From: Scott Roberts (jse885@cox.net)
Date: Mon Aug 08 2005 - 01:08:07 BST
DMB,
dmb says:
One cannot say what you mean. Or rather, you cannot say what you mean.
Scott:
True. That's because we are dealing with mystery, with meaning itself. So
the question is whether insisting on contradictory identity is better or
worse than privileging one opposite over another.
dmb continued:
As I
understand it, you are once again using a different form of the idea in an
effort to undermine the very same idea. The idea behind the phrase, 'Thou
art that' is all about getting past the infinite pairs of opposites that we
used to interpret the world. Its all about realizing the undivided reality
behind those conceptual pairs of opposites.
Scott:
The problem with what you say is that in saying it you are creating a center
(the One, That, the undifferentiated aesthetic continuum) that you imagine
to be beyond ("getting past") the infinite pairs of opposites. While what I
am saying is that there is no such beyond, that nirvana is samsara (and is
opposite to samsara), while you are saying that nirvana is beyond samsara.
This difference has consequences (see below).
dmb continued:
And as I understand it, your
'middle way' is just another way to express this same idea. To insist that
we "cannot say" that it is one or the other in that pair of opposites points
to the same paradoxical truth about the undivided reality.
Scott:
I think the Magliola quote that I have given a couple of times shows that
they are not the same idea: [Derrida on the Mend, p.97]:
"As for "abrogation of the identity principle," an abrogation which is the
first norm of genuine Madhyamika (that is to say, Nagarjunism, or Madhyamika
which has remained faithful to Nagarjuna's original attitude towards
sunyata), the historical linkage between Ch'an/Zen and the origins is more
complex. The nature and history of the ... koan, for example, is subject to
great academic controversy, with some researchers claiming it operates quite
purely in Nagarjuna's mode, viz., a rigorous rationalism whereby logic
cancels itself out -- leaving devoidness to lapse (slide) by, interminably
[aka logic of contradictory identity - Scott]; and others seeing it as
operative in a Yogacaric mode, as an intuitionism, so the monk does *not*
through the assiduous use of reason *deduce* self-contradiction, but rather
*transcends* reason "in a flash". When W.T. de Bary speaks of Zen's interest
in Indian Hinayana sources and when Ninian Smart calls Zen "Japan's
substitute for Lesser Vehicle Buddhism", they are indicating a movement in
Zen away from what was the increasing absolutization of sunyata occurring in
most of the later Buddhist schools. But Westerners, through the good offices
of Zen's great missionary to the West, D. T. Suzuki, know only of
logocentric (and thus absolutist) Zen, and indeed there is no question that
logocentric Zen has been for quite some time now Zen's most popular form.
Or, to avoid needless confusion, let us call it "centric Zen", since its
whole effort is to transcend logos understood as the language of *is* and
*is not* and to achieve the 'undifferentiated center' (of course,
'undifferentiated center' is just a permutation of logos, in the specialized
Derridean terms we have already worked through at such length). Thus Suzuki
declares that "The meaning of the proposition 'A is A' is realized only when
'A is not-A', that Buddhist philosophy is the "philosophy of self-identity,"
and that in this self-idenity "there are no contradictions whatsoever." The
supreme self-identity, indeed the only self-identity in the ultimate sense,
is centric Zen's sunyata: "Emptiness is not a vacancy -- it holds in it
infinite rays of light and swallows all the multiplicities there are in this
world."...
"The differential movement in Zen of course opposes the centric Zen just
instanced..."
(He goes on to give some stories that exemplify differential Zen, too long
to quote. But in essence, it is about emptying out emptiness, so it does not
become an "undifferentiated center", as DQ is a center in the MOQ.)
dmb continued:
And yes, the terms 'divided' and 'undivided' are one such pair. So please
spare me the comeback where you point this out and once again
uncomprehendingly posit the logic of contradictory identity.
Scott:
If the terms 'divided' and 'undivided' are one such pair, then why do you
blithely talk about "realizing the undivided reality behind those conceptual
pairs of opposites."? Doing so raises the undivided above the divided, and
that is a mistake.
dmb concluded:
Sorry about the level of hostility here, Scott, but it really has become
tiresome.
So far, it has illuminated nothing and has only served to short-circuit
potentially fruitful conversations. Its become a real drag. I hereby beg you
to give it a rest.
Scott:
I do not give it a rest because your/Pirsig's form of philosophical
mysticism (what Magliola calls "centric Zen") is the basis from which Pirsig
deals with intellect. Intellect divides, which according to your view is
taken to lead one away from the center. But if the divided is understood to
be in contradictory identity with the undivided, then one can appreciate
that intellect creates, that it is DQ as well as SQ, that there is no
"center", that the aesthetic requires division, and is not "beyond" it.
- Scott
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