[MD] The Beginning of it All

[Ham Priday]

Marsha, and all --


> I think your comment to Partha is an important aspect of pattern making.
>
>    "Indeed, what the Taoist believes is that whatever
>     is, is the Tao, so it cannot possibly be undesirable.
>     Even the most seemingly ghastly thing is that way.
>     Good and Bad are simply values we assign to things..."
>
> Whatever is Quality cannot possibly be undesirable.  Quality equals
> Morality.  Assigning good and bad are pattern making.

An interesting, but flawed, analysis.

Can what is "bad" be desirable?  What is good (desirable) and what is bad 
(undesirable) are patterns of our own making.  But they are patterns of 
value (Quality) which, you say, equals Morality.  There is something askew 
here.  And it demonstrates a point I have been trying to make in my book and 
the MD.

We can't extrapolate morality and immorality beyond finite experience. 
Thus, what to us is "unfair", "cruel", "painful", or "repulsive" are finite 
representations (patterns) of the Tao (otherness)
relative to OURSELVES.  If we take ourselves out of the equation, there is 
no morality because there is no difference.  It is man--alienated 
value-sensibility--that determines what is good and bad and invents Morality 
to categorize all experienced phenomena.  As an alienated creature, the 
human being-aware is divided by nothingness and imperfect, and the 
imperfections are reflected in the objects and events which he perceives as 
"bad", as well as what he doesn't perceive at all.  Only a Sensibility that 
is not divided from other-being is perfect.  This, I believe, is what is 
referred to in the various religions as God, Tao, Oneness, Buddha-nature, 
and Essence.

Being-aware is a divided (dualistic) entity whose experience is 
differentiated and relational.  And while Quality, Value and Morality (the 
good-to-bad spectrum) are fundamental to experiential (S/O) existence, such 
differentiation is not fundamental to the ultimate source.  At the risk of 
offending the MoQuists, I contend that the equation Quality = Morality = 
Reality is wrong as applied to the undifferentiated source.  My argument 
rests on the metaphysical principle that Reality is not a divided system. 
Essence is the absolute integration of contrariety.

Food for thought?

Essentially yours,
Ham