The first drop is into darkness. Down and to the right and such surprise! We forget on The Boardwalk that "the ground" is an artificial construction, a deck of wood boards you walk on high above the sand and tides. So when we first get on the Big Dipper, and drop down into the bowels of what is underneath, where it is dark and the turns come swift, short and hard, we are surprised, shocked and maybe a bit scared. The screams of our fellows are actually sort of a comfort in the darkness. Metphysical radicalism is a redundancy. By it's nature, metaphysical exploration dives into the roots, under the ordinary structures we live upon. It can be scary, in its own way. Who knows what monsters lurk in the depths? A materialistic, value-free world view is a comfort to those afraid of unknown and unknowable "other", so when we of the MoQ look around us and ask "why", we needn't look so far for the reasons Pirsig is ignored or denigrated by academy-land, even while being far more popular and widely-read probably than any other metaphysician of ancient or modern history.
We live in a world dominated by value-free metaphysics for a very good reason. It could even almost be viewed as a valid choice, if it wasn't intrinsically insane. But to restate my main point, the big problem with the current world view, is not that it seems so heavily dependent upon reasoning from subjective/objective outlook, it is this crucial choice to remove value from the understanding of reality. It is the lack of value which kills, not subjects, not objects. This forum's eternal focusing upon SOM for so long in the face of this truth reveals a hidden agenda - a choice with motivation and consequences. "Group task avoidance" seems to me to be the appropriate label. Otherwise why spend so much time and energy on perpetuation of illusion? The Lord Buddha replied:--Purna! Our mysterious Intuitive Nature is perfect and enlightening and its natural perfection is intelligent and profound. Since the True Nature is free from all illusions (the True Mind), so the illusions are naturally devoid of any reality, and, therefore, have no source of existence. It they have no source of existence, they are no longer illusions even. All these thought-illusions have been raised by mean of their own reciprocal manifestations thus the piling up of delusion upon delusion has been going on for kalpa after kalpa as many as the particles of dust in the air. Though the Buddhas have disclosed their falsity, yet sentient beings cannot at once recognize their falsity and return to their natural state of enlightenment. The source of these delusions is nowhere else but within one's own mind. As soon as you understand the source of a delusion, the deluding conception loses its hold upon existence. If within your mind you provide no source for these false conceptions, there will be none to be discarded. Those who have attained enlightenment are as if awakening from sleep, and their past life seems only a dream. Awakening from a dream, like rising in a roller coaster ride from the darkness to the big climb into the light. 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/
