Squad: I know why it's been so quiet. I know why there hasn't been a
post in days. You've all quit your jobs, sold your computers and now
you're in a deep state of meditation. You're dhyana-ed. You've become
monks. Right?
Okay, I admit it. I don't know why it's been so quiet. Maybe everyone is
on vacation or simply bored? Maybe you're upset that admiration of the
MOQ doesn't necessarily translate into obtaining that static/Dynamic
balance in real life? It seems our discussion has been squelched for
some unspoken reason. I can only guess what the reasons are.
But seriously, for those who are still interested in this month's topic,
I'd like to share a few ideas. I've found some relevant thoughts in Alan
Watts' "THE WAY OF ZEN", one of his more scholarly works. I think his
explainations of the word "dhyana" are very helpful. He goes into more
detail than Pirsig did.
Here's an interesting note to start. Watts points out that the word
"dhyana is the original Sanskrit form of the Japanese zen". It's meaning
is central for an understanding of Buddhism, and I would add that it is
central in the meaning of the MOQ and Pirsig's notion of DQ and the
evolutionary freedom associated with it. But he warns us that ,
"Meditation in the common sense of "thinking things over" or "musing" is
a most misleading translation. But such alternatives as "trance" or
"absorbtion" are even worse, since they suggest states of hypnotic
fascination." There are lots of reasons why the term is so widely
misunderstood in the West, for example...
On page 55 he says, "The difficulty of appreciating what dhyana means is
that the structure of our language does not permit us to uste a
transitive verb without a subject and a predicate. When the is "knowing"
grammatical convention requires that there must be someone who knows and
something which is known...But dhyana as the mental state of the
liberated or awakened man is naturally free from the confusion of
conventional entities with reality. Our intellectual discomfort in
trying to concieve knowing without a distinct "someone" which is known,
is like the discomfor of arriving at a formal dinner in pajamas. The
error is conventional, not existential."
Clearly, Pirsig would describe this conventional error as the cultural
immune system. The social level values embodied in our language work to
keep us from seeing the nature of dhyana as well as other "things" like
the green flash and the dharmakaya light. And the "knowing" Watts refers
to must be essentially the same as Pirsig's "direct experience". So
there are two major impediments to our understanding what dhyana really
is; our culture and language don't permit us to see it easily and it
transcends the intellect, and yet it's all we have in trying to
understand the meaning of dhyana.
And just in case it not painfully obvious, the mental state known as
dhyana is the source of FREEDOM that Pirsig points to. It is central to
the whole issue of obtaining both Sq and DQ, of balancing ritual and
freedom.
On page 54 Watts says, "To the restless temperment of the West, sitting
meditation may seem to be an unpleasant discipline, because we do not
seem to be able to sit "just to sit" without qualms of conscience,
without feeling that we ought to be doing something more important to
justify our existence. To propitiate this restless conscience, sitting
meditation must therfore be regarded as an exercise, a discipline with
an ulterior motive. Yet at that very point it ceases to be meditation
(dhyana) in the Buddhist sense, for where there is purpose, where there
is seeking and grasping for results, there is no dhyana."
We can see that Watts is describing part of the same cultural immune
system. He sees a way around it. We Westerners can approch dhyana by
turning the East's "just sitting" into a discipline and practice. We do
this in the hope that dhyana will emerge in spite of our cultural bias
against it. But its a very difficult thing to manage because the West
perfers "doing" over simply "being" so much that we have a thousand and
one insulting words to describe "unproductive" people.
And if I may be so bold, I think we saw the cultural immune system at
work here. For example, Diana's humorous advice on how to become a
slacker seemed to suggest that Dhyana can only be achieved by corrupt
and lazy fools. Rocky's appeal to his family and other social duties may
have pulled the heart strings, but seemed to be awfully defensive.
Roger's advice that we behave moderately at work and take up a new hobby
to keep things fresh was great as far as it goes, but seems to have very
little to do with freedom or dhyana. And David T. suggestion that it all
comes down to militarisitic swordsmanship and his references to
"Buddhism without beliefs" has got me totally baffled. i wouldn't even
pick up a book by that title. Its like believeing in a book called, "A
belief system without beliefs" or eating at "The resturant without
food." I haven't read it that specific work, but I'm quite certain that
there is a strange form of Buddhisism at the upper levels of American
society that is really just a kind of exotic Nihilism. Its a fancy way
of "believeing" in nothing but one's own personal goals. Its exactly the
kind of thing the original "Buddha" was out to crush. His emphasis on
compassion and the universal accessability was a rejection of the
elitist and compassionless warrior class that dominated India in his
time. Don't get me wrong. I'm glad we're learning from the east, but
there are way too many cheap, knock-off, imported philosophies that
really don't deserve the name "Buddhism". I'm only guessing Bachelor is
one of those bad importers. And please remember that these Eastern
belief systems have been described by Pirsig as one of "the most
profound achievements of the human mind".
Please forgive my frankness. I realize these comments might bruise an
ego or two, but that seems less important than being honest and straight
forward. You won't get any fake flattery from me and I hope you'll take
that as a sign of respect. (Phoney agreement is something I find very
offensive, even more than dishonest condescension.) I only hope it makes
everyone eager to re-think and re-state their thoughts on the topic.
Now back to Watts. On page 55 he says, "As used in Buddhism, the term
dhyana...can best be described as the state of unified or one-pointed
awareness. On the one hand, it is one-pointed in the sense of being
focused on the present, since to clear awareness there is neither past
nor future, but just this one moment (ekaksana) which Western mystics
have called the Eternal Now. On the other hand, it is one-pointed in the
sense of being a state of consciousness without differentiation of the
knower, the knowing and the known."
In terms of the MOQ, I think we can see that the clear awareness of the
present could be described as the release of social and intellectual
patterns that might prompt us to pollute the one moment with our
memories and expectations. And on the other hand we can see that
"consciousness without differentiation" very much resembles Pirsig's
"direct experience" of the "undifferentiated aesthetic continuum". It's
not just a matter of their using the same vocabulary either. I think
they are expressing the same ideas and have both studied many of the
same sources to get those ideas.
On page 53 he says, "It is a total clarity and presence of mind,
actively passive, wherin events come and go like reflections in a
MIRROR; nothing is reflected except what IS. Through such awareness it
is seen that the seperation of thinker from the thought, the knower from
the known, the subject form the object, is purely abstract...Seen thus,
the process of experiencing ceases to clutch at itself. Thought follows
thought without interruption, that is, without any need to divide itself
from itself, so as to become its own object."
Notice that dhyana is not the state of having an empty mind, but is
rather one of "total clarity and presence of mind" where thoughts flow
naturally. Just as Pirsig says, Watts also sees dhyana as a natural
human process. They see it as the most natural state of mind and as
something that we in the West ought to re-discover. Please remember that
Pirsig even goes so far as to make it seem kind of down-home and
friendly by saying that the quest for such a state of mind is what
boats, cabins and hiking trails are all about.
David B.
MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org
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