[MD] Truth and Relativity 2.0

[David Harding]

Hi Marsha,  

> Yes, and I get that your understanding is based on your experience (hopefully) and static pattern history. The tales describing the moment of enlightenment are quite varied; the _monotonous boredom_ from "just sitting" is but one possible trigger. (I am not saying you are incorrect.) I do agree that meditation seems to be an essential requirement.
Okay.
> I think that judgements based on social/ego attachment are what the Zen people are addressing. That IS attachment. But if static patterns of value are understood to exist relatively, there is nothing to attach to. Static patterns of value are process, a series of momentary events, at best a pattern of nominal convenience. I don't think that all patterns are attachment and suffering. It depends on how you understand them.
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I agree.  It does depend on how you understand them. But what is that change in understanding do you think?  I think that change in perspective is suddenly seeing things from a DQ perspective, not a sq perspective.  A Mystic perspective does not see any value in the distinction between this or that quality.    A sq perspective however, sees value in the distinctions between things. That is between either this *or* that. To make a static distinction of some thing which cannot be defined is what sq does. There's no other static quality which exists.  Static quality is just a whole lot of distinctions.  Does it have x property, *or* does it have y property? Creating these distinctions, however, causes our suffering because that is the nature of a distinction.  It is fixed. We see them as fixed and defined, which is not what the fundamental nature of reality is.  Does a dog have a Buddha Nature?  If you answer yes or no, you're screwed.  Mystics say that it is best not to play the game of this / or that. You argue this as well because all it does is cause suffering.  I agree. *But* the MOQ says there isn't a person alive who doesn't play the game of definition..

As Pirsig says:

".. 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."

There are issues with spending too much time in a DQ perspective and issues with spending too much time in a sq perspective.  If there's too much DQ, then things just become chaotic and meaningless and lacking in distinction.  If there's too much sq, this blocks the light of DQ.  They both have their issues.  There isn't just an issue with too much sq as you say Marsha.  How do you avoid the chaos which is created from following too much DQ?  I think a lot of what you say lacks this distinction between things and it is almost to the point where it is chaotic.  
This chaos can only be trapping you in yet more suffering.  

But all is not lost. The MOQ provides an answer to avoid the pain of static patterns. The real way to avoid the pain of static quality, is by living *through* it.  Not by pretending it doesn't exist. Or by muddying the distinction between the two and pretending that you can see all the DQ and sq in everything at the same time.  sq and DQ are two distinct things. When they're treated as such, and you fully accept static quality, you live through static demands, it's only then that static quality disappears to reveal the DQ that was there all along..

-David.