From: khoo hock aun (hockaun@pc.jaring.my)
Date: Mon Dec 22 2003 - 14:13:58 GMT
Hi Joe and all,
Joe wrote:
> joe: i love the Christian faith. I love the Work principles based on
> Gurdjieff. I love the MoQ described by Robert Pirsig. What you wrote,
> Khoo, aabout Buddhist practice seems so sensible. I would like to accept
> that also! At the end your questions are lures: "What does a
metaphysician
> see, beyond mind and matter, when they cease? Does he or she see the
> Metaphysics of Quality?"
>
> Never say 'I' to my actions, feelings, or thoughts! Never identify with
> self! Call the self 'it'! Are conscious labors and intentional
sufffering
> 'radical renounces'? I was never taught that in school. Must I immure
> myself "in one of the strongly built cells, there to receive every
> twenty-four hours a piece of bread and a small jug of water?" No! I
choose
> to participate somewhat on a maliling list with Platt, Bo, Mark, Joe,
etc.,
> and accept what I get.
>
> I won't leave off! Conscious cannot come from the non-conscious, organic
> cannot come from the inorganic, evolution is incomplete! I am broken and
> need repair. This is a hell of a place to become a Buddha! (The damn
word
> processor I use to make a rough draft insists with a red underline that
> 'Buddha' be written with a capital 'B')
Khoo:
Lest a misconception persist, I would like to say a little about the term
'radical renounce(r)s" when used to describe buddhists.
The imagery you conjure that buddhism leads to ascetism - the practise of
extreme self-denial for religious reasons - is rather superficial. But I
will grant that it was done so to make a point.
The Buddha attempted ascetism for six years after leaving a life of comfort
as a prince - and found that his path to enlightenment lay somewhere in
between - not in either extreme. The life of buddhist monks today must
appear like asceticism to a deeply entrenched material culture - but they
were not so 2500 yrs ago. However, the voluntary acceptance of 227 rules of
theravada monkhood is not a walk in the park - only the most determined to
achieve liberation do so - only because it has been found to favour rapid
progress towards enligthenment.
For the rest of the buddhist community, their lives are spent in karmic
preparation, simply put " stay away from evil, do good and purify the mind".
But to be born human is a rare opportunity to gain enlightenment which is
only possible on this human plane. All beings who have progressed through
the 31 planes of existence and who have achieved candidature for buddhahood
after countless lifetimes are born as humans to achieve this final
liberation. In this sense, every human has the potential to become a
buddha - on this plane the balance between mind and matter is just right for
this to occur. It seems therefore that neither a dog nor a god can achieve
buddhahood in their own respective lifetimes.
Enlightenment may not come too on this mailing list - but just as you,
Platt, Bo and Mark, myself and everyone else signed on, there is a keen
interest to find out what Pirsig's Metaphysics of Quality could be and how
it could be acheived. However, each and every discussant or lurker is only
able to appreciate the Metaphysics of Quality at their own level of
understanding and preparedness. If only someone would write an "MOQ for
Dummies".
But every now and then we are afforded our occasional metaphysical insights,
flashes of dharmakaya light which Pirsig refers to in Lila Chap 26: " It
signals a Dynamic intrusion upon a static situation...When there is a
letting go of static patterns the light occurs. ... The light would occur
during the breakup of the static patterns of the person's intellect as it
returned into the pure Dynamic Quality from which it emerged in infancy."
It is in this light that one can see that conscious can indeed come from the
non-conscious, organic can come from the inorganic, and evolution is indeed
incomplete. In this light, we see we are each discrete "selves" broken away
from the contiuum of Pirsig's Dyanmic Quality. Buddhism's basic position is
that subject-object metaphysics is at the root of all suffering, no matter
how much
material progress is achieved in its name. But the middle path, or
moderation, is taken. The "self" is accepted as a temporary biological and
social vessel for consciousness, nothing more, balanced against the vista of
this "self" as but one in a multitude of zillions, more alike and
undifferentiated from the other than each could imagine.
Best Regards
Khoo Hock Aun
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 : Mon Dec 22 2003 - 14:16:47 GMT