[MD] emptiness

[Andre]

I think I have inadvertently pushed the send button when the post was 
not yet completed. Please ignore the previous one and if you care to 
ignore this one as well that's fine...I'm easy, but this is the complete 
one.

Marsha to Mark:

So I find it worth considering what the Buddhist's have to say about Emptiness, and what this particular presentation says about the importance of realizing Emptiness, or Dynamic Quality.  I find it a very thoughtful presentation.

Andre:
Hi Marsha, Mark. First of all 'the Buddhists' have nothing to say about 'Emptiness' because there isn't anything to say about it. The closest one gets is 'light' or 'freedom' or 'within which there is great working', 'an insight','a luminous cloud', 'an intese vision', 'a sensation of great bliss'. These are all nice , but they are all static representations which is what DQ is not . Read all the first person accounts of the saints and sages over the years, read Pirsig and you will not find anything on the content of Quality, Nothingness, Emptiness, Tao, Buddha mind, Big Self...not one thing...of course not. There is nothing to say about it...because you end up thinking about nothing at all (which is a nice experience). But Phaedrus realised this. A first person account of DQ is meaningless unless one has like-developed persons to converse with. And even that conversation is quite weird to watch.

Therefore he gained the insight that "In the past Pheadrus' own radical bias caused him to think of Dynamic Quality alone (as you seem to be doing Marsha) and neglect static patterns of quality (as you seem to be doing Marsha). Until now he had always felt that these static patterns were dead. They have no love. They offer no promise of anything. To succumb to them is to succumb to death, since that which does not change cannot live. But now he was beginning to see that this radical bias weakened his own case ( listening Marsha?). Life cannot exist on Dynamic Quality alone. It has no staying power. To cling to Dynamic Quality is to cling to chaos. He saw that much can be learned about Dynamic Quality by studying what it is not rather that futilely trying to define what it is... Slowly at first, and then with increasing awareness (!) that he was going in a right direction, Phaedrus' central attention turned away from any further explanation of Dynamic Quality and turned to the static patterns themselves' ( LILA pp 124-5. The exclamation marks are not meant to be condescending or derogatory but are placed there to point to where I think you go overboard or neglect).
  
The idea of 'realizing Emptiness' is a different notion and practice. All the perennial philosophers agree that it is here right now, closer to you than you are to your self! Quite a claim and quite a promise which isn't a promise. It is an affirmation that needs to be realized. Until such realization one can only point the finger. That is what the MOQ attempts to do (amongst other things). Which is the dynamic interplay of LILA, DQ/sq not to be confused with one another. Remember the great insight in reducing all to the 'One'? This is not so. To express the 'One' properly one designates it as 'not-two'.

For what it is worth.