by Dan Glover
10/21/98
"You want to explain the nagual with the tonal. That is stupid..." - don Juan to Carlos Castaneda Tales of Power
Now the image of the raggedy Indian dog was back, and he realized what it meant. - Robert M. Pirsig Lila; An Inquiry into Morals
Robert M. Pirsig has written a very interesting encore to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance called Lila; An Inquiry into Morals in which he outlines his philosophy called the Metaphysics of Quality. When I first began this paper, I thought perhaps to contrast Pirsig's Metaphysics of Quality to zen teachings, especially in the way Dynamic Quality is represented as an unknowable something.
The more I thought about it though, the more I realized that I know nothing at all of zen and have never really studied it, and besides, I see many others have written about that connection already...I wanted something new, a different angle. And while re reading Lila I came across this passage:
Phaedrus thought that this lapse in logic magically fitted the thesis he had started with: that the American personality had two components, European and Indian...even the language was changing from European to Indian... Lila Pg. 320
Here there seemed to be an angle that few had explored yet. I remembered reading about the brujo and searched through Lila for just what it was I remembered:
If you had asked the brujo what ethical principles he was following, he probably wouldn't have been able to tell you. He was just following some vague sense of 'betterment' that he couldn't have defined even if he wanted to. Lila Pg. 132
This passage had never set right with me the first time I read it, and it still didn't. Suddenly I saw Tales of Power by Carlos Castaneda on my bookself and a flash of inspiration occurred! Here was the real brujo Pirsig was talking about! And not only that, I am very familar with Castaneda's work, having read most of his books multiple times. This is something I could write about!
Now I knew why that passage always bothered me...it was an incorrect assumption on Pirsig's part as to what constitutes a brujo. The brujo described in Lila was: ...said to have been peering through a window from outside, and this is a sure mark of a witch. At any rate, he got drunk one day and boasted that they could not kill him. Lila Pg. 126
Now I began to wonder if the man described as a Zuni brujo was merely a sham, a wannabe brujo, who nevertheless was in touch with something very Dynamic. A more powerful brujo would never have revealed himself to be what he was in the first place and of course would have slipped through the anthropological cracks. Sure enough, my suspicion was confirmed when I found this passage of Castaneda's:
"No one can sneak up on a brujo, even if he is old", Benigno said with authority. "They can gang up on him when he's asleep, though. Thats what happened to a man named Cevias."
I asked him to give me all the details of that event, but he said that people secretly believed Cevias had been only a fool, and that no one could harm a real sorcerer. A Separate Reality: Further Conversations with don Juan Pg. 70
Carlos Castaneda first met don Juan in a bus depot where they were introduced by a mutual aquaintance. Castaneda was interested in learning about medicinal herbs in the region and intentionally represented himself as knowing far more about plants than was true. Does don Juan explain his 'ethical principles'? After they had been aquainted for some time, Castaneda writes:
"Who are you, really?," I asked. He seemed surprised. He opened his eyes to an enormous size and blinked like a bird, closing his eyelids as if they were a shutter. They came down and went up again and his eyes remained in focus. His maneuver startled me and I recoiled, and he laughed with child-like abandon. "For you I am Juan Matus, and I am at your service..."
"Why are you doing this to me?" I asked. There was no belligerence in my question. I was only curious as to why it was me in particular.
"You asked me to tell you about plants", he said. I noticed a twinge of sarcasm in his voice. He sounded like as if he were humoring me.
"But what you have told me so far has nothing to do with plants," I protested. His reply was that it took time to learn.
"What is wrong with you when I saw you, and what is wrong with you now, is that you don't take responsibility for what you do," don Juan said. "When you were telling me those things in the bus depot you were aware that they were lies. Why were you lying?" I explained my objective was to find a 'key informant' for my work. Don Juan smiled and began humming a Mexican tune.
