PIRSIGIANS:
One night a monk was out for a walk with his dog. The monk was thinking
about the lesson his master had given that day and felt frustrated. He
wasn't sure that he understood the lesson and tried hard to find its
meaning.
The master had told him over and over again. He said to the troubled
monk, "The holy word is not the Truth". As the monk walked he secretly
wondered if his master was blasphemous or insane. "The holy word is not
the Truth? If that is true," he wondered, "then why do we study the
holy word day after day"?
As he came to a clearing along the path he noticed that a giant full
moon was rising on the eastern horizon. The monk had never seen a moon
so big. Wanting to share the awesome spectacle, he instinctively pointed
to the moon and shouted out, "Look at the beautiful rising moon!".
But nobody was there except the dog, who barked at the excited monk. And
instead of looking at the moon, the dog looked at the outstreched hand
of the monk and tried to bite his sleave. "No" said the monk, laughing.
"Look at the moon!"
The dog, not sure if it was being scolded or not, looked at the monk's
face, and then his pointing hand. The dog repeated this several times,
never once looking at the moon.
The monk began to chuckle. Then he cried a little with the laughter
mixed in and then came the hysterical belly-laugh. It actually knocked
him to the ground. "Now I understand", said the monk to himself. "The
word is not the truth and my pointing hand is not the moon."
My apologies to those who have already heard this, it may even be in
ZAAMM.
Pirsig is precise when he wants to be, but both books are also fictional
and employ alot images to help drive the points home. Whenever we use
words and ideas (intellectual patterns) to refer to mystical reality
(Quality) they need a certain transparency. Mystics use the kind of
words, images and ideas that can point to a reality beyond themselves.
Said another way, the language of mysticism has to let you see past the
hand and to the moon.
And I think Pirsig tried to make the case that the evolution of
intellectual patterns is informed and guided by Quality. Further, we are
already aware of Quality (Mystical reality) on other levels. So that the
meaning behind the words is not learned so much as recognized.
David B.
homepage - http://www.moq.org
queries - mailto:moq@moq.org
unsubscribe - mailto:majordomo@moq.org with UNSUBSCRIBE MOQ_DISCUSS in
body of email
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat Aug 17 2002 - 16:02:46 BST