From: David Harding (davidharding@optusnet.com.au)
Date: Tue Nov 08 2005 - 08:35:16 GMT
Platt Holden wrote:
> David H. asked:
>
>
>>Platt,
>>
>>How do you persue beauty through art?
>
>
> I attempt to engage in the human purpose described by Pirsig in his SODV
> paper, although without pretense of being on the same artistic or
> intellectual level as the individuals he talks about. One just does his
> best. If you have ever painted, you are familiar with the experience in
> the beginning of "plunging into the unknown" and of "trying to bring
> something out of that unknown into a static form that would be of value to
> everyone." In so doing, one strives to connect with beauty, the center of
> existence. Of course, art is not restricted to painting. As Pirsig points
> out, it's any "high quality endeavor."
>
> Here is the significant excerpt:
>
> "In Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance art was defined as high
> quality endeavor. I have never found a need to add anything to that
> definition. But one of the reasons I have spent so much time in this paper
> describing the personal relationship of Werner Heisenberg and Niels Bohr
> in the development of quantum theory is that although the world views
> science as a sort of plodding, logical methodical advancement of
> knowledge, what I saw here were two artists in the throes of creative
> discovery. They were at the cutting edge of knowledge plunging into the
> unknown trying to bring something out of that unknown into a static form
> that would be of value to everyone. As Bohr might have loved to observe,
> science and art are just two different complementary ways of looking at
> the same thing. In the largest sense it is really unnecessary to create a
> meeting of the arts and sciences because in actual practice, at the most
> immediate level they have never really been separated. They have always
> been different aspects of the same human purpose."
>
> Best,
> Platt
>
Hi Platt,
Thanks for these words. I follow a similar approach, yet with a slight difference. The MOQ says that if one wants to create high quality art, the best(only) way is through perfection and killing of
all static patterns so all that is left is but a pure expression of Dynamic Quality. As you know, Zen masters achieve this perfection through various arts such as archery or even flower arrangement.
They perfect their work to such a degree that their art becomes a way of life and anything they do, whether it be archery, flower arrangement, brushing their teeth in the morning or even eating an
icecream it comes as a natural flow from their affinity with Dynamic Quality. That's why I do sitting meditation - the simplest, easiest art of them all. Just my thoughts.
-David.
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