[MD] Taking off the glasses?

[Andre Broersen]

Steve to dmb:
(1) DQ is primary experience, the leading edge of experience
(2) To say that I am not in touch with DQ then is to say that my
experience does not have a leading edge.
(3) How can that be when I am a set of static patterns left in the
wake of that leading edge of experience? If I begin where DQ ends, how
can I be out of touch with it?

Andre:
Hi Steve, dmb

Some quotes:
'Follow it and, behold, it escapes you; run from it and it follows you close. You can neither possess it nor have done with it... . Henceforth there will be no need to grieve or to worry about such things.'
-Huang Po

'Like the empty sky it has no boundaries, Yet it is right HERE, ever serene and clear.
When you seek to attain it, you cannot see it. You cannot take hold of it, But neither can you lose it.
-Yung-Chia

As [the Buddha] has no abiding place anywhere, none can take hold of him, nor can he be let go.
-Ma-Tsu

'Not knowing how near Truth is, people seek it far away-what a pity!
They are like him who, in the midst of water,Cries in thirst so imploringly.
-Hakuin

Pirsig states:
'To the extent that one's behavior is controlled by static patterns of quality it is without choice. But to the extent that one follows Dynamic Quality, which is undefinable, one's behavior is free'.

'Taking it all in all, Zen is emphatically a matter of personal experience; if anything can be called radically empirical, it is Zen. No amount of reading, no amount of teaching, no amount of contemplation will ever make one a Zen master. Life itself must be grasped in the midst of its flow...'
-D.T Suzuki

'Why are you unhappy?
Because 99.9 per cent
Of everything you think
And of everything you do,
Is for yourself-
And there isn't one.
-Wei Wu Wei

'To know immediately, then, or intuitively, is for mental content and object to be identical'
-William James

'This very earth is the Lotus Land of Purity; And this body is the body of Buddha'
-Hakuin

'The world is illusory
Brahman alone is real
Brahman is the world'

All of these quotes are suggesting that we need to suspend (at least temporarily) our dualistic mode of conceptual thinking. All of these quotes point to a non-dual awareness. This can be grasped intellectually but its full impact and significance can only be realized through experience.

Hence Pirsig's reluctance and apprehensions to write a metaphysics of Quality in the first place.

The Buddha simply said that he was 'awake'.

How many of us are awake? Who is not already enlightened? How many of us are in touch with DQ?

I'll speak for myself: I am 99.9 per cent in touch with sq. It's honest and as simple as that. If it was the other way around (99.9 per cent DQ) I would not be wasting my time here!

Cheers.