Buddhism as an apology for late capitalism

[Grausamkeit]

We can all agree to disagree, then.

[Alan]

Grow up? We weren't the ones calling someone else a dumbass. What pains me is the blatant hypocrisy of your posts. You were the one that was originally butthurt, lashed out against a philosopher you only knew because of this very thread, and then you project yourself by saying we're the ones lashing out when someone disagrees.

[OnyxBat]

Originally Posted by Alan

http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes...e-violent-than
Q: It’s hard to accept that Buddhism supports violence. Buddhism is growing very fast in the west and very few people will agree with you...



Slavoj Zizek: Buddhism is the predominant ideology in the west now. It plays a very conformist function. It makes you feel good in global capitalism. I read an analysis why all the top managers in the US like to practice Zen and all. Because things are so confusing now with one speculation you can lose billions of dollars in a minute. The only thing that can explain this is Buddhism which says that everything is an appearance and be aware of the inner reality and all that. You are dealing with just fake appearance. The tradition European thinking doesn’t help in explaining the world in a flux. This new age Buddhism gives authenticity to global capitalism. That’s why Dalai Lama is popular in Hollywood. I hope he is aware of what kind of game he is playing there, maybe he is not aware. He is providing them a cheap spiritual path so that you can basically go on with your life -- seducing, sex orgies, drugs, earn money -- but it gives you a feeling that I am aware I am not really that. It helps you to normalize and neutralize the schizophrenia we live in.

Very sad how people turn a nonviolent religion into shit (bet half of them dont know the origins of the religion).

[Versus]

Originally Posted by DoubleK

I would never wager that Black Hawk Down is a good representation of Desert Storm, nor would I wager that the story and the characters of that movie accurately reflect how I see that particular part of history.

Black Hawk Down was Operation Gothic Serpent.

It was conducted 2 years after Operation Desert Shield and Operation Desert Storm in a different region of the world.

Sorry. I know it's irrelevant, but you know me.

[HumanePain]

Originally Posted by Grausamkeit

Yes, I do think that adults going through identity crisis are idiots. If you do not know who and what you are with all of your worldly possessions/titles stripped away then you are truly lost. You have to know yourself to be true to yourself.

On this particular point I must respond: wait until you reach middle age. The individual is not stagnant. We change as we learn new things. People who won't or can't change as they learn new things or go through new experiences are the ones I consider "truly lost", because they cannot leverage the new information or experience into expanding their scope, increasing the range of their radar. It is ok to put your hands in your head and rearrange who you thought you were into someone else.

I have been an adult for a long time; I thought I knew who I was and learned I was nothing more than lost in the herd of middle class, and had done nothing more than learned what to think rather than how to think.

My identity crisis saved me. It still does. And it started with throwing away titles.

[JCC]

Originally Posted by HumanePain

On this particular point I must respond: wait until you reach middle age. The individual is not stagnant. We change as we learn new things. People who won't or can't change as they learn new things or go through new experiences are the ones I consider "truly lost", because they cannot leverage the new information or experience into expanding their scope, increasing the range of their radar. It is ok to put your hands in your head and rearrange who you thought you were into someone else.

I have been an adult for a long time; I thought I knew who I was and learned I was nothing more than lost in the herd of middle class, and had done nothing more than learned what to think rather than how to think.

My identity crisis saved me. It still does. And it started with throwing away titles.

This is a very good post. I've become sort of known for changing a great deal in a short space of time every so often. It's just something that needs to happen after a certain experience or you read a certain book or whatever. It hits you where it has to and you sit down and have a think, realise you've been running in the wrong direction, reach inside your head and rearrange it all. Chuck out a few things you don't need, get an upgrade on some others, add some new machinery and then take it for a test drive. It needs to happen and I hope I don't ever stop changing. When you've stopped changing you've just stopped learning and paying attention.

[CuckooTuli]

This thread has become awesome.

[Despanan]

So I read this article a while ago.

I actually have to agree with Kontan. I get the points that Z is making, but I think he's really reaching and making a number of hasty assumptions. For one he's equating taking a non-violent stance/non-action when violence is happening around you with actual violence.

I get that you can consider this "perpetuating" the violence but I don't think I'm ready to equate that with actively working to perpetuate violence/engaging in violence yourself.

