Platt Holden (pholden@worldnet.att.net)
Sat, 15 Nov 1997 02:11:16 +0100
In a post dated Oct. 29, Bo wrote:
"Still, his latest paper amazed me greatly (referring to Robert Palibo, a
Swedish student who Bo corresponds with). In it he inverts the usual
concept where mind is considered ordered-or bringing order-and the world
chaotic. His new idea is the other way around: Mind is dynamic while the
world is ordered. Isn't this Pirsig's claim too? Reality (the world) is
ordered in four discrete levels, while "mind" is everything and nothing;
another way of calling it chaotic or dynamic."
Yes. I think this is Pirsig's idea. But it is far from being new. Here' s a
quote from Master Huang Po of Zen:
"All the Buddhas and all sentient beings are nothing but the One Mind,
besides which nothing exists. This Mind, which is without beginning, is
unborn and indestructible. It is not green or yellow, and has neither form
nor appearance. It does not belong to the categories of things which exist
or do not exist, nor can it be thought of in terms of new or old. It is
neither long nor short, big nor small, for it transcends all limits,
measures, names, traces and comparisons. Only awake to the One Mind."
Lest you believe this to be "too mystic," here is what Erwin Schroedinger
the founder of quantum mechanics said:
"The only possible alternative is simply to keep to the immediate
experience that consciousness (i.e. Mind) is a singular of which the plural
is unknown; that there is only one thing and that what seems to be a
plurality is merely a series of different aspects of this one thing; the
same illusion is produced in a gallery of mirrors . . . The external world
and consciousness are one and the same thing."
This idea of One Mind, this (in Bo's words) "undifferentiated, undefined,
pre-existing source of all things referred to as Dynamic Quality" has,
depending on the tradition in which it is expressed, been called Absolute
Being, Absolute Way, the Void, the Abyss, God, the Godhead, or in modern
vernacular, Spirit or Spirituality.
Far from being out of the mainstream, the MoQ reflects the wisdom of the
ages. Our logic-strapped, sensory-bound scientific worldview has
temporarily buried this one truth among many truths. As Plato said, "You
cannot conceive of the many without the one."
Platt
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