Platt, Ant, Ham,
[Platt]
> That's why to me the MOQ "viewpoint" took our
everyday experience > of everyday events... So I ask
in all sincerity, what am I missing? Is
> the MOQ based on some experience other than
experience of
> everyday affairs? If so, how come ZMM and Lila are
grounded in
> everyday affairs?
Platt,
Ant quoted Cooper and Pirsig as follows from the
[MD] Instant Karma:
"This is illustrated by David E. Cooper
(Emptiness: Interpretation and metaphor in
Contemporary Buddhism,
Vol.3, Issue 1 (May 2002), p.18):
When enlightened [a person] is once again aware of
the mountains as
genuinely present, but in a quite different register
of awareness from his original, naïve one. It is not
simply that he appreciates their dependent status:
rather he has become capable of those double
exposures through which a mountain both dissolves
into and condenses a world, and is both a unique,
palpable particular, yet an expression of a wondrous
and advancing whole.
In the following quote, Pirsig explains this
mountains-and-rivers
analogy in MOQ terminology:
This mountains-and-rivers analogy is used in Zen to
explain
the contradiction between statements made in the
context of the everyday world and statements made in
the context of the world of the Buddhas.
From an everyday world Dynamic Quality is like an
undefined perfume which attaches in different ways to
the objects of the world. In the world of the Buddhas
the perfume is the whole thing and objects are merely
transitory patterns of the perfume. In the Buddhas
world Dynamic Quality is the dharma, the only order
there is. (Pirsig to McWatt, December 4th 1994)
SA now inserts as follows:
I've quoted this "mountains-and-rivers" Zen
analogy as an [MD] before. I've pulled this from
"Toward a Philosophy of Zen Buddhism" by Toshihiko
Izutsu as follows (I believe it may have been a thread
called [MD] Dogen) {parenthesis in the following quote
are NOT mine}:
"This situation is what Dogen refers to when he
remarks that the 'mountains and rivers (as they appear
in the state of enlightenment) must not be confused
with ordinary mountains and rivers', although they are
the same old mountains and rivers.
Nothing presents the process by which this Zen
world-view becomes established, better - and in a
manner more typical of Zen - than the oft-quoted
saying of Master Ch'ing Yuan. He said:
Thirty years ago, before this aged monk
(i.e., I) got into Zen training, I used to see a
mountain as a mountain and a river as a river.
Thereafter I had the chance to meet
enlightened masters and, under their guidance I could
attain enlightenment to some extent. At this stage,
when I saw a mountain: lo! it was not a mountain.
When I saw a river: lo! it was not a river.
But in these days I have settled down to a
position of final tranquillity. As I used to do in my
first years, now I see a mountain just as a mountain
and a river just as a river."
SA now inserts as follows:
I will go on to say that Ham is hung-up on the
second-stage interpretation of the MOQ. Ham brings up
that the MOQ is nihilistic, but that is when the monk
said, "... when I saw a mountain: lo! it was not a
mountain. When I saw a river: lo! it was not a
river."
Platt, the first stage is the convenient fiction
of "... this aged monk (i.e., I) got into Zen
training, I used to see a mountain as a mountain and a
river as a river." The 'dynamic is static' 3rd stage
where Master Ch'ing Yuan says, "... final tranquility.
As I used to do in my first years, now I see a
mountain just as a mountain and a river just as a
river." This 3rd stage is as Toshihiko Izutsu
mentions above, "...what Dogen refers to when he
remarks that the 'mountains and rivers (as they appear
in the state of enlightenment) must not be confused
with ordinary mountains and rivers', although they are
the same old mountains and rivers."
woods,
SA
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