Hello everyone
On Wed, Oct 13, 2010 at 10:00 PM, John Carl ridgecoy...@gmail.com wrote:
Assign the question to the students. Have them write 500 words
about what quality is in thought and statement. For many students the
assignment has a shocking effect that makes them more responsive to
the word later on in the course. Instructors should try the
assignment themselves first to know what the shock is like.
===
Good idea, Bob, I'll give it a try. Problem though, when the instructor has
already stuffed the student's head with ideas about that very question,
it's hard to imagine any hope that the student is going to be able to say
too much of surprising interest in such gone-over ground, thus little hope
of any shock, but here goes. 500 words translates to a bit more than
thirty lines, in the window I've got open now. That means three paragraphs
of ten lines each and I'm already more than half done with the first. No
problem, professor.
Phædrus wrote a letter from India about a pilgrimage to holy Mount
Kailas, the source of the Ganges and the abode of Shiva, high in the
Himalayas, in the company of a holy man and his adherents.
He never reached the mountain. After the third day he gave up,
exhausted, and the pilgrimage went on without him. He said he had the
physical strength but that physical strength wasn’t enough. He had the
intellectual motivation but that wasn’t enough either. He didn’t think
he had been arrogant but thought that he was undertaking the
pilgrimage to broaden his experience, to gain understanding for
himself. He was trying to use the mountain for his own purposes and
the pilgrimage too. He regarded himself as the fixed entity, not the
pilgrimage or the mountain, and thus wasn’t ready for it. He
speculated that the other pilgrims, the ones who reached the mountain,
probably sensed the holiness of the mountain so intensely that each
footstep was an act of devotion, an act of submission to this
holiness. The holiness of the mountain infused into their own spirits
enabled them to endure far more than anything he, with his greater
physical strength, could take.
To the untrained eye ego-climbing and selfless climbing may appear
identical. Both kinds of climbers place one foot in front of the
other. Both breathe in and out at the same rate. Both stop when tired.
Both go forward when rested. But what a difference! The ego-climber is
like an instrument that’s out of adjustment. He puts his foot down an
instant too soon or too late. He’s likely to miss a beautiful passage
of sunlight through the trees. He goes on when the sloppiness of his
step shows he’s tired. He rests at odd times. He looks up the trail
trying to see what’s ahead even when he knows what’s ahead because he
just looked a second before. He goes too fast or too slow for the
conditions and when he talks his talk is forever about somewhere else,
something else. He’s here but he’s not here. He rejects the here, is
unhappy with it, wants to be farther up the trail but when he gets
there will be just as unhappy because then it will be here. What
he’s looking for, what he wants, is all around him, but he doesn’t
want that because it is all around him. Every step’s an effort, both
physically and spiritually, because he imagines his goal to be
external and distant. [ZMM]
Dan comments:
The shock that Phaedrus is talking about is that moment you discover
that you don't know what you think you know. The student knows what
quality is. Everyone knows what quality is. But when confronted with
actually explaining what quality is, they fail, just as you have
failed, John. The shock isn't in what is said. The shock occurs when
the student discovers that they cannot explain what everyone knows.
The reason for this seems to have something to do with ego-climbing
versus selfless climbing. You are clowning around with the question,
just as Phaedrus was clowning around with the mountain. You are trying
to best the mountain for reasons of your own instead of sensing the
holiness of the quest(ion). You can do better but for reasons of your
own, you just don't care enough.
John:
Quality in thought and statement. That's a tough one, it really is.
There's lots of surface stuff - accuracy in grammer, logical construction,
rhythmically dextrous vocabulary , pulse of words - poeisi of ideas which
beguile and persuade, but when I say any work is really good I mean more
than all that. Quality in expression, in my experience, signifies a match
with my needs. Something I'm looking for without even knowing it. Hopeful
signs that there are answers to my questions; signifying a prodding to my
progress. Connecting me, with words, with some other person on the other
side of all words and signs, whose words make sense - and that same sense
is in me. Evidently its also in them. A shared sense then. A connection
beyond mere grammer's purview or control.
Dan:
See what I mean? You are ego-climbing.
