[MD] The Oriental intellect(ual) level

[Heather Perella]

     [Akshay]
> > 1. In relation to whether Upanishadic philosophy
> can be classified as
> > "intellectual" or not:
> > The answer is "to a certain extent". In Hindu
> tradition, the mind is often
> > grouped along with the five senses, and so the
> (mystic's) goal is to not
> > only still the senses but also the mind, which
> means the very thought
> > patterns. However, this absolute inhibition of the
> senses is a peculiarly
> > Hindu idea (or so it seems to me) and this lacuna
> exists in that the Vedic
> > tradition considers the senses and the mind more
> as a tool rather than an
> > enemy. So, the important thing to understand here
> is that *thought is only
> > a tool*, just as sight is a tool, because without
> the faculty of sight, my
> > conceptions of the world would be way different.
> The ultimate goal is to
> > realise Purusha (according to the Samkhya school)
> or Brahman (according to
> > the Vedanta schools).

     [Bo] 
> Since we are here to the discuss Pirsig's Quality
> Metaphysics the 
> question really is whether - in a MOQ context - the
> Upanishadic can be 
> classified as intellectual. If you have noticed my
> assertion that the 
> MIND interpretation of the 4th level is wrong, your
> will understand that 
> your reaction to (questions about intellect) as MIND
> or THOUGHT 
> PATTERNS is irrelevant .. IMO.  

     Bo, this comment of yours provides no argument
against Akshay's mentioning of the Upanishadic
philosophy, other than your opinion about what the
fourth level is.  To say it is "irrelevant" without
any consideration is ignorance.  You are NOT the
source of what is relevant or not when it comes to the
moq.  Frankly, unless you can clarify yourself better
here, your lack of trying to listen to another's point
of view is again, as usual it would seem, to follow
right along with your dogmatic defining of what the
intellectual level is.  You leave no freedom left on
your SOL interpretation for what intellect is.  You
support tyranny on the intellectual level it would
seem.


     [Akshay] 
> > Hence, if I am permitted to make such an addition
> to the MoQ, Upanishadic
> > philosophy seems to transcend the intellectual
> patterns of SQ into the
> > "spiritual patterns of SQ". In fact, in the Katha
> Upanishad, five levels
> > are mentioned: objects, senses, mind, intellect,
> self. (
> http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/sbe15/sbe15012.htm).

     [Bo] 
> All this may be interesting for one studying Indian
> philosophy but it 
> becomes - as said - irrelevant regarding the MOQ. 

     Then why did Pirsig mention India as follows from
Lila chapter 30:

     "He had thought that surely this time he had
reached the end of the Quality-areté-rt trail. But
then from the sediment of old memories his mind
dredged up a word he hadn't thought about or heard of
for a long time:
Rta. It was a Sanskrit word, and Phaedrus remembered
what it meant: Hta was the 'cosmic order of things.'
Then he remembered he had read that the Sanskrit
language was considered the most faithful to the
Proto-Indo-European root, probably because the
linguistic patterns had been so carefully preserved by
the Hindu priests...
     The physical order of the universe is also the
moral order of the universe, Rta is both. This was
exactly what the Metaphysics of Quality was claiming.
It was not a new idea. It was the oldest idea known to
man.
This identification of rta and areté was enormously
valuable, Phaedrus thought, because it provided a huge
historical panorama in which the fundamental conflict
between static and Dynamic Quality had been worked
out. It answered the question of why areté meant
ritual. Rta also meant ritual. But unlike the Greeks,
the Hindus in their many thousands of years of
cultural evolution had paid enormous attention to the
conflict between ritual and freedom. Their resolution
of this conflict in the Buddhist and Vedantist
philosophies is one of the profound achievements of
the human mind."

     Bo, notice what Pirsig says here, "..one of the
profound achievements of the human mind."  Why you say
what you say sometimes Bo... I really don't know. 
Pirsig found India's philosophies to be very valuable,
and you throw them away, without an agrument at all by
just blowing them off and saying, 'This is
irrelevant'.

     Again Bo, later on in the same chapter as
follows:
    
     "Following the period of the Brahmanas came the
Upanisadic period and the flowering of Indian
philosophy. Dynamic Quality reemerged within the
static patterns of Indian thought."

     But this inclination on your part is you SEEM to
like chapter one of ZMM and then threw away the rest
of ZMM and all of Lila.       


     [Akshay] 
> > 2. Relation between Upanishadic wisdom and Greek
> thought:
> > To tell you frankly, the entire Greek tradition of
> philosophy is directly
> > derived from the Vedic tradition. Of course,
> modern historians like to say
> > that it was the Proto-Indo-European religion that
> is the true mother of
> > all religions, however, the more we discover about
> the Vedic way of life,
> > the more we come to agree that it indeed is the
> true religion (refer to
> > works by Subhash Kak, David Frawley, Vivekananda).
> The first record of the
> > speed of light (Sayanacharya's commentary on the
> Vedas), the best
> > meditation and medication system (Ayurveda and
> Yoga), the first book on
> > air transport (Vimana shastra), myriad instances
> of futuristic thoughts
> > (eg., idea of cloning in the Mahabharata)... and
> this is not even the tip
> > of the iceberg. What's Greek thought's greatness
> compared to that?

     [Bo] 
> It reminds me of the Soviet system where all
> inventions had a Russian 
> counterpart or were anticipated by one. Regarding
> the Greeks it's not 
> so much "greatness" as the birthplace of the idea of
> TRUTH, that there exists an objective, inert,
reality
> independent of what people 
> think about it, and I had hoped that you would see
> some similarity to it 
> in the said Upanishads period, instead of claiming
> that the previous 
> Vedic tradition was the origin of modern science.
> Make one more try ... 
> after having read Pirsig's works

     If your argument is "one more try... after having
read Pirsig's works", then you've failed to provide
any intellectual quality yourself.  You seemed to be
arguing the birthplace of "greatness" and "the idea of
TRUTH", but geography is inorganic, and whoever stands
at the top in "king of hill" is a child's game.  You
come off very rigid Bo, and not very welcoming or
open-minded.

woods,
SA

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