From: khoo hock aun (hockaun@pc.jaring.my)
Date: Wed Dec 17 2003 - 12:56:39 GMT
" While sustaining biological and social patterns
Kill all intellectual patterns
Kill them completely
And then follow Dynamic Quality
And morality will be served. "
- Lila Chap 32, the Metaphysics of Quality
translation of a buddhist poem
Dear Wim,
Thank you for your comments and questions.
You wrote:
> You quote Siddharta Gautama as having said:
> "The whole secret of existence is to have no fear. Never fear what will
> become of you, depend on no one. Only the moment you reject all help are
you freed"
>
> I don't understand the second part of your quote ("depend on no one ...").
> Depending on others doesn't seem a problem to me if it is part of (more or
> less equal) mutual dependence. It is unequal dependence that limits
freedom.
> Freedom is meaningless and worthless without (equal) mutual dependencies
> (static patterns of value) to work with and build upon. If you would
reject
> all dependence and participate in no static patterns of value any more
> (which is impossible), you would be 'free from' everything, but not 'free
> to' attain anything worthwhile either. Is hope that's not the
'enlightenment' Buddhists strive for?!
Khoo:
At the centre of all buddhist practice is the implicit understanding that
everyone has the potential to become a buddha; each step, if taken, towards
this goal, is focussed on completely dismantling "patterns" that constitute
the
self as we come to know it. However, as long as we convince ourselves that
this "self" exists and has its biological, social and intellectual needs; we
feed off the earth, establish a position in society and engage with the
minds
of others to sustain the image of self - both in the material form and in
the mind.
We form mutually dependent networks and think we "function" freely
as units within a larger society.
The freedom that you refer to is the social and intellectual freedom of an
individual to serve this "self" and ensure its continued existence. This
freedom that you refer to is the freedom of the subjective "self" existing
in a separate "objective" world.
This subject-object world view dominates the mind to such an extent that
it is the becomes basis of all individuality; with it, the free assertion
of
the person of all his/her inherent rights. But this person, free as an
individual, is
enslaved to the idea that there is a "self", a derivative of the
subject-object world view
that has been constructed to explain the very existence of the "self"
itself.
The objective of buddhism is to completely transcend this subject-object
worldview; and to achieve a perspective that there is absolutely no self -
and no
individuality to preserve, thereby no insecurity to cause fear and hence no
dependence on anyone
- the ultimate release from interdependent origination.
The sangha, or the order of the monks, was established to enable the
buddhist monks to practice
and propagate the dhamma. It also served to take care of the their
biological and social needs
as long as they live, while they strive to, in Pirsig's words, "kill all
intellectual patterns".
Karma explains for me why the world and the universe, is so unequal - why
some are rich and
some are poor, why some are smart and some dumb, why some die as innocent
infants while
others die in their sleep at 100. Some who have taken the path through
several lifetimes,
their karmic burdens diminishing, find themselvesin circumstances that
favour their efforts.
However, no matter how weighed down the karmic chain one happens to be; on a
hellish plane
of existence where matter predominates, for instance - the opportunity is
always there
for one to take the first step towards liberation from the chain.
"It is always better to give than to recieve" - this epitomises the virtue
of being less dependent
and more independent as one progresses. Mutual dependencies between two
"selves" and multilateral
dependencies between many 'selves" - are exactly that - dependencies of
insecure needful entities each
desperately hooked on maintaining the idea of their existence. The freedom
advocated for the "self"
to maintain these dependencies have been exploited and abused to preserve
the "self" and in its name,
allowed those whose "selves" are strong to bully those whose "selves" are
weak.
> At the end you write:
> 'If anything, the buddhism is merely a "Manual for One's Personal
> Salvation - Use What Works For You"'.
>
> Can Buddhism also provide a manual for collective salvation, "how to help
> the static patterns of value that connect us migrate towards Dynamic
> Quality" instead of "how to dissolve them"?
Yet, ironnically, migration towards Dynamic Quality involve "dissolving the
static patterns of value".
