[MD] The MOQ/Zen relationship.

[skutvik at online.no]

Marsha and Group
 
21 Sep. you wrote:

> I certainly understand you wanting to keep religion separate, and it
> does seem the mystic experience is often linked to religious
> traditions, but it doesn't have to be so.  I've read that even the
> Dalai Lama, in his efforts to bring together East and West, has warned
> to be attentive to what is insight/wisdom and what is cultural
> tradition, which are often entangled. The Buddhist traditions are
> beneficial because they are not theistic, and their purpose is to
> bring enlightenment (however that word may be understood or
> misunderstood) to benefit all. 

I started my post by saying that religion as something defying reason 
only occurred after "reason" i.e. the intellectual level. And I'm afraid 
this your introducing Dalai Lama brings MOQ into the murky Buddhist 
waters I want to "save it from" - sorry for being so implacable. He 
speaks about "insight-wisdom versus cultural tradition, and "insight-
wisdom" may match "what defies reason" but "cultural tradition" in 
Tibet is not our Western REASON. 

Tibetan cultural tradition was/is all about achieving the mystical 
experience while Western Reason is all about preventing such which 
is dismissed as hysteria, mental illness .. etc.     

Back to the MOQ.  Before Reason - i.e. intellect - the social reality 
ruled  and  there was no S/O (mystic/reason) distinction (why it was 
regarded as Quality itself by Pirsig)  Yet, the MOQ is not a return to the 
pre S/O (social reality) it's a reunion of Subject/Object beyond intellect. 
So, I do not particularly want to involve Orientalism because this may - 
as Pirsig and this discussion has touched on - be a culture that has 
gone through the intellectual stage, but not developed it into a SOM, 
before going on to a Quality-like stage.This creates OUR East/West 
chasm. Dalai Lama may understand the West, but we only sees 
"mysticism" over there. 

Yours profoundly 

Bodvar