Willem,
Below is from a post I wrote almost a year ago today on Kitaro Nishida, who
founded the Kyoto school of Philosophy. I can't be sure Pirsig ever read
Nishida, but the similarities are overwhelming (If he didn't, then this is an
amazing occurence of synchronicity.)
I have quoted Nishida a dozen times over the past year, and someone else in
the group has read him too.....DLT or Rich?
In all honesty, the philosophy of "An inquiry into the good" is not as well
integrated as the MOQ, but in reading it I find that the entirety of Lila
reveals itself. After Nishida, an entire new dimension opened in Lila. I
recommend this book before any other as a companion reader to Pirsig for
REALLY grasping the MOQ. (By the way, Struan would hate it)
Roger
*************************
ROGER SHARES A NEW FIND WITH THE LS
Squad:
I just found the companion novel to LILA.
Yea, I found the real Lola.
Actually, I went to the Barnes and Noble to get a new copy of Lila, because
the one I have has had the words worn out from excess reading and
highlighting. I went to where the book should be…… Hmmmm, nothing under
philosophy…… Let me try Eastern Thought……… Ahhhhh, here we go ……Zen and
The
Art of MM……. Hey , what is this beside it? No, not Lila, but a new book
titled AN INQUIRY INTO THE GOOD.
Intrigued? You know I was. But in picking it up, I saw that it wasn’t
written by Pirsig….. It was written by Kitaro Nishida. And it was written in
1911.
Nishida was a Zen Buddhist who was influenced by William James’ theories of
Radical Empiricism and Pragmatism to transform mystical Zen experience into a
metaphysical philosophy. To quote the author "I wanted to explain all things
on the basis of pure experience as the sole reality."
His Pure or Direct Experience is virtually identical to the personal
definition of DQ that RMP uses. And the philosophy Nishida develops has the
following as essential components:
1) Pure Experience precedes the subject and the object( the self and the
universe)
2) Pure Experience is active , constructive and creative. It brings forth
reality.
3) Pure Experience is undifferentiated oneness with reality.
The major distinction between RMP and Nishida is that the former seems more
focused externally and metaphysically, while the latter is focused
internally.
Nishida embraces direct experience similar to Pirsig, but he flatly rejects
any DQ other than direct experience. He views any DQ other than actual pure
experience as an abstraction of reality…..in other words, as a static
pattern.
Per Nishida, consciousness, self, matter, subjects, objects, time and space
are all static patterns created out of Pure Experience.
I am no philosopher, but to a Westerner this seems at first like Idealism…..
But to a Buddhist, what he is explaining is that pure experience creates the
self and the universe. Without the ‘self’ the ‘universe’ doesn’t exist, and
vice versa.
A few months ago, Diana , Walter, Horse and others started pointing out that
we were dealing with two distinct definitions of DQ Different names or
interpretations were given, including ‘personal’ and ‘universal’; and
‘formative’ and ‘contributive.’ Nishida seems to be saying that only one of
these two exists. No, actually I think he would say they are the same thing
and that the universal is personal. However, Nishida was criticized by his
contemporaries as being forms of solipsism and tainted with ‘psychologism’.
I
would fault him primarily for being before his time!
To a certain extent, I would say RMP and Nishida were saying similar things
within the contextual framework of their societies.
Two other clear distinctions between these philosophers:
1)Rather than four levels, Nishida divides reality into three slices-- Nature
(our 1st two), consciousness, and socio-intellectual (our last two). He
doesn’t divide them per se in AN INQUIRY INTO THE GOOD, but it is clarified
as
part of his later philosophy in a foot note.
2)It is much more religious and inspirational and rooted in Buddhism
I do not know if Pirsig has ever read or heard of Nishida, but they certainly
seem to have come to complementary metaphysical truths. Nishida has given me
new insights in how to approach the MOQ.
Below are some quotes I had my wife pull from the book. Sorry I can’t lead
you to a decent web page on what I read , but his later writings seemed to
get
less focused and to backtrack on several of his own ideas. Perhaps missing
the
full definition of DQ left him uncertain and forced him to degrade his
philosophy away from the MOQ, which he almost found. Regardless, between his
drifting later in his life, bad translations, and possibly misunderstanding
of
his concepts, everything I found on this guy over the net stunk.
