From: Ant McWatt (antmcwatt@hotmail.co.uk)
Date: Thu Nov 24 2005 - 18:17:30 GMT
Scott stated to Paul T, November 23rd 2005:
You acknowledge that the MOQ as presented in LILA stems from the first
level. I would agree with you that this may be appropriate for a Western
audience still stuck in conventional truth, *except* that Pirsig calls it
"metaphysics". And being based on the first level, that metaphysics is
wrong, leading, as I mentioned, to such beliefs that everything is "evolving
toward DQ", privileging DQ over SQ, and the attitude toward intellect. From
the second level, such formulations are, as I see it, hindrances. Further, I
disagree with you and Ant that Pirsig's further comments add up to a
"'second-level' understanding of the MOQ".
Ant McWatt comments:
Scott,
Firstly, not only do I think that Pirsig's further comments in LC, my PhD
etc add up to a “second-level” understanding of the MOQ but I would argue
that the Dynamic level of understanding is also implied in LILA. Even very
early on with my correspondence with Pirsig, it was referred to in the
context of LILA. For instance:
-----------------------------------------
“Your questions indicate you’re reading LILA more carefully than I wrote it.
Here are some answers:
These two statements are in fact, contradictory.
(1) 'To cling to Dynamic Quality alone apart from any static patterns is to
cling to chaos. He saw that much can be learned about Dynamic Quality by
studying what it is not rather than futilely trying to define what it is.'
(2) 'But Dynamic Quality is not structured and yet it is not chaotic. It
is value that cannot be contained by static patterns.'
The two statements were written years apart and I never put them side by
side in MY mind and saw that they require further explanation. The
resolution of this contradiction is that the first statement is made from a
static, ‘mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers’ view, and the second
is made from a Dynamic, ‘mountains are rivers and rivers are mountains’
view. This ‘mountains-and-rivers’ analogy is used in Zen to explain the
contradiction between statements made in the context of the everyday world
and statements made in the context of ‘the world of the Buddhas.’
From an everyday world Dynamic Quality is like an undefined perfume which
attaches in different ways to the objects of the world. In the world of the
Buddhas the perfume is the whole thing and objects are merely transitory
patterns of the perfume. In the Buddhas world Dynamic Quality is the
dharma, the only order there is.”
(Pirsig to McWatt, December 4th, 1994)
----------------------------------------
Moreover, note this section from a letter by Pirsig from January 15th 1994
which again is alluding to the second level:
“The Sioux concept of self and higher self is one I hadn’t heard of. At
first sight it seems like a striking confirmation of the universality of
mystic understanding. In Zen Buddhism ‘Big-Self’ and ‘small-self’ are
fundamental teaching concepts. The small-self, the static patterns of ego,
is attracted by the ‘perfume’ of the ‘Big-Self’ which it senses is around
but cannot find or even identify. (There is a Hindu parable in which a small
fish says, ‘Mother, I have searched everywhere, but I cannot find this thing
they call water’). Through suppression of the small-self by meditation or
fasting or vision quests or other disciplines the Big-Self can be revealed
in a moment sometimes called 180* enlightenment. Then a long discipline is
undertaken by which the Big-Self takes over and dissolves the small-self
into a 360’ enlightenment or full Buddhahood.”
>Well, I can't claim to know just what he thinks, but as I see it, if he had
>that second-level understanding, he would not have written LILA the way he
>did. This would be like knowing about QM [quantum mechanics] and
>relativity, and then >writing a book on Newtonian physics as if that were
>the extent of current physics.
No, that logic doesn't follow. For example, are high school kids given
lectures on quantum mechanics or Newtonian mechanics first when they start
their physics classes? I think if Pirsig had emphasised the second
(Dynamic) level of understanding in LILA, it would have been generally too
obscure. I think you have to give beginners in East Asian mysticism a
fighting chance to understand some basics even if they are an Anglo-American
professor of philosophy.
