[MD] Emptiness & Quantum Mechancics

[david buchanan]

Andre said to dmb:
...But let's not focus on Marsha alone. I think she represents millions of people, and on this list, is the mouthpiece of many. Marsha tries to 'getting at the MOQ through Buddhism' which does have the definite sound of 'new-age' approach to me and does nothing for the MOQ nor for Pirsig's achievement.

dmb says:

She represents millions? While it's true that there is a lot of relativism in postmodernism and even before that there was the modern, objective "anthropological doctrine of cultural relativism", which says "you cannot judge one culture in terms of the values of another". "Science says there is no morality outside of cultural morality", he explains, and "that is the paralysis". "By contrast the Metaphysics of Quality", says, "cultures are not the source of all morals, only a limited set of morals. Cultures CAN be graded and judged morally according to the contribution to the evolution of life". The same could be said about our intellectual descriptions. 


Andre said:
As Pirsig himself said: 'If you're looking for enlightenment rather than scholarly knowledge, you'd better read this ( Buddhism plain and simple,  Steve Hagan). The MOQ is about 'scholarly knowledge'...and Buddhism...not one without the other. Their fundamental connecting platform is experience.

dmb says:
That's right. If you want knowledge you go to a university and if you want enlightenment you go to a monastery. If you're a scholar you read and write and talk with those who read and write and talk. If you're a monk you shut up, sometimes for months or years at a time. Maybe that's what Marsha should do. Maybe she'd be happy or at least happier. 

Andre said:

The Dalai Lama is taking it seriously by finding connecting points of Buddhism with (Western) science. Both can and will enrich each other, keep each other 'straight' and 'up-to-date'.   This combination will have a better chance of succeeding than throwing reifications, relativations, and 'my unpatterned experience was better than yours' pubescent retorts.



dmb says:

I take it you are referring to "The Dalai Lama at M.I.T.". That stands for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where neurologist and master meditators are working together in an effort to see transcendent states of mind from a third-person point of view - by observing the brain AND from within the experience itself. Both of those are valid. Both of those perspectives are incomplete without the other. Both perspectives are improved by adding the other. New Agers and scientistic thinkers tend to use one to dismiss the other and that's exactly the false dilemma we hope to avoid.