[MD] New UK edition of LILA

[Ant McWatt]

Dear all,

You might be interested in the following article by Masao Abe, who is a 
leading proponent of  Zen in the West.  I usually consider Pirsig's work as 
just being applicable to people in the West but in this article, Abe seems 
to suggest ZMM and LILA are also the type of intellectual development that 
Japanese Zen Buddhism needs.

"Zen is grounded in Non-thinking which is not shackled by either thinking or 
not-thinking and yet freely uses both of them. But precisely because of its 
standpoint of Non-thinking, Zen has in fact not fully realized the positive 
and creative aspects of thinking and their significance which have been 
especially developed in the West. Logic and scientific cognition based on 
substantic objective thinking [e.g., conceptual thinking], and moral 
principals and ethical realization based on Subjective practical thinking 
[e.g., Kantian ethics or Nietzsche’s ideas of will-to-power and aesthetics 
absolutized to the other of reason or Pirsig’s metaphysics of quality 
described in his books, Zen and the Art of Motor Cycle Maintenance and Lila] 
have been very conspicuous in the West. In contrast to this, some of these 
things have been vague or lacking in the world of Zen. Because Zen (at least 
Zen up until today [1983] has thus not fully realized the positive and 
creative aspects of human thinking, its position of Non-thinking always 
harbors the danger of degenerating into mere not-thinking."

The reference of the full article is:

http://www.biosciences.utoledo.edu/pribor/individuation.html

Best wishes,

Anthony


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