All, >> Marsha >> Page 52, Pirsig¹s 2000e e-mail to Anthony: For scientists, the mind of the >> Buddha and the Mind of God are usually the same, even though the Buddha was >> an atheist. I think it is extremely important to emphasize that the MOQ is >>pure empiricism. There is nothing supernatural in it.¹ Compare this, later >>in the thesis, with Northrop¹s concepts by intuition¹.
> Matt > Buddha was not an atheist, he used the current Gods in his > meditations. Just read about all the gods that visited him under the > trees that he sat under. . [Dave] I agree with Matt that "Buddha" was not an atheist in the classic sense of believing "that there are no deities." My understanding is that Buddha's take was that "God talk" was counter productive, it either did nothing or increased suffering. So he limited his path to what humans could achieve divorced from any thought, talk, or action concerning gods. As Buddhism developed over time into a fully formed religion with various schisms and sects "Buddha" in some branches has taken on more and more godlike attributes. So when RMP says," For scientists [and many Buddhists], the mind of the Buddha and the Mind of God are usually the same." I generally agree, except lumping of all scientists [or for that matter all Buddhists] together is a bit of over generalization. >Matt >When Pirsig says Atheist, he means > anti-Christian (or Muslem or Jew), he does not mean anti-Gods. [Dave] I disagree, in other places he is clear that he believes there are no deities regardless of brand name. >Marsha > From your discussion of how enigmatic Zen appears to Westerners, I am reminded > of Pirsig¹s statement in LILA: > Of the two kinds of hostility to metaphysics he [Phædrus] considered the > mystics¹ hostility the more formidable. Mystics will tell you that once > you¹ve opened the door to metaphysics you can say goodbye to any genuine > understanding of reality. Thought is not a path to reality. It sets > obstacles in that path because when you try to use thought to approach > something that is prior to thought your thinking does not carry you toward > that something. It carries you away from it. To define something is to > subordinate it to a tangle of intellectual relationships. And when you do > that you destroy real understanding. (1991, p.66) [Dave] RMP states, "that the MOQ is pure empiricism. There is nothing supernatural in it." But in the next breath he suggests that mystic experience coupled with intuition is the penultimate path to truly understanding reality. In the end is this not ultimately the claim of all religions? Whether its "natural" or "supernatural" is kind of beside the point. Is coupling mystic experience and intuition and claiming it to be the best take on reality that humans can achieve really a good concept to base our life around? Dave 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
