tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5043003269935490917.post9144704617921798322..comments2024-02-14T08:44:41.513+00:00Comments on Progressive Buddhism: Zizek's Western BuddhismMyeong Jin Eunsahn http://www.blogger.com/profile/10324409234993116264noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5043003269935490917.post-43192078363585952152010-01-25T18:44:17.005+00:002010-01-25T18:44:17.005+00:00Quick comment from an avid reader of Zizek.
The p...Quick comment from an avid reader of Zizek.<br /><br />The properly Zizekian response here would be to claim that the division between so-called Western (postmodern) Buddhism and "true" (scriptural) Buddhism is not an aftereffect of Buddhism's cooptation into America and European society but rather is a primordial cut inherent to Buddhism itself. In other words, the postmodern "interpretation" of Buddhism was part of Buddhism from the beginning, one of its intrinsic possibilities. In this case, Western Buddhism expresses what is to the scriptural Buddhists the repressed core of Buddhism proper, its relativistic complicity with the violence of Global Capital. So, for example, Suzuki's commentary on affirmation "not conditioned by a negation" (mirroring Nietzsche's notion of the Yea-sayer as well as Foucault's double circumscription of meaning and truth in philosophical archaeology) strikes a relativistic chord sharply contrasting Zizek celebration of Divine Violence, which depends upon a double negation. For Zizek, such an act must first step out from the coordinates of world-perpetuating activity by a radically negative gesture of non-participation; only by means of this negating gesture of freedom is the space opened for a true act. In what Zizek would call "a properly Hegelian paradox," freedom is the condition for freedom. <br /><br />But does this not put Plum Village alongside the Shanghai Commune and the Paris Commune in a line of radical communities who have dropped out of society and forged ahead with a new non-Capitalist vision? The answer is clearly "No." No where does Zizek celebrate the apolitical compassion of the sustainable, non-exploitative, and egalitarian Buddhist community. Plum village does not fit alongside the death-defying radicalism of Robespierre or the Red Guard in Zizek's narrative of world transformation for a simple reason: a Plum Village alive and well in the heart of capitalist Europe offers no fundamental challenge to the hegemony of Global Corporate Power. The Paris Commune and Shanghai commune occurred at the epicenter of world-transformative revolutionary violence --- to Zizek they were failed attempts to directly institutionalize the spirit of the revolution. Plum Village is what Zizek would call decaffeinated revolutionary -- the impossible revolutionary without the revolution. If, instead, on the proverbial day after the apocalyptic scene at the end of Fight Club -- after Tyler Durden destroys the computer databases of the main central banks -- yes, then Plum Village would be the site of revolutionary activity (the revolutionization of the revolution) -- and Durden's death would represent his truly Buddhist detachment from commodity fetishism. But without the explosives, the personal transformation does not make it into Zizek's pantheon: while Global Capital still calls the real shots, still controls the economic realities that interpolate and warp our reality and our choices, Plum Village remains an ideological appendage of Capitalism. <br /><br />My question is therefore a different one. Does a "True Buddhist" really care whether his faith is admitted into Zizek's pantheon? If so, why? Does he inwardly doubt this his path can build the world he envisions in the age of global ecological collapse and continental enslavement? The political dynamics of the modern world demand new questions of the original Buddha. The questions of freedom in the age of global finance cannot but change Siddhartha's path. The modern circumstance begs Buddhism to reveal what is in Buddhism more than Buddhism itself. <br /><br />And apropos to today: Who will build (and fight for!) a Plum Village in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. <br /><br /><br />(PS: I've read "Tarrying with the Negative", "Parallax View", "Violence", and "In Defense of Lost Causes.)Jacob Libbyhttp://yaa-coub.livejournal.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5043003269935490917.post-40749407083758602722008-10-11T00:34:00.000+01:002008-10-11T00:34:00.000+01:00That was an awesome article as it was patient with...That was an awesome article as it was patient with the subject and especially stayed with the thoughts of some Powerhouses of philosophy through when a lot of people disregard them because of provocative statements.<BR/>One thought. You wrote a section where the Buddha talked about the Middle path of two extremes. In a psychoanalytic of reading between the lines. "Two extremes ought not be practiced by one who has left himself behind. That of clinging to sense pleasures due to suffering and to deny the clinging of sense pleasure due to the desire to not suffer. There is no middle ground between them as there is no suffering. It is there that I tell you to walk." Isn't the Buddha describing Nietzsche's nihilism with the two extremes and gives the alternative predating Nigarjuna with Not-Logic? If so, over time the "Truths" have been turned into a big self-help program. No wonder it fits with Mr. Capitalism.