Hi Bo,
> If you are going to
> > offer Western Civilization some kind of alternative to our
> destructive
> > materialistic monotheism, you better explain it in non-threatening
> > terms. And, I think Pirsig decided to make a mass appeal because he
> > anticipated the kind of reception he'd receive in the academic
> > community. He came right out and said as much. It's there for us to
> > see in Lila.
>
> No reason to pick nits here even if monotheism ("semitism" in my
> parlance) paired with Western Civilization) sound as bit odd. WC is
> more a SOM-as-intellect pattern, while monotheism was/is the final
> and most refined social pattern. And now that the "West is won" by
> intellect it inevitable turns against the Muslim World and the two
> clashes in the form of the Islam vs. West conflict.
[Mary Replies]
I don't want to pick nits about things we generally agree on, but I just
want to say that I chose the word 'monotheism' intentionally. I include
Islam. I see no difference between it and the Semitic-based religions from
the perspective of replacing them with the MoQ as a western Buddhism.
I expect to get argument about this from many quarters. "The MoQ is not a
religion!" I can hear you (perhaps everyone?) say, and I would respond that
in the broadest sense it is. Every philosophical tradition ever invented -
that is every metaphysics - can be described in terms of how it relates to
the belief system from which it sprang, and if it has nothing to say about
belief then it's not a metaphysics IMHO.
Khoo's posts have helped gel what for me was a rather vague thought on this
for some time. When Khoo showed how you could interpret Karma as SPOVs it
suddenly became crystal clear. The most fundamental difference between East
and West is this Western idea of the self as the fundamental reality of the
human condition. The idea of eternal self is the basis for all monotheism,
and by the way, the word 'monotheism' is oddly interesting in itself. Used
to indicate worship of a single god, it also carries with it the idea at its
base of preservation of the individual self too.
Buddhism knocks the self off its exalted pedestal and replaces it with the
bigger picture idea of a unified Universe (paraphrasing badly here)
otherwise known in these parts as Dynamic Quality. The West has been asking
the wrong questions all along. The MoQ is Pirsig's attempt at offering an
alternative.
The lonely, pointless, existential 'man' is the ultimate expression of
Western thought without god. It is what we are all afraid of in the West -
much more so than the devil I would suggest, and is really what religion
attempts to shelter us from. Atheists are not maligned in our culture
because we believe they are wrong, so much as because we are afraid they are
right.
If you cannot imagine any higher form of existence than the objective world
around you, and you realize that you will one day die, and then realize that
everything you struggled to achieve, teach yourself, learn, or do; that is,
every self-improvement you've made, is all for naught because it will
disappear along with you when you die, then you have no choice but to invent
an afterlife where your personal and particular 'self' will live on. Think
about it. Without eternal life, what's the point if you live in a
subject-objective universe?
Braced for attack :),
Mary
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