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ONTOLOGICAL CHAUTAUQUAS

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Zen_motorcycleI was interested to read “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” as I spent many years of my life riding motorcycles, and most of my life searching for answers to ontological and spiritual questions.

The author, Robert M. Pirsig, in first person, tells his real-life adventure of  a 17-day journey on his motorcycle from Minnesota to Northern California with two friends and his 8 year old son Chris.  The trip is punctuated by numerous philosophical musings and educational diatribes he refers to as “Chautauquas“, a popular method of adult teaching used in rural America during the 1800s.

Robert Pirsig was tested as having an IQ of 170 at the age of 9 years.  His prodigious intellect led him to an epiphany that Western academia and science is based on unsubstantiated bullshit.  Thereafter his personal philosophical investigations eventually drove him to ask questions and find answers that can only be discovered by exploring ones spiritual self.

The “dialogues” the author has with himself while riding his motorcycle across America are tied together by the story of the narrator’s own past self, who is referred to in the third person as Phaedrus (after Plato’s dialogue). Phaedrus, a teacher of creative and technical writing at a small college, became engrossed in the question of what defines good writing, and what in general defines good, or “Quality”.

The book reviews the subject of Western philosophy, touches on Eastern philosophy, including Zen.  The discipline and technical skill of maintaining the motorcycle he is riding is used as an excellent analogue for his explanation of his psychic travels through the barren landscape of soulless Western world, both physically and metaphysically.  Eventually, he resolves the question of “what is quality” through a subjective understanding of spiritual essence.

Fortunately, Mr. Pirsig is still living and has resolved his personal quest sufficiently to continue living in human society long enough to write this excellent book.

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DO WHAT YE WILL

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DO WHAT YE WILL

“An Ye Harm None, Do What Ye Will”

Bide within the Law you must, in perfect Love and perfect Trust.

Live you must and let to live, fairly take and fairly give.

For tread the Circle thrice about to keep unwelcome spirits out.

To bind the spell well every time, let the spell be said in rhyme.

Light of eye and soft of touch, speak you little, listen much.

Honor the Old Ones in deed and name,

let love and light be our guides again.

Heed the flower, bush, and tree by the Lady blessed you’ll be.

Where the rippling waters go cast a stone, the truth you’ll know.

When you have and hold a need, harken not to others greed.

With a fool no season spend or be counted as his friend.

Merry Meet and Merry Part bright the cheeks and warm the heart.

Mind the Three-fold Laws you should three times bad and three times good.

When misfortune is enow wear the star upon your brow.

Be true in love this you must do unless your love is false to you.

“An Ye Harm None, Do What Ye Will”

________________

—- from  “The Wiccan Rede” published in the neo-Pagan magazine Earth Religion News in 1974.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiccan_Rede

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PHILOSOPHER FOR HIRE

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no-free-adviceA philosopher is someone who practices philosophy, which involves rational inquiry into areas that are outside of either theological dogma or science. The term “philosopher” comes from the Ancient Greek φιλόσοφος (philosophos) meaning “lover of wisdom”. Its origination has been ascribed to the Greek thinker Pythagoras.

In the classical sense, a philosopher was someone who lived according to a certain way of life, focusing on resolving existential questions about the human condition, and not someone who discourses upon theories or comments upon authors. Typically, these particular brands of philosophy are Hellenistic ones and those who most arduously commit themselves to this lifestyle may be considered philosophers.

In a modern sense, a philosopher is an intellectual who has contributed in one or more branches of philosophy, such as aesthetics, ethics, epistemology, logic, metaphysics, social theory, and political philosophy. A philosopher may also be one who worked in the humanities or other sciences which have since split from philosophy proper over the centuries, such as the arts, history, economics, sociology, psychology, linguistics, anthropology, theology, and politics.

— Wikipedia