From: Scott R (jse885@spinn.net)
Date: Thu Sep 11 2003 - 03:32:09 BST
(I sent this yesterday, but it showed up on the list with the content
replaced by a message from Bo. Anyway, here's trying again.)
Paul,
[Paul:]
I thought that your use of Nishida's logic of contradictory identity
deserved a post of its own!
[Scott:] Not a bad idea :-)
>[Scott prev:] On first approximation, S is DQ and O is SQ. Franklin
Merrell-Wolff says his first enlightenment experience was experiencing
the "Pure Subject", sounding very much like Pirsig saying that Zen
satori was experiencing pure DQ. The absence of all form. His second
enlightenment experience showed that his first had a lingering dualism:
to be absent of all form implies that there is form from which he had
escaped. His second told him that the formless and form are one.20
Nirvana is samsara. So, S is O, and O is S, DQ is SQ, and SQ is DQ, (and
not) and we are neck deep in the logic of contradictory identity.
[Paul:] After giving this some thought, I propose that the logic of
contradictory identity is unnecessary. It seems like Nishida is trying
to solve paradoxes which aren't supposed to be solved so much as
dissolved. The paradoxes which Nagarjuna and Dogen set were supposed to
point the student away from intellectual patterns, such as logic, to
show its superimposition on an immediately apprehended non-intellectual
reality which does not follow our logic. They are not intended to spur
the practitioner on to invent a clever intellectual solution. By
attempting to resolve the paradoxes Nishida is inadvertently reinforcing
the notion that the abstractions which logic makes use of correspond to
something fundamental [and paradoxical in this case] in experience which
must be explained/resolved.
If by "our logic" you mean "Aristotelian logic", then yes. The logic of
contradictory identity is not Aristotelian, and is not Hegelian. It is
these differences that make the L of CI Nagarjunian. The difference
between the logic of contradictory identity and Hegel's dialectical
logic (to which it bears a superficial likeness) is that in the former
nothing is ever explained and resolved. It is precisely to point out
that the paradoxes *cannot ever* be resolved in a synthesis, or
dissolved, that Nishida sees as the logic of contradictory identity.
In this there is a criticism of, say, Neo-Platonism, in that it attempts
to say that these basic paradoxes are resolved in the One. For Nishida
(and I would claim for Nagarjuna and Zen), this loses the vital truth
that "emptiness is not other than form, form is not other than
emptiness". The One of Neo-Platonism tends to be treated separately from
the many, while the logic of CI rubs one's nose in the mutual identity
and contradiction of the one and the many. It is designed to *prevent*
resolution.
[Paul:] The intellectual construction of a contradictory dichotomy is,
in MOQ terms, no more than an intellectual pattern of values formulated
from complex symbolic abstractions. So to solve a "contradictory
identity" paradox one simply rejects the contradictory dichotomy in
favour of non-paradoxical experience. I believe this is the approach
that Nagarjuna and the Wisdom Sutras are advocating.
[Scott:] Where does the abstraction come from? Where does the
intellectual construction come from? Why the phrase "no more than an
intellectual pattern"? This is nominalism, and it is the great error
that needs to be overcome. The ability to abstract, or to create an
intellectual pattern, is a complete and utter mystery. And it is, and
will always be, a mystery because it involves the many and the one in
self-contradictory identity.
As to "reject[ing] the contradictory dichotomy in favor of
non-paradoxical experience", well, why not just give oneself a frontal
lobotomy? Why have we bothered to become human at all?
Nishida is a philosopher, and his especial interest is in providing a
philosophical "account" of Zen. {The scare quotes around "account" are
to note that he is not attempting to describe mystical "experience"
itself.) The function of the logic of contradictory identity is in no
sense to be taken as a solution to the big questions ("What is
emptiness?", "What am I"). It is to prevent one from mistaking any
possible non-contradictory identity for a solution. Such a false
solution becomes an idol, a false god.
The pursuit of "pure experience" can be one such false god. While
Nirvana is the "blowing out" of concepts like self and non-self, to stop
there is to ignore that emptiness is not other than form (like
self/other).
[Paul:] The point is that "self" and "not-self" are never given in
experience, they are arrived at through abstraction, so to say they are
one and the same is just to say that they are derived from a unified
experience.
[Scott:] Well, I think saying they are never given in experience is
incorrect. If there are no distinctions, there is no experience, and for
human beings at this stage in our evolution, the primary distinction is
between self and non-self. The change in thinking that I propose to
relate "experience", "self", and "non-self" is not that "self" and
"non-self" are intellectual abstractions we impose on experience, but
that experience in itself is the creation of the self and the other. It
can also create in other contradictory identities.
