Ant McWatt comments: This reminds of the more esoteric material (Joseph Margolis? - I can't remember off the top of my head) that Scott Roberts introduced seven-eight years ago. You can just go on and on in these logical circles; spinning words like a logical positivist on speed... Anyway, as Dave is saying, LILA is basically written from the static perspective of the "everyday, mundane world" where, for pragmatic reasons, it's just easier to presume the components of the self are static, or better still (as Marsha implied), so we don't confuse Pirsig's static-Dynamic terminology with the concepts of Newtonian physics, "stable". (The latter modification is noted by Pirsig as an improvement somewhere in the correspondence).
Of course, in my academic correspondence with Pirsig which Marsha enjoys quoting extensively from the MOQ Textbook and PhD (btw, still both available as PDF files from the groovy looking shop at robertpirsig.org!!!), the Dynamic perspective of the "Buddha's World" was introduced, and, of course, the essential nature of the (dependent) static patterns are seen as ever-changing and impermanent from that perspective. But some of these changes - such as our sun slowly burning itself out - are outside many human lifetimes. Though I think it's important to realise that perspective is there (especially in regards to avoiding dukkha/personal imbalance), it can confuse things (certainly when discussing the MOQ) if you're not making it clear that it is this perspective you're taking. And, then, you can apply the logic of the Tetralemma and be really strict about what you can and can not assert about reality (and its various components) but how useful is that type of academic exercise for maintaining your bike or getting on with your wife or encouraging world peace, love and understanding? Not much really. It's academic, fat man in the refrigator time. A little bit degenerate and essentially self-serving. Ron replies: This is where that clarity and precision in meaning applies so greatly in reference to context. I think you have a good point about the static, as the ancient greeks would say as "that which persists through change" being pragmatic, because once we begin to get into all the abstractions we begin to chase concepts that have no corresponding experience. We move from our empirical roots. We move from meaning. I dont think I know anyone who believes that the sun or even the self is without change. But because they persist through change, the greeks believed that it spoke to the nature of the good and intelligibility. For what does the term static mean but the intelligible in experience? . . 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
