Andrea - sorry to miss those great posts that are being talked about.
Re missionaries and monks.
I suspect this conversation is being carried on the absence of any actual
experience of dynamic quality on this topic. I.E. our joint personal
aquaintance with missionaries and monks is: nil.
That being so, what's actually going on is that we are speculating from
pre-conceived expectations about the answers are to suit our purposes.
No?
Maybe you should head off to the Himalayas/East Africa/South America/local
Salvation Army and go test your theories?
Because there is a possibility that you are overlooking. I.E. that the
missionaries and the mystics are one and the same people.
Couldn't one say that Pirsig is both missionary and mystic?
Just a thought.
And while were at it, I'd just like to comment that it possibly takes great
discipline to acheive much in this world of ours. Maybe that discipline is
exactly what the mysticism of a Buddhist Monk in India, or of a Catholic
Father battling a corrupt regime in Kenya, amounts to. Maybe. Go see.
Maybe you will find that these are *selfless* people, and that their
insights, their humility, their compassion, and their active power, are all
one and the same.
Maybe. And maybe the so-called missionaries and mystics vary enourmously in
all these regards. And that people do.
I mean, you will all want to collect some evidence on this one, won't you?
-Elephant
(that's me breaking the once-a-week-rule in the second post. Video
Meliora...)
> From: David Lind <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2001 23:51:51 +0000
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re: MD Pure Quality!
>
> Andrea - great posts. You summed up what I believe about
> mysticism. It's not necessarily "being" enlightened, but the
> belief/trust/knowledge that such a state exists or even just
> awareness of other levels of reality.
>
> Marco wrote:
>> I think the priests who are in Africa to help people must be a bit
> less mystic than the ones living in a monastery. Then, of course,
> I don't blame mystics. It's not their fault if people die for hunger,
>
> but also it's not mysticism that cures hunger.
>>
>
> David responds:
>
> Really? Are you sure? It couldn't be that the mystic's faith/belief
>
> can affect this dimension of reality? What about prayer? Isn't
> that a form of mysticism?
>
> Shalom
>
> David Lind
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> marco wrote:
>
>> Andrea, David(s)
>>
>>
>> ANDREA HAD WRITTEN:
>> If the man is a mystic, or a MOQist (:)) he knows nevertheless
> that there is *no* future, ie, that the concept of future is
> illusory. In
> fact, the 'goodness' of a future hospital is nothing that can be
> immediately perceived (as MOQ prescribes value to be defined
> by immediate perception). In the immediate, the man actually
> feels that *collecting money to build a hospital in Africa is the
> good thing to do (now)*
>>
>> MARCO HAD ANSWERED:
>> The MOQish is NOT mystic. He does not think that the future is
> illusion, he just think that in order to attain (a future) Quality,
> one
> has to be an artist in the present (remember the motorcycle
> maintenance).
>>
>> ANDREA WROTE:
>> Now that's strange. As far as I remember, the only difference
> RMP assumes between himself and a mystic is the attempt to
> analyze Quality with metaphysical tools. As far as personal
> ethics goes, I can't remember any single passage in Lila or
> ZAMM that establishes any substantial difference between a
> MOQist and a mystic.
>>
>> PIRSIG HAD WRITTEN IN LILA (my emphasis):
>> «What made all this so formidable to Phaedrus was that he
> himself had insisted in his book that Quality cannot be defined.
> Yet here he was about to define it. Was this some kind of a
> sell-out? His mind went over this many times.
>>
>> A part of it said, "Don't do it. You'll get into nothing but trouble.
> You're just going to start up a thousand dumb arguments about
> something that was perfectly clear until you came along. You're
> going to make ten thousand opponents and zero friends
> because the
>> moment you open your mouth to say one thing about the
> nature of reality you automatically have a whole set of enemies
> who've already said reality is something else."
>>
>> The trouble was, this was only one part of himself talking.
> There was another part that kept saying, "Ahh, do it anyway. It's
> interesting."