Nagarjuna, Magliola and company have a place when a person has developed
their interest in East Asian mysticism (such as yourself and Paul have done)
but if LILA had explicitly included further levels in this way, I highly
doubt it would have been read in North America or Europe by more than a few
specialists. Just like quantum mechanics, even now I haven't yet read
anything on the tetralemma (here or elsewhere) which explains it
particularly clearly (though I've just asked Paul for some of the texts he's
been looking at and, at some point, will read the Magliola text you
suggested.)
>There should have been more hedging, some acknowledgment of the further
>levels. Basically, I am saying that you just can't get from the MOQ to a
>second-level understanding of the MOQ, without reworking at the fundamental
>level, in particular, in how DQ and SQ are treated, and in that case it is
>questionable whether it should still be called the MOQ.
There has to be limits on exploring further levels of understanding or a
book such as LILA would never be finished. Where an author places a limit
is a pragmatic decision in the central message he wants to convey and the
general audience he wants to reach out to. In my humble opinion, I think
Pirsig had the pragmatic balance just about right.
>To put it another way, anybody who participates in MD has presumably read
>LILA and therefore should have, to some extent, assimilated the
>first-level.
>Shouldn't they, then, be exposed to the second and third?
Most members on MD also have a copy of my PhD (which Pirsig closely read and
commented on - in regard to the MOQ - a number of times) and the second
level is discussed here. Moreover, you and Paul have continued the debate
of further levels of understanding on the Discussion Group for anyone
inclined to follow it.
> >Basically, I see the way the MOQ treats DQ and SQ as overly dualistic,
> >leading to such non-Buddhist statements like "evolving toward DQ", and of
> >privileging DQ over SQ.
I think the biggest problem with traditional Buddhism is the idea of
reincarnation which is – more or less - replaced in the MOQ by the idea of
cosmological evolution (towards DQ). I'm not completely convinced that
reincarnation doesn't occasionally happen (in some form, anyway) but the
scientific evidence that evolution occurs is far stronger. As such, I would
bet my bottom dollar that Siddhartha would have taken Pirsig's side if he
had been as aware of modern science (and the ideas on evolution) as we are.
Now aren't you surprized I took that line? :-)
Best wishes,
Anthony.
P.S. I think the quote pasted below that Paul found by Magliola is helpful
in understanding the above post:
“At first glance, it may appear that Chi-tsang's argument implies a unitary
formation negating the particularities of the mundane world (recall that the
'mundane' is Reality according to samvrti-satya's [static] perspective);
and/or maybe that Chi-tsang's argument implies a transcendent Emptiness
attained by ladder-like ascent of the three levels. To quote Nagarjuna's
often-cited caveat, a misperception of emptiness is "Like a snake
incorrectly seized" (MK XXIV:11b). Chi-tsang's 'three levels of two truths'
do not broach a unitary formation; and they do not broach a transcendent
Emptiness; and they do not constitute a 'ladder' climbing to such an
Emptiness....In terms of samsaric particularity, concreteness,
differentiation (existential features), what interests us is that the three
levels are not-discarded....because they are not best conceived as a
climbing-ladder. They are prajnapti [PT: pointers], yes, but not a ladder.”
“A ladder suggests that one climbs the rungs, and then leaps from the top to
a transcendent, discarding the ladder...[but] experientially the three
levels are not a ladder, nor are they meant to lead to a mystical experience
that transcends the ladder. Indeed, regarded from the experiential
perspective, the supreme truth of the third level even seems to… circle
back to the first level, 'existence' [mundane truth] and 'emptiness'
[supreme truth]. The practitioner stays with the 'ladder', but it is no
ladder-to-be-climbed in any teleological sense. Non-attachment is to
scramble up and down the ladder at will.”
Magliola quoted from “NAGARJUNA AND CHI-TSANG ON THE VALUE OF ‘THIS WORLD’”.
http://ccbs.ntu.edu.tw/FULLTEXT/JR-JOCP/jc117216.pdf
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