"When a man decides to do something he must go all the way," he said, "but he must take responsibility for what he does. No matter what he does, he must know first why he is doing it, and then he must proceed with his actions without having doubts or remorse about them." (Journey to Ixtlan, Pg. 38)
I have looked in vain in Lila for anything resembling the ethical principles as powerful as these. This IS the morality of the universe! And so it became increasing clear to me that what Pirsig uses as an example of a brujo in Lila and what a brujo really is could be likened to the difference between a layperson and a Buddhist master in zen.
There is a powerful point of interaction between these two philosophies. Castaneda writes:
...[don Juan] explained that every human being had two sides, two separate entities, two counterparts which became operative at the time of birth. one was called the 'tonal' and the other the 'naugal'...He smiled and winked at me. "I am using your own words now," he said. "The tonal is the social person... the tonal is, rightfully so, a protector, a guardian- a guardian that most of the time turns into a guard...The tonal is the organizer of the world, perhaps the best way of describing its monumental work is to say that on its shoulders rests the task of setting the chaos of the world in order...The tonal is everything that we are; name it! Anything we have a word for is the tonal."
"The tonal is an island...the tonal is like the top of this table. There is a personal tonal for each of us, and there is a collective one for all of us at any given time...
"The nagual on the other hand is the part of us which we do not deal with at all...the nagual is the part of us for which there is no description- no words, no names, no feelings, no knowledge...I have named the tonal and the nagual as a true pair. That is all I have done." Tales of Power Pg. 128
It is clear that don Juan divides reality into what is perceived, the tonal and what is not perceived and never can be, the nagual. Pirsig writes:
After many months of thinking about it, he [Phaedrus] was left with a reward of two terms: Dynamic good and static good, which became the basic division of his emerging Metaphysics of Quality. Lila Pg. 133
With the identification of static and Dynamic Quality as the fundamental division of the world, Phaedrus felt that some kind of goal had been reached...He saw that much can be learned about Dynamic Quality by studying what it is not rather than futilely trying to define what it is. Lila Pg. 138
Static quality patterns are dead when they are exclusive, when they demand blind obedience and suppress Dynamic change. But static patterns, nevertheless, provide a necessary stabilizing force to protect Dynamic progress from degeneration. Although Dynamic Quality, the Quality of freedom, creates this world in which we live, these patterns of static quality, the quality of order, perserve our world. Neither static nor Dynamic Quality can survive without the other. Lila Pg. 139
Pirsig says: Dynamic Quality is not structured and yet it is not chaotic. It is value that cannot be contained by static patterns. Lila Pg. 164
The beauty of that old Indian, Phaedrus thought, is that he seemed to have understood this. Lila Pg. 139-140
Pirsig's Dynamic Quality can only be described through analogies. Its essence is undefinable, for once it is defined, it is no longer Dynamic Quality, but something else. Castaneda takes a somewhat more mystical approach to Dynamic Quality, yet there can be no doubt both authors are describing the same 'thing'.
It is clear that the brujo don Juan is describing an elementary division of reality exactly where Pirsig places his division. Different words are used, tonal in place of static quality and nagual in place of Dynamic Quality. Yet there is certainly no mistake that they are both desribing the same underlying Quality and dividing it between what is experienced and and what is not.
There is a remarkable similarity between Pirsig' Dynamic Quality and Castaneda's nagual. Both are equally difficult to get a handle on and impossible to understand...unobjectifiable in other words.
I also find it extremely interesting that don Juan calls the tonal the social person. For those unfamilar with don Juan Matus, he was a Yaqui Indian who referred to himself as a brujo or a sorcerer, and he spent ten years teaching Castaneda his philosophy. Don Juan encouraged Castaneda's writings even though he himself thought it was a useless exercise and in fact encouraged him to publish his manuscripts.
