Andre, Mary and Mark, Mr. Pirsig is an American (Sorry Magnus for the cultural insensitivity) Philosopher and I believe that Lila was intended to be an explanation of this American synthesis as it is found in America, where the Asian Minded migrated east, the Victorian Minded migrated west, and both clashed and combined in Turtle Island.
I found a real interesting snippet somewheres on the web, A Cherokee site, on this subject, that described it this way: A common misconception is that European culture invaded America and wiped out Native Tribal culture, but closer to the truth is that European and Native American culture combined to create a new and unique synthetic worldview. Pirsig points this out in Lila and celebrates it and shows how we need to balance our lives better by refuting the emphasis upon the Victorian-centric apparatus of the giant as the ideal. In other words, the synthesis of east and west is real, except in academia where Indians are objects to be studied or government where they are subjects to be controlled. HI John, This may be true about Lila, I know that Pirsig said that ZAMM was not much about Zen, but it was. If one wants to understand a Western interpretation of Eastern philosophy, there are many better places to look, where this is explained with much more knowledge. MoQ is a very narrow method for looking at reality at least as more and more structure is placed on it. I feel it does have some Eastern influence but perhaps only superficially (imho). Of course, any book can be interpreted in many ways, and the more one knows about Eastern philosophy the more one can make the connections in Pirsig's writings. The great thing as you say, is the combination of world views which is a product of the ease at which people travel and exchange information. This has never existed before, so it could be said that, (contrary to the belief that nothing ever changes), because of technological advances, there is an opportunity for a high level philosophy which combines similarities in East and West, and blends in the differences. Mark John 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/
