From: David Harding (davidharding@optusnet.com.au)
Date: Sat Oct 11 2003 - 07:02:34 BST
On Sat, 11 Oct 2003 12:35 am, Patrick van den Berg wrote:
> Hi David H,
>
> > There is a Pirsg comment in Lilas Child which you may find
> > interesting.
> >
> > 29. The MOQ, as I understand it, denies any existence of a
> > "self" that is independent of inorganic, biological, social or
> > intellectual patterns. There is no "self" that contains these
> > patterns. These patterns contain the self. This denial agrees
> > with both religious mysticism and scientific knowledge. In
> > Zen, there is reference to "big self" and "small self". Small
> > self is the patterns. Big self is Dynamic Quality.
>
> Hm, interesting, though I'd like to see it worked out a bit more. I
> think I've read Lila's Child a while ago. "Big self is Dynamic Quality".
> I can agree with that maybe, on reflection, but the disadvantage of this
> is that 'big self' opposes to 'small self'. Isn't it more valueable to
> see small self being contained by big self? So that our small selves are
> part of this bigger self?
I don't think that Dynamic Quality is an object that 'contains' things inside
it or is contained by any object.
I think Dynamic Quality and Static Quality Are in opposition to each other,
but they also need each other to survive. If static patterns are overly
Static and require blind obedience then they suppress Dynamic change, while
on the other hand if Dynamic change is too powerful and fluid then I believe
chaos can emerge. This is what I think Pirsig was talking about when he said
that the culture needs the tension between both the Brujo and the Priests to
survive.
> It's true that 'scientific knowledge' agrees with the notion that the
> patterns contain the self, not vice versa. When you study attention with
> fMRI or EEG, you see resp. parts of the brain and electromagnetic
> waveforms that are linked to the act of attention. So what our selves
> 'will' or 'decide', is not by action of an I on the brain, itself
> independend of it's own brain, but the action of neural patterns.
As I know little of fMRI or EEG it is difficult to comment on this, however I
would have thought that classical scientific knowledge claims that an SOM
object contains the self who's acknowledgement of Dynamic Quality is
nonexistent.
>
> What you said, that DQ is not merely not-self, and higher self does not
> include static qualities; well, that's fine with me. To me, it's a
> matter of taste where you cut the pie of quality-and-selves in two
> halves.
>
> Greetings, Patrick.
Regards, David H
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archives:
Aug '98 - Oct '02 - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
Nov '02 Onward - http://www.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/summary.html
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Oct 11 2003 - 07:01:56 BST