[MD] Navigating Quality

[MarshaV]

Greetings Khoo,

Thank you for your thoroughly presented suggestion.  Ms. Han Suyin's story sounds worthy of investigation for all the reasons you present.  I have never seen the film  'Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing', but definitely know the song and music.  I love that Ms. Han Suyin's wish was to create a new Asian literature, and from what you have written it sounds like she succeeded.

I still remembered it was you who recommended the two Elizabeth films, both staring Cate Blanchett, and with wonderful commentary by the director Shekhar Kapur.  I have watched them many times since then and always find them inspiring.   

Thank you Khoo,


Marsha 


On Feb 12, 2013, at 11:07 AM, Khoo Hock Aun <khoohockaun at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Marsha,
> 
> I have the inspiration to introduce to you an author who passed away
> recently in November last year.
> 
> Han Suyin lived until 95 and was most famous for her book, Love is a Many
> Splendoured Thing which was made into a movie and "Love Is a
> Many-Splendored
> Thing<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Is_a_Many-Splendored_Thing_(song)>",
> won the Academy Award for Best Original
> Song<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academy_Award_for_Best_Original_Song>.
> Her mixed heritage ensured a continuing tension between East and West all
> throughout her life born as a Eurasain in a large Chinese household. Her
> obituary in the Guardian can be found here :
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/04/han-suyin
> 
> According to Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_Suyin, in 1952, she
> married Leon F. Comber, a British officer in the Malayan Special Branch,
> and went with him to Johore <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johore>,
> Malaya<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federation_of_Malaya>(present-day
> Malaysia <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia>), where she worked in the
> Johore Bahru General Hospital and opened a clinic in Johore Bahru and Upper
> Pickering Street, Singapore.
> 
> Uncle Comber is a friend of my wife's family whom Han Su Yin married after Tang
> Pao-Huang<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tang_Pao-Huang&action=edit&redlink=1>her
> first husband died in the Chinese Civil War, There are many stories my
> wife tells me about her and Uncle Comber, especially about her high society
> ways she was used to when her Gen Tang ensured for her during her time
> in London completing her medical degree.
> 
> n 1956, she published the novel *And the Rain My
> Drink<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_the_Rain_My_Drink>
> *, whose description of the guerrilla
> war<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malayan_emergency>of the Malayan
> Chinese rubber workers against the government was perceived
> very anti-British, and her husband is said to have resigned as acting
> Assistant Commissioner of Police [Special Branch] mainly because of this.
> 
> Between the time she was married to Gen Tang and Uncle Comber  she met and
> fell in love with Ian Morrison <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Morrison>,
> a married Australian war correspondent based in Singapore, who was killed
> in Korea in 1950. She portrayed their relationship in that famous novel and
> the factual basis of their relationship is documented in her autobiography *My
> House Has Two Doors* (1980). She has a long list of novels,
> autobiographical books and on recent Chinese history from which you could
> pick out something worthwhile.
> 
> In 1955, Han Suyin contributed efforts to the establishment of Nanyang
> University <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanyang_University> in
> Singapore<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singapore>.
> Specifically, she offered her services and served as physician to the
> institution, after having refused an offer to teach literature. Chinese
> writer Lin Yutang <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lin_Yutang>, first
> president of the university, had recruited her for the latter field, but
> she declined, indicating her desire "to make a new Asian literature, not
> teach Dickens", according to the Warring States Project at the University
> of Massachusetts
> Amherst<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Massachusetts_Amherst>
> .[8] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_Suyin#cite_note-umass-8>
> 
> The rest of Han Suyin's story is well documented, and the stories she tells
> are of a China and civilisation trying to come to terms with the 20th
> Century. Her life is in many ways one of a immensely talented woman,
> trapped between two worlds, seeking expression and fulfilment through her
> words in response to the vicissitudes she experienced.
> 
> I have never met Han Suyin although I visited Lausanne for other business
> regularly in the last few years and there was no reason to.  But she
> embodied both a distant celebrity and yet someone you know intimately
> through Uncle Comber. You know, the stuff of Hollywood and the stuff in
> your very own backyard.
> 
> I think the contrast between east and west is captured in many ways, and
> much more so in a life like hers, where the tensions play out in the books
> she wrote.
> 
> The last scene from the movie here.
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goD9ZezCMoA
> 
> Rgds
> Khoo Hock Aun
> 
> 
> 
> On Mon, Feb 11, 2013 at 4:37 PM, MarshaV <valkyr at att.net> wrote:
> 
>> 
>> Hello Khoo,
>> 
>> You wrote:  Dynamic is preferable to static for an advanced soul seeking
>> the Source. But how do we get to Dynamic when we can’t say what it is ?
>> 
>> Marsha:
>> One approach that has been suggested is by discovering what it is not: not
>> this, not that.  Here's where the critical thinking of a skeptic (inquiry)
>> might be useful.  But also I remember you suggesting to me to stay in a
>> state of mindfulness.
>> 
>> While you are present, do you any names of the great books from East Asia
>> to recommend?  I have read The Heart Sutra, The Diamond Sutra, The Platform
>> Sutra and I'm presently reading the The Lankavatara Sutra.  I would
>> appreciate your recommendation.
>> 
>> 
>> Marsha
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On Feb 10, 2013, at 1:07 PM, Khoo Hock Aun <khoohockaun at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>>> Dear All,
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Its been a long while. Here is a short reflection on navigating Quality
>> (or
>>> getting a grip on Reality).
