Hello, MoQers all! Platt, Jonathan, David and the rest of you, greetings!
IMHO, this thread and the one on faith is the heart of the MoQ. If you can't
get the MoQ on this level, it doesn't make sense anywhere.
> [David Buchanan] Peter, I don't get it. I thought there were five
> physical senses and that the only controversy about it comes from the
> belevers in ESP or other paranormal ideas. I can see how "instincts" might
> be harder quantify or even to identify, but the senses? A trick question?
> Please explain.
If I may - Buddhists recognize six. Our five plus mind.
ESP as a "6th sense" is more believed than you might think. I suspect it is
a misidentified sense of moral values.
Mystic Judeo-Christian-Muslims also recognize a sixth sense, in this case a
God-sense.
SOMist Westerners seem to be more or less alone in proclaiming five senses.
Platt quotes Pirsig:
"There was 'something wrong-something wrong-something wrong'
feeling like a buzzer in the back of his mind. It wasn't just his
imagination. It
was real. It was a primary perception of negative quality. First you SENSE
the high or low quality, then you find reason for it, not the other way
around.
Here he was SENSING it."
This is the first step in problem-solving - realization that there is a
problem. This is the first step on the path to enlightenment. This is the
mystic experience at its most basic.
Jonathon:
How about this - mysticism is the search for absolute reality. Absolute
Reality=Nirvana=God=Quality=Theory of Everything. The search is hardly
anti-intellectual. In fact, the more you learn the better off you are. The
biggest trick of mystic practice is to not get caught up in definition. By
defining something you objectify it and then you are stuck in the SOM trap.
The definition is not the object! Mystic practice is not anti-rational, it
is precisely rational.
A working definition of "the divine" is not useful because it obscures "the
divine." It is more precise to speak of "the divine" in terms of what it is
not, if it must be talked about at all. Quality just is. It is the absolute
basis of reality. I have always thought it was apparent that Pirsig was
speaking of the mystical One when he referred to Quality. That it happens to
be a rational concept is the beauty of it.
I suppose I am making little - or no - sense. The phenomenal world is
describable, the noumenal is not. It is inherent in the phenomenon, but is
not the phenomenon. If you touch the phenomenal world deeply enough, you
touch absolute reality. I'm sorry, I can't think of any other way to
approach "the divine."
It is the contention of us mystics that with practice the noumenal can be
directly experienced. Some of us have. Platt described such an experience. I
have on a couple of occasions. There are quite a few reasonable types that
would concur. I perceive "the divine" as God, others as whatever their
culture accepts as a metaphor for it. "Quality" is Pirsig's gift to us
empiricists. The only way to understand Quality is to experience it.
"Quality is the Buddha. Quality is scientific reality. Quality is the goal
of Art." - ZMM, pg 270 Bantam edition, 1976.
Good night, all!
drose
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