I am reminded of the literature from Frank Buchman's now virtually
forgotten Moral Re-Armament
movement and a quotation that got stuck in my head: "You can't change the
world without changing
yourself first."
While the emphasis of buddhism is on individual practice and personal
improvement,
utilising from the dhamma that which suits one's level of preparedness to
undertake the necessary steps
- another implicit understanding is that as you save yourself, you begin to
save a bit of the world.
One less clouded mind and the world seems better, becomes better. On the
other end of the scale, there
are bodhisattvas, in the mahayana tradition and who hold off ultimate
buddhahood out of compassion
until the rest of humanity is saved. In this regard, the responsibility of
each and everyone
of us is nothing less than awesome.
Take the subject-object metaphysics worldview for instance. For several
years now, this discussion group
has been in existence, progressing to the publication of Lila's Child, after
several commentaries, even from Pirsig
himself. In spite of all that has been stated in the closing chapters of
Lila, most discussants are still mired
in the subject-object worldview, unable to dismantle the "static patterns of
value" that help maintain the
illusion of a subjective self in a subject-object metaphysical universe.
While recognising that biological and social patterns are necessary for the
sustenance of life,
the maintenance and projection of intellectual patterns are not; they are
however crucial to the sustenance
of our "selves" - the subject in the SOM worldview. The advocacy that the
intellectual level has been responsible
for the material and technological paradise the modern world represents
belie the reality that it has really,
more crucially, been responsible for the subject-object schism throughout
our history and the fundamental cause of
the "moral and social nightmare" that Pirsig refers to. We are now at 6.3
billion "selves" and counting.
The process in the West started with the Greeks of course. By the time the
Cartesian fixation of "I think, therefore I am"
set in, the intellectual ownership of the individual was complete. There
idea that there was a "self" to think, to develop and generate concepts, to
hypothesise and to establish theories to explain objective phenomena. The
concept of the ownership of the patent was born and with it the scientific
revolution. By the 15th century, China was the most technologically advanced
country in the world - but there was no concept of patents and the
individual ownership and exploitation of its intellectual ideas. Everything,
every idea, every innovation collectively belonged to the Emperor of the
Middle Kingdom, the Son of Heaven.
Practically, and admittedly, it is not easy to achieve a non-SOM point of
view. Killing the intellectual patterns, as Pirsig says, seem like indulging
in some kind of mental suicide to those whom have lived as a subjective self
all their life.
Yet, to discuss the Metaphysics of Quality meaningfully, and to help us
migrate toward Dynamic Quality, would it not be necessary to understand what
a metaphysical view of reality would be ?
What might help would be to focus on our own direct experience of the world
taken from a non-self perspective. Writers who understand this direct
experience implicitly look beneath the facetious veneer of things and
describe what they see for what they are; the are true insights - David
Bohm's implicate order, Rupert Sheldrake's morphogenetic field, Richard
Dawkins's
memes, and David Peat's synchronicity among others collectively weave
together a metaphysical point of view that increasingly depicts a thoroughly
interconnected and interdependent universe where the sense of self is
nothing but a deperate complex persistent pattern.
As much as philosophology parades as philosophy, intellect is nothing but
vicarious knowledge, and no substitute for direct experience. The mind
operates the machinery of the intellect generating thoughts and conceiving
each concept as its reality. The thought of an apple is as real as an apple,
but the buddhist abhidhamma breaks the thought process to 17 distinct parts.
As far as the self is concerned, mind is the sixth sense, a pattern builder
and sustainer of the most prolific order. The practice of meditation, of
being mindful, is to arrest the capacity of the mind to develop and impose
its many varied patterns. The objective of meditation is to take thought out
of the way of our direct experience of the universe.
What does a metaphysician see ? One whose being is not bounded by the
natural laws of mortality, space and time ? One who is not trapped in a
physical body of flesh and blood, whose direct experience of the world
around him is not limited to the five senses of the body ? One who
understands that mind has a tremendous capacity to generate any number of
intellectual concepts and present them as reality ? What does a
metaphysician see, beyond mind and matter, when they cease ? Does he or she
see the Metaphysics of Quality ?
Best Regards
Khoo Hock Aun
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