SA, Platt, Arlo, Guys, yesterday SA offered up a quote from Chapter 9 of Lila that I have included at the end of this post. I believe the context was: how are Native American religions similar to Zen? Clearly at some point Pirsig seems to have thought they were. He says that Lila, or at least the book that was to come after ZMM, was going to be about Indians. But it is not. It is about a psycho-floosy. Maybe this is because the Indians are not nearly as Zen as Pirsig would like them to be.
Certainly their quests for visions and their stress on NOW is Zen-like but Native American traditions are Paleolithic in nature. Their cultures were prehistoric and more like those of cave men than of moderns. Perhaps in confronting this Pirsig decided to take a different path, write a different book. The manito that SA brings up illustrates the point. In the passage he cites, Pirsig is trying to divert attention away from the overtly theistic character of Native American religions. Take his quote from Mandelbaum for example. (Mandlebaum's work is available in its entirety online.) There is this from the beginning of the section on Religion and Ceremonialism that Pirsig cites: "The concept of a single all powerful Creator was dominant in Plains Cree religious ideology and ceremonialism. Every prayer for supernatural aid, every ritual addressed to divine powers, had to begin with an invocation to kice manito-, Great Manito. All the phenomena of the universe are considered to be under His control and everything was created by His will. He was not personalized, nor given any definite abode other than a general empyrean locale; He did not appear to men in visions. Moreover, He was conceived as being too great, too awesome, to be asked directly for His blessing." - Mandelbaum, 1979 http://www.schoolnet.ca/autochtone/Plains_Cree/index-e.html Not Yahweh, but close. There are Jews and Christians with this sort of view of God. (In fact the Jews regarded the name of God to be too sacred to be spoken.) But then right before the very quote Pirsig cites there is this: "Unpleasant things, vicious animals, thorned bushes, diseases, arose from matci-manito-, Evil Manito. His spirit powers were Cougar, Lynx, Snake. They could grant certain abilities to a man, but exacted the life of his wife or child in payment. Currently, the Evil Manito is modded after the Christian devil and the whole concept of evil power may possibly spring from missionary influence." - Mandelbaum, 1979 Or perhaps Pirsig could have referenced his inspiration Verne Dussenberry who had this to say in a discussion about the repeated use of particular sweat lodges among the Rocky Boy Cree: "Each time prayers are repeated in the structure, more power or muntua is added. Muntua means something sacred - a great power. The Creator has this power as do the spirits, although theirs is not as great as is Ki-sei-men-to's. If one depends sufficiently upon the Creator, he can secure much of this power for himself. Thus whether through rationalization or firm belief, the Cree feel that constant use of the same structure enhances muntua or power in that particular lodge." - Dussenbery, The Montana Cree - 1962, published 1998. Dussenberry does not suggest anything other than that the Cree are theists. In fact he claims that their religion has allowed them to survive as a people into modern times. So a book on Native Americans to bring out a philosophy that is alleged to be "antitheistic" probably would not have worked. Even if you consider Native American meditative practices. The goal of a vision quest was not to seek oneness with the absolute. Rather it was to gain spirit power from animistic spirits. Mandelbaum says this directly after the quote SA provided from Lila: "THE VISION QUEST When a boy approached puberty, his father or grandfather might send him out "to fast." Not all boys sought visions, but many did. The boy and his father went to some lonely place, carrying with them cloths for offerings and a filled pipe. The place chosen was often atop a high hill, although any secluded spot might be chosen. Some boys entered a bear's den, others would repair to a tree overhanging a river, some stayed on a raft, a few remained on an unsaddled horse for the duration of the quest. It was believed that a boy was more likely to be visited by the horse spirit if he sought a vision on horseback and would have a better chance of seeing the buffalo spirit if he pillowed his head on a buffalo skull. But there was nothing inevitable about this and sometimes a youth who slept on a buffalo skull or who remained in a bear's den would know many spirit powers but not the buffalo nor the bear." So to summarize: manito is not a term synonymous with Great Spirit. It is one of the Great Spirit's attributes. In fact since it can be either good or bad, gosh it sounds a lot like Luck or Chance, doesn't it? As Mandelbaum put's it and Pirsig quotes it, "It connoted any phenomenon that transcended the run of everyday experience." Hmm, that sounds a lot to me like a meaningful coincidence. Maybe manito, muntua, (the reference Platt provided on this term listed about six alternate spellings) is Native American for synchronicity. Case -------------------------------------------- "American Indians are exceptionally skilled at holding to the ever-changing center of things. That is the real reason they speak and act without ornamentation. It violates their mystic unity. This moving and acting and talking in accord with the Great Spirit and almost nothing else has been the ancient center of their lives. Their term manito is often used interchangeably with 'God' by whites who usually think all religion is theistic and by Indians themselves who don't make a big deal out of any verbal distinctions. But as David Mandelbaum noted in his book The Plains Cree, 'The term manito primarily referred to the Supreme Being but also had many other usages. It was applied to manifestations of skill, fortune, blessing, luck, to any wondrous occurrence. It connoted any phenomenon that transcended the run of everyday experience.' In other words, 'Dynamic Quality.'" -Lila 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.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
