[MD] A fly in the MOQ ointment

[skutvik at online.no]

Hi Khoo

19 Feb.you wrote:

> In the following you diss Buddhism and Pirsig at the same time, which
> must stand as a record of some kind, extending your legacy-setting
> mode yet another notch. No one on this planet does that and I wonder
> why you just don't go write a book

Buddhism is OK, it's just unclear, the MOQ is perfectly clear and I only 
diss(miss) Pirsig when he treat the MOQ as something inferior to 
Quality. IT IS THE QUALITY! 

> on your own Metaphysics of Bodvarism instead of mangling's Pirsig
> Metaphysics of Quality out of recognition for all of us.

I stick to all MOQ tenets, the only point of deviation is the 4th. static 
level, but over the years Pirsig has wavered from outright rejection 
(Lila's Child) to within a hair's breadth of the same standpoint (Paul 
Turner letter)   

Bo before:
> > As said a couple of times I think Pirsig's prostrating himself before
> > Buddhism is directly counterproductive after having "received" a much
> > clearer Western system of wisdom that turns circles round the woolly
> > Oriental article.

> Two things wrong here.
 
> 1) The "woolly Oriental article" is a full-fledged philosophy
> and practice which have pretty much worked out the neccesary pathways
> for directly experiencing Reality and mapped the terrain for the
> journey towards it. It is pretty defamatory to go on putting down and
> to cast aspersions on Buddhism.

But no Western can orient him/herself from this "map", believe me I 
tried, but it was not until the MOQ I understood.  

> 2) You claim Pirsig developed "a clearer Western system" in ZAMM and
> lambast him for linking his insights to Zen and Buddhism in Lila. In
> your intepretation of his MOQ, you seek to designate and install SOM
> solely in the intellectual level so that the MOQ can be essentially a
> "Western" solution for a "Western" SOM problem. This itself is
> counterproductive as the MOQ should be a universal application
> especially as SOM in its present form pervades the rest of the world.

I build on Pirsig's about the Veda-Upanishads transition corresponding 
to the social-intellectual one. His assertion here however is that the 
Up.. era was a "non-S/O intellect" which I protest, any philosophy 
worth anything is an impersonal (objective) rise above the personal 
(subjective). I guess Buddhism emerged as an insight that that this 
ceaseless objective over subjective chase were futile. Exactly this was 
the motive behind MOQ's emergence, but with its new Dynamic/Static 
split, its static levels of which the last was the said futile S/O "chase", it 
is so much easier to understand at least in my opinion 

You are right about SOM having spread  and - still IMO - the Oriental 
culture having had an intellectual (SOM) bout so easily can adjust 
(back) to that stage and become more "technological and industrial" 
than the West ... if need arises, while the Middle East - Muslim - 
culture is stuck at the social (Semitic religion) stage and regards SOM-
cum-intellect as a deadly danger to their Social Quality stage ...which it 
truly is.    

The rest of your post I find no purpose in responding to. Except how 
many twists you can find to the "sock" metaphor. But note that I now 
have given an account for how the MOQ is a clearer "Buddhism" so no 
more harping on that issue.

Bodvar