[MD] Reading & Incomprehension

[Ham Priday]

Krimel to Bodvar on 6/9:

> I think reality is "something." I am sure not sure what.
> Every time I think I have it nailed down it changes into
> something else. It always seems to run faster than I can.
> I find myself always talking about what I thought it was
> just a bit ago but then it is gone again. And so I call it Tao.

That you think Reality is "something" is a giant step from nihilism to 
metaphysical agnosticism.  Perhaps the reason you can't capture it is that 
YOU are running while Reality stands still.  You are here today, gone 
tomorrow, but Reality is ever omnipresent.  One might say you scan the 
parameters of Absolute Reality and experience it incrementally as finite 
fragments (POV, for the indoctrinated).

> That's kind of what Lao Tsu says. I call it Tao because it is a
> strange word from a strange culture and that helps remind me
> that I don't actually know what it means. I think it is infinitely
> better than Quality because regardless of what Pirsig says
> I always think in the back of my mind somewhere that I do
> know what that word means.

Excellent!  Pirsig's Quality is like the God of religion, since neither is 
regarded as intrinsic to the subjective Knower.

 [Bodvar]:
> Well what did Lao Tsu mean by TAO if not the source
> from which everything emanates or are "carvings" out of?

That's music to my ears, coming from you, Bo.  I'm especially in tune with 
"the source from which everything emanates."  It's decidedly Platonistic.

[Krimel]:
> He said he didn't know what to call it so he called it "The Way"
> and that you could recognize it through the common relationships
> that underlie all opposition. Rough and smooth, dark and light.
> It is like water. In a cup for example it is not the substance of the
> cup that is of value but the space it encloses. It is the possibility
> of sculpture inside the uncarved block. You can define all of the
> terms you use to talk about it but it is also in what escapes your
> talking.  Lacan talks about "the real" kind of like this as what
> is left over and beyond our conceptions.

You must have read the sculpture analogy from my Creation hypotheses:

"When Michelangelo was asked how he was able to sculpt his masterpiece 
'David', he is said to have replied: 'Creating The David was easy - all I 
had to do was remove all that was not David from the stone.'  Think of 
nothingness as the chisel we use to carve out all that is not finite being 
from absolute Essence."  --http://www.essentialism.net/mechanic.htm#essence

"The Way" suggests a path -- an attitude or set of beliefs that can help 
establish balance in the life-experience, rather than reveal Reality itself. 
But of course we cannot BE the Realty we seek; we can only sense its Value. 
If anything is intrinsic to self-awareness, it is sensibility to Value.  As 
we stand (or run) in awe of the Absolute Source, it is value-sensibility 
from which our finite experience of reality is actualized.

I'm encouraged by your willigness to discuss these fundamental concepts, 
gentlemen.  It's refreshing to see that metaphyics still lives -- even in 
Qualityland.

Essentially yours,
Ham