From: Paul Turner (paul@turnerbc.co.uk)
Date: Tue Aug 16 2005 - 17:18:01 BST
David H,
>> Paul: I am saying that, in the MOQ, the experience of Dynamic Quality is
>> privileged over static patterned experience because it is the source of
>> static improvement i.e., the ongoing expansive force of evolution. If it
>> were privileged just because it was 'unpatterned nothingness' then I
>would
>> think that would be akin to Dynamic Quality being no more than a chosen
>> object of religious worship.
>
>I disagree, I think it is 'no more than a chosen object of religious
>worship' when it is encaptulated within a concept such as 'I follow DQ only
>because it improves me' thus becomming a pattern and
>not DQ.
Paul: I didn't say anything like 'I follow DQ only because it improves me'.
I was considering the MOQ moral hierarchy with respect to Dynamic Quality
being at the top but, anyway, let's take this conversation all the way to
its end. "DQ" is a static conceptual pattern, "undefined Quality" is a
conceptual pattern, "nothingness" is a pattern, "Buddha" is a pattern etc.
Throw away LILA and ZMM and shut down this forum.
>> If describing Dynamic Quality as the expansive
>> force of evolution "wraps it up" then so be it. If this is the case,
>Pirsig
>> spends most of LILA "wrapping up" Dynamic Quality.
>
>I agree, I too think that Pirsig 'wraps up' "undefined Quality" but as soon
>as he does he distances himself from the concept immediately by creating
>the very first two divisions, 'defined' (Static)
>Quality and 'undefined' (Dynamic) Quality.
Paul: That division is a pattern too. And as I said, throw away LILA
because the role of Dynamic Quality in the MOQ is described throughout.
>>>Yes a hit of smack can be considered pure DQ...
>>
>>
>> Perhaps, but I am trying to distinguish the unpatterned degenerate and/or
>> chaotic from the unpatterned evolutionary experience by saying that
>Dynamic
>> Quality precedes, and is the only cause of, static improvement and is not
>> simply a blissful state of pleasurable nothingness.
>
>Since when according to the MOQ was a 'blissful state of pleasurable
>nothingness' a bad thing?
Paul: When it is a biological pattern which is destructive to social
patterns, like heroin can be.
>> I would generalise that
>> the experience of heroin tends to be highly biologically addictive,
>> destructive of social patterns, and therefore degenerate.
> > However, you are,
>> of course, at liberty to demonstrate that heroin use constitutes a
>Dynamic
>> advance.
>>
>
>To me, that heroin taking is degenerate on the larger scale is another
>issue entirely, but at the most immediate level, Dynamic Quality is
>everywhere/nowhere, while doing anything/nothing.
Paul: Another patterned conceptualisation of Dynamic Quality which would
have been better off not written.
>> I think
>> enlightenment is the awareness of the 'impermanence' or 'emptiness' of
>> static patterns, including one's own, and this can occur anywhere and can
>be
>> brought about in many different ways and at many different 'depths'.
>With
>> respect to my own limited 'acquisition' of this awareness, for example, I
>> feel my experience was 'shallow', but at the time, enough, and it was
>> certainly unexpected, occurring neither in a Zendo nor anywhere near a
>> motorcycle. For the record, I don't claim to be an 'awakened one' and my
>> own development of this awareness would consist in the cultivation of the
>> ability to perceive Dynamic Quality or static quality at will.
>>
>> With respect to my relating Dynamic Quality to the improvement of static
>> patterns being a supposed infringement on the undivided nothingness of
>> enlightenment, I think this 'nothingness'** is only the goal of e.g. Zen
>> Buddhism insofar as it provides an experiential awareness of the lack of
>> inherent self-existence of all 'things'. I think Zen aims to push past
>the
>> 'lip service' which many people pay to this awareness and go deep enough
>to
>> put it 'beyond doubt'. However, I don't think this represents an
>'arrival'
>> at some place in which static quality has been permanently left behind.
>
>I agree.
Paul: Great.
Regards
Paul
A Monk asked Yun Men, "What are the teachings of a whole lifetime?"
Yun Men said, "An appropriate statement."
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