[MD] Navigating Quality

X xacto at rocketmail.com
Wed Feb 13 12:01:29 PST 2013 

projections

MarshaV <valkyr at att.net> wrote:

>
>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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