Hi Lief, This is a fair question, since any serious claim on a depiction of reality must grab the popular sentiment.
I read ZMM shortly after it came out in paperback (early '70s). The book was wildly popular and discussed on campus quite freely. It was even included in some philosophy classes that I took. ZMM was accessible to the general public and we were all waiting for the sequel. In Lila, Pirsig trends towards a more erudite academic formulation of MoQ, and makes it a difficult read for many. It is much easier to place oneself in the "Easy Rider" setting, than the navigator who picks up women. It has been my intention to broaden the accessibility of MoQ to all "denominations", and I do this through analogy. Often, I must admit that I push an awareness and end up "speaking in tongues". Part of the "problem" may be the format in which we currently exchange opinions. We are all avatars (in the modern sense of the word), and can therefore project any appearance that we wish. Since there is no direct contact, most of what is written is subject to the "view" that the readers come with. While interesting and indeed important for me, the end result is an unfocussed delivery. There are many in the forum who try to instill some cohesion by relating back to what is written, which I don't disagree with, but there is really no central theme that directs the forum (in my opinion). Such is the case for the spontaneous arising of a modern metaphysics. Let us remember that Buddhism was very messy at the beginning, and it took a firm leader to guide it. This was during the Axial Age when there was a switch from looking at what is "outside", to looking at what is "inside". This age encompassed many revolutionary thinkers over about 500 years. We may be entering a similar age at this time, once the magic of science is dispelled. The last recognized Buddha did his best to get his followers to think for themselves, only providing certain guidelines. Buddhism was open to all religions since the approach it took did not exclude any form of analogy. Thus, it is important to provide bridges to everyone interested in trying something new. Interestingly, the Western translation of Buddhist thought often uses the word "suffering". This has been used to connote some form of nihilism in today's world. It does not seem that such a connotation is what the Pali Texts may imply. The notion of "suffering" that is brought up can better be translated as "lacking", or "incomplete". That is, the world as presented through words is missing something. It is this notion of discovering something that makes life more complete or understandable that Buddhism describes. In today's world, there seems to be a similar sense of "incompleteness", that is "what does it all mean". Any movement is slow and cannot be viewed historically in the present. However, "if we build it, they will come". Thanks for the question posed. It delves to the heart of what we are trying to do. Cheers, Mark (Ph.D.) 2011/5/6 Leif Gunnar Alvær <[email protected]>: > Hi. > first post in a long long time.. > As far as I see it MOQ holds value as a metaphysics, or model of > reality. It is no more true than the models we use today to explain > reality, but they are also valuable. My question is simple, and it > might have been discussed earlier in this mailing list, why isnt the > MOQ popular? I mean, one PhD and a limited amount op people discussing > this, is that all? I might be missing something here, but I would > assume that the MOQ would eventually catch fire and spread. If it was > of poor quality it would probably die out, but it does provide us with > an alternative way of viewing the world, and all such alternatives > should atleast be investigated by the universities and educational > establisments (everyone who wants to evolve tbh). > > So what am I missing > > alvaer > 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 > 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