Just Sharing With Friends,
Roger
SELECTED QUOTES FROM KITARO NISHIDA’S "AN INQUIRY INTO THE GOOD":
On Direct Experience Creating Reality:
<<it is not that there is experience because there is an individual, but that
there is an individual because there is experience.>>
<<reality consists only of direct experience. Any other notion of reality is
simply an assumption>>
<<Materialists consider the existence of matter an indubitable, self-evident
fact, and from this starting point they attempt to explain mental phenomena
as
well. With reflection, though, we see that their approach puts the cart
before the horse.>>
<<that which is without qualities or activity is no different from
nothingness.>>
<<The unifying power at the base of our thinking and willing and the unifying
power at the base of the phenomena of the universe are one and the same.>>
<<God’s power is felt as a fact of direct experience.>>
<<Reality is established by contradictions.>>
<<When these contradictions disappear, reality disappears as well. On a
fundamental level, contradiction and unity are simply two views of one and
the
same thing.>>
On Abstraction And Consciousness:
<<Meanings or judgements are an abstracted part of the original experience.>>
<<activity of thinking constitutes a kind of pure experience>>
<<The primary function of thinking is to manifest truth. Although there is no
true or false in pure experience as the intuition of one’s own phenomena of
consciousness, thinking does include a distinction between true and false.>>
<<Which ideas are true and which false? In a given system a perception is
correct when it fits well with the system’s purposes; when it runs contrary
to
them, it is in error.>>
<<What we know is not the mind itself but the activity of knowing, feeling,
and willing.>>
On Materialism:
<<Assumptions regarding such a reality are abstract concepts formulated so
that thinking can systematically organize the facts of direct experience.>>
<<Material phenomena are abstractions>>
<<The so-called objective world is not apart from our phenomena of
consciousness. Rather, it consists of these phenomena unified by a kind of
unifying activity. When the phenomena are universal--when a unity
transcendent of the limited, individual consciousness is maintained--we
regard
them as constituting an independent objective world.>>
<<atoms…are abstract concepts formulated for the sake of explanation, and
they
cannot actually exist.>>( I believe this was prior to quantum physics)
<<Pure matter has no positive qualities that we can grasp; it possesses only
purely quantitative characteristics such as spatial and temporal movement.
Like a mathematical concept, it is nothing more than a completely abstract
concept.>>
<< What we call space, time, and material force are simply concepts
established in order to organize these facts and explain them.>>
On Side Benefits Of SOM:
<<The history of the advance of learning over the past several thousand years
traces the path by which human beings have discarded subjectivity and pursued
objectivity.>>
ON Levels:
<<Let us take, for example, a bronze statue….. We cannot view the statue as
a mere lump of bronze, for it is a work of art that expresses our
ideals…….The unifying activity of the ideals and the physical and chemical
laws that control the raw material belong to different spheres, and in no way
do they clash with each other.>>
<<The goal of thinking is truth, and the laws that control the linkage of
ideas in thinking are the laws of logic.>>
On Mind Matter:
<<the idea that there are two realities: mind and matter. This is a total
mistake.>>
On Mysticism:
<<it is the artist, not the scholar, who arrives at the true nature of
reality.
<<Artists are people who most excel in this kind of intuition. They discern
at a glance the truth of a thing and grasp it’s unifying reality.>>
On Communication:
<<Our feeling and volition allow for communication and sympathy between
individuals; they have a trans-individual element.>>
<<True reality, like the true meaning of art, is not something that can be
transmitted from one person to another. All we can transmit is an abstract
shell.>>
On Yin/Yang Complementary:
<<there must be a third thing to join the first two and enable each to
function with respect to the other. For example, when the motion of material
object A is transmitted to object B, there must be a force acting between
them. And in the case of qualities, when one quality is established, it is
established in opposition to another. For instance, if red were the only
color, it would not appear to us as such, because for it to do so there must
be colors that are not red. Moreover, for one quality to be compared with and
distinguished from another, both qualities must be fundamentally identical;
two things totally different with no point in common cannot be compared and
distinguished.>>
<<Reality is established by contradictions.>>
<<When these contradictions disappear, reality disappears as well. On a
fundamental level, contradiction and unity are simply two views of one and
the
same thing.>>
<<Because there is unity, there is contradiction, and because there is
contradiction, there is unity.>>
<<The most powerful reality is the one that most thoroughly harmonizes and
unifies various contradictions.>>
<<The fundamental mode of reality is such that reality is one while it is
many and many while it is one.>>
Death:
<<When it is fixed in a single state, and cannot switch to opposing states it
dies.>>
Value?:
<>
<<For an infant, all initial sensations are directly the universe itself.>>
Evil:
<<At the same time, that reality is a unified whole, it must include
opposition.>>
<< Conflict is an indispensable aspect of unity, for it is through conflict
that we advance to an even greater unity.>>
<<Why, if this is so, we encounter falsehood, ugliness, and evil in the
world?
When we consider this problem deeply, however, we see that in the world there
is neither absolute truth, beauty, and good, nor absolute falsehood,
ugliness,
and evil. Falsehood, ugliness, and evil always arise in our viewing
abstractly just one aspect of things while we are unaware of the whole, and
in
being partial to just one facet of reality and thereby going against the
unity
of the whole. (As I said in Chapter , falsehood, ugliness, and evil are in
one respect necessary for the establishment of reality; they are generated by
a principal of opposition.)>>
<<Evil is merely the privation of essential qualities.>>
<<Evil arises from the contradictions and conflicts of the system of
reality…..they are based on the differentiating activity of reality and are a
necessary condition for the development of reality. Again, reality develops
through contradictions and conflicts.>>
<<A tranquil, uneventful world with no sin and no dissatisfaction would be
extremely mundane and shallow. Those who do not know sin, cannot truly know
the love of God, and those who have no dissatisfaction or anguish cannot
comprehend the depths of spirituality. Sin, dissatisfaction, and anguish are
necessary conditions for the spiritual advancement of humanity; a true person
of religion does not see a divine contradiction in these experiences, but
rather feels God’s infinite grace.>>
On Morality:
<<To unite with the true reality of the self is the highest good.>>
<<Our self is the very unifier of the universe.>>
<<When we are in a position of unity, we are active and free. In contrast,
when we are unified by another, we are passive and controlled by the law of
necessity.>>
<<Virtue is to function in accordance with the self’s own nature.>>
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