Castaneda asks don Juan:
"Are the nagual and the tonal within ourselves?" and don Juan answers: "Very difficult question... you yourself would say that they are within ourselves. I myself would say they are not, but neither of us would be right. The tonal of your time calls for you to maintain that everything dealing with your feelings and thoughts take place within yourself. The sorcerer's tonal says the opposite, everything is outside. Who's right? No one. Inside, outide, it doesn't really matter." Tales of Power Pg. 131
There is no doubt that Don Juan is describing the subject/object split and ultimately decides it doesn't really matter. And Pirsig writes:
"If the world consists of only patterns of mind and patterns of matter, what is the relationship between the two? If you read the hundreds of volumns of philosophy available on this matter you may conclude that nobody knows...In a value-centered Metaphysics of Quality the four sets of static patterns are not isolated into separate compartments of mind and matter. Matter is just a name for certain inorganic value patterns." Lila Pg. 177-8
The subject/object split doesn't matter in Pirsig's Metaphysics of Quality either...what matters is Quality. In a Quality-centered universe, mind and matter, or subject and object, lose their significant meaning we have learned to assign to them.
Don Juan speaks of something he calls "a sorcerer's controlled folly", and Pirsig would seem to use controlled folly when he decides to write his Metaphysics of Quality, although he doesn't delve into just what he is doing as deeply as don Juan:
What made all this so formidable to Phaedrus was that he himself had insisted in his book that Quality cannot be defined. Yet here he was about to define it. Was this some kind of sell-out? His mind went over this many times. A part of it said, "Don't do it. You'll get into nothing but trouble."
The trouble was, this was only one part of himself talking. There was another part that kept saying, "Ahh, do it anyway, its interesting." This was the intellectual part that didn't like undefined things, and telling it not to define Quality is like telling a fat man to stay out of the refrigerator, or the alcoholic to stay out of bars. Lila Pg. 74
Pirsig decides that the alternative to writing about Quality is ultimately a degeneracy into avoidance and decides to write about Quality simply because to not write about it would be folly. Without using the words, Pirsig is using 'controlled folly'.
"I wonder if you could tell me more about your controlled folly," I said. "What do you want to know about it?" "Please tell me don Juan, what exactly is controlled folly?" Don Juan laughed loudly and made a smacking sound by slapping his thigh with the hollow of his hand. "That is controlled folly!" he said, and laughed and slapped his thigh again.
"What do you mean...?" "I am happy you have finally asked me about my controlled folly after so many years and yet it wouldn't have mattered to me in the least if you had never asked. Yet I have chosen to feel happy, as if I cared, that you asked, as if it would matter that I care. That is controlled folly!"
We both laughed very loudly. I hugged him. I found his explanation delightful although I did not quite understand it. A Separate Reality: Further Conversations with don Juan Pg. 78
Perhaps its easier to see what Pirsig's motivations were now, and how his use of controlled folly resulted in his writing Lila. There is a deep undercurrent of zen-like teachings running through Castaneda's books. Perhaps this is why the philosophy of don Juan and Pirsig's Metaphysics of Quality have such striking similarities.
Throughout Castaneda's books, don Juan speaks of a path with heart which sounds very much like the notion of arete that Pirsig discusses:
Digging back into ancient Greek history, to the time when this mythos-to-logos transition was taking place, Phaedrus noticed that the ancient rhetoricians of Greece, the Sophists, had taught what they called arete, which was a synonym for Quality. Lila Pg. 443
Castaneda asks don Juan: "But how do you know when a path has no heart?" don Juan replies, "Before you embark on it, you ask the question: does this path have heart? If the answer is no, you will know it, and then you must choose another path."
"But how will I know for sure if a path has heart or not?" I asked.
"Anyone would know that", replied don Juan. "The trouble is nobody asks the question; and when a man finally realizes that he has taken a path without heart, the path is ready to kill him. At that point, very few men can stop deliberately and leave the path...a path without heart is never enjoyable. You have to work hard even to take it. On the other hand, a path with heart is easy; it does not make you work at liking it." The Teachings of don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge Pg. 166-7
Pirsig writes: Good is a noun. That was it. That was what Phaedrus had been looking for. That was the homer over the fence that ended the ballgame. Good as a noun rather than an adjective is all the Metaphysics of Quality is about. Of course, the ultimate Quality isn't a noun or an adjective, but if you had to reduce the Metaphysics of Quality to one sentence, that would be it. Lila Pg. 468
Good is a noun. That seems like a path with heart to me.