I also disagree with his assessment that Hollywood is the "West Distilled". What comes out of Hollywood is what a roomfull of executives think will sell, and what catches on is what happens to strike a chord with the American people/has the best marketing. It does reflect our culture (like any art does) but I think it reflects a very limited perspective of our culture.

It's like here in New York, I walk by the Broadway ads and what I see is a product. Broadway isn't theater "Distilled" it's a theme-park for fat midwestern tourists who will gladly shell out $125+ per ticket to see a band impersonate the Beatles, or a blonde "C" List celebrity portray Roxy in Chicago, or Spiderman fall from his rigging and break his friggin' neck.

Broadway is behind the times, and really more of an accurate picture of what the times were 30-50 years ago, not contemporary American culture and certainly not an adequate reflection of where theater is. No one really gives a crap about "Hair" or "The Million Dollar Quartet" they just make sales based on name-recognition and nostalgia.

IE: It's not really representative of our culture per se, it's a tourist trap. Granted tourist traps and consumerism are a part of American culture, but there's so much more to it than that.

Hollywood is less "western culture distilled" as it is a caricature of western culture.

[Despanan]

As far as the Buddhism/Apology for capitalism goes, I will again have to disagree with Z. I can certainly see where he's coming from, and I'm sure he's correct as to WHY it's caught on with certain CEOs and the like. However it's still a MASSIVE minority religion and certainly does not "Define the West" (the West is defined by Christianity).

Buddhism is honestly pretty hostile to Capitalism in my opinion, what with the whole issue of giving up of attachments. I think Z has a point that if you view the world as illusory, losing a million dollars (or even 20-million) is easier to bear, but Buddhism is a religion which works to make you comfortable with being uncomfortable. It may be that there are some executives exploiting Zen to deal with a fluctuating global market but I don't really see it as Buddhism as an apology so much as one aspect of Buddhist thought which happens to resonate with people who play in the global markets.

The stuff about being "disconnected from the world" and thus able to kill with impunity is not really normative Buddhism either. I mean arguably you COULD run around killing people and accruing no Karma if you were a Buddha or Bodhisattva but you would be so disconnected from the world at that point you'd have, like, a Dr. Manhattan level aloofness about life and death. You'd view being dead as absolutely no different than being alive, and thus why the hell would you waste you time in battle? It would serve absolutely no purpose.

Buddhism has become increasingly tied to the West in general and Capitalism in particular, by virtue of it's persecution by communist China, NOT it's actual teachings. I have never heard of a Buddhist monk who considers himself a capitalist. Most (including the Dhalai Llama) identify as socialist.

[Mr.Doobie]

Originally Posted by Despanan

It's like here in New York, I walk by the Broadway ads and what I see is a product. Broadway isn't theater "Distilled" it's a theme-park for fat midwestern tourists who will gladly shell out $125+ per ticket to see a band impersonate the Beatles, or a blonde "C" List celebrity portray Roxy in Chicago, or Spiderman fall from his rigging and break his friggin' neck.

Broadway is behind the times, and really more of an accurate picture of what the times were 30-50 years ago, not contemporary American culture and certainly not an adequate reflection of where theater is. No one really gives a crap about "Hair" or "The Million Dollar Quartet" they just make sales based on name-recognition and nostalgia.

THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU!

You are the first person I have ever talked to that has ever agreed with me that Broadway is antiquated, out-of-touch, and a haven for hack playwrights who pander to the lowest common denominator (coughAndrewLloydWebercoughcough).

Buddhism is honestly pretty hostile to Capitalism in my opinion, what with the whole issue of giving up of attachments. I think Z has a point that if you view the world as illusory, losing a million dollars (or even 20-million) is easier to bear, but Buddhism is a religion which works to make you comfortable with being uncomfortable. It may be that there are some executives exploiting Zen to deal with a fluctuating global market but I don't really see it as Buddhism as an apology so much as one aspect of Buddhist thought which happens to resonate with people who play in the global markets.

But you see, he never said that "true" Buddhism is what these CEO's practice. In fact, I think a good deal of his point is that the Buddhism that is popular in American culture today is faux-Buddhism.

It's kind of like how Jesus was a radical who demanded the rich give away every penny to the poor, but televangelists and such use his name to make themselves filthy rich and than proceed to not give up a dime.

But than, I'm not very familiar with this guy, and one article is not enough to form an opinion on a philosophers entire school of thought, which I'm sure he's spent a good deal of his life developing.

