Hello everyone On Wed, Jul 25, 2012 at 5:44 AM, David Harding <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Dan, > >> Dan: >> Yes this is a good point. I think the sentence you left off might be >> important here: >> >> "Dynamic Quality is affirmative." >> >> When I queried him on this Robert Pirsig answered: >> >> "Yes, my statement that Dynamic Quality is always affirmative was not >> a wise statement, since it constitutes a limitation or partial >> definition of Dynamic Quality. Whenever one talks about Dynamic >> Quality someone else can take whatever is said and make a static >> pattern out of it and then dialectically oppose that pattern. The best >> answer to the question, “What is Dynamic Quality?” is the ancient >> Vedic one——“Not this, not that.” >> >> Dan comments: >> I take this to mean that Dynamic Quality is free of any pattern. If >> that is so then we cannot juxtaposition static quality freedom against >> Dynamic Quality freedom in any meaningful way. I wonder how that >> stacks up against statements like this from LILA: >> >> "Dynamic Quality is the pre-intellectual cutting edge of reality, the >> source of all things, completely simple and always new. It was the >> moral force that had motivated the brujo in Zuni. It contains no >> pattern of fixed rewards and punishments. Its only perceived good is >> freedom and its only perceived evil is static quality itself-any >> pattern of one-sided fixed values that tries to contain and kill the >> ongoing free force of life." >> >> "Static quality patterns are dead when they are exclusive, when they >> demand blind obedience and suppress Dynamic change. But static >> patterns, nevertheless, provide a necessary stabilizing force to >> protect Dynamic progress from degeneration. Although Dynamic Quality, >> the Quality of freedom, creates this world in which we live, these >> patterns of static quality, the quality of order, preserve our world. >> Neither static nor Dynamic Quality can survive without the other." >> >> Dan comments: >> Here it is clear that Dynamic Quality is to be seen as the Quality of >> freedom while static quality is the quality of order. Since neither >> can survive without the other we cannot negate the one without also >> negating the other. >> > > Yes. I'm not sure if we can negate 'Dynamic Quality' as there is no thing to > negate but I get your point..
Dan: I think this might tie into why some people never seem to change their tune. By clinging exclusively to known static patterns (old tea) they neglect any response to Dynamic Quality even if it might better their lives. > >> It seems to me that by mastering static patterns and putting them to >> sleep they are being negated. Wouldn't you agree? > > > Yes I would. However call it what we may - my question still stands - that is > - "can we achieve freedom without 'doing some other static pattern'?". Our > western understanding would ordinarily say that we couldn't. There is > another type of freedom in the East however - which the MOQ points to > Metaphysically - which says that we can. I can see more clearly now thanks > to this above distinction, that it is the fact that Western freedom involves > 'doing something else' which distinguishes it from the more commonly freedom > found in the East. Dan: That's a good question. But I am still not sure that Eastern philosophies like zen achieve freedom by moving away from all static patterns. Robert Pirsig makes a point in Lila of how rigid Buddhist social traditions really are even though many Westerners believe zen is a kind of 'doing whatever' philosophy. Now, he also says in the middle of that rigidity freedom is found but he also says there is a danger of taking those social patterns as real and not the representations they are meant to be. To answer your question, yes, we can and do achieve freedom all the time. You know that if you have ever lost yourself in an activity. > >> Dan: >> But in truth if every soldier questioned orders war would come to an end. > > Okay. At the risk of debating what makes a good soldier I won't disagree > here.. > >> Dan: >> My point was how do we know when we are working for a criminal? I >> chose Chicago politics because of the history of Chicago politics. It >> isn't my definition. Do some reading if you don't believe me. You are >> talking as if we have a choice in following static patterns. I am >> saying as long as we follow static patterns there is no choice. A good >> soldier follows orders. A good politician seeks votes. If either of >> them do not do as required they will not be soldiers or politicians >> for long. The goodness of each lies in the social value of soldiers >> and politicians, not in some idealized sense of goodness apart and >> separate. >> >> Freedom as a choice not to do something is a negation of static >> quality, is it not? So it is free will but not freedom? I grow >> confused… > > Yes we have free will as a result of freedom so I see them as very much the > same thing. And both are a negation of static quality. My original point > here before we got caught up on what makes a good politician or a good > criminal or a good soldier was the rather banal comment that we both know > what freedom in the West is. And that is the negation of static quality that > results in our doing something else.. Dan: So free will is synonymous with freedom? I think we have to look at the dictates of society and how it constrains our actions in very specific and undeniable ways. As long as we seek out other social or intellectual patterns to occupy our time we are never free. That's why I pressed the issue with what makes a good soldier and a good criminal. So what you are saying, that we achieve freedom in