From: skutvik@online.no
Date: Mon Jul 14 2003 - 07:44:13 BST
Hello and welcome Khoo (is that enough re.names?)
You said 12 July.
> I find this thread fascinating. I have been following the forum
> silently for years "over here from my box" but feel compelled to say
> something now.
Where exactly is "your box" Burmese it sounds to me.
> Chinese society for instance has always considered itself culturally
> and morally "superior" to the barbaric rest of the world. The Middle
> Kingdom assimmilated the cultures it came into contact with (both as
> conquerer and the conquered) but left the barbaric rest of the world
> alone. Until western science, technology and intellect manifested its
> imperial muscle to subdue the nation but not its culture and society.
> Even when infected with communist ideology, the shared Chinese culture
> had a "we are superior" edge to it. I believe this worldview still
> exists, in Greater China, Taiwan, Singapore and the rest of the
> Chinese diaspora. So if Bo's views imply a position of cultural
> superiority over the rest of the world, I dare say we are all guilty
> of it as well, perhaps for different reasons. That is if we want to go
> down that road.
Nice to be defended, but I wish it was for other reasons :-) because I
consider Squonk's accusation to be fabricated ..and impossible to
counter because neither do I understand his reasoning ..if there is
such.
> I am tempted to say that the Chinese, along with the Indians, Japanese
> and other hindu or buddhist based cultures have long tangled with the
> subject-object divide and learned to live with it, so to speak.
YES!! My interpretation of the RT part of LILA is that the said cultures
were presented as having gone past (not short-cut) intellect's S/O
divide and seen the greater context - having so to say reached the
Quality solution long ago. But Squonk, hell-bent on the thinking
variety of intellect, interpreted this as racism ..maybe relevant in his
reasoning, but not in accordance with the said book.
> The
> contemporaries of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle in Greece were the
> Buddha in India, Lao Tze and Confucius in China. Buddhist philosophy
> has a distinct subject-object component but that is not all to it. Lao
> Tze's metaphysics was about the "undefined" but Confucius sought to
> place a cultural structure and order into Chinese society, caring less
> for what cannot be empirically ascertained.
By the way, do you know Alan Watts' efforts to bridge the East/West
gap?
> Back to the intellectual level, the mind is included as a sense-door
> in Buddhism in addition to the other five, capable of generating
> concepts and constructions, that may or may not have relation to
> reality itself.
Q-intellect in this "...capable of generating concepts that may or may
not have relation to reality itself " sense I may accept. In other words
the value of the (subjective) concepts versus (objective) reality divide,
but the mind-intellecters want Q-intellect to be only the mind half.
> Transcending the mind, hence the intellectual level is
> a primary objective in Buddhism. The dilemma that Pirsig presents
> after ZAMM and Lila and faced by this group is where do we go from
> here? Undefined "quality" is itself the fifth level, the harmony we
> achieve when we take down the intellectual scaffolding that brought us
> here.
"Intellect a primary objective in Buddhism"? Do you mean as
something to be transcended or achieved or..? Anyway I agree with
undefined quality being the 5th level in the potential sense. DQ is at
work on intellect from where it will produce a new level, but when
established IT will be as static as all other levels .
"Take down the intellectual scaffolding"! ..Exactly, but so many are so
immersed in intellect's S/O as SOM that they bring it into the MOQ
and speaks about a thinking-intellect or a mind-intellect, not a
"thinking/reality"- or a "mind/matter" intellect which it is.
> Having arrived at the height of intellect how do we deconstruct
> it ?
Trough understanding the MOQ properly in my opinion.
> More intellect doesn't seem to be the answer.
Complete and profound agreement.
> And I do concur that this group needs to make a breakthrough from the
> intellectual circles that its has found itself mired in. I hope this
> is one such rare opportunity.
So mired in its mind/matter bog that it is even brought over in the
MOQ.
Bo.
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