[MD] Defining Dynamic Quality

[Ant McWatt]

David Morey stated April 13th 2006:

>Hi Ant
>
>Your changes are good. But you know I think the time has come
>for DQ to be very precisely framed, or cornered, because it needs
>to come out of the cult cupboard, and become available to everyone,
>even Matt.


David,

As Dynamic Quality is the continuum that enables things to exist, it is 
beyond definition.  As David E.Cooper (“The Measure of Things”, 2002, p.311) 
notes:

“Emptiness is ‘wondrous’ not because it is an amazingly grand and impressive 
phenomenon, but because it is the necessarily inexplicable source of the 
possibility of the world, and hence that to which the being of the world and 
of ourselves owes.  Again, one is reminded of Wittgenstein: ‘it is not how 
things are in the world that is mystical, but _that_ it exists...’ to 
experience ‘wonder at the existence of the world.’  [“Tractatus”, 6. 44.]  
This is to wonder at the very possibility of there being a world and hence, 
for Buddhists, at the emptiness which, uncluttered by things found within 
the world, allows there to be a world in a way that necessarily resists 
explanation and understanding.”

The introduction of Professor Cooper’s very “non-cult” text can be found at:

http://www.oup.co.uk/pdf/0-19-823827-4.pdf

There’s also John Blofeld’s “Taoist Mystery and Magic” which quotes a number 
of Taoist masters about Dynamic Quality, the work of Nagarjuna and 
commentries on his work such as Jay Garfield’s “The Fundamental Wisdom of 
the Middle Way” (see Paul Turner’s Twelve Links blog at 
www.twelvelinks.blogspot.com for more details).  Other than the Pirsig 
material available in his texts and at the roberpirsig.org website, I think 
that is good as you’re going to get in “cornering” Dynamic Quality without 
resorting to mediation, vision quests, psychedelics or becoming an artist.

Best wishes,

Anthony.


P.S. Specifically with Matt K's query in mind about what East Asian 
philosophy can offer the West, there's an interesting ten minute monologue 
by Brian Walden (originally transmitted on BBC Radio 4’s “Points of View”) 
posted on the internet for just the next week at:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/shows/rpms/radio4/point_of_view.ram


----- Original Message -----

>From: “Ant McWatt” <antmcwatt at hotmail.co.uk>
>To: <moq_discuss at moqtalk.org>
>Sent: Thursday, April 13, 2006 1:07 AM
>Subject: [MD] Language Games (was Theatre and Definitions)


  DM,

  I hope your April 12th post (pasted below) and suggested Heidegger essay
  “What is Metaphysics?” helps out Matt.

  I’m not sure of the wisdom about being too precise about Dynamic Quality
  but I would have framed your “definition” of it thus:

  “DQ is Nothingness, the [indeterminate, aesthetic] flux, [creative]
  movement, what everything [static] appears out of and returns to.”

  Best wishes,

  Anthony.


  “There is nothing in common between Brahman and ultimate reality as
  conceived by Democritus, Plato or Aristotle. The atoms of Democritus, the
  ideas of Plato and the forms of Aristotle were definite determinate
  things, the very antithesis of the unspecifiable Brahman. Also the 
Democritean
  atoms, the Platonic ideas and the Aristotelian Unmoved Mover were concepts
  by postulation, whereas Brahman, besides being indeterminate, is a concept
  by intuition.”

  F.S.C. Northrop, “The complementary Emphases of Eastern Intuitive and
  Western Scientific Philosophy,” in Charles A. Moore, ed., ‘Philosophy East
  and West’ (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1944), p. 176



From: “David M” <davidint at blueyonder.co.uk>
Reply-To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
To: <moq_discuss at moqtalk.org>
Subject: Re: [MD] Language Games (was Theatre and Definitions)
Date: Wed, 12 Apr 2006 19:58:58 +0100

Matt

It is hard to know what to say. I agree with DMB that DQ is
simply a matter of experience, it is the most obvious aspect
of experience, it dominates it so much that it cannot be differentiated
from the whole. When we differentiate anything within experience
it is SQ, DQ is what is left behind and obscured by all differentiation.
DQ is Nothingness, the flux, movement, what everything appears out
of and returns to. Try this Heidegger essay for size:

http://www.stanford.edu/dept/relstud/faculty/sheehan/pdf/01-hd-wm.pdf

He who pursues learning will increase every day;
He who pursues Tao will decrease every day.

DM

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