all reasonable people,
from a personal perspective i continue with my primary interest-
the limitations of reason.
As i tried to point out in my last post, i felt that Pirsig had
left the nature of Reason somewhat incomplete in ZAMM and
unexplored in lila. The vice like grip that reason has on the
human mind is amazing to say the least, and it would be no
exaggeration to say that this is the age of reason. Thus if the
limitations of reason are to be overcome, it is reason itself that
can do so , as Pirsig says to turn the analytic knife towards
itself. To do that we have to look closely at the process of
reason.
The most striking aspect of reason i have observed in this
forum is that what one person considers reasonable is totally
unreasonable for another. Why should this be so ?
The reason (!!!) for this is that reason is nothing else but
(primarily) the LINEAR operation of underlying static patterns
and concepts of that person. Some of these static patterns
come built in as part of the hardware, mainly for survival
but most of these are culturally & socially aquired and some
are internally generated. Apart from these factors, there
are in every individual certain "tendencies" or "talents"
or "unique way of looking at things" that also play an
important role in shaping the "structure of static patterns".
Most (if not all) persons take the underlying operating static
patterns as granted, without examination, right from childhood
and eventually these operate even without volition ie sub-
consciously. Which means that most people most of the time
are not even aware of the operation of these static patterns,
let alone examine them for their validity or usefulness and
their effect on blocking understanding and developing new
static patterns.
So much has the quantum of these static patterns increased that
we now have become slaves of these patterns. They run us , we do
not run them. And the burden on one's reason has become enormous-
every time we are now confronted with paradoxes that we must
resolve to keep moving. Our reason is tormented by the yins
and the yangs.
Zen is a practice that tries to break this fixation of
deep rooted sub-consciously operating static patterns, and
also the relevance of realising their counter-static patterns.
A Zen story illustrates this very well :
A renowned Zen master said that his greatest teaching was this:
Buddha is your own mind. So impressed by how profound this
idea was, one monk decided to leave the monastery and retreat
to the wilderness to meditate on this insight. There he spent
20 years as a hermit probing the great teaching.
One day he met another monk who was traveling through the
forest. Quickly the hermit monk learned that the traveler
also had studied under the same Zen master. "Please, tell me
what you know of the master's greatest teaching." The traveler's
eyes lit up, "Ah, the master has been very clear about this.
He says that his greatest teaching is this:
Buddha is NOT your own mind "
Thus the challenge before everyone's intellect is to find the
"source code " of one's operating system , to use a computer
analogy. Only when the "source code " is known can one make
efficient use of one's rational faculties - to be able to
modify it and set it to proper order. Else an inquiry into
morals will just end up in never ending static circles.
Thus spake Socrates in "Phaedrus" :
"Now I have no leisure for such enquiries; shall I tell you why?
I must first know myself, as the Delphian inscription says; to
be curious about that which is not my concern, while I am still
in ignorance of my own self, would be ridiculous. And therefore
I bid farewell to all this; the common opinion is enough for me.
For, as I was saying, I want to know not about this, but about
myself: am I a monster more complicated and swollen with passion
than the serpent Typho, or a creature of a gentler and simpler
sort, to whom Nature has given a diviner and lowlier destiny?"
yo be continued....
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat Aug 17 2002 - 16:03:28 BST