Like Nagarjuna (I think: I'm not expert enough to be sure, but this is
my impression), the L of CI does not say the self and the non-self are
"one and the same". It says that they are the same and they are not the
same, that the self exists by negating itself, that there is no
bottoming out in a "unified experience". Instead, all experience is this
interplay of the one and the many, and Awakening is realizing this
bottomlessness, aka, impermanence.
[Paul:]For example, "time as duration" and "time as discrete events" are
just abstracted descriptions of how one can conceive of "time", so the
only contradiction is in the hypothetical sense that an experience can
be described in terms of duration or in terms of events. The description
has no bearing on empirical experience.
[Scott:] Again, whence the "just abstracted descriptions"? In any case,
these "abstractions" became very real to me in trying to discern how a
computer could be aware. This is because a computer is designed
explicitly to treat time as discrete events solely, and this makes
awareness impossible. Hence the difference between a person and a
computer is that the former actually does experience duration as well as
discrete events. Or, again, experience is the creation of the
contradictory identity of the continuous and discrete.
Having said that, I agree that "duration" and "discrete events" are
symbols. But so is "time" itself, and so is time. Time (and space) are
*themselves* descriptions of the eternal. But the L of CI will correct
this to say that time and space are not other than the eternal, and vice
versa.
[Paul:] In terms of "DQ" and "SQ", I would say they refer to
complementary aspects of experience which have been abstracted
symbolically by Pirsig to provide a metaphysical conception of a process
of experience. They are also static divisions of experience.
[Scott:] I would say that "complementary" does not cover it. They are
opposed, and by opposing constitute the process experience, Experience
is never just static or just dynamic. Once named, the names are, of
course, static.
[Paul:]"Since in the MOQ all divisions of Quality are static it follows
that high and low are subdivisions of static quality. "Static" and
"Dynamic" are also subdivisions of static quality, since the MOQ is
itself a static intellectual pattern of Quality." [Lila's Child Note 86]
[Scott:] Once the words are chosen, one has a static pattern. But the
choosing of these words by Pirsig was a result of the tension between DQ
and SQ. Our reading of them is also a tension between DQ and SQ.
[Paul:] As such, all static divisions collapse into a non-intellectual
monism referred to by Pirsig as Quality, so whilst your "DQ is SQ, SQ is
DQ" is not an incorrect conclusion, I think it is an unnecessary
overhead to a simpler understanding, and is perhaps another symptom of
"endless thinking"...
[Scott:] See the discussion of the neo-Platonic One above. They do not
collapse into a non-intellectual monism called Quality, because Quality
is not other than DQ/SQ *and* its description (the MOQ) *and* its denial
(SOM) *and* endless thinking. However, I will agree that it is an
unnecessary overhead in terms of understanding the topics covered in
Lila. It is only when one turns one's attention to other topics, like
how Quality and DQ/SQ relate, or how intellect works, that it becomes
necessary. So I am definitely not criticizing Pirsig for not employing
the L of CI. To have done so in Lila would have been a distraction.
[Paul:]"In the thinking realm there is a difference between oneness and
variety; but in actual experience, variety and unity are the same.
Because you create some idea of unity or variety, you are caught by the
idea. And you have to continue the endless thinking, although actually
there is no need to think." [Shunryu Suzuki, "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind"
p.120]
Or is this Nishida's point?
[Scott:] No. Nishida would say that variety and unity are not the same,
yet are the same, and as long as that contradictory identity is borne in
mind, one will not get caught by the idea of just variety (as
materialists do), or just unity (as centric mystics do), or both unity
and variety (as dualists do), or neither unity nor variety (as nihilists
do).
As to "no need to think", maybe and maybe not. Nagarjuna, and I think
Nishida, saw their work to be soteriological, to clear out ideas that
restrict one's experiencing ("false views", or idols). Thinking, like
any experience, *is* endless, in the sense of being always open (which I
realize is not what Suzuki means). The function of the L of CI is to
keep it open, if one's experiencing is of the thinking variety (again: I
see the view of thinking as somehow being opposed to experiencing to be
more nominalism). On the other hand, to be able to be detached from it
is a good thing, for which one needs Zen-type discipline.
- Scott
P.S. It is getting late, so a response to your other post will have to
wait.
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archives:
Aug '98 - Oct '02 - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
Nov '02 Onward - http://www.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/summary.html
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Thu Sep 11 2003 - 08:26:41 BST