[MD] (Fwd) Re: Intellect's Symposium

[skutvik at online.no]

Hello Khoo

1 Feb. you wrote:

> Bo, the Boddhisatva, Tell us, how do you  envisage such a "western
> buddhism" and how would it work ?  How different is it from its
> "Eastern cousin". Now that you have come out and suggested it, we would
> like to hear it from you. Please enlighten us. Best regards Khoo Hock
> Aun 

Thanks for the new "rank" but too long hours and no pay ;-) How I 
envisage the MOQ as a "western buddhism" I have told many times  
No particular enlightenment is required except understanding the 
MOQ, but that seems to be the needle eye for the camels. You surely 
remember my  string of reasoning 

1) "Philosophy"  is by definition a search for explanations that goes 
beyond the mythological god-centered ones. Religious philosophy in 
the Christian, Jewish, or Muslim sense is an oxymoron.  

2) Thus any culture having had an encounter with philosophy has also 
had an encounter with the "objective, skeptical attitude" whether the 
culture got stuck there, i.e. let it develop into a SOM or went onwards 
is the crux. 

3) the former happened to the West, while the Orient abolished their 
S/O before it reached the "point of no return" (which was Aristotle IMO) 
and entered a Quality-like stage, AKA Buddhism, Taoism. But as I 
made clear the "objective (intellectual) level is part of the Oriental 
constitution and they can be as technological as any. Hence China's 
and Japan's "wirstschaftwunder".   

Now, you Khoo about Buddha as different from the one that Buddhism 
talks about is in line with Quality something else than MOQ's Quality 
and something I disregard. The greatest insight I know is ZAMM's 
about Newton's gravity theory creating the Gravity Reality, all efforts to 
refute that theories creates new ways of seeing things is futile, and a 
metaphysics recreates everything.

Further my contention is that MOQ's job to overcome the deeply 
entrenched SOM rationality required a super-rationality and that 
consists of the dynamic/static divide and the levels that dissolves the 
SOM-induced paradoxes. This is so "reasonable" that no rationalist 
can refuse to look into MOQ's "telescope" lest left in the role of the 
Cardinal who refused to look into Galileo's telescope (an example that 
science harps so  much on) 

However Pirsig of LILA got so hung up in the Quality=Reality  issue 
(which is an axiom and cannot be proved) that the MOQ was left in 
shambles regarding the intellectual level and his demonstrations how 
the MOQ rids existence of the SOM-induced paradoxes are less than 
convincing, while the correct - Phaedrus envisaged MOQ - does it 
without problems all paradoxes stem from the subject/object split 
having cemented into existence's "ground".    

Well, that's all. The Eastern Tradition's early and easy transition to the 
Quality-like stage beyond their underdeveloped SOM needed no 
super-rational ordering (no dynamic/static Buddha ...etc.) creating the 
"mysticism" that Westerners love to call what they don't understand, 
yet sense the value of. And within this ordering it is the  4th. level as 
SOM that does the trick, but is what most of this discussion won't 
have. 

ZAMM:
> " The first step down from Phaedrus's statement that "Quality is the
> Buddha" is a statement that is such an assertion, if true. provides
> a rational basis of three areas of human experience which are now
> disunified. The three areas are Religion, Art and Science.If it can
> shown that Quality is the central term of all three, and that this
> Quality is not of many kinds but of one kind only, then it follows
> that the three disunified areas have a basis for introconversion" pp
> 260 ZAMM

"Quality is the Buddha". Exactly! But Buddha obviously has static 
aspects, and "...providing a rational basis" Right on! Super-rational 
IMO. "Three areas being united" Definitely!  Four IMO, the so-called 
physical universe that Pirsig's guru enigmatically called "illusory" is 
incorporated.    

It all fits

Bodvar