Marsha, I have been following your recent posts on Buddhism and they are excellent. This post brought up the discussion Matt and I were having about pre-intellectual experience being a fantasy. Matt made some fairly good remarks supporting this notion and the line drawn between intellectual and pre-intellectual is practically invisible. The quote below seems to agree with Pirsig that there is a useful practicle distinction between the two. Matt seems to think that this is making a preferance to certain kinds of experience (the hot stove example) I think it merely pays homage to primacy and primacy another word for "plain and simple"... This is an interesting discussion for me, do not know if it is for yourself or Matt, but it's worth developing in my opinion. -Ron
----- Original Message ---- From: Marsha Valkyr <[email protected]> To: MoQ <[email protected]> Sent: Sun, December 20, 2009 9:31:26 AM Subject: [MD] Plain and Simple I decided to reread Steve Hagen's book 'Buddhism Plain and Simple'. "What is the Basic human problem that no apparent remedy will cure? What is our existence all abut? How can we ever possibly comprehend the whole of it? And yet isn't knowledge of the Whole --- knowledge that's not relative or dependent on changing conditions --- precisely what would be required to free us from the doubts and dilemmas that cause us so much anxiety? "We long to be free from our confusion and discontent, not to have to live out our lives chained helplessly to uncertainty and fear. Yet we often do not realize that it's precisely our confused state of mind that binds us. "There is a way to move beyond this ignorance, pessimism, and confusion, and to experience --- rather than comprehend --- Reality as a Whole. This experience is not based on any conception or belief; it is direct perception itself. It's _seeing_ before signs appear, before ideas sprout, before falling into thought." (Hagen, Steve, 'Buddhism: Plain and Simple', Tuttle Co., inc., P. 2) _____________ Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars... 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/ 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/
