Hi Steve, I am a bit late in responding to this topic but this has its reasons. I remember from long ago that Marsha asked me how often I thought of death...I told her the thought was on my mind every day.
SOM in all of its wonderful varieties suggests that a person is born, lives..does his or he thing, and dies. End of story. The Christian view put simply ( resting on Aristotelian premises) emulayes the former but changes the latter into 'dies' and ends up eternally ( whatever that means) in heaven, hel or purgatory. (I have been brought up submersed in this concept). Perhaps, if you are so inclined you could read Dante's"' Divine Comedy'. Enter Gautama and Nagarjuna's version: You have not been 'born' at all. You have 'dependently arisen'. Without your parents, you would not be here, without their parent they would not have been here etc, etc... follow this for a minute and you conclude that everything and everyone is not an isolated growth on its own, it has depended on everything else to arise. There is not a 'thing' in the universe that is not linked in some way to something else in the universe. There is nothing that has an independent 'essense' ( which is something that Ham needs to wake up to). There is no independent existence called tree, mountain, Andre, Steve, Pirsig. We have all dependently arisen. 'We' were not born at a certain point in time and within a certain point in space. So if we have not been born, how can we speak of dying? As if being born and dying are separate, independent, essentail processes within something called 'living' in between. Gautama never answered questions related to a first beginning... it is a meaningless question. It is mu. Given the dependent arising perspective, which I think is fully endorsed by the DQ/SQ of the MoQ I take comfort in the continuation of the patterns that have formed and melded into what is socially called Andre. But these patterns have 'me'. 'I' in this sense am an illusion. It is useful and practical ( for social reasons). In a conventional sense but I do not have an independent essence that is born, lives and is going to die. The all encompassing idea Nagarjuna places his idea in is called 'emptiness' . The lacking of 'essence', the lacking of an independently arisen entity. I take comfort in this perspective because it reflects closely ( does not correspond to dmb) my own experience. I am 'dependently arisen' and part of this 'emptiness' from which developed the patterns that are now (conventionally) called 'Andre". I am not a lone , isolated individual, estranged from my fellow man or environment. 'I' came, part of the organic whole, the One, The Void, Quality, Nothingness, all that is. I have suffered the Christian perspective and it is hard and difficult to beat and rise 'above' this SOM mentality. Harder work to join, and giving in, to the Buddhist experience...leading to the divine dance ( which Arlo and gav so eloquently hinted at)...but all worth it. DQ/SQ...Lila. For what it is worth. Andre 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/md/archives.html
