[MD] Zen and theArt of Religion

[Andre Broersen]

JA to Andre:
My point was that we can beat something material with a stick but we can?t hit a concept at the intellectual level with a stick. Each level has its tools. To maintain a social motorcycle we have to use social ?sticks? and vice versa.

Andre:
What is a social motorcycle?

JA:
 I know there are people trying to talk with vegetables and even think that rocks too can listen to small talk but these people are wrong because they don?t understand the 4 levels of the MOQ fully. 

Andre:
This reminds me of a passage (p 165) in ZMM:
A rush of wind comes furiously now, down from the mountaintop.” The ancient Greeks,” I say, ¨who were the inventors of classical reason, knew better than to use it exclusively to foretell the future. They listened to the wind and predicted the future from that. That sounds insane now. But why should the inventors of reason sound insane?” 

Talking with veggies and rocks may provide us with insights which classical reason, certainly in the West, has ridiculed for too long. I think the MOQ is open to those perspectives. Whether these persons understand the 4 levels of the MOQ or not is beside the point. Live and realize the four levels but be open to DQ I’d suggest. And it seems to me that they are.

Or would you, JA rather talk to your local politician/banker/businessperson/marketing manager/ image engineer to find out what is going on?

JA:
Descarte?s test works only at the same level. 

Andre:
Wow!!! I think therefore I AM??? At the same level??? Please explain JA because this is very confusing. Or are you conversing with the woods?

JA:
We can prove that a thought is, by comparing it to another thought.

Andre:
Interesting. How do you do that? How do you prove that a thought………is????? by comparing it to another one?
Have you eaten mushrooms JA?

JA:
Social patterns are fooling around with lawyers and people in love and so on. 

Andre:
Oh dear. You have been at them mushrooms or perhaps had some smokey dope? We ARE the patterns JA. Who is fooling around with whom?

JA:
It?s like talking moral or ethics to a SOMer, quite fruitless.We must begin with to convince the person that there IS art and moral, at first.

Andre:
I do not agree JA. SOM has its own values and morals…plenty of them. Just follow Phaedrus’  conversation with Rigel, Chapter 6 in LILA. Plenty of moralizing at the social level…underpinned which plenty of assumptions, worship, faith  and liturgy (ritual) and of course the pursuit of fame fortune and glory. All great morals to have and pursue and pursue and pursue, as Pirsig suggests: to find Paradise…Paradise…Paradise.

You want to intellectually convince someone that art and morals exist? Good luck.