[MD] The Intellectual Gauntlet

[MarshaV]

Greetings Bo,


----- Original Message ----- 
From: <skutvik at online.no>
To: <moq_discuss at moqtalk.org>
Sent: Sunday, July 20, 2008 6:16 AM
Subject: Re: [MD] The Intellectual Gauntlet


> Marsha:
>
> 17 July you wrote to Mati
>
>> "The Prasagika Madhyamaka solely avowed technique is to show by prasaga
>> (or Reductio Ad Absurdum) that any positive assertion ("it is", or "it is
>> not") made about - or view proclaimed of - phenomena must be regarded as
>> merely conventional (savti or lokavyavahara). Therefore there is no
>> position that constitutes the ultimate truth (paramartha), including the
>> views and statements made by the Prasagikas themselves, which are held to
>> be solely for the purpose of defeating all views. The Prasagikas also
>> identify this to be the message of the Buddha who, as Nagarjuna put it,
>> taught the Dharma for the purpose of refuting all views.
>
> Don't you understand that the passage you cite:
>
>    ".. any positive assertion ("it is", or "it is not") made about - or
>    view proclaimed of - phenomena must be regarded as merely
>    conventional (savti or lokavyavahara).
>
> Is what started young Phaedrus on his "lateral drift". He was an
> extreme intellectual (one who believes that positive assertion CAN
> be made (objective results can be arrived at) At that time he didn't
> knowing anything about Eastern wisdom so  he felt it was reality
> itself being pulled from under him. Later on he arrived at the even
> deeper insight that this (belief in the possibility of making positive
> assertions) is the SOM and further, in the first moq, INTELLECT!

In a dream last night, the Dalai Lama sent me a gift.  It was a bag of 
money.  What am I to make of it?   What would make you happy?

I am not sure what you are asking.  The self and things in this world are 
conceptual.  If that is what you are saying, I agree.  But, to me, that 
means that the MOQ and all its levels are conceptual (static patterns of 
value).  That is most important, and what the MOQ so beautifully states.  To 
be so bogged down in definition seems sooooooooooooo SOM.  Intellect is 
great for what it is, and what it is not.   Intelligence is to not let 
intellect fool you.

Can you really definitively state anything about someone else's insight?


>
> Had this been maintained MOQ would not only be in accordance
> with Eastern wisdom but a step further. Intellect cannot provide
> ultimate truths yet it's the highest and best static level   All levels
> fails on this "ultimate" point, if one pursues social value far enough
> it turns biological. Biology blurs into inorganic, and inorganic
> dissolves into chaos.  Only the DQ/SQ configuration is the ultimate one.

If one pursues any of these patterns far enough, you will find they are 
empty of independent existence.  That is not chaos.  Or maybe it's chaos 
when you think from a Western religious/philosophical point-of-view.  It is 
NOT chaos.  What is a pattern?  Any static pattern of value has only a 
nominal existence.  It's a mental smudge.

Quality (DQ) I think is the emptiness of emptiness.  If there is any 
ultimate, that would be it.


>> " This is intellect!  See for yourself.
>
> You maintain that the said Prasagika insight is an intellectual
> pattern ...is that so?

No I never meant Prasagika insight is an intellectual pattern.  It is not an 
intellectual pattern.  (Forgive me, I am not a Buddhist or a scholar.)  I 
think the Prasagika's offer an intellectual path to such an _insight_. 
It's hilarious that I, with such a tiny skull (and the help of friends), 
would be one to pursue this path.  And you, with the big brains, won't 
venture past static, Western cliches about Buddhist philosophy.


But if this is intellect (in India) and some other
> realization is intellect on the Fiji islands, and a third view is 
> intellect
> in Uzbekistan then INTELLECT ITSELF is the mental faculty that
> makes and holds these patterns, and we are back in SOM - its
> mind and mind patterns called "thoughts" - and the MOQ is dead
> and gone.

The intellectual pattern is not the insight.


>
> I honestly feel that this Eastern connection is what prevents the
> MOQ from realizing it full potential. It is a step further than
> Buddhism.

If your knowledge of Buddhist philosophy is as thoughtful as David M's (July 
19, 2008 4:21 PM) than I suspect it explains why you want to kill the MOQ 
with your static point-of-view.


> Think for yourself.

Bo, I believe no one.  I've been an extreme skeptic since I was a little 
girl.   And you have not presented a convincing argument.   But I am 
beginning to think that there is a lot of subject/object thinking happening 
here.


Marsha