Greetings Ham,
This has been on my mind since this morning, so forgive me if I seem to respond too quickly. On Apr 13, 2010, at 1:51 PM, Ham Priday wrote: > > Hello Marsha -- > > > >> Ultimate Truth is not a form or entity. Ultimate Truth is the lack of >> inherent existence, independence, autonomy, permanence and >> changelessness. To the Buddhist, it is Emptiness or dependent >> arising. To the MoQ'ist it is indivisible, undefinable and unknowable >> Quality. > > Since "ultimate" is commonly understood to mean the final or quintessential > nature of reality, I find it strange that one would conceive of the Ultimate > as a "lack" or "emptiness". I interpret the Buddhist concept of emptiness to > connote "non-thingness" rather than a void or empty space. I agree with you that the Buddhist's Emptiness does not represent a void or empty space. > Meister Eckhart, who was a Christian gnostic, referred to the Creator as > "absolute fullness of being," and it is in the sense of that concept that > I've posited an Absolute Source. I read somewhere that the choice of Ultimate over Absolute was to indicate there was nothing concrete being implied. > > > You see, Marsha, I view the physical universe (i.e., "beingness") as mostly > nothingness. In physicists' terms, the critical density of interstellar > space has been calculated at about one hydrogen atom per cubic meter, or one > ten-thousandth of an ounce in a volume the size of Earth. I'd call that > essentially pure emptiness, wouldn't you?. I think we have both agreed that emptiness, or voidness, does not represent Emptiness. > So if, as I firmly believe, there is a source for "what IS", that source must > be absolute "IS-ness", or what I call Essence. I could not expect an individual mind to divide, define or know what is clearly beyond it. > (Incidentally, although the nature of Essence is unknowable, unlike Quality > it is not dependent on a conscious agent.) Conscious agent versus a self? Maybe a consideration for another day. > [Ham, previously]: >> Since you deny a primary source or Creator, I can only assume >> that you believe the universe created itself and that you are a late >> product of its evolution. > > [Marsha]: >> If by evolution you mean 'change', I understand myself to be the flow >> of ever-changing, interdependent, impermanent organic, biological, >> social, and intellectual patterns. > > Such a collection of ephemera does indeed suggest "emptiness"; That would be empty of independent existence. > yet there is no cause or progenitor implied. Conventionally both are implied, but no truth beyond their pragmatic existence. > Nothing comes from nothingness. SOMETHING starts this process > of change, dependence, differentiation, evolution, and patterning that > we experience as the universe. What is that something? To say it is > Quality infers that quality stands alone, independent of relations or > differences, which it does not. Quality can only be judged in relation > to something which lacks quality. Like the descriptor "Excellent", > it needs a comparative referent by which to be measured. Causation is the conventional point-of-view. With Quality, if Quality is the same as Emptiness, there is interdependency which is non-causal. I think we must keep separate 'after experience judgments' from 'immediate experience value'. Measurement pulls us into the realm of static patterns, or conventional reality. >> If one thinks that the 'incomplete knowledge' or 'illogical reasoning' >> is the Truth and never question such assumptions, than that seems a >> pretty good definition of ignorance. It's not a pretty word, but I fully >> admit, pretty or not, that I am working with my own ignorance. >> (Be quiet, xacto!) > > Truth is a chimera of objectivism. Its meaning is either "what works > consistently" or "what cannot be denied." Since it has no conceptual > value, I don't concern myself with it. If ideas were bound by what can > be proved as true, we would have no philosophy or intellectual thought. > I doubt very much that you're a person who rejects anything that can't > be objectively proved, or who believes cosmological theories are > developed by "ignorant" people. I think that this is the most important and most difficult subject of thought, and I am afraid that at any moment Buddha or Mr. Pirsig will arrive to wash my mouth out with soap for such impertinence. > >> Maybe you "accept [a cognizant self]", but to others you have posited it, >> asked them to assume its absence. > > What would I want to demean my own Self by asking others to assume its > absence? I was referring to the original statement. It's long gone, so never mind >> You might investigate whether there is within what you think to be >> the self or what you think to be external objects is changelessness, >> independence, and permanence? You've already stated elsewhere >> that all is relative, that the ultimate truth that can be known is that all >> is relative, and what is beyond the known is unknowable and undefinable. >> Yes? > > The mode of experience is relative, temporal and changing. Therefore I > do not rely on the experienced world for metaphysical insight. Factual, > definitive (i.e, objective) knowledge is not my game. (I give the scientists > credit for that.) As a philosopher, I am a conceptualist. Pirsig himself > denounced the logical positivists, and most of what is discussed here is > of a conceptual nature. What builds conceptual knowledge but patterns of experience? What a game!!! I like the idea of approaching Ultimate Truth by discovering what is false, and I know I sound like broken record, but it is why a appreciate: not this, not that. >> Quality is a label for what is indivisible, undefinable and unknowable. > > That label, I suppose, would include future events, the cause of evil, > fuzzy math, the Big Bang, extra-terrestrial life, gods and goddesses, > superstition and witchcraft. Statically it would include all you mentioned, the dynamic is yet to be determined. > Thanks for your explanations, Marsha. I've enjoyed our dialogue. I've enjoyed the dialogue too. > > Best wishes, > Ham And my best wishes to you. Marsha ___ 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