I do have to agree with PorlNecklace that I think a good deal of Eastern-influenced religion/philosophy being adapted in the West is due to it's "exoticism".

[Despanan]

Originally Posted by Mr.Doobie

THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU!

You are the first person I have ever talked to that has ever agreed with me that Broadway is antiquated, out-of-touch, and a haven for hack playwrights who pander to the lowest common denominator (coughAndrewLloydWebercoughcough).

I actually like ALW (Jesus Christ Superstar is friggin' amazing, and Phantom ain't bad) but yeah, Broadway sucks and off-broadway ain't much better. If you want to see groundbreaking work you need to go off-off Broadway, you need to find the theater companies without a great deal of money on the line/a huge-assed building to support, because they're the ones willing to take artistic risks.

Regional theater and off-Broadway more often than not are obsessed with doing "safe" work because of all the money and jobs on the line. They depend upon subscribers and thus are forced year by year into cookie-cutter revival-style theater.

Which ironically makes them more and more irrelevant and distances them from their subscribers.

[Alan]

You are only seeing concepts insofar as they retain the same name, not in their immanent application.
Just see part of the phrase HumanePain quoted of that guy:
"If you do not know who and what you are with all of your worldly possessions/titles stripped away then you are truly lost."

Read that and tell me that is not the quintessential western appropriation of buddhism, and how many people have not expressed that same 'philosophy' as a way to cope with their lives?

[Grausamkeit]

Originally Posted by Alan

Grow up? We weren't the ones calling someone else a dumbass. What pains me is the blatant hypocrisy of your posts. You were the one that was originally butthurt, lashed out against a philosopher you only knew because of this very thread, and then you project yourself by saying we're the ones lashing out when someone disagrees.

I was not calling anyone on this forum a dumbass. Only some philosopher. Then you made up some assupmtions about me based on my observations about him.

Yes, grow up. I was not attacking you only talking about this Zizek person. I do not get bent and say that people are snobs or up themselves if they dislike someone I look up to or disagree with what they say or think.

[Alan]

Originally Posted by Grausamkeit

I do not get bent and say that people are snobs or up themselves if they dislike someone I look up to or disagree with what they say or think.

2 days before:

Originally Posted by Grausamkeit

You really believe that dumbass Zizek has anything of substance to say?

Originally Posted by Grausamkeit

This Zizek person sounds like some psuedo-intellectual who needs to actually do something with his time besides watching movies. I have little patience for philosophy or philsophers, all of the people I've known who have fancied themselves as such have always been full of horseshit.

Go play in another thread. This one is finally getting interested now that your inane comments were out of the picture.

[Grausamkeit]

Originally Posted by Alan

2 days before:
Go play in another thread. This one is finally getting interested now that your inane comments were out of the picture.

Must get exhausting running in circles the way you do.

[Mr.Doobie]

Originally Posted by grausamkeit

must get exhausting running in circles the way you do.

i-ron-eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

[Grausamkeit]

Originally Posted by mr.doobie

i-ron-eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Irony? Nah. I am too olde and busted to run in circles. Might break a hip.

[MechaSaya]

Alan, I think you're being trolled.

[Grausamkeit]

Originally Posted by HumanePain

On this particular point I must respond: wait until you reach middle age. The individual is not stagnant. We change as we learn new things. People who won't or can't change as they learn new things or go through new experiences are the ones I consider "truly lost", because they cannot leverage the new information or experience into expanding their scope, increasing the range of their radar. It is ok to put your hands in your head and rearrange who you thought you were into someone else.

I have been an adult for a long time; I thought I knew who I was and learned I was nothing more than lost in the herd of middle class, and had done nothing more than learned what to think rather than how to think.

My identity crisis saved me. It still does. And it started with throwing away titles.

I agree, individuals are not stagnant. I also believe that we can remain who we are without completely changing ourselves. I have learned and grown a lot in my adulthood, but I am still basically me. I am happiest in the things that I have discovered for myself, rather than adopting the beliefs of others. In that you are also correct. I appreciate your insight, HumanePain. You have given me food for thought.

[Saya]

I didn't reply originally because I thought Desp did a good job and I was super busy at the time and couldn't give a reply my all, and was particularly drained from a course I did in Buddhism (I bombed a paper because I was so burnt out from my intense Luther paper, I didn't put much into it, so I didn't do as well as I could have done). But I just did awesome on a midterm, I'm feeling cool hip and groovy and I want to tackle this now.

