Re: MD Re:Zen and DQ

[feral1]

> Richard wrote:
> I think the model for MoQ meditation was discussed earlier.  It was about
> mediatating "back" though the levels.  You meditate to leave behind your
> intellectual awareness, your sociological identity... etc.  Whoever made
> the posts stated rightly that its very difficult just to get to leave
> behind the intellectual, and any further than sociological (ie centering in
> only on your biological processes, or your molecular state) is damn near
> inconceivable.  I took a class in meditation once.  Didn't do much for me.  
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I don't remember the discussion on the MoQ and meditation (does anyone want to give a quick overview?) but I don't believe the regression this implies correlates well with the rest of the MoQ. If the successive levels become more and more moral, than why is meditation regarded as the moral pursuit that it is? To push back to lower levels strikes me as being more immoral than good.
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With regards to Jason's earlier question on meditiation/Zen as a method of reaching Dynamic Quality: the purpose of Zen Buddhism and meditation, as best as I can express it, is to push through the position of the self as witness, to dissolve the ego, so that there is only the play of nondual awareness, awareness that does not look at objects but is completely one with all objects (Zen says "it is like tasting the sky"). The gap between subject and object collapses, the self (intellectual level, perhaps?) is transcended or dissolved, and pure nondual awareness--which is very simple, very obvious, very clear--arises. It is an attempt to reach no-mind, but by transcending the mind rather than regressing.
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Zen subscribes to the notion of many Eastern philosophies -- that reality manifests itself in levels or dimensions, with each higher dimension being more inclusive and therefore "closer" to the absolute totality of Godhead or Spirit or absolute awareness � Dynamic Quality. In this sense, Spirit, or DQ, is the height of being, the highest rung on the ladder of evolution. But it is also true that Dynamic Quality is the wood (and this is a difficult metaphor: it's difficult to come up with a non-static example) out of which the entire ladder and all its rungs are made. Thus Dynamic Quality is the essence of each and every thing that exists.
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The first aspect of Dynamic Quality, or the highest-rung aspect, is it's transcendental nature -- it far surpasses any worldly or finite things. The entire universe could be destroyed, and DQ would remain. The second aspect, the 'wood' aspect, is the immanent nature of Dynamic Quality -- it is equally and utterly existent in all manifest things and events, in nature and culture and mind. From this perspective, no one thing is 'closer' to Dynamic Quality than another, for all are equally "made of" DQ. Thus, DQ is both the highest goal of all development and evolution, and the ground of the entire sequence, as present fully at the beginning as at the end; Dynamic Quality is prior to this world, but not other to this world. Meditation, as Jason pointed out, is the method by which it is possible to experience DQ, and the experience is a continuation of consciousness rather than a regression to the earlier levels of the MoQ.
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I hope this made sense, and that my view of DQ corresponds even remotely with everyone else's. It is a difficult sort of thing to intellectualize about. My one question in relation to all this is whether the intellectual level is the final level � might there be levels beyond that we are unaware of? Is it possible for lower levels to comprehend those above? "Philosophy in the Flesh" (there was an earlier thread that touched on this book) talked extensively about the fact there is no universal reason, or any sort of disembodied reason that it is the task of the mind to interpret. Rather, reason arises from the nature of our brains, bodies, and experiences. If this is the case, then might it be 'rational' to speculate that there are perhaps other, more evolved forms of understanding or comprehension, or levels of morality? My apologies is this is getting too 'new age-y' or a little too far out of Pirsigian bounds, but I would be curious as to what the rest of you think on the absoluteness of four levels.
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ciona