Hullo Gary, Scott, et al,
I have been following your debate from a distance, as it were, but your last
post got me more intrigued. Not that I am convinced that you have
demonstrated 'checkmate', Gary, even though I tend to see the situation more
or less your way, on balance, but because I think you have done good work in
showing more clearly where the issue lies. I totally agree when you say "we
are here to take Pirsig and build off him", and that is what keeps me coming
back.
Scott says "The very idea of "explaining" is a SOT phenomenon." Gary
responds "Is that what you mean to be saying? That all human thinking is
caught in SO framework?" I think this is an important point to which I will
return. Scott moves the debate in a useful direction when he suggests that
what we are discussing is not so much Eastern belief systems as mysticism,
and he asserts this implies that "to 'experience' DQ 'I' must dissolve all
static patterns", which is seemingly what Pirsig is saying at the end of
Lila. I want to deal very briefly with this point, since I believe it is
nonsense.
If quality is understood by every child, and breaks into our lives
constantly, then it is not something that 'I' do (such as dissolve static
patterns) that makes quality accessible to me. At the biological level it
comes with my genes as part of my behaviour, and at the social level it
arises most strongly in my experience of injustice, while at the
intellectual level it comes unbidden and unannounced in my experiences of
beauty, or elegance, or truth ... the list can be added to. Pirsig argues
that our (perhaps false) experiences of subjectivity, or our (perhaps false)
perceptions of 'objects', arise from DQ. To say I "must dissolve" static
patterns to experience DQ is not only untrue, but it begs the question of
what is this "I" that must so act?
Scott goes on to suggest that there is a deeper level of mysticism.
"Merrell-Wolff experienced a second Recognition in which Nirvana too
dissolved into what he initially called the High Indifference, and later
Consciousness without an object and without a subject. For this to be the
case, then DQ must also, in some way be the Universe, since in some way
Nirvana and samsara are the same. I don't expect to understand this, only to
accept it as a guide."
This seems to me correct as a general statement of what I read as the mystic
position. Scott understands that this "tells me that the set of static
patterns that I
experience is as much a map as my thinking of it, that to make the
distinction "the map is not the territory" is, ultimately, as bogus as the
distinction between subject and object. It tends to reinforce the idea that
there is an independently existing objective reality." This also seems to me
to match with the mystic view.
Scott further argues that "the important point is that the observed DOES NOT
EXIST except when observed. That is, the action of DQ in observing the
observed is at the same time the creation of the observed. The hazard at
this point is to think that the observed is being created "out of" some
unobserved substance. That is a SOM mistake."
This is very close to the crunch point. Here it seems to me Scott remains
with the mystics and parts company with Pirsig, who is careful not to be
branded an 'idealist', which would be to assume that there is no 'objective'
reality outside my thinking. Pirsig wants to remain in touch with a view of
reality that can encompass a metaphysics, and scientific theories such as
evolution, which only make sense if there is in some sense or other a
'world' out there. Which is why I see him as a 'mystic-manque'. He follows
the mystic understanding to a certain point, then pulls back. The incident
described at the end of Ch 12 in ZMM of his withdrawal from Benares Hindu
University reflects this.
Gary has responded "You may be saying that ultimate reality is DQ's
perspective and the rest is maya. Thus there is no map & territory. No
"independently existing objective reality'." This seems to me to be where
Scott is taking us, and again it seems compatible with my reading of
mystics. But Pirsig allows for the existence of static quality, while the
mystic views this as just another illusion.
Gary goes on "Everything any human has ever said is words ... Humans have a
capacity to deceive ... maps/observer/mapmakers are fundamentally not the
same as the observed/territory. This is inescapable. All our previous
agreement on DQ being the true observer observing itself is just a bunch of
human words, a map which may not be and can never be considered ultimately
true by any human."
I am not sure this is 'check'. It assumes that it is not possible to 'know'
anything outside of the 'world' created through words. Yet it is just this,
I suppose, that the mystic does assert. Sure, his assertion must be in
words, but what he is pointing to is a way of knowing which is not mediated
by words. It is simply attending to what is, here and now. It is not that he
is unable to communicate something of this experience in words, but for his
words to be heard and appreciated aright the listener must also share a
similar experience.
The flaw in the 'checkmate' argument is in your statement "What we know for
certain about humans is that we are finite." As to whether we are finite or
infinite the mystic will perhaps answer 'mu'. Living in the moment is living
beyond the finite/infinite divide. Each moment is both a birth and a death.
When you say "We have only human maps! We can never escape this map &
territory
divide", you assume there is no way of living that does not require maps.
The mystic would deny this.
This may seem a win for the mystics, but it is not so simple. First, the
mystic seems unable to convincingly explain how 'samsara' has such power
over us, if reality is simply the ongoing upwelling of what is, or quality,
or whatever. It is common to label our sense of self, or of time, or of
substance, as 'illusions', but the question remains as to how it is possible
for illusion to be so omnipresent in human kind, and so powerful. (This is
similar to the question which demands explanation for the christian who
believes in a 'good' God. How then do we explain the reality of evil?)
This problem operates in two directions. For the ordinary person mired in
'samsara' there is the question of how one might escape this fate, given
that there is no 'map' to help. You can have faith in some guru, obviously,
but the number of bent gurus around makes that a risky undertaking. There
are plenty of people who claim to 'know' enlightenment, but how do I know
that they are correct, and can they show me a way, or is that a fallacy too?
When Gary says "Humans have a capacity to deceive", he touches on one aspect
of this problem. John Wren-Lewis, who seems to speak from a genuine mystic
experience, argues there may well be no 'way' to that experience for others.
It is a matter of grace, he thinks.
The problem also operates in the reverse direction. Mystics, especially
those who speak of the Bodhisattva vow, are concerned to guide others to the
'truth' they have experienced. But the starting point seems always to be
with words, and the words don't work. Krishnamurti, after a lifetime's
teaching, sadly admitted that not one person had been brought to
enlightenment as a consequence.
A forum such as moq.org is unavoidably about words. Even if one of our
number is a genuine mystic, how should I know? I tend to mistrust those (I
call them the 'cryptics') who are always making brief and seemingly profound
statements in this forum, usually full of archetypal references, or turning
the other person's argument into a question. They sound profound, but I
wonder at their "capacity to deceive", especially when they betray
annoyance, petulance or spite. Their comments usually betray an implied
superiority to those they address, but even if it was real, how would I
know? This is a more subtle form of the map/terrain issue. All our words are
maps, and can be nothing else.
So Gary, while your argument is not perhaps as watertight as you see it, I
tend to agree that in practical terms, if "all human thinking is caught in a
SO framework" as Scott suggests, we have a more profound problem than Pirsig
outlined in his comments on degeneracy in writing a metaphysics.
John B
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