[Bo] I'm not completely stupid, but a sine or whatever wave is no wave without a peak and a valley like a coin must have a front and a rear side, as 'in' is dependent on 'out' and 'up' is on 'down'. Isn't this saying
that there are nothing without its contrast i.e. no monisms? To see the mutual dependency is - well - a great pastime, but it's a "cul d'sac" as the French says. [Krimel] Define "completely"... In ZMM Pirsig clearly and unequivocally identifies Quality as the Tao. In Lila he expands on this. This is MoQ basics and it is a bit disheartening to have to explain such things to newbies over and over again. If you don't understand the basics it will be hard for you to move on to more advanced MoQ discussions and many of the conversations on this forum will be hard for you follow. Worse yet you could find yourself writing really long winded posts that lead to nowhere. [Bo] Is the mind/body dualism suddenly fundamental, not two sides of the same coin? OK, I'll not taunt you, the S/O was fundamental before the Dynamic/Static and the mind/body one of its many offsprings, soul/body the "religious" variety. [Krimel] The Taoists had established static and dynamic as the fundamental metaphysical duality 2,000 plus years before the MoQ came along. Pirsig is merely restating this in western terms and showing how it fits into and resolves problems in western philosophy. [Bo] Don't be silly, the I/You distinction has been with mankind since the social level in moqspeak. [Krimel] All of the different versions of the problem I have mentioned in this context are statements of the same problem. For example in the I/Thou version there is no fundamental difference between you and my smelly sneakers. My sneakers are not me they are a Thou. There is a fundamental difference between the way I experience my sneakers and the way I experience my foot. My experience of other individuals is no different. Other people are 'other' than me. My experience of their behavior is more complex but my knowledge of them relies on sensory data that is of a different character than my experience of my own body and thoughts. [Bo] You don't recognize the level arrangement and see all (mind/body, self/not self) distinctions as subsets of the I/Thou one and - furthermore - claim that Buddhism has resolved it, but if the resolution is based on "thou" an internal construction in the respective individuals, then the external/internal distinction remains .. which IS a S/O subset. It's nice Eastern mysticism with such resolutions but - as said - a dead end. [Krimel] It is not that I don't recognize the level arrangement as useful. I just don't recognize it as anything particularly special, profound or original. I mentioned the Buddhist view of "Thou art that" but make no other than it is one way of seeing the problem. Pirsig puts it this way: "Since all knowledge comes from sensory impressions and since there's no sensory impression of substance itself, it follows logically that there is no knowledge of substance. It's just something we imagine. It's entirely within our own minds." I believe in western philosophy this is call phenomenology. The dead end is that for skeptics there is no resolution to this problem other than to call it absurd and ignore it. [Bo] Pirsig agrees with you that the DQ/SQ (the MOQ) are mere modifiers of Quality. That's the very problem IMO, Quality is of course Dynamic Quality, the night is no more dynamic than the day or vice versa so that metaphor is irrelevant. [Krimel] I would like to think you are right but Pirsig does confuse Quality and DQ in much of Lila and has said that it is probably ok for everybody to just lump them together. I agree that it is possibly to make sense of the MoQ in this light but not as it is commonly formulated around here. But you would have to get a better grip on the MoQ basics for me to explain it to you. [Bo] The MOQ is "commonly understood" as some Western "Buddhism" and I guess you are part of that understanding. And this is about all for this time. [Krimel] I am certainly not among those who find westernized Buddhism in the MoQ. Buddhism is an offshoot of Hinduism which originated in India. Taoism has no connection to either as it originated in China. I believe Zen Buddhism is the result of the convergence of Buddhist contact with the Chinese and the synthesis affected by the Japanese. It merges Buddhist practice with Chinese metaphysics. But seriously you should know this. Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