>> This was the intellectual part that didn't like undefined things,
> and telling it not to define Quality was like telling a fat man to
> stay
> out of the refrigerator, or an alcoholic to stay out of bars. To the
> intellect the process of defining Quality has a compulsive quality
> of its own. It produces a certain excitement even though it leaves
> a hangover afterward, like too many cigarettes, or a party that
> has lasted too long.
>>
>> Or Lila last night. It isn't anything of lasting beauty; no joy
> forever. What would you call it? Degeneracy, he guessed.
> WRITING A METAPHYSISCS IS, IN THE STRICTEST MYSTIC
> SENSE, A DEGENERATE ACTIVITY.
>>
>> But the answer to all this, he thought, was that a ruthless,
> doctrinaire avoidance of degeneracy is a DEGENERACY OF
> ANOTHER SORT. That's the degeneracy fanatics are made of.
> Purity, identified, ceases to be purity. Objections to pollution are
>
> a form of pollution. The only person who doesn't pollute the
> mystic reality of the world with fixed metaphysical meanings is a
> person who hasn't yet been born—and to whose birth no
> thought has been given. The rest of us have to settle for being
> something less pure. Getting drunk and picking up bar-ladies
> and writing metaphysics is a part of life.
>>
>> That was all he had to say to the mystic objections to a
> Metaphysics of Quality. He next turned to those of logical
> positivism.»
>>
>>
>> MARCO:
>> Well, Andrea, maybe you are right that the difference RMP
> assumes between himself and a mystic is the attempt to analyze
> Quality with metaphysical tools. What I don't accept is that *only*.
>
> It's like to say that the *only* difference between an abstainer and
> an alcoholic is that the latter drinks whisky. We can well cut it
> with the famous razor... and the sentence sounds better: a
> MOQist analyzes Quality (Reality)... and this is not *only* at all.
>
>>
>> ANDREA WROTE:
>> Now *if* there is no "official" difference between MOQist and
> mystic morals, and you claim there is one, you must be
> expressing a personal belief about one of them. I think you got
> the mystics wrong.
>>
>> MARCO:
>> It's true that I don't know a lot about mysticism...IMO 3WD is
> right: mystics are very rare. Anyway if I got it wrong, I got it from
>
> your words, in this occasion. Sticking to your example, I've never
> said that mystics don't want to save the children. Just that if it
> was true what you wrote that "he [the mystic] knows nevertheless
> that there is *no* future, ie, that the concept of future is
> illusory" ,
> well, it means IMO that a mystic attitude will not save the children
> of your example. You have reminded me of ZAMM....
>>
>> PIRSIG HAD WRITTEN (in ZAMM):
>> « But one day in the classroom the professor of philosophy
> was blithely expounding on the illusory nature of the world for
> what seemed the fiftieth time and Phædrus raised his hand and
> asked coldly if it was believed that the atomic bombs that had
> dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were illusory. The
> professor smiled and said yes. That was the end of the
> exchange.
>>
>> Within the traditions of Indian philosophy that answer may have
> been correct, but for Phædrus and for anyone else who reads
> newspapers regularly and is concerned with such things as
> mass destruction of human beings that answer was hopelessly
> inadequate. He left the classroom, left India and gave up ».
>>
>> MARCO:
>> Inadequate.... not wrong. YES! It's not wrong to pray for those
> children: it's inadequate. In the end, I think that probably the MOQ
> *seems* very mystic from our Western viewpoint... while
> probably it is very Down-to-Earth from a mystic viewpoint (if any).
>>
>>
>> ====================
>>
>> DAVID LIND:
>> I don't think you'll find anything in mystic teachings that state
> that mystics believe what you imply.
>>
>> MARCO:
>> The phrase "The mystic believes that "there is *no* future, ie,
> that the concept of future is illusory", was not mine, but Andrea's.
> As said above, I don't know a lot about mysticism, but I do
> believe that if you want to save the children (Andrea's example)
> you can't go on thinking that future (as well as the past, read the
> ZAMM quotes I offered) is illusory...
>>
>> I think the priests who are in Africa to help people must be a bit
> less mystic than the ones living in a monastery. Then, of course,
> I don't blame mystics. It's not their fault if people die for hunger,
>
> but also it's not mysticism that cures hunger.
>>
>>
>> Shalom to you too....
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>
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