From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Mon Jun 14 2004 - 20:22:52 BST
Hi All,
Some of my notes on Beauty, Art and Dynamic Quality:
--For me, beauty makes a direct connection to Dynamic Quality.
--How does art fit into MOQ? Well, for me the whole thing is about art.
Indeed, I think it's art itself since Pirsig uses the art forms of the
novel and the symbol of Lila to express his beliefs. No eye-glazing
academically-sanctioned philosophical paper for him. He needs art to
communicate the meaning of his metaphysics Like love and beauty, it's
power is best depicted in music, poetry and visual expressions. In fact,
for me the whole purpose of art is to create the feeling of Dynamic
Quality, a "Wow," "Awesome, "Aha," "Oh my God" feeling of sheer wonder and
joy in realizing all of a sudden that you are one with the entire universe
because all patterns for that moment have disappeared and you experience
the Dynamic Quality center of life. Art is truly at the heart of MOQ.
--What the world will eventually come to understand is the Metaphysics of
Quality, which asserts the world came into being because it was right that
it do so, the result of the Principle of Goodness. It is known in everyday
life simply as "Beautiful."
--What words do we see Pirsig using to describe DQ? Elegant, brilliant,
first good, shone through, wonder, mystery, excitement, pure fun, skill,
fortune, blessing, luck, wondrous, transcended. Throughout Lila, Pirsig
emphasizes the poetic, esthetic aspect of DQ.
--Music and other forms of art are universal responses to DQ. The
particular form of expression or cultural style is irrelevant to the
universality of Quality in art to which man has responded since his cave
days, long before he could read or write.
--Now, the present moment of pure awareness, isn't an object. It's an
intuitive feeling, like beauty. You can't define it, you feel it. Dynamic
Quality, Beauty, the big NOW--all words for the same thing.
--From my point of view ultimate reality is pure DQ which I believe is
synonymous with pure beauty. If we could arrive at total awareness, become
God so to speak, I believe we would experience the harmony of existence as
having such blinding splendor that we would faint dead away from the sheer
impact of its unbearable beauty
--It's my contention that to enter the "transpersonal domain," become
spiritually awakened or experience "oneness" you don't have read books by
Ken Wilber, attend lectures by Deepak Chopra or spend several months at a
monastery in Tibet, but simply go to your local museum, symphony hall or
trout stream where Beauty is likely to be found if you can't discover it
in your own back yard. I also believe there is no greater calling in life
than to create beautiful things. Which is why, long after the politicians
are gone and forgotten, the artists and their works will be preserved and
revered. I consider Pirsig to be a first rate artist. I'm drawn to the MOQ
again and again because of its wonderfully lucid, harmonious and elegant
intellectual pattern, especially compared to the degenerate, postmodern,
anti- rational rubbish being propagated by humanities professors at
today's universities.
--Here is a wonderful description of the aesthetic experience by Clement
Greenberg, an art critic: "Esthetic enjoyments are immediate, intuitive,
undeliberate and involuntary and leave no room for conscious application
of standards, criteria, rules or precepts." No intellect there. Just an
instantaneous "value reaction"--a response of a living being to DQ.
Best,
Platt
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 Jun 14 2004 - 20:44:58 BST