the West by doing something else, is not freedom at all. It may seem like freedom but by clinging to static patterns we are never free. We are simply exchanging one pattern for another. So according to what you are saying, we never achieve freedom. I disagree. > >> Dan: >> Actually I am speaking from the perspective of everyday affairs. I >> have no way of knowing the perspective of the Buddha. > > But you do know the perspective of the Buddha Dan. Everyone does. As you > say.. you just have to 'wake up'. Dan: I should have said intellectual knowing to be precise. As soon as I formulate these words I lose any Dynamic perspective. If I lived my life from a Buddha's perspective I would not be here in this discussion group. I wouldn't write a word. > >> Dan: >> The way I see it, we use words as representations of experience. We >> use words to symbolically point at something that has already moved >> on. That's all we can ever do when it comes to speaking or writing. We >> cannot capture direct experience, or Dynamic Quality. > > We can't capture direct experience or Dynamic Quality. That's right. So why > do we try? Why bother? Why speak? The 'truth' of Dynamic Quality is what is > not said. Dynamic Quality isn't anything. Dynamic Quality isn't words.. I > have heard that Buddhist monks go for years without saying anything… Dan: Yes, why speak at all. I think some people speak because they enjoy hearing and reading their own words. It is a kind of ego climbing. You see it when someone sends a post and moments later sends a correction. You know they've read what they said and are horrified to find a mistake, as if no one will realize it was a mistake. At the same time though these words have a kind of pull to them, at least for me. I spend all my time after midnight writing. I have a dozen books all full of trash. I don't care though. I am not writing to impress anyone including myself. I am just writing. As I go along, I find I get better at it. It is the same way with Buddhist monks and their silence. The more they practice, the better they get. > > But then the answer to these questions is obvious. We can't help but define > these things. Purity identified ceased to be` purity… Protests to noise are > form of protest. Dan: So why protest at all? Perhaps it would all be a thousand times better if we just sat quietly while the world unfolded around us. > > >> I see conflict arising here because we fill our cups with old tea. It >> doesn't taste good but we refuse to pour it out because it is all we >> have. > > Yes. However someone isn't going to change their mind unless they think it's > better for them to do so.. Why are people hesitant to think another way is > better? Why are they hesitant to empty their cup? I'm interested in this. > Some folks on here don't value static quality distinctions. They think > static quality is too finicky. Too nitpicky. And to be honest I don't > actually disagree with their criticisms. We've all got to the point where > some thing is just too finicky and 'lost'. SOM is great at this. But, of > course, these distinctions are unavoidable. So we ought to get them as good > as we can. Until they see the value in them(or indeed that they're > unavoidable) they won't start taking Metaphysical divisions seriously... Dan: I am interested too. > > >> Dan: >> Dynamic Quality is an intellectual term as is every word we write. We >> always speak and write from the world of everyday affairs. To pretend >> we can speak from the world of the Buddha is only that... pre tense. > > I disagree. We can and do speak from the world of the Buddha. I mean you're > right in that all words, on reflection, are static quality. But what of > words which point to Dynamic Quality? Do the words of the Buddha not point > to Dynamic Quality? When the Buddha points to Dynamic Quality, he is not > making intellectual distinctions. The words he is using could be broken part > into static quality distinctions certainly - but that is not what he is > pointing at. When you tell me to 'wake up', is that you making an > intellectual distinction between actual wakefulness and sleep? The place we > are speaking from or the values we are talking about or pointing to is > important.. Especially if those values we are pointing at or talking about, > are defined or not. Dan: I don't believe the man known as the Buddha ever wrote anything down. He must have known about writing; he was a prince born into wealth. Most certainly he had the best teachers, the best his society had to offer. I read how he lived some forty years after awakening under the Bodhi tree. He walked around just talking to people. Later his followers thought it of value to write down his words. Why didn't he write anything down? > >> Dynamic Quality is meaningless. It is not this, not that. When we give >> meaning to it Dynamic Quality is no longer Dynamic Quality. That's the >> whole point of the hot stove experiment. Something gets us off the >> stove but we don't know what it is until later. > > I agree. And right now you are speaking to the value of Dynamic Quality. Of > how this quality is undefined. I could misread what you've written and start > analysing it intellectually but that would miss what you are pointing to… > >>>>> I don't think that people in the East are Buddhas. They strive for >>>>> things in a way that is similar to how the Buddha did hundreds of years >>>>> ago. Regardless, if you don't think that people in the East are much >>>>> different from people in the West in their philosophy and outlook on life >>>>> then I suppose there's not much I can say.. >>>> >>>> Dan: >>>> I would say their cultural mores are perhaps different but we as human >>>> beings all cherish similar things... things being the operative word >>>> here. >>> >>> Indeed. Goods, values, morals- they're universal. How we statically >>> manifest our values however - is different. How the East and West values >>> Dynamic Quality - is different. The West values Dynamic Quality through >>> it's veneration of 'Freedom'. As Pirsig writes: >>> >>> "When they call it freedom, that's not right. 