"In all of the Oriental religions great value is placed on the Sanskrit
doctrine of Tat tvam asi, "Thou art that," which asserts that everything
you think you are and everything you think you perceive are undivided.
To realize fully this lack of division is to become enlightened."
From the Guidebook to ZAMM, p22:
"In the spiritual traditions of both East and West - I am thinking not about
particular religions, but about the mystical element to be found in them all
- we find the claim that eventually one must let go of the activites of
thought and imagination in order to enter a region of consciousness that
such symbolic activity cannot reach."
Here's Alan Watts in his "MYTH AND RITUAL IN CHRISTIANITY":
"mysticism ...of this kind involves a far more acute awareness of the plain
evidence of the senses than is usual, and that, so far from retreating into
a subjective and private world of its own, its entire concern is to
transcend subjectivity, so that man may 'wake up' to the world which is
concrete and actual, as distinct from that wich is purely abstact and
conceptual. Those who undertake this task unanimoulsly report a vision of
the world startlingly different from that of the average socially
conditioned man - a vision in whose light the business of living and dying,
working and eating, ceases to be a problem. It goes on, yes, but it ceases
to be the frantic and frustrating pursuit of an ever-receding goal, because
of the discovery that time - as ordinarily understood, is an illusion.
Yet another consequesnce of this acute awareness of the real world is the
discovery that what has been felt to be one's 'self' or 'ego' is also an
abstraction without reality - a discovery in which the 'mystic' oddly joins
hands with the scientist who 'has never been able to detect any organ called
the soul'. That which takes the place of the conventional world of time and
space, oneself and other, is properly described by negatgions - 'unborn,
unoriginated, uncreated, unformed' - because its natue is neither verbal nor
conceptual. In brief, the 'seers' of this realty are the 'disenchanted' and
'disillusioned' - those who are able to employ thoughts, ideas, and words
without being spell-bound and hypnotized by their magic."
See what I mean? If your life depended upon correctly guessing what the
point is here, what would be your guess?
Thanks in any case,
dmb
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