[MD] How to experience Dynamic Quality

[david buchanan]

David H said to Dan:
Doing something in this case, does translate into knowing how it occurs.  That is the only answer you can give.  The only way to know what Dynamic Quality is, is to experience it for yourself.   So how does someone experience Dynamic Quality? This is what I am getting at.  The MOQ says that you can experience Dynamic Quality by getting static quality perfect.

dmb says:
Right, I think we can take this idea of perfecting static patterns and put it right next to the notion of killing static patterns. Neither term should be taken too literally so that they're really just two ways of saying the same thing. Elsewhere, there is also the idea of putting static patterns to sleep. In each case, I think, these are ways of talking about what we all already know from experience. When is the last time you had to stop and deliberately think about how to tie your shoe, walk across a room, drive your car to work or how to read a sentence? These are ordinary examples of static patterns you've mastered, perfected, put to sleep or killed. You don't have to think about them because they work. You just act without having to reflect on the how or the why. Those patterns have, in effect, become invisible. I think this basic idea can also be applied to motorcycle repair, the art of rhetoric, archery or any skilled activity. When you've got it down, so speak, that's when real creativity and real artfulness can come in the picture. I mean, you're not going to be a expert driver or a world class chef just by following DQ. You always have to begin by learning how to make the car stop and go, how to sear, fry, saute and butter your noodles. In both cases, it's going to take a lot of experience before you can just use those patterns effortlessly, without having to deliberate, reflect, adjust and all the other clumsiness that comes with learning something new. But when you've got it all down pat, not literally perfect but let's say fully integrated into your skill set, then you can be artful and creative. It's like genius, only it's earned rather than given. Or, you could say freedom takes a lot of discipline. There is a tension in this that might seem a bit paradoxical when taken in the abstract but we're really just talking about what happens when we learn how to operate shoe laces. Static patterns of quality are habits that work so well that we don't have to think about them anymore.  

David H said:
There is some thing which links these two things together. Every thing is static quality. If I look around and all I see is things, then how do I experience Dynamic Quality? What is Dynamic Quality? These to me, are genuine questions and have a very powerful Metaphysical answer to them. You can experience Dynamic Quality by getting things perfect.

dmb says:
Think of any skilled activity. Did you see that recent article on "flow" experience or "peak" experience in the Huffington Post? It opened with a skier sliding down an expert slope in Aspen. In this example the skier was experienced and had even been down that particular mountain before but this time it was different. Maybe the fine weather helped and I imagine it wouldn't hurt to also have a good night's sleep, a decent breakfast, warm clothes and boots that fit. The article describes the skier finding his groove, hitting his stride, getting in the zone or whatever. The difference this time was that everything seemed to be working perfectly, effortlessly. Tap, tap, tap, over the top of each mogul and the whole experience just "flowed". He was so lost in the moment that he forgot himself, he was absorbed in the activity. It probably looked like a beautiful run to the other skiers and he probably left tracks in the snow that somehow look right. Afterward he might be likely to talk about that run in terms of being one with the mountain. This, I think, is the kind of ordinary, non-supernatural mysticism that we find in Zen. Flying effortlessly down a double black diamond slope is just like magic but you gotta earn it. You have to ski a few times before you can even begin to have a sense of what that's like. DQ and sq are always working together. You can't have just one or the other. Not if excellence is the goal.

Dan said:
... Dynamic Quality is always right here! Right in front of us! We tend to cover it up with intellectualizations and mindless chatter that we have going on inside our heads, constantly telling us all about the world we're experiencing. Monkeys chasing monkeys.

dmb says:
Right, the past is only in our memories and the future is only in our plans, Pirsig says. As James puts it, we understand backward and we plan forward. But the immediate present, the now, is not static. I like to think of the Dynamic present as the ever-moving crest of a wave while the static patterns of our past experiences and the static patterns of our future plans are the troughs on either side of that wave. I like the analogy (from James) because you just can't have one without the other. And you can see how the one is constantly being converted into the other in a continuous process.
I think a big part of what Pirsig is up to is helping us to get a sniff of what's always already right under your nose. Or we might say he's trying to get us to notice, to use, and to develop a sense of quality, if not a sense of Dynamic Quality. It's not just something you're born with, he says, although you ARE born with it. It can be cultivated, sharpened. You can earn it. And when you do that, maybe you can stop painting by the numbers. That's what the talk about caring about the work, having a feel for the work, is all about. Instead of obediently following the rules and principles like some child, slave, soldier or factory worker there is an unwritten dharma that guides so that the rules and principles are your subservient tools, not your master. A feel for the work. You gotta care, he says. Elsewhere, his hipper friends say to him, "man, will you please quit with all your five dollar questions and kindly just dig it"? Reminds me of the hippie girl who said to me, after she stopped laughing at me, "You're not supposed to understand the Grateful Dead. You're supposed to dance to it." They were both saying that thinking was not the way to know the thing. It's not just about feeling groovy, but this soulful sensitivity is exactly what's missing from most rationalistic philosophies and scientific thought. (I mean "soul" in the musical, artful sense, not the theological sense.) That's what makes our world so damn ugly. You know, because that view says truth and beauty are two different things and that latter is just a frill, a meaningless nicety. So I think this is where Pirsig wants to expand rationality by getting us to take grooviness seriously. The "reintegration of the affective domain of man's consciousness" is another way of saying that this caring and feeling and this sensitivity to excellence really does matter. And it ain't no frill. It's the whole thing.

Dan:

... And no matter how I try, I can never seem to get even one single story perfect. Not one. Hell, I can't even put one perfect paragraph together. Yet, when I am writing, and I mean really writing, "I" disappear. Hours pass by like they're nothing. I've come to accept that my writings will never be perfect. But I do experience what may be called Dynamic Quality while I am writing. Of that, I am certain.

dmb says:
Yep, that's what I hear writers say all the time. It's not very different from the skier or the artful mechanic. Based on you description, I'd call it a flow experience. And that fact that you'd even think about shooting for perfect or holding perfection up as the ideal to meet only shows you that care about the quality. On some level, at least, I'd bet you'd agree with me that perfection is a fairly ridiculous goal, probably invented by some insane, self-loathing overachiever. To the extent that people have beat themselves up for being less than "perfect", it's a perfectly evil idea. Just trying not to suck is enough pressure for me.