Marsha to Andre (and perhaps Tim may be interested: And who are you?
Andre: I assume (and this is a very slippery thing to do with reference to you) that you want to know this from a MOQ perspective? Or should I say MY MOQ perspective? Well, then you'll know you get the standard answers. I am a set of static patterns of value that have co-dependently arisen with all other static patterns of value.(and I am after something) At some point in this development, distinctions are learned between oneself and the world as this is a valuable one to hold. ( Rahula verifies that it's accurate to think of the 'self' as being real in the 'static' or conventional sense (sammuti-sacca, it's acceptable to 'use such expressions in our daily life as 'I', 'you', 'being', 'individual' etc. According to Rahula, the Buddha taught that a clinging to the self as static and permanent is the primary cause of dukkha (which is usually translated as 'suffering'). (Anthony's PhD, p 47) And, our language is so organized around notions of 'man', 'I', 'people', 'she' and they are so convenient to use it is impossible to get rid of them. But there is no need to so long as it is remembered that they are terms for collections of patterns and not some independent primary reality of their own. (LILA, p 158) And, from this point of view I agree with Pirsig when he argues that, 'This Cartesian 'Me', this autonomous little homunculus...is just completely ridiculous.This self-appointed little editor of reality is just an impossible fiction that collapses the moment one examines it'. (LILA, p204) I'd like to put this 'sense of self' in the context of William James' observation as outlines in his 'Concerning Fechner', a chapter in his 'A Pluralistic Universe': Fechner likens our individual persons on the earth unto so many sense-organs of the earth's soul...'We add to its perceptive life so long as our own life lasts. It absorbs our perceptions, just as they occur, into its larger sphere of knowledge, and combines them with the other data there. When one of us dies, it is as if an eye of the world were closed' ( In 'The Heart of William James', p 282) Place this in the MOQ context and we come close to the concept of dharma. 'Dharma, like rta, means 'what holds together'. It is the basis of all order. It equals righteousness. It is the ethical code. It is the stable condition which gives man perfect satisfaction...Dharma is duty...Dharma is beyond all questions of what is internal and what is external. Dharma is Quality itself, the principle of 'rightness' which gives structure and purpose to the evolution of all life and to the evolving understanding of the universe which life has created'. (LILA, p392) So now you know who I am? 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
