From: Rebecca Temmer (ratemmer.lists@gmail.com)
Date: Mon Nov 07 2005 - 22:10:52 GMT
Hey DMB..
First off, I'm not a Christian - I was raised in Catholic school and
Protestant Bible camp but those things are more than a decade off and I've
all but abandoned that point of view. Religion still interests me intensely
though and I think it will continue to for a long time. For many people
including myself Christianity was something we were exposed to at such a
young age that it is deeply ingrained into the way we think, even if we
don't ever consciously recognize it. It is also very heavily implicated in
our society, again even if we don't want to consciously recognize it.
For these reasons I think it's important to look at religion and study it
critically the way we would Aristotelian logic or some such thing. I hope it
will help us to better understand how society works and perhaps see how
people from other traditions have a hard time relating in our society - and
how 'westerners' have a hard time relating to them. (I like to have my
motivations stated clearly here).
dmb says:
> I don't get it. Sam Norton presented a similar idea and I didn't get it
> then
> either. I'm sure it would help if you'd describe the "philosophical
> conceptions" you associate with the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Then it
> might be possible to see how that connects with the MOQ.
Rebecca:
I'm interested in the allegorical connections that I detect between the MOQ
and the Christian Trinity. There seems to be a lot of debate about dq/sq/Q -
what they are and how we define them. For this discussion, I'll give you my
impressions and we can work from there. You need not believe in the
Christian conceptions in order to understand the following, but it helps if
you can suspend that disbelief for a couple of minutes in order to get what
I'm saying.
Quality is like God the Father. It is unknowable and undefinable. It is the
source of all things.
Static Quality is like God the Son. God made flesh. God put into static
patterns if you will. This is especially intriguing if you imagine the story
as though God inserted himself into our world on all four static levels.
Dynamic Quality is like the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is inspiration.
There are also connections here between tongues of flame and the Dharmakaya
light, which Pirisg is so fond of.
If we disregard the idea of an anthropomorphic God then it's much easier to
see the conncetions. I think this path might be useful because there are
centuries of thought and writings about the mystery of the Holy Trinity that
might be helpful in describing the MOQ if we could concieve of it in this
way.
DMB:
> I'm skeptical about that, but there are definately Christian themes in
> ZAMM.
> In the scene where he just about to go insane he invokes an old church
> hynm
> about "crossing to that yonder shore". And then there is Chris's
> abandonment
> issues near the end. The "Why hast thou forsaken me" theme is below the
> surface, but Pirsig still gives credit to that theme for supplying lots of
> added power to the scene. If I recall rightly, Pirsig did this
> unconsciously
> and only noticed the theme after it was written. Maybe even after it was
> published. The details can be found in Pirsig's letter to Redford, which
> is
> reprinted in The Guidebook.
>
Rebecca:
I'm not really concerned with the Christian themes in ZMM or Lila, except
that if there are subconscious Christian themes in Pirsig's writing, there
might also be some relation between his Philosophy and Christian philosophy
- even if it's totally subconscious. This is especially important because
there is a strong connection between SOM (western rational thought) and
Christianity, these things generally developed together over the last two
milennia. In the flaying of SOM and the emphasis on eastern mysticism, we've
neglected the less obvious connection to western (Semitic) mysticism.
Thanks for taking the bite, I look forward to your response!
Rebecca
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