Greetings Ham,
I do not know where your knowledge of Buddhism comes from, but
Buddhism, at its core, is all about 'know thyself', and all about
insight, and all about morality. A smart man knows what he does not know.
Marsha
At 01:17 AM 5/20/2009, you wrote:
Hi WillBlake --
Yes, letting go of self, of the ego, of self consciousness.
The attainment of truth, liberation, as the Upanishads, Buddha,
Taoism, Zen, would all claim. I believe in that and am working
towards that too.
It would seem from recent interpretations of MoQ (which is
obviously still in the making) that such release is not consistent
with this philosophy. In fact the claim is we are subject to
group behavior not individual expression.
Sad but true. One has to acknowledge the self of consciousness
before he can let go of it.
Relegating ego and consciousness to a collective intellect is a step
in the opposite direction. It denies the very self that seeks
liberation and truth -- even the freedom to choose that path. For
if there is no knowing 'I' to realize truth, if we have surrendered
the subjective self to the objective universe, what is there left to liberate?
But, as Pirsig has said in interviews, MoQ is waiting for the next
independent thinker, to carry it along. It would seem Pirsig is
waiting as well. Plato had his academy, current philosophies have
the Internet. Much more powerful and capable of generating
a synthesis of ideas, and even new ones, if there is actually
something new under the sun. What an opportunity!
There's nothing new under the sun, but there is much to be revealed
about existence if we don't approach it with a closed
mind. Socrates said "The unexamined life is not worth living." But
introspection is meaningless to those who deny the insight it can
afford us. How often has Science been accused in this forum of
failing to answer ultimate questions? Yet, the same voices are
quick to demean spirituality and metaphysical insight as mythical
remnants of an unenlightened age.
Psychiatrist Richard Schain has written:
"The tendency to neglect the metaphysical aspect of human life has
always existed in the history of mankind but no era has so
depreciated and disparaged metaphysics as the current
one. Metaphysics is relegated to the realm of scholarly study or
traditional religions where it exists in a tethered, tradition-bound
form of little use to those seeking to develop their position in the
universe. ...
"'...[T]he essential feature in the life of an individual is his
valuation of his interior self, i.e. his subjective self. There is
no greater tragedy than the failure of an individual to realize this
value. What hinders this development, however, is the modern view
that there is no such thing as the self, that there is only a
complex arrangement of synapses and neurons in the brain, giving
rise to the illusion of self. Without a belief in the metaphysical
self, humans are at the mercy of their environment, which in the
present age fares little for the development of an interior
self. Only a radical metaphysics will save the individual from
drowning in the swamps of the materialist dogmas of contemporary society."
-- [R. Schain: "Toward a Radical Metaphysics"]
Me, I want to live from the inside out, not the outside in; I want to
radiate, not absorb. . . I want to be a sun, not a black hole, I want
to be responsible, not a victim. All this can result from freedom
of the confining, needing, ego, "grasping and clinging" as a
translation of the early writers of Buddha's teachings would stress.
As agents of value, we are all potential "suns". But if we cease
desiring, as the Buddhists prescribe for "avoiding pain", we shut
off the value sensibility that connects us with our essential
source. That's retreating to a "black hole" existence in which
being-aware has no more meaning than the insentient rock and human
beings are pawns of biological evolution.
We'll never understand man's place in the universe by pretending
that subjects and objects don't exist.
I share your sentiments, Will. Thanks for giving me this
opportunity to reflect on them.
Essentially yours,
Ham
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_____________
The self is a thought-flow of ever-changing, interrelated and
interconnected, inorganic, biological, social and intellectual,
static patterns of value responding to Dynamic Quality.
.
.
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