Posted by Joseph on August 02, 2001 at 18:23:29:
In Reply to: Re: Re: Re: Zen and Archery posted by Rick Denney on August 02, 2001 at 15:55:01:
Anyone interested in Quality(capital Q) should take a look at www.moq.org. The site is full of folks actively discussing the minutia of Pirsig's metaphysics. People have written doctoral dissertations on the topic. In Zen, Pirsig tears down conventional metaphysics and leaves us with Quality. The sequal, Lila, is an attempt to build a new metaphysics up from the Quality moment. Ultimately he fails terribly, he admits as much by the end of the book, providing a vague roadmap and leaving it to others to fill in the details. His new metaphysics is just as susceptible to the arguments he used to tear down conventional metaphysics but the exercise is interesting none the less and it is very likely that his metaphysics deals with some situations better than conventional metaphysics.
Lao Tzu did a much better job getting it right a long time ago. The one gem from his books that has stayed with me, however, is that a person is capable of anything if they have the right attitude. Pretty inspirational actually if you think about it long enough.
my two cents,
joseph 'meandering thoughts' felton