[MD] Awareness and consciousness in the MOQ

[David Harding]

Hi Andre,

> David to Andre:
> I'm confused by this comment because you end up agreeing with me below that even the word 'quality' is a definition of some kind?
> 
> Andre:
> No intention of confusing you David. Phaedrus sees in the use of the term "Quality" already a 'violation' of the mystical 'nothingness'. I think it is also a compromise in terms of trying to develop a philosophical framework that seeks to incorporate Eastern as well as Western traditions, perhaps as a result of Pirsig's reading of Northrop's "Meeting of East and West".
> 
> I think Phaedrus says somewhere in LILA that with a term like 'nothingness' you won't even get a hearing in the Western philosophical/scientific community. You won't get taken seriously. But they cannot get around a term such as Quality or value for that matter.
> "With the identification of static and Dynamic Quality as the fundamental division of the world, Phaedrus felt that some kind of goal had been reached. The first division of the Metaphysics of Quality now covered the spectrum of experience from primitive mysticism to quantum mechanics.(LILA, p 124)

Yep. I agree. 

> David:
> Us talking right now is us defining Dynamic Quality.
> 
> Andre:
> Sorry mate, but I stick to ma guns. O:-)

Thats fine. So long as you're willing to change when something better comes along.

> Talking is not(necessarily) defining. And please keep in mind Anthony's suggestion...you have read ZMM and LILA, no? So what is the 'definition' of Quality?

If you're so strung up against the word 'definition' that's fine. However I'm using the word in the following Mirriam-Webster sense:

4 . c : sharp demarcation of outlines or limits <a jacket with distinct waist definition>

All things, including the term Quality, are a demarcation of outlines or limits. In fact, every thing is.

> 
> David:
> Words are ruining the ultimately undefined nature of reality.
> 
> Andre:
> Not sure if you read my post to Ron, but I do not think that words 'are ruining the ultimately undefined nature of reality'. The Buddha rests just as comfortably in the gears of a motorcycle as in the words of a text. I prefer the use of the term 'partial'. I mean, if words are ruining everything then we may as well stop talking altogether, in the same way that if certain posters consider sq to be an illusion then we may as well stop living. I mean it just nullifies everything. As if, indeed everything in the universe can be described by the twenty-six written characters. Not on.

Right.  So to describe this conundrum we have the awesome metaphysical terms static quality and Dynamic Quality.  All words, every thing that you can find in a dictionary or an encyclopaedia including all your words above and the two books ZMM and Lila is static quality - the only thing left is Dynamic Quality which is no thing at all..  Any word that you use, any demarcation of outline or limit is a restriction of the ultimate Dynamic Quality.  These demarcations or limits are not Dynamic Quality which has no limit or outline or restrictions. But then, these words I am using now have demarcations and limits and even does the term Dynamic Quality.  That has clear and fixed demarcations and limits. The shape of the words for instance..  They're limiting Dynamic Quality right there...

From Lila:

"To the intellect the process of defining Quality has a compulsive quality of its own. It produces a certain excitement even though it leaves a hangover afterward, like too many cigarettes, or a party that has lasted too long. Or Lila last night. It isn't anything of lasting beauty; no joy forever. What would you call it? Degeneracy, he guessed. Writing a metaphysics is, in the strictest mystic sense, a degenerate activity.
But the answer to all this, he thought, was that a ruthless, doctrinaire avoidance of degeneracy is a degeneracy of another sort. That's the degeneracy fanatics are made of. Purity, identified, ceases to be purity. Objections to pollution are a form of pollution. The only person who doesn't pollute the mystic reality of the world with fixed metaphysical meanings is a person who hasn't yet been born — and to whose birth no thought has been given. The rest of us have to settle for being something less pure. Getting drunk and picking up bar-ladies and writing metaphysics is a part of life."

Pirsig doesn't shy away from the fact that he is ruining the undefined nature of the universe by defining it. He doesn't say he is 'partially' defining it by outlining a Metaphysics. He knows exactly what he's doing. Pirsig, using the term Dynamic Quality, is putting aside this conundrum.  He acknowledges that the term 'Dynamic Quality' is a form of definition but getting drunk and picking up bar ladies and writing metaphysics is a part of life.   Once he was able to put aside the 'undefinition' of quality that he arrived at in ZMM he was then able to delve into the static quality of the MOQ and get really drunk!

-David.