[MD] the prime directive of the MOQ

[Scott Roberts]

Gav,

Gav said:
awareness without thought is the basis of zen.
so zen is a regression eh? wonder if bob would agree?
(that was sarcastically put)

Scott:
I would read the following before uncritically accepting the belief that the 
basis of zen is awareness without thought, or in general taking Pirsig as an 
authority on mysticism [from Robert Magliola, "Derrida on the Mend", p. 97]:

"As for "abrogation of the identity principle," an abrogation which is the 
first norm of genuine Madhyamika (that is to say, Nagarjunism, or Madhyamika 
which has remained faithful to Nagarjuna's original attitude towards 
sunyata), the historical linkage between Ch'an/Zen and the origins is more 
complex. The nature and history of the ... koan, for example, is subject to 
great academic controversy, with some researchers claiming it operates quite 
purely in Nagarjuna's mode, viz., a rigorous rationalism whereby logic 
cancels itself out -- leaving devoidness to lapse (slide) by, interminably 
[aka logic of contradictory identity - Scott]; and others seeing it as
operative in a Yogacaric mode, as an intuitionism, so the monk does *not* 
through the assiduous use of reason *deduce* self-contradiction, but rather 
*transcends* reason "in a flash". When W.T. de Bary speaks of Zen's interest 
in Indian Hinayana sources and when Ninian Smart calls Zen "Japan's 
substitute for Lesser Vehicle Buddhism", they are indicating a movement in 
Zen away from what was the increasing absolutization of sunyata occurring in 
most of the later Buddhist schools. But Westerners, through the good offices 
of Zen's great missionary to the West, D. T. Suzuki, know only of 
logocentric (and thus absolutist) Zen, and indeed there is no question that 
logocentric Zen has been for quite some time now Zen's most popular form. 
Or, to avoid needless confusion, let us call it "centric Zen", since its 
whole effort is to transcend logos understood as the language of *is* and 
*is not* and to achieve the 'undifferentiated center' (of course,
'undifferentiated center' is just a permutation of logos, in the specialized 
Derridean terms we have already worked through at such length). Thus Suzuki 
declares that "The meaning of the proposition 'A is A' is realized only when 
'A is not-A', that Buddhist philosophy is the "philosophy of self-identity," 
and that in this self-idenity "there are no contradictions whatsoever." The 
supreme self-identity, indeed the only self-identity in the ultimate sense, 
is centric Zen's sunyata: "Emptiness is not a vacancy -- it holds in it 
infinite rays of light and swallows all the multiplicities there are in this 
world."...

"The differential movement in Zen of course opposes the centric Zen just 
instanced..."

(He goes on to give some stories that exemplify differential Zen, too long 
to quote. But in essence, it is about emptying out emptiness, so it does not 
become an "undifferentiated center", as DQ is a center in the MOQ.)

- Scott