Zizek makes the assumption that all Buddhism is the same Buddhism. Buddhism in itself compromises several clashing ideologies that Buddhists have fought over since Buddha's death. After his death, there has been dissent among Buddhists, originality between those who wished the arhats to hold power, and held that arhats are very rare and most people will not achieve enlightenment, and those who believed arhats do not deserve power, and enlightenment can be achieved by anyone. There were other contentions, but this argument is what eventually divided Theravada Buddhism and Mahayana Buddhism. Theravada values arhats as revered Buddhas who should be followed, while Mahayana Buddhists wanted to subvert their domination. Early Mahayana texts frequently mock arhats, such as with the stories of Vimalakirti, who was only a lay person but frequently made an ass of arhats.

While some schools of Buddhism valued hegemony and patriarchy, other schools dissented. in the Vimalakirti Sutra, arhat Shariputra goes to Vimalakirti's house and meets a goddess. Shariputra believes a male body is better, and its true that even today there are schools that believe women cannot be enlightened. So Shariptura asks the goddess, if you have the power to change your body, why don't you choose a superior male form instead of a female form? The goddess replies that she has been searching for all of eternity for "femaleness" and found it does not exist. Shariputra questions her further, so the goddess turns him momentarily into a woman. When she changes him back to a man, she asks him, "what did you do with your female form?" Shariputra replies, "I didn't make it or change it." The goddess says, in all things, there is neither male nor female." In the goddess's teachings on nonduality, its the earliest argument for "gender is a mental/social construction" I have yet come across, and she directly challenged the sexism of the arhats. And this is canonized! And not to mention in the Tripitaka there is the Songs Of The Sisters written by very early Buddhist nuns who seem to have regarded themselves as equals to men, sexism was probably not institutionalize right away but added later.

And while you can criticize Westerners for appropriating Buddhism, keep in mind in some countries Buddhism is part of the hegemony and the state, such as in Thailand, and in feudal Japan. Western Buddhism for the most part does not rely on monasteries, that might have been the intention of the first Buddhists teachers to establish schools here but lay people greatly outnumber monks and nuns as religious followers. And because Buddhism is not a state institution, there is a lot more debate and dissent allowed, and discourse around principal ideas of Buddhism are changing, such as the rejection of the idea of reincarnation. Buddhism also has a broader social message, yes this can manifest itself as a shallow "Free Tibet!" slogan, but it can also manifest itself in social programs and anarchist organization. My introduction to anarchism was through Robert Aitken, who professed that it was the best means to organize. He never became a monk, just a roshi, and encouraged lay people to find their involvement in the public life empowering, and not a nuisance as tradition says. He was a founder of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship which operates as decentralized collective engaged in social services and activism.

That isn't to say that Westerners made Buddhism into a social religion, in feudal Japan it was the nuns of Tokeiji temple who gave refuge to women, protected them from abusive husbands and assassins, and petitioned for their right to divorce (which was granted if the women stayed there for a few years). The poem in my signature was written by an abbess of Tokeiji. The women of Tokeiji were shamed as "fallen flowers" by men, but Yodo sought to empower them and help them see their intrinsic buddha nature. During the Vietnam War Thich Nhat Hanh declared neutrality, sought to rebuild villages and would not turn away any who were wounded or who were in need, regardless of which side they were on. He founded the idea of Engaged Buddhism, the idea that Buddhism can become a vehicle of change, NEEDS to be a vehicle of change and serve the people, not shy away from the world. Cheng Yen in Taiwan had the same idea, created Tzu Chi Foundation, which today has medical schools, runs social programs for those in need and does relief work, such as during the earthquake in Japan.

At the same time, the samurai class were often Zen Buddhists, as were the ruling Emperors and Shoguns. Thing is, traditionally lay people were believed to be too busy with their lives to achieve enlightenment and were not held to the same standard as monks and nuns. Buddhist institutions depended on the state and so they grew to become servants of the state, hence supporters for aggression. There have always been dissenters as well, Ikkyu accused the abbot who accepted a purple robe from the royal family of being a thief and a liar, and Zen was actually very anti-materialist after persecution in China over the perceived greed of monks and nuns eradicated a lot of early Zen literature and teachings. In Western Buddhism, which says lay people often have an advantage over monks as the world is constantly in our face, we have better practice to cultivate compassion and awareness, and a greater ability to do good.