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Between Chaos and Order is a place where patterns of static quality are
>>> best used as griphandles when we weave from point to point across the
>>> multiverses of Dynamic Quality. Our consciousness constantly projects
>> both
>>> these experienced and created static patterns from the everchanging
>>> dynamic, to seek an explanation for the Chaos.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> We all navigate to get somewhere in each of our realities and sometimes
>>> mistake these griphandles of static patterns as ends in themselves. We
>> can
>>> actually end up in the grip of the griphandle. The truth is that none of
>>> these griphandles ever last, formed for our purposes, dissolving after we
>>> are gone and our need passed, but perpetuated by a humanity in search of
>>> something that is permanent.
>>> 
>>> An order of things, or if you like, patterns of static quality, have been
>>> constructed to navigate the oceans of seeming chaos. The order of things
>>> that emanates from our primary griphandle; that of a static self, is
>>> regarded the only reality we know as long as our self exists. This sense
>> of
>>> self persists even as the set of energy patterns that make up our
>>> biological person change constantly. No one second are they exactly the
>>> same.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> What is the "us", then that does this navigating of the dynamic
>> multiverses
>>> ? The Hindus would have us as the smaller souls seeking the Greater Soul,
>>> or generalising, little pockets of dynamic quality seeking return to the
>>> Source. In the Eastern worldview, the "self" is but the epitome of only
>> the
>>> social level. It diminishes when the idea of community emerges. It
>>> dissolves when the idea of universality takes hold.
>>> 
>>> The Western worldview sets the individual "self" as the height of the
>>> intellectual level; because it’s our "self" that does the thinking of
>>> thoughts, the basic building blocks of all intellect. Sounds terribly
>>> Cartesian, but as a static grip handle, it has persisted and been
>>> perpetuated.
>>> 
>>> In the Eastern worldview, the individual is a temporary grip handle,
>>> incidental to the intellect. The intellectual level transcends the
>> person.
>>> The thoughts once expressed belong to humanity. The personal fortune or
>>> destiny of the individual thinker is not a function of the intellect. No
>>> individual self determination here. It’s all karma, and thoughts find the
>>> thinker, creativity becomes synchronicity, when the universes conspires
>>> with you to come together.
>>> 
>>> Yes, human rights belong at the intellectual level, but not at the
>> expense
>>> of humanity or the planet for at the hands of a social greedy acquisitive
>>> individual for that matter. Some may argue the free enterprise economic
>>> system is the best evolved template for human progress. Yet it has not
>>> eliminated universal human suffering, nor caused a major treatise on
>> human
>>> happiness to be written. Maybe with the possible exception of the
>>> Metaphysics of Quality.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> At the physical level, energy is not equally distributed among static
>>> patterns. At the biological level, complex self sustaining systems
>> compete
>>> to draw energy from the physical world. At the human level, evolving
>> power
>>> structures are social static patterns competing for limited resources.
>> The
>>> thoughts of the intellectual level of the Western world are everywhere in
>>> chains, bounded by the levers of the levels below. For all our great
>> ideas,
>>> injustice prevails everywhere on the planet and self serving systems
>> ensure
>>> that the world's resources are in the hands of a few.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Even as these are the subjects for political or social discourse, left or
>>> right, socialist or capitalist, the intellect may have a field day
>> amongst
>>> those who have the most faculties, but is of little help for the
>> individual
>>> interested to navigate the projections of static quality in the quest for
>>> dynamic quality to achieve equanimity, harmony and peace.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> He or she would be more interested in a guide for navigating Quality.
>> Maybe
>>> the Tao of Grip handles may work. : )
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Is there a way to wean the individual from his or her dependency on
>> static
>>> patterns and to consider them only as stepping stones on a pathway ? I
>> can
>>> understand on MD Discuss we use the currency of commonly understood
>> static
>>> patterns. In discussing Dynamic Quality we fall short and fear the fall
>>> into the Chaos. Its the fear of flying, you see.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> But seriously, in the combined worldview, would not the individual "self"
>>> of the intellectual level transcend each of our own lives and across our
>>> lifetimes connecting the dots amongst the multitude that would otherwise
>> be
>>> the Chaos that engulfs us all. Because you are not attached and prepared
>> to
>>> let go, the imagery of this everchanging interdependent lattice of
>>> griphandles keep you from falling and helps you straddle the comfort of
>>> Order and the calamity of Chaos.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> A mastery of what static qualities are and how to navigate them is
>>> essential. Thinking of them as griphandles requires us to know which ones
>>> to clutch, how long to hold on to them and when to let go as we hurtle It
>>> follows that the strategic goal is not a vaultful of static qualities,
>> but
>>> using them adeptly to get to the next point in indeterminate environment
>> of
>>> dynamic quality. Pirsig has already designated static quality the lesser
>> of
>>> the two. Static quality serves the purposes of those who cannot grasp the
>>> fluidity of change. Dynamic is preferable to static for an advanced soul
>>> seeking the Source. But how do we get to Dynamic when we can’t say what
>> it
>>> is ?
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> One view shows you nothing but Chaos, another, nothing but a static rigid
>>> Order. As a human on the cusp of awareness, in all likelihood,
>>> enlightenment could be when these projections of Order dissolve away, and
>>> with them, our fear of Chaos. Welcome, then, to the World of the Buddhas
>>> Regards
>>> Khoo Hock Aun
>>> 
>>> --
>>> 
>>> khoohockaun at gmail.com
>>> 6016-301 4079
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> 
> 
> -- 
> 
> khoohockaun at gmail.com
> 6016-301 4079
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