[MD] The Quest for Quality

[MarshaV]

At 08:19 PM 9/15/2008, you wrote:

>[Marsha]:
>>My beef is your insinuation that Quality, which is beyond
>>definition, needs to be associated with words like:  primary,
>>first, or purpose.  To call Quality the primary source is an
>>attempt to make it static, turn it into a static pattern of value.
>>You go too far.
>
>Ah, yes.  The infamous and ill-conceived "static/dynamic" split.
>(I might as well get this off my chest as well.)  Patterns, like 
>movement and change, are differentiated events which only occur in a 
>relational system.  Relation is the nature of physical reality which 
>is secondary to the primary source.

Relation and change represent reality's empirical nature.



>I never understood why the Pirsigians insist that their fundamental 
>reality must be dynamic, while its derived patterns are 
>static.  This seems illogical to me.  Even in the mysticism of the 
>Orientals, what is absolute and whole is unchanging, whereas the 
>mind interprets it as a flow of pluralistic events.

This statement is way too general for understanding.  I doubt that 
you have a full understanding of Eastern mysticism or its 
teachings.  Even within Buddhism there is still a debate concerning 
whether there is really 'two truths' or one.


>You see, Marsha, for the essentialist Essence is static and 
>immutable, impervious to the conditions of finitude.  It is 
>existence which is differentiated and transient.  And this is 
>because the locus of subjective experience -- individuated awareness 
>-- is detached from the essential source, thus limited in its 
>perspective.  In biblical terms, we "see through a glass, 
>darkly."  What we see is a finitely differentiated "reduction" of 
>the absolute source.
>
>Tell me, Marsha: Does Pirsig acknowledge DQ as the primary 
>source?  IS there a primary source in the MoQ?  If you can't answer 
>this  affirmatively, then I would submit to you that the Quality 
>hierarchy has no fundamental reality and is merely a paradigm for 
>experiential existence.

RMP states that Quality is indivisible, undefinable and 
unknowable.  Quality is beyond conceptualization.  I think it would 
be safe to state that experience is the primary source of patterns.

Marsha





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Shoot for the moon.  Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars.........
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