Marsha to Andre: Are you saying my statement is incorrect? I think that to understand the emptiness of self and phenomenon is to eliminate the tendency to grasp which causes suffering. But I am not a Buddhist, so I could certainly be misinterpreting the dharma.
Andre: Hi Marsha. I think your statement is correct. The idea of self is useful, convenient and practical and as Pirsig says, references to the self, the 'I' etc etc are so ingrained in our language it is impossible to get rid of them (Lila, p158). Í am not a Buddhist either but the MoQ suggests that when you begin to dissect 'substance'/phenomenon (PoV's) you end up thinking about nothing whatsoever. I tend to think that the same applies to this notion of 'self'. If 'we' are patterns of value which patterns contain the self? Which pattern is yours and which is mine? Which specific set of patterns define my 'self' ? To cling to these as if they are real and desirable causes suffering because they are not true. I am presently working my way through Nagarjuna's "Fundamental Wisdom..." which I find very difficult, so use Steve Hagen to keep my feet on the ground, and am barely able to follow his reasoning which leads to his conviction that the self is empty. At present this is an intuitive conviction for me. Regarding the dharma. It may well have something to do with small and big self. The dharma which you find within your own patterns is a recognition of your big self (which is recognising Dynamic Quality). And who owns DQ? Ha!! DQ 'owns'/has small self. DQ has no boundaries and if 'self' is not a boundary I do not know what is. Not sure if this is helpful Marsha. Andre PS: Reanney's use of the boy-statue and associated metaphor filled me with apprehension as well. He could have used a more appropriate and sensitive metaphor to get his point across. 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/
