[MD] Is it serious?

[Ham Priday]

Hi WillBlake --


> Yes, letting go of self, of the ego, of self consciousness.
> The attainment of truth, liberation, as the Upanishads, Buddha,
> Taoism, Zen, would all claim. I believe in that and am working
> towards that too.
>
> It would seem from recent interpretations of MoQ (which is
> obviously still in the making) that such release is not consistent
> with this philosophy. In fact the claim is we are subject to
> group behavior not individual expression.

Sad but true.  One has to acknowledge the self of consciousness before he 
can let go of it.
Relegating ego and consciousness to a collective intellect is a step in the 
opposite direction.  It denies the very self that seeks liberation and 
truth -- even the freedom to choose that path.  For if there is no knowing 
'I' to realize truth, if we have surrendered the subjective self to the 
objective universe, what is there left to liberate?

> But, as Pirsig has said in interviews, MoQ is waiting for the next
> independent thinker, to carry it along. It would seem Pirsig is
> waiting as well. Plato had his academy, current philosophies have
> the Internet.  Much more powerful and capable of generating
> a synthesis of ideas, and even new ones, if there is actually
> something new under the sun. What an opportunity!

There's nothing new under the sun, but there is much to be revealed about 
existence if we don't approach it with a closed mind.  Socrates said "The 
unexamined life is not worth living."  But introspection is meaningless to 
those who deny the insight it can afford us.  How often has Science been 
accused in this forum of failing to answer ultimate questions?  Yet, the 
same voices are quick to demean spirituality and metaphysical insight as 
mythical remnants of an unenlightened age.

Psychiatrist Richard Schain has written:
"The tendency to neglect the metaphysical aspect of human life has always 
existed in the history of mankind but no era has so depreciated and 
disparaged metaphysics as the current one.  Metaphysics is relegated to the 
realm of scholarly study or traditional religions where it exists in a 
tethered, tradition-bound form of little use to those seeking to develop 
their position in the universe. ...

"'...[T]he essential feature in the life of an individual is his valuation 
of his interior self, i.e. his subjective self.  There is no greater tragedy 
than the failure of an individual to realize this value.  What hinders this 
development, however, is the modern view that there is no such thing as the 
self, that there is only a complex arrangement of synapses and neurons in 
the brain, giving rise to the illusion of self.  Without a belief in the 
metaphysical self, humans are at the mercy of their environment, which in 
the present age fares little for the development of an interior self.  Only 
a radical metaphysics will save the individual from drowning in the swamps 
of the materialist dogmas of contemporary society."
    -- [R. Schain: "Toward a Radical Metaphysics"]

> Me, I want to live from the inside out, not the outside in; I want to
> radiate, not absorb. . . I want to be a sun, not a black hole, I want
> to be responsible, not a victim.  All this can result from freedom
> of the confining, needing, ego, "grasping and clinging" as a
> translation of the early writers of Buddha's teachings would stress.

As agents of value, we are all potential "suns".  But if we cease desiring, 
as the Buddhists prescribe for "avoiding pain", we shut off the value 
sensibility that connects us with our essential source.  That's retreating 
to a "black hole" existence in which being-aware has no more meaning than 
the insentient rock and human beings are pawns of biological  evolution.

We'll never understand man's place in the universe by pretending that 
subjects and objects don't exist.

I share your sentiments, Will.  Thanks for giving me this opportunity to 
reflect on them.

Essentially yours,
Ham