On Quality: An Inquiry into Excellence: Unpublished and Selected Writings

The physical order of the universe is also the moral order of the universe. Ṛta is both. This was exactly what the Metaphysics of Quality was claiming. It was not a new idea. It was the oldest idea known to man.

But unlike the Greeks, the Hindus in their many thousands of years of cultural evolution had paid enormous attention to the conflict between ritual and freedom. Their resolution of this conflict in the Buddhist and Vedantist philosophies is one of the profound achievements of the human mind.

The past exists only in our memories, the future only in our plans. The present is our only reality.

Within the Hindu tradition dharma is relative and dependent on the conditions of society. It always has a social implication. It is the bond which holds society together. This is fitting to the ancient origins of the term. But within modern Buddhist thought dharma becomes the phenomenal world—the object of perception, thought or understanding.

By not knowing Quality in its “everything-state,” you will only see a part of reality, you will be trapped in a small life. You are likely to be technically and intellectually competent without an overall understanding. The idea is to go beyond intellect and to expand reason, fully to understand the total quality of everything. When you find it, it

That way of doing things is the right way, and the way that produces things of real value, where there’s no separateness between the doer and the done.

Quality is a characteristic of thought and statement that is recognized by a non-thinking or intuitive process. Because definitions are a product of rigid reasoning, quality can never be rigidly defined. But everyone knows what it is.

But this is one of the most profound statements he could have made. He was using words but he didn’t want you to cling to them. He simply wanted you to absorb them and make them a part of you, and carry on the dharma, and words could be a useful instrument for this purpose.

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.