[MD] The First Swoop

[John Carl]

The first drop is into darkness.  Down and to the right and such surprise!
 We forget on The Boardwalk that "the ground" is an artificial construction,
a deck of wood boards you walk on high above the sand and tides.  So when we
first get on the Big Dipper, and drop down into the bowels of what is
underneath, where it is dark and the turns come swift, short and hard, we
are surprised, shocked and maybe a bit
scared.  The screams of our fellows are actually sort of a comfort in
the darkness.
Metphysical radicalism is a redundancy.  By it's nature, metaphysical
exploration dives into the roots, under the ordinary structures we live
upon.  It can be scary, in  its own way.  Who knows what monsters lurk in
the depths?  A materialistic, value-free world view is a comfort to those
afraid of unknown and unknowable "other", so when we of the MoQ look around
us and ask "why", we needn't look so far for the reasons Pirsig is ignored
or denigrated by academy-land, even while being far more popular and
widely-read probably than any other metaphysician of ancient or modern
history.

We live in a world dominated by value-free metaphysics for a very good
reason.  It could even almost be viewed as a valid choice, if it wasn't
intrinsically insane.  But to restate my main
point, the big problem with the current world view, is not that it
seems so heavily dependent upon reasoning from subjective/objective
outlook, it is this crucial choice to remove value from the
understanding of reality.  It is the lack of value which kills, not
subjects, not objects. This
forum's eternal  focusing upon SOM for so long in the face of this
truth reveals a hidden agenda - a choice with motivation and
consequences.  "Group task avoidance" seems
to me to be the appropriate label.  Otherwise why spend so much time and
energy on perpetuation of illusion?

The Lord Buddha replied:--Purna!  Our mysterious Intuitive Nature is perfect
and enlightening and its natural perfection is intelligent and profound.
Since the True Nature is free from all illusions (the True Mind), so the
illusions are naturally devoid of any reality, and, therefore, have no
source of existence.  It they have no source of existence, they are no
longer illusions even.  All these thought-illusions have been raised by mean
of their own reciprocal manifestations thus the piling up of delusion upon
delusion has been going on for kalpa after kalpa as many as the particles of
dust in the air.

Though the Buddhas have disclosed their falsity, yet sentient beings cannot
at once recognize their falsity and return to their natural state of
enlightenment.  The source of these delusions is nowhere else but within
one's own mind.


As soon as you understand the source of a delusion, the deluding conception
loses its hold upon existence.  If within your mind you provide no source
for these false conceptions, there will be none to be discarded.  Those who
have attained enlightenment are as if awakening from sleep, and their past
life seems only a dream.

Awakening from a dream, like rising in a roller coaster ride from the
darkness to the big climb into the light.