'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance' was like a first child. Maybe that
will always be the best-loved one. But this second child is the bright one. I
think a lot of people will argue with some of the ideas in Lila. There may be
controversy. But if people are still reading these two books a hundred years
from now, I predict Lila will be the one they consider the more important'
“This may sound as though a purpose of the Metaphysics of Quality is to trash
all subject-object thought but that's not true. Unlike subject-object
metaphysics the Metaphysics of Quality does not insist on a single exclusive
truth. If subjects and objects are held to be the ultimate reality then we're
permitted only one construction of things”
“In any hierarchy of metaphysical classification the most important division is
the first one, for this division dominates everything beneath it. If this first
division is bad there is no way you can ever build a really good system of
classification around it.
In his book Phaedrus had tried to save Quality from metaphysics by refusing to
define it, by placing it outside the dialectical chess board. Anything that is
undefined is outside metaphysics, since metaphysics can only function with
defined terms. If you can't define it you can't argue about it. He had
demonstrated that even though you can't define Quality you still must agree
that it exists, since a world from which value is subtracted becomes
unrecognizable.”
“But he realized that sooner or later he was going to have to stop carping
about how bad subject-object metaphysics was and say something positive for a
change. Sooner or later he was going to have to come up with a way of dividing
Quality that was better than subjects and objects. He would have to do that or
get out of metaphysics entirely. It's all right to condemn somebody else's bad
metaphysics but you can't replace it with a metaphysics that consists of just
one word.”
“By even using the term 'Quality' he had already violated the nothingness of
mystic reality. The use of the term 'Quality' sets up a pile of questions of
its own that have nothing to do with mystic reality and walks away leaving them
unanswered. Even the name, 'Quality,' was a kind of definition since it tended
to associate mystic reality with certain fixed and limited understandings.
Already he was in trouble.Trying to create a perfect metaphysics is like trying
to create a perfect chess strategy, one that will win every time. You can't do
it. It's out of the range of human capability. No matter what position you take
on a metaphysical question someone will always start masking questions that
will lead to more positions that lead to more questions in this endless
intellectual chess game. The game is supposed to stop when it is agreed that a
particular line of reasoning is illogical. This is supposed to be similar to a
checkmate. But conflicting
positions go on for centuries without any such checkmate being agreed upon.
Phaedrus had spent an enormous amount of time following what turned out to be
lousy openings.
A particularly large amount of this time had been spent trying to lay down a
first line of division between the classic and romantic aspects of the universe
he'd emphasized in his first book. In that book his purpose had been to show
how Quality could unite the two. But the fact that Quality was the best way of
uniting the two was no guarantee that the reverse was true - that the
classic-romantic split was the best way of dividing Quality. It wasn't.”
“He'd been reading Ruth Benedict's Patterns of Culture without any particular
search in mind, when a relatively minor anecdote stopped him. It stayed with
him for weeks. He couldn't get it out of his mind.
The anecdote was a case-history in which there was a conflict of morality. It
concerned a Pueblo Indian who lived in Zuni, New Mexico, in the nineteenth
century. Like a Zen koan (which also originally meant 'case-history') the
anecdote didn't have any single right answer but rather a number of possible
meanings that kept drawing Phaedrus deeper and deeper into the moral situation
that was involved.”
“When Phaedrus first read this passage he felt a kind of eerie feeling - a
feeling he might have had if he had passed in front of a strange mirror and
suddenly seen a reflection of someone he'd never expected to see. It was the
same feeling he got at the peyote meeting. This Zuni Indian was not exactly
someone else.
This was not just an isolated tribal incident going on here. This was something
of universal importance happening. This was everyman. There is not a person
alive who is not in some way or other in the kind of situation this 'witch' was
in. It was just that his circumstances were so exotic and so extreme one could
now see it, by itself, out in the open.”
“The story was of a struggle between good and evil, but the koan it raised was,
'Which was which?' Was this person really good or was he perhaps also evil?
At first reading he might seem a model of goodness, a lone, virtuous man
surrounded by wicked persecutors, but this was too facile. Circumstances of the
story argued against it.”
“Sometimes you can see your own society's issues more clearly when they are put
in an exotic context like that of the brujo in Zuni. That is a huge reward from
the study of anthropology. As Phaedrus thought about this context again and
again it became apparent there were two kinds of good and evil involved.”
“To cling to Dynamic Quality alone apart from any static patterns is to cling
to chaos. He saw that much can be learned about Dynamic Quality by studying
what it is not rather than futilely trying to define what it is.
Static quality patterns are dead when they are exclusive, when they demand
blind obedience and suppress Dynamic change. But static patterns, nevertheless,
provide a necessary stabilizing force to protect Dynamic progress from
degeneration. Although Dynamic Quality, the Quality of freedom, creates this
world in which we live, these patterns of static quality, the quality of order,
preserve our world. Neither static nor Dynamic Quality can survive without the
other.
If one inserts this concept into a case such as that of the brujo in Zuni, one
can see the truth of it. Although the Dynamic brujo and the static priests who
tortured him appeared to be mortal enemies, they were actually necessary to
each other. Both types of people had to exist.”
“Phaedrus' central attention turned away from any further explanation of
Dynamic Quality and turned toward the static patterns themselves.”
Ron:
We see how he focused his attention in the remainder of the story in the Koan
style which I believe
Is similar to the Socratic method illustrated in Plato’s Phauedrus. I think
Pirsig deliberately chose
The symbols of “Phaedrus” the koan in zen and the game of Lila, to reinforce
these themes of the MoQ.
I think many questions are answered in these statements.
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