----- Original Message ----
From: MarshaV <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Monday, October 20, 2008 4:00:50 PM
Subject: Re: [MD] patterns revisited
At 02:47 PM 10/20/2008, you wrote:
> Marsha:
>It is human nature to dissect, name and define, but not Nature.
>
> woods:
>I'm not dissecting and naming. I can, but that's where I'm trying to
>come at this. I could. And it can easily be taken that I am coming
>at this in that manner, but I'm not. Pirsig mentioned a mental way to
>understand. I'm trying to understand in a value way. Again, mental
>is a good way. It has value. But value is not restricted to mental only.
Marsha:
How about the value is experience. When I experience a tree, the
tree exists and I who experienced it exist.
woods:
Are you trying to formalize or put into a formula what is valued? Are you
trying to find a way to put into a formula how we are connected and
interrelated
with this world?
ZMM Ch.
"Value, the leading
edge of reality, is no longer an irrelevant offshoot of
structure. Value is the
predecessor of structure. It's the preintellectual
awareness that gives rise to
it. Our structured reality is preselected on
the basis of value, and really to
understand structured reality requires an
understanding of the value source
from which it's derived."
You can lay a structure out that tries to relate an experience your having,
what a tree is having, but value is preselected before structure. I don't
think
value will be found in the structure. We can give value to the structure and
thus,
harmonize, but the value will still be before the structure, before me, before
the tree.
So it is difficult to come up with a formula to state value. For once we do,
once we
get to some point of conclusion, underlying this point of conclusion will
still be urge, this unsettledness. Not in the sense of discomfort or
disturbed. But
as value changes and structures will constantly be changing, for instance, I'm
watching
the leaves blow in the wind, the clouds blow by, and the sun is now coming up
above the hill crest to the east, my son's playing and being somewhat loud, I
have
music playing, etc... Any formula I come up with to point out this structured
circumstance can't hold for the leaves will not stay in the same position, the
sun
keeps moving, my son is now being actually pretty quiet, the music did get
softer but
it's building up, oh, now my son is getting louder, oh, the wind stopped
blowing.
Do you see what I mean? I could I ever come to structured conclusion that I
can
settle with? We can find structured events that will hold still long enough to
maybe
draw an accurate depiction, and that might be good for our lifetime for that
particular
event, but what of all these changing structures.
So I'm wondering what your trying to understand from patterns? Patterns
are what change:
ZMM Ch. 24:
"And when you really
understand dynamic reality you never get stuck. It has
forms but the forms are
capable of change."
And so I find myself valuing peace of mind. Quiet mentality. It's
interesting for me
too for I came across quietness before I read ZMM from my experience of zazen
and being
in the woods. That's how I've read ZMM and Lila. With quietness. Now one can
come back to getting stuck and trapped. That happens. One then comes back
to quietness again to refocus. ZMM also talks about value quietness which is
found
in the original quote I sent in this first post of this thread.
ZMM ch. 25:
"But value
quietness, in which one has no wandering desires at all but simply performs
the
acts of his life without desire, that seems the hardest."
woods continues:
Isn't this our effort? Spiritual rationality Pirsig calls this in ZMM.
How to do this? Again back
to quietness of mentality or peace of mind, which then generates from our lives
and calms our
tensions that form structures that are rigid and get stuck. This is how we can
do
something to life in general. It starts with ourselves, but then we begin to
change the routines
in our life. Certain routines that no longer agree with our peace of mind then
change with our effort
to sustain our peace of mind. Quietness is our moral compass. Quietness
guides our directions in
life. If our spirit is not doing well, but we find we need some gumption, and
we get inspired and gain
the gumption to do something, then we do it. With consistent effort and a
sustained quietness or moral
compass is ripe to provide us with a good direction. Yet, once life becomes so
decadent and creativity
is lost, then something has gone astray. If you find what you are doing
becomes a task in which it
is consistently difficult to sustain quietness, then definitely something is
not sustaining ones quiet. Spirit
is the gauge. If your spirit is consistently down, but you keep repeating what
depletes ones spirit, then
I would recommend changing it up and trying it another way or trying something
else all together.
When I look around and see if people are being creative or not, that is an
indicator of their spirit. It is
an easy obvious way to notice our bright their spirit is burning or have they
settled into a world of
decadence. Without creative expression in the world, from a human or a tree,
then the spirit is decaying.
If ones spirit is down, then the inspiration is gone for one, and the spirit is
what brings any person or plant
into connect with real time. When the this happens I call it ghostening. The
world becomes fake, and the
sense of what is real is lost and depleted. Here is how we can achieve value
quietness from ZMM:
ZMM ch. 25:
"So the thing to do when
working on a motorcycle, as in any other task, is to cultivate the
peace of
mind which does not separate one's self from one's surroundings. When that is
done successfully then everything else follows naturally. Peace of mind
produces right
values, right values produce right thoughts."
woods continues:
I say all of this, because this is what I currently value. This is my
current project. I find this
to be the root of the problem. It's spiritual. What of patterns? They
change. So, maybe
I didn't say anything at all that is on topic for this thread, but I think I
did at times. Maybe
this will help us come closer to understanding where the two of us are coming
from on this topic of
patterns. That was my effort here. I'm sensing your valuing something and
trying to convey
this value in some way that I can understand. It may not even be your value,
but what is value or
patterning as a bottomline or premise behind this whole understanding of what
patterns are.
Let me know what's happening, and maybe you could help me better understand
what you
mean.
woods
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