From: Dan Glover (daneglover@hotmail.com)
Date: Sat Dec 27 2003 - 03:49:50 GMT
Hello everyone
>From: "khoo hock aun" <hockaun@pc.jaring.my>
>Reply-To: moq_discuss@moq.org
>To: "Moq_Discuss@Moq.Org" <moq_discuss@moq.org>
>Subject: Re: MD Sit on my faith Date: Wed, 17 Dec 2003 20:56:39 +0800
>
>" 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.
Dan:
Dear Wim and Khoo,
Maybe it depends on what kind of Buddhism being talked about but in my
experience a person cannot strive for 'enlightenment' in the same sense that
they might strive to lead a good life or strive to earn a living. It seems
to me that if a person pays attention to Buddha's words--depend on no
one--they will perhaps come to see that 'enlightenment' does not exist as a
goal to be obtained by following the lead of others, nor is 'enlightenment'
a state of being to be sought after and obtained by practice. We just have
to wake up to our self. For me that is not so much about dismantling the
patterns that make me what I am as it is about seeing the patterns that make
me what I am; what they are--not what I think they are.
>Khoo:
>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.
Dan:
I think the MOQ would say the subject-object world view that dominates the
mind are patterns and like the patterns of self there is no need to
dismantle them as long as one sees sees the patterns for what they are, not
what they should be or might be.
>Khoo:
>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.
Dan:
I read somewhere that Buddha talked of joyful participation in the sorrows
of the world. To me, this means there is no karmic burden but that which we
take on our self; of course if we take on a karmic burden our self, only our
self can let go. Joyful participation in sorrow allows a person to see the
impermanence of life and of all the patterns that make up existence--the
rich and innocent will pass away just as will the poor and the
guilty--without becoming entrenched and trapped by the sorrow, thus
eliminating karmic relationships (what Robert Pirsig calls 'evolutionary
garbage'). It's not an easy thing to be joyful in the face of certain death
but what's a better alternative?
>Khoo:
>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.
Dan:
It seems to me that we as a culture today need intellect far more than
culture did a couple hundred years ago. I look around and I don't see the
intellectual level as any kind of cause of the "moral and social nightmare"
that you speak of, even indirectly. I do see religious and ethnic
background--social patterns--as a fundamental difference over which war
arises time and again. In LILA, RMP warns of the failure of using
intellectual patterns to deal with these problems but that doesn't mean the
intellectual level causes the problems. I agree though that some ideas tend
to promote the preconditions necessary for nightmares to thrive.
>Khoo:
>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.
Dan:
This doesn't seem much different than everything belonging to the state as
it does in some socialist and communist countries. From what I understand
China is just now coming to grips with the concept of private ownership.
>Khoo:
>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 ?
Dan:
I guess to be meaningful a person should "get something" out of the
discussion and perhaps for each person that comes here that "something" is
different.
>Khoo:
>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.
Dan:
I'm not sure what you mean by "mind" in your statement :"The mind operates
the machinery of the intellect..." If we go by Mr. Pirsig's definition of
intellect then you're saying intellect operates intellect. I don't think
that's what you mean. Perhaps you mean the biological brain but then I
think you might have it backwards, according to the MOQ (and recent research
into the brain). It has been found that (in general) people who maintain an
active intellectual lifestyle are more apt to resist what was once thought
to be the ravages of aging--early senility, loss of memory, dementia. It's
not that the brain generates intellect, it's the intellect that generates
the brain.
>Khoo:
>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.
Dan:
If asked what the object of my meditation was I couldn't answer. If pressed
for an answer I might say that there is no objective to my meditation in the
sense that you seem to mean (a Western sense). I see the taking of thought
out of the way of experience as a by-product of meditation but not the
objective. It would be the same as saying I meditate to lower my stress
level. While it's true that stress is reduced, that's not why I meditate.
It's a by-product.
>Khoo:
>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 ?
Perhaps he or she just sees things as they are.
Thank you for your enlightening posts,
Dan
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