Marsha,
That McWatt guy knew what was he was talking about, didn't he?!
A little more seriously, I'm not a great fan of throwing quotes around (all
"old tea" which is relatively static to hearing people's own new,
Dynamic thoughts) but I'll add this pragmatic thought about the
"self" from Di Santo & Steele:
"Real in the sense of being [a] useful conceptualisation... but illusory
in the sense of having independent or absolute existence from anything
else. As the eighth century philosopher Shankara answered a student
who asked him if you should run if being chased by a mad elephant: ‘Yes,
because you’re part of the same illusion!’" (Di Santo & Steele,
1990, p.61)
It's the last line which is critical here!
Still, "all those years ago", it was great seeing poor old Platt
Holden grasp the old SOM notion of the self like Jimi Hendrix's infamous miner:
"I love you baby like a miner love gold
Come on sugar, let the good times roll"
Now that's a quote from "Electric Ladyland" (what a great album for
psychedelics - you can quote me on that too!) while, of course, (for the
dubious "benefit" of new members) Platt's Ayn Rand-like rantings on
the self can be found throughout the archives at MOQ Discuss.
Best wishes,
Ant
P.s. Marsha, I mentioned your query about the "Greatest Books of East Asian
World" at the Facebook page for robertpirsig.org.
----------------------------------------
Marsha quoted Bob & Ant:
> "An example of sammuti-sacca [i.e. conventional truth corresponding to static
> quality] is the concept of self. Pirsig follows the Buddha’s teachings about
> the ‘self’ which doesn’t recognise that it has any real existence and that
> only ‘nothingness’ (i.e. Dynamic Quality) is thought to be real. According to
> Rahula, the Buddha taught that a clinging to the self as real is the primary
> cause of dukkha (which is usually translated as ‘suffering’). Having said
> this, Rahula (1959, p.55) makes it very clear that it’s not incorrect to ‘use
> such expressions in our daily life as ‘I’, ‘you’, ‘being’, ‘individual’, etc’
> as long as it is remembered that the self (like anything else conceptualised)
> is just a useful convention."
> (McWatt, MoQ Textbook, Section 5.6)
>
>
> "This fictitious 'man' has many synonyms; 'mankind,' 'people,' 'the public,'
> and even such pronouns as 'I,' 'he,' and 'they.' Our language is so organized
> around them and they are so convenient to use it is impossible to get rid of
> them. There is really no need to. Like 'substance' they can be used as long
> as it is remembered that they're terms for collections of patterns and not
> some independent primary reality of their own."
> (LILA, Chapter 12)
>
>
> "This Cartesian 'Me,' this autonomous little homunculus who sits behind our
> eyeballs looking out through them in order to pass judgment on the affairs of
> the world, is just completely ridiculous. This self-appointed little editor
> of reality is just an impossible fiction that collapses the moment one
> examines it. This Cartesian 'Me' is a software reality, not a hardware
> reality. This body on the left and this body on the right are running
> variations of the same program, the same 'Me,' which doesn't belong to either
> of them. The 'Me's' are simply a program format.
>
> "Talk about aliens from another planet. This program based on 'Me's' and
> 'We's' is the alien. 'We' has only been here for a few thousand years or so.
> But these bodies that 'We' has taken over were around for ten times that long
> before 'We' came along. And the cells - my God, the cells have been around
> for thousands of times that long."
> (LILA, Chapter 15)
>
>
> “The MOQ, as I understand it, denies any existence of a “self” that is
> independent of inorganic, biological, social or intellectual patterns. There
> is no “self” that contains these patterns. These patterns contain the self.
> This denial agrees with both religious mysticism and scientific knowledge. In
> Zen, there is reference to “big self” and “small self.” Small self is the
> patterns. Big self is Dynamic Quality."
> (RMP, Lila’s Child, Annotation 29)
>
>
> "It's important to remember that both science and Eastern religions regard
> "the individual" as an empty concept. It is literally a figure of speech. If
> you start assigning concrete reality to it, you will find yourself in a
> philosophic quandary".
> (RMP, Lila’s Child, Annotattion 77)
>
>
> "The MOQ, like the Buddhists and the Determinists (odd bedfellows) says this
> “autonomous individual” is an illusion."
> (RMP, Copleston Annotations found at robertpirsig.org)
>
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