'Freedom' doesn't mean >>> anything. Freedom's just an escape from something negative. The real reason >>> it's so hallowed is that when people talk about it they mean Dynamic >>> Quality." >>> >>> But there is other way of achieving the same Dynamic Quality without this >>> risk of chaos. This is something the East has worked out… >> >> Dan: >> But what is freedom an escape to? Isn't that the question we should be >> asking rather than what it is an escape from? If freedom is an escape >> to something better, isn't that a response to Dynamic Quality? > > No, not always. High quality or some thing better simply isn't Dynamic > Quality. As you quote - Pirsig has said that Dynamic Quality isn't always > affirmative like this. Dynamic Quality isn't always 'some thing' better. For > Dynamic Quality isn't anything. Including high quality. The freedom we have > in the West is an escape from some such a pattern to another such a pattern. Dan: Perhaps. I write. When the words are really flowing I become lost in the writing. Hours will pass. I don't feel hunger or thirst. I am not aware of me at all. Yet I am not really aware of the writing either. I can't take credit for it anymore than I can take credit for the sun shining or a sudden rain shower that comes out of nowhere. These words just appear on the screen. I sit down with nothing to say and in a little while there are these words. Where did they come from? I don't know enough to talk about this stuff. If I try and remember all the rules of good writing I may as well quit writing. So in a way Marsha is right. I just make it up as I go along. But it isn't really me making it up. So in a very real way she is wrong. I think many athletes also talk about losing themselves in their sport. There is something called a 'runner's high' that many extreme athletes speak of. Too, there is that moment when a baseball is hit into the air and you actually begin running for the spot where it will come down before it is even hit because you sense the body motion of the hitter and you just know where the ball is going. Everything else in the world fades away. It is just you and that ball coming together. And the feeling of making that catch is what sets a person free. Unless you have experienced it you will never know the feeling of just letting go of everything and becoming the ball. So I tend to disagree that we in the West only escape one static pattern by focusing on another. We may not go about it in the same manner as the East but writing and running and games like baseball are very real forms of meditation. And it doesn't matter so much if one masters those patterns or not. What matters is giving in to them... becoming those patterns. That is what life is all about, in my opinion. > >>> >>> They are both. Ultimately, you're right. Everything is Dynamic Quality. >>> They are different terms and not different things. It's all Dynamic >>> Quality. It is the source of all things. >> >> Dan: >> In the Metaphysics of Quality, everything is not Dynamic Quality. If >> it was, it wouldn't be a metaphysics. I am not talking ultimately... I >> am talking from the standpoint of the MOQ. I assume we all are, or at >> least we should be since this is a forum dedicated to the MOQ. > > I think a good place to start from in any metaphysics is ultimately and work > from there. In the MOQ ultimately everything is Dynamic Quality. It is > stated plain as day in the very last sentence of Lila: > > " Good as a noun.. Of course, the ultimate Quality isn't a noun or an > adjective or anything else definable, but if you had to reduce the whole > Metaphysics of Quality to a single sentence, that would be it." > > That is the crux of the MOQ to me in that sentence. I get your opposition to > people claiming that they can do nothing but speak from the perspective of > the Buddha. I think it ridiculous if someone comes onto a philosophical > discussion board and says nothing in-particular. But they're not going to > change their minds unless they think that it's better to do so… Dan: "Dream delivers us to dream, and there is no end to illusion. Life is a train of moods like a string of beads, and as we pass through them they prove to be many-colored lenses which paint the world their own hue, and each shows only what lies in its focus." [From 'Experience,' Ralph Waldo Emerson] > >> Dan: >> Yes, so to posit Dynamic Quality as everything is a show-stopper. >> There is no way to define reality if everything is one. I think that's >> what causes so much frustration when some contributors start yelping >> about Dynamic Quality being the same as static quality. It doesn't >> make metaphysical sense. And we are discussing a metaphysics. > > I think those contributors are speaking to the undefined nature of quality. > That Dynamic Quality is undefined is ultimately correct as I have said. > However there is a whole other value which is neglected by their focus on > Dynamic Quality. From this neglect chaos arises… Can you see the chaos? Dan: They are being difficult. No one can speak from undefined reality. There are no words. > >> My pleasure, David. Thank you too. > > I'm still very much enjoying this conversation. Thanks Dan, Yes I am having much fun here, thank you, David. Dan http://www.danglover.com 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
