On Quality: An Inquiry into Excellence: Unpublished and Selected Writings

“Write about what you know. If you write about what you know, and know personally, and know deeply, and know better than anyone else, that’s going to be plenty exotic to everybody else.”

There is a Hindu story where the little fish asks his mother fish, “I have been anywhere and everywhere, but I cannot find this thing called water.” Quality is the water that supports us all. It is the source of both subjects and objects, both mind and matter. It is everything.

Zen is, of course, a continuation of the old dhyana yoga, in which one just sits silently and allows one’s thoughts to go away by their own dead weight.

As far as I know, “Quality” is still the best term, but “meaning” is a term I have thought about often. It’s an excellent synonym

To me “happiness” is a much narrower term than “Quality.” I think of happiness as a biological response to quality in which the quality is external (objective) and the happiness is internal (subjective). Happiness is thus subordinate to a subject-object metaphysical relationship and is limited by it.

Normally one’s ability to see what is good marches far ahead of one’s ability to produce it.

Mu becomes appropriate when the context of the question becomes too small for the truth of the answer.

Dynamic Quality is outside all patterns including philosophical rules. It is perceived directly, without intellectual mediation.

The place to improve the world is first in one’s own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there.