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Quality
And what is good, Phaedrus
And what is not good -
Need we ask anyone
to tell us these things?
from ZAMM
Robert Pirsig
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Adapted from the Tao Te Ching
Quality and it's manifestations are in their nature the same.
It is given different names when it becomes classically manifest.
Romantic quality and classic quality together
may be called the "mystic".
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Simple Definition of quality
-how good or bad something is
-a characteristic or feature that someone or something has
-something that can be noticed
as a part of a person or thing
-a high level of value
or excellence
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Reaching from mystery
into deeper mystery,
it is the gate to the secret of all life.
Quality is all-pervading,
And its use is inexhaustible!
Fathomless!
Like the fountainhead of all things...
Yet crystal clear
like water it seems to remain.
I do not know whose Son it is.
An image of what existed before God.
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...Continuously, continuously,
it seems to remain.
Draw upon it
and it serves you with ease...
Looked at but cannot be seen...
listened to but cannot be heard...
grasped at but cannot be touched...
these three elude all our inquiries
and hence blend and become one.
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Not by its rising is there light,
Not by its setting is there darkness
Unceasing, continuous
It cannot be defined
And reverts again into the realm of nothingness
That is why it is called the form of the formless
The image of nothingness
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That is why is called elusive
Meet it and you do not see its face
Follow it and you do not see its back
He who holds fast to the quality of old
Is able to know the primeval beginnings
Which are the continuity of quality.
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"And what is well and what is badly—need we ask Lysias,
or any other poet or orator, who ever wrote or will write either a political or any other work,
in metre or out of metre, poet or prose writer, to teach us this?"
From Plato's dialogue The Phaedrus
Enjoy
© 2016 MU-Peter Shimon
