Hi Mary, Marsha, Mark, Khaled, John and all,
Marsha asked: I'd like to ask you about what you say above, because it represents the reason for agreeing with Bo that the fourth level is the SOM level. It's at this level that abstract mental objects are reified and manipulated in a formal way, with the subject's feelings/opinions supposedly extracted. Khaled commented: While Buddhism seem ( if my understanding is right) to be asking of self awareness and evaluations of the self, the Abrahamic faith tend to rely on blind faith and instant salvation. John posed this question: . …. The Buddha couldn't make sense of it either, which is why he dumped the whole idea." And my question is, did the Buddha dump the whole idea? And if so, why then do so many of his followers cling to that which he dumped? Mark commented: I too believe that intellect is not the ultimate tool to use. However it is a tool as I interpret it from the Noble Eightfold Path. It takes discipline of the mind (whatever that is)…. Mark adds: Finally, in terms of the religion of Buddhism, I do not necessarily believe that both reincarnation or karma needs to be accepted a priori. I have found that science is a useful tool for exploring and verifying (to myself) these precepts. Indeed, science is a tool of the intellect and it is very useful once one accepts the metaphysical nature of this discipline. It may take a non-cognitive leap, but this is done all the time by great scientists (not me). Mary asked this: Would it be correct then, to equate karma with static patterns of value? Putting this in the context of the debate about the definition of the Intellectual Level sheds new light on it for me, however, I still have questions. So to be sure I get your meaning, where would you place the S/O split in this context. …..Do Buddhists look down on the West? Mary also asked from another thread: I think (and you guys can let me have it now) that the MoQ is basically a Buddhism wolf in Western sheep's clothing…... I know it's what I mean when I say that the Intellectual Level is totally steeped in SOM and cannot transcend it. I am incapable of thinking of anything - of forming any thought about anything - that is not me (the subject) thinking about something (the object). _______________________________________________________________________ Buddhist explanation of self This long-running and at times acrimonius argument over the definition of the Intellectual Level within Pirsig’s Metaphysics of Quality reminds me of the story of an avid overzealous monk who took the words of his Zen Master too literally: “A renowned Zen master said that his greatest teaching was this: Buddha is your own mind. So impressed by how profound this idea was, one monk decided to leave the monastery and retreat to the wilderness to meditate on this insight. There he spent 20 years as a hermit probing the great teaching. One day he met another monk who was traveling through the forest. Quickly the hermit monk learned that the traveler also had studied under the same Zen master. "Please, tell me what you know of the master's greatest teaching." The traveler's eyes lit up, "Ah, the master has been very clear about this. He says that his greatest teaching is this: Buddha is NOT your own mind." The Buddhist explanation of self, self-awareness and ultimately of the subject goes thus: “As we perceive objects in the world (receive sensory input), we create a subjective ‘self’ in response. Individual consciousness becomes conditioned through the impact of the environment on the senses as well as with our examination and identification with those experiences. The impact and recording of an object gives rise to a ‘subject that is recording’ and thus our sense of duality, however illusory, is created and intensified.” Intellectual Level My own take of the Intellectual Level within the MOQ is that where society has evolved an organised communications and institutions to serve and facilitate intellectual abstraction.as a whole. A collective system of intellect as it were as opposed to an individual intellect. Specialized intellectuals within this level do little else in terms of the social and biological. Their output: products of the intellect – may it be science, technology, literature, art or music, leadership and religion – all of the humanities are deployed by society and us all as individuals for their value over social and biological ones. This category of individuals may have been the clergy, priesthood, sages or whichever group providing the “ideas” cutting edge of society. While universities and research institutes are facets of the intellectual level of western societies, other societies may manifest their intellectual products differently in culture, religion and the arts. Now it must be made clear, not all in society develop their intellectual capabilities; only those who do so become the intelligentsia, members of the knowledge ecosystem that is so much referred to in this day and age. Their primary tool is not the scientific method per se but their ability to generate abstractions after abstractions, mental objects, intellectual constructions and basically patterns sometimes referred to as models, designs and templates. Power of Abstraction and Symbol Manipulation No doubt, to do what they do, they start with their inherent capabilities for abstraction, the creation of mental objects and the formation of concepts independent of sensory input; their adeptness at this we consider intelligence and the communicative tools as language. Pirsig sees a continuum in the physical manifestation of abstractions as symbols and their manipulation as the indicator of intellect and their development all the way to an intellectual level where ideas prevail over social and biological patterns. At the apex of the intellect, abstraction is at the level of the imagination. Subject-Object Logic and the Scientific Method However, these ideas, concepts and mental abstractions need not be the product of the scientific method or the subject object logic process alone. In the Subject-Object Logic/Scientific method, these abstractions, mental objects and concepts, patterns are tested as hypotheses and ‘evidence’ is built for their validity within the context of the sensory faculties. But the intellectual process also generates a number of abstractions, mental objects, concepts and patterns that are not so tested for their validity. In their expression, in art, literature, music, they also constitute the Intellectual Level. In this sense, yes, the Subject-Object Logic category of activities and its