Unlike the monks pandering to shoguns and emperors I don't think the CEO practicing Zen to cope with financial loss is the same. One is the marriage of the institutional religion and the state, the other is the commodification of Buddhism. Buddhists are seen as a niche market, and spirituality is the commodity to sell to them. We see this with Dalai Lama self help books and Brad Warner pushing Buddhism as a "punk" religion that has very little history of sexism and oppression, now buy his books and give him money and marvel at how edgy his religion is. There is a ton of merit in saying certain schools of Buddhism are inherently hierarchical, such as Tibetan Buddhism, but the rest of us suffer the annoyance of our belief system being cheapened, packaged and sold, just like feminists get annoyed at Girl Power merchandise that ultimately says nothing, and communists facepalm at the Che t-shirts. I don't think that means Westerners collectively did Buddhism a huge disservice, in many ways I think we helped make it better, and it doesn't mean Buddhism doesn't have anything to offer.

I think a lot of radicals burn bridges to potential allies just for some kind of radical cred. The more you hate things that most people wouldn't think to hate, the more anti-establishment you are. I got a zine in Winnipeg that is saying "KILL MEN", then going on to say "well, not really, just kill the idea of men, since they oppressed us womenfolk for so long." And its super disappointing because the zine goes on to make some really awesome points about gender and war, but the moment you advocate gendercide then take it back and say "lol just trolling", you lose your audience. Its needlessly antagonistic, alienating, and does nothing to endear radicalism to most people. Mostly, it just makes you look like a douche.

[Saya]

Originally Posted by Alan

You are only seeing concepts insofar as they retain the same name, not in their immanent application.
Just see part of the phrase HumanePain quoted of that guy:
"If you do not know who and what you are with all of your worldly possessions/titles stripped away then you are truly lost."

Read that and tell me that is not the quintessential western appropriation of buddhism, and how many people have not expressed that same 'philosophy' as a way to cope with their lives?

I realized that I didn't even address the Hollywood thing. Even if Hollywood pulls the strings of America, the two most notable celebrity Buddhists are Richard Gear and Goldie Hawn, both Tibetan Buddhists. I think Seal is too. On every Buddhist forum I've ever been on, when someone asks "What are some Buddhist movies?" One of the first replies will be "The Matrix." And that's the big blockbuster we have. We have Kundun and Cry Of The Snow Lion, The Golden Child, Little Buddha and Seven Years In Tibet. Most of it centers around the politics of the Tibetan invasion and genocide, The Golden Child moreso on Eddie Murphy saving a little monk. The Matrix is the only thing close to Zen that made it big, the only movie I have yet to see that is very much about Buddhism was a Korean flick called Why Has Bodhi-Dharma Left for the East? The Tibetans got a feel good cause, we got THERE IS NO SPOON. I just don't see the major ideology being Buddhism, far more movies are made about Christianity and not all of them revolve around an invasion.

Unless you're talking about people picking what they like from Buddhism. This reminds me of Leo Tolstoy who argued that you cannot have morality without religion. Secularists, he said, pick what they like from the morality religion had brought, and they are superficial, rootless flowers they pick. I think we'd both agree that Tolstoy was wrong. However, lots of morals originate in religion and survive the loss of faith. When I stopped being Christian I didn't stop believing in the golden rule and the virtue of charity, my idea being that it was just common sense and good rules to have. If people find a moral in Buddhism that they like and pluck it, sometimes I think the meaning can be lost but also people can bring new meanings and maybe even better meanings. "Don't place your identity on material wealth and power" isn't special to Buddhism anyway, we didn't invent it. You might retain some morals after the loss of faith but you give new meaning to them.

[Grausamkeit]

Saya, I'm going to give the next person who tells me "Buddhism is sexist" an earful after your post!

[Saya]

Buddhism can be incredibly sexist! But again, from the start there were people calling bullshit on it.

Which is why its hard to make sweeping generalizations about Buddhism, shits complicated, yo. And there's the issue of multivocality and the general allowance of free speech that can make it confusing.

[Grausamkeit]

Originally Posted by Saya

Buddhism can be incredibly sexist! But again, from the start there were people calling bullshit on it.

That's my point. The people that have said that think that Buddism is Buddhism and don't realize(or don't care?) that there is far more to it than what they've seen.