[MD] Mill: Quality philosopher

[Gene M]

Platt wrote:

> What I love about Pirsig is that his metaphysics is completely koan
> free. Those who want to ponder the meaning of one hand clapping are
> immovable (static) New Agers.


I can't comment on Pirsig's absence of koans, I honestly can't remember well
enough, so I'll take your word for it. However I will argue with you about
Zen Koans as a whole. They are extremely dynamic statements! We are set in
our logical, rational patterns. Extremely static. A Zen Koan shakes that
worldview up, it tries to remove layers of static patterns so we can observe
Dynamic Quality better. To call a Zen practitioner "New Age" is both
ridiculous and insulting. Zen has existed for thousands of years, while the
romans were marching on the western world, they were questioning the nature
of reality, challenging the static patterns accepted without thought. New
Agers might have tried to hop onto Zen (and good for them if they did!), but
it's unfair to characterise Zen Koans as New Age.

I think you could really benefit from some Zen yourself. You're a very
static man Platt. No amount of effort can alter your static intellectual and
social patterns it seems. I've found that asking myself questions about my
values and beliefs with really obvious answers, I've been able to root out a
lot of logically inconsistent belief ingrained into me as a child, and
explore some very interesting facets of Reality.

It's always the most obvious questions that give us the most interesting
answers, it seems.

And there's Probably no absolute truth.

-Gene