SOM which we designate as science is only a sub-set of the Intellectual Level. Pirsig’s SODV paper clearly alludes at its conclusion to the Conceptual Unknown as the aesthetic common ground/ or Dynamic Quality which draws out both the capacity for scientific curiosity and the poetic vision alike. Subject-Object Split To go now to the Subject-Object Divide/Split itself, the sense of “self” is a response to the perception of other objects. In this sense, it is interesting that the “subject” is a pattern itself, and an “object” that regards itself as different from other “objects”. That the SOM slices the Subjective Reality and the Objective Reality between Social and Biological levels is a reflection of where the “self” is found to “exist”. Duality The duality of mind-matter in the Buddhist context, permeates throughout all 31 planes of existence and this appears in various combinations. It could be considered that karma manifests as static patterns of value strung by consciousness from combination to combination. Each resultant permutation of the duality is a result of karma. . I tried once to explain karma and reincarnation to an accountant once and compared consciousness to the cashflow, and our karma at any given point to the stock; the balance sheet of mind and matter permutation is a static pattern of value, carried forward at each end of the financial year to the next year. Pirsig’s Metaphysics of Quality indeed postulates that only Quality and its derivatives Mind and Matter exist. Consciousness Buddhism conveys that consciousness, of which there are a number of levels and the most superficial of which, contributes to the idea of mind and self. This superficial level is the patterning process that takes place always in the context of and in conjunction with other patterns. This superficial consciousness exerts karmic weight and can also create karmic weight. At a deeper level of consciousness; the substratum and the primordial ground levels; arrived at by removing the patterning process, sense of self and even mind disappears and the reincarnation in terms of continuity from life to life becomes apparent. The treatment of these levels of consciousness differs in Buddhism and Hinduism; the former focused on the diminishing the superficial levels and the latter on seeking the primordial level. These levels appear to correspond to Static Quality and Dynamic Quality respectively. Attachment and the SOM Bias For the purposes of the individual in the Buddhist context, the propensity to generate mental objects and patterns means living within a world that is still not grounded in Reality. An intellectual may “know” vicariously through these abstractions, but as far as he is caught up in the web of these abstractions he is not in touch with Reality in terms of direct experience. What is usually in the way and the impediment to direct experience is attachment to these ideas, concepts, mental objects. Just observe how some intellectuals fiercely argue for THEIR and their identification with their ideas. As mental objects, they can be and as much desired by the ‘self’, as are the objects evoked by the other sense faculties. Attempts to reserve the Subject-Object Logic/Metaphysics exclusively for the Intellectual Level is to install and enthrone this subset as the pinnacle of society and themselves the result of a bias for subject –objective metaphysics and scientific materialism. Distraction in this form takes us away from Pirsig’s main message: describing a Metaphysics of Quality that would go beyond the subjective-objective logic worldview, beyond to the level of all intellectual abstractions and to experience Reality directly. The potential development of a cognitive faculty that apprehends non-sensuous phenomena may overcome such a bias. In his monograph “Why the West Has No Science of Consciousness: A Buddhist View” Alan Wallace writes: “The primary instrument that all scientists have used to make any type of observation is the human mind. Does this instrument provide us only with its own artifacts, without any access to any objective reality existing independently of the mind? Or if the mind provides us with information about the objective world, does it distort it in the process? …… the scientific study of the mind in the West was delayed for three centuries after the inception of the Scientific Revolution, which is tantamount to using an instrument for three hundred years before subjecting it to scientific scrutiny. What kind of scientific worldview has emerged as a result of this profound oversight and the enormous disparity of our understanding of the mind and the rest of the natural world?” Pirsig adds the following: "The Metaphysics of Quality subscribes to what is called empiricism. It claims that all legitimate human knowledge arises from the senses or by thinking what the senses provide. Most empiricists deny the validity of any knowledge gained through imagination, authority, tradition, or purely theoretical reasoning. They regard fields such as art, morality, religion, and metaphysics as unverifiable. The Metaphysics of Quality varies from this by saying that the values of art and morality and even religious mysticism are verifiable and that in the past have been excluded for metaphysical reasons, not empirical reasons. They have been excluded because of the metaphysical assumption that all the universe is composed of subjects and objects and anything that can't be classified as a subject or an object isn't real. There is no empirical evidence for this assumption at all. It is just an assumption." (Robert Pirsig, LILA, Black Swan, 1991, rep.1994, p.121) Buddhism in Sheep’s Clothing If Pirsig attempted to present Buddhism in Western terms, I find the Dalai Lama’s attempt to provide a bridge in his exhortations for science and Buddhism to work together also in the same vein coming from the other direction. But the Metaphysics of Quality has yet to be fully formed and is only at is preliminary stages of development. Do Buddhists look down on the West ? In certain ways the collective karma of the West represents heaven on earth because of their intellectual achievements and consequent control over the earth’s resources used to quench the desires of its population; its celebrities live the lives of Gods and Goddesses. If the voracious consumerism of both material and intellectual products and services by an egocentric society conceals an deep emptiness, then the West deserves compassion from Buddhists, not scorn. Best Regards Khoo Hock Aun 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/
