Hi Platt, Thank you for your continued questions. If my attempts fail again, it may be due to my limited powers of exposition or that your understanding and mine are fundamentally different. Nevertheless I will remain with you on this thread for as long as need be. We are not going to stop here, unless you yourself choose to.
On Sat, Feb 20, 2010 at 10:10 PM, <[email protected]> wrote: Hey Khoo, You make a couple of assertions that appear not to be supported by the MOQ and thus cast doubt on your explanation. Platt compares my statement with Pirsig's: First, you say "Morality is served by reducing suffering, either palliatively or removing it forever permanently." In direct contradiction Pirsig says, "If you eliminate suffering from this world you eliminate life. There's no evolution. Those species that don't suffer don't survive. Suffering is the negative face of the Quality that drives the whole process." (Lila,29) Khoo says: I am glad you drew up this quote as it refers to suffering as the flip side of Quality, which many don't readily acknowledge. There is no contradition there: suffering is implicit in the evolution of life and WHILE we participate in this moral order, the moral value is to reduce suffering, (when I use the adjective palliative - i mean relieving or soothing the symptoms of a disease or disorder without effecting a cure). To remove suffering completely, which is to offer THE cure, it means ONE opts out of the evolutionary process, which, dear Platt, continues as life no matter what one does. Platt compares another set: > Second, you say "It follows that the MOQ also tells you that you can > give up choice-making altogether and live in the reality of the dynamic > present where there are no static level choices to make." Khoo remarks: Yes, but the second part of the paragraph which clarifies how this may be achieved has been left out. As long as you are able to maintain a perspective of Dynamic Quality, everyday choice-making between static patterns becomes irrelevant. Platt asks in disbelief: > Give up choice-making? Can't be done if you want to live (except > temporarily > while meditating).. Khoo continues: This comes in degrees of practice and it may seem impossible for the conditioned mind bound by habits and attachments to see how this can be: What ? Give up this; Give up that ? While meditating, you choose not to think, or rather pick from the alternative intellectual patterns forming and presenting themselves in your mind. But say, if you have cultivated your mind and your time has come and your can see the light, the realisation becomes, indeed, becomes permanent. But enligthened ones still live on in their body and in society. their choices of how they do this become irrelevant. While the Buddha lived after his enlightenment, it did not matter his biological or social needs - sufficient for sustenance, sufficient for interaction, never the need for ostentation, never the need for elaboration; ditto the Dalai Lama today. Pirsig, as Platt quoted, writes: "It looks as though Keith is looking for something he can SEE. And he thinks values are not something he can SEE and therefore are not empirical. But if you think values are not empirical, try removing every trace of them from the world as we understand it and see what is left. You can't even get out of bed in the morning without making a value judgement that it is better to do so." (LC, Note 124) Khoo again says: You bet, you cannot remove values from the world as we understand it. We have to make value choices everyday, every moment we participate in this world, this universe, this moral order. And every choice we make has its moral/karmic implications. We live with the choices we each make, every each choice.Our choices make the values empirical, karma is manifested. To round off this exposition on the resolution of contradictions within the MOQ I will serve you another Pirsig quote, but closer to the original Zen master's version from the Tokugawa period: "Die, while alive, And be completely dead; Then do whatever you will All is good. Of course the Pirsig says the MOQ translates this as: While sustaining biological and social patterns Kill all intellectual patterns Kill them completely And then follow Dynamic Quality And morality will be served." Platt pleads: So I'm afraid you haven't cleared up your explanation of the original contradiction for me. But I do appreciate the attempt. Perhaps I'm missing something. Khoo offers: This effort is worth it. Bring on this again if it is not resolved and all the contradictions you can find and lets resolve them one by one. After all Soto Zen Master Taisen Deshimaru (1914-1982) said, “Harmonizing opposites by going back to their source is the distinctive quality of the Zen attitude, the Middle Way: embracing contradictions, making a synthesis of them, achieving balance.” 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/
