From: PhaedrusWolf@aol.com
Date: Tue Dec 07 2004 - 17:53:05 GMT
In a message dated 12/7/04 10:49:13 AM Eastern Standard Time,
markheyman@infoproconsulting.com writes:
Quality. That's what they'd been talking about all the time. "Man,
will you just please, kindly dig it," he remembered one of them
saying, "and hold up on all those wonderful seven-dollar questions?
If you got to ask what is it all the time, you'll never get time to
know." Soul. Quality. The same? (ZMM)
Hi msh, and all,
Also from Zen;
Phædrus is fascinated too by the description of the motive of "duty toward
self " which is an almost exact translation of the Sanskrit word dharma,
sometimes described as the "one" of the Hindus. Can the dharma of the Hindus and
the "virtue" of the ancient Greeks be identical?
Then Phædrus feels a tugging to read the passage again, and he does so and
then -- what's this?! -- "That which we translate `virtue ' but is in Greek
`excellence."'
Lightning hits!
Quality! Virtue! Dharma! That is what the Sophists were teaching! Not
ethical relativism. Not pristine "virtue." But areté. Excellence. Dharma! Before
the Church of Reason. Before substance. Before form. Before mind and matter.
Before dialectic itself. Quality had been absolute. Those first teachers of the
Western world were teaching Quality, and the medium they had chosen was that
of rhetoric. He has been doing it right all along.
I feel the soul fits in Socrates from Plato's Dialogues as well in Pheado
(as well as but not as extensive in others);
_http://www.greece.com/library/plato/phaedo_01.html_
(http://www.greece.com/library/plato/phaedo_01.html)
Is pretty much concerned with the soul, and the description of the soul in
it might show that the idea of the soul fits well inside this Quality, in that
it is there before, after, and within the patterns, along with Socrates' God
makes up this Quality, Virtue, Dharma, the "the very soul of the Homeric
hero."
But, Socrates' soul would reenter the body at birth, and this is where the
innate knowledge, something like the innate knowledge the Native American
believes in, for experiences from the souls that went before us in life.
This departs from most Christian Churches.
The word soul could be interchanged with Quality in some context, but
Quality would include the soul and God as a whole, as in Hindu Oneness or Buddhist
Nothingness(?)
Still, I believe all the religions are saying pretty much the same, both
East and West in spirit as Pirsig is saying about Quality. I have a feeling
Pirsig might disagree with this, but does Quality as a dialectic term not throw a
blanket over all the religious absolute terms? As opposed to fearing the
terms, it would seem to me that accepting them might lead to a better acceptance
of those who use them in their everyday life. An understanding of life might
come by inclusion as opposed to exclusion of all thought.
Just thoughts, and I hope they are not perceived as "dangerous" for
mentioning them.
Chin
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