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5043003269935490917.post-13611358402920934502007-12-05T09:40:00.000+00:002007-12-05T09:40:00.000+00:00Brilliant essay, Joe. I like Zizek, though it make...Brilliant essay, Joe. I like Zizek, though it makes me cringe to see him misunderstand Buddhism like this. But other than that, I think he makes some hard-hitting and important points about Western spiritual movements that echo Ken Wilber's Boomeritis Buddhism and related criticism of "<A HREF="http://www.wie.org/j34/stacey-intro.asp" REL="nofollow">Neo-advaita</A>".Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5043003269935490917.post-9266572892178911272007-11-24T18:46:00.000+00:002007-11-24T18:46:00.000+00:00I appreciate your extended commentary, Buddhist Ph...I appreciate your extended commentary, Buddhist Philosopher. I meant to make a similar addendum to my thoughts as I made on another blog that commented on this same essay. The key thing to understand about Zizek is that he is typically after not some reality behind illusion, but as he puts it, the reality in illusion itself. For reasons I'm still working to properly articulate, I think this comes close to issues in the buddhadhamma pertaining to conventional and ultimate reality.<BR/><BR/>My problem with Zizek in this essay, and generally with this topic, is that he does a sloppy job at maintaining this distance. This is especially so when he talks about the involvement of Buddhist beliefs in Japanese fascism. I think Zizek's point is important, but insofar as we maintain this distance from some "real" Buddhism, which in this critique is not so much our concern, and the kind of spectre of Buddhism that Zizek and myself have labeled Western Buddhism.<BR/><BR/>Western Buddhism, as I strived to develop it, is a concept related not as much to the Buddha's teachings (in spirit or in letter) as an ideological transformation in the West in which the Buddha's teachings get co-opted. In other words, Zizek's problem is with a thoroughly Western phenomena and body of beliefs. This phenomena is given a kind of definable body by the injection of Buddhist teachings and ostensibly Buddhist practices that brings them better into the open for critique, if perhaps for precisely how they misunderstand and misrepresent the Buddha's teachings.<BR/><BR/>The problem as I see it is not whether Zizek is really engaging the buddhadhamma, though it would be interesting if he did, but that he doesn't put enough distance between that kind of engagement and the one he makes with Western Buddhism. It's in the gap of this distance that we move from Buddhism as an immanent, lived practice and Buddhism as an ideology, or perhaps more fairly, an ideology masquerading as Buddhism. In this sense, I'm not arguing that there is some important difference between "Asian Buddhism" and what I'd prefer to call "Buddhism in the West." To me the split is not inherent to Buddhism practiced in the West (i.e. the problem is not that Westerners categorically "just don't get it"), but is nonetheless present there, and poses a problem for Buddhists in the West as much as it does political thinkers like Zizek.Joe Clementhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07708351256024540229noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5043003269935490917.post-70976443228771953792007-11-23T08:14:00.000+00:002007-11-23T08:14:00.000+00:00My limited experience of Zizek (reading 'The Art o...My limited experience of Zizek (reading 'The Art of the Ridiculous Sublime') wasn't very positive. In terms of style he came across as a pretentious obscurantist, as someone who was far more interested in sounding clever and in intellectualisation for its own sake, than in truth or reality or even in being clearly understood. Maybe I'm stupid, but his writing is almost indistinquishable from the <A HREF="http://www.elsewhere.org/pomo/" REL="nofollow">Postmodern Essay Generator</A>. <BR/><BR/>Zizek's essay seems to be a series of staw man arguments. He is responding to his own conceptualisations about well-trodden misconceptions of Buddhism. Does it need to be said that Star Wars and George Lucas' Buddist influences are hardly the definitive word on Buddhadharma? Anakin's over-attachment to things making him 'turn evil' owes more to Jung than Buddhism I'd say. Buddhism teaches that attachment causes suffering not evilness. Zizek makes the same mistakes as Nietzsche. Buddhism does not teach nihilism. Nihilism is an extreme view, an attachment which is to be released with the others. The practice I do, is engagement with reality with an open heart and mind, an appreciation of reality, a moral, generous way of living.<BR/><BR/>Where I disagree with you a little Joe is in your portrayal of western Buddhism as clearly distinct from Asian Buddhism, as if the people in Asia have a culture which is universally understood and agreed and which we whiteys can only pretend to get. <BR/><BR/>Possibly Buddhism is more widely misunderstood as nihilistic in the west - one of my teachers complains about this. However, this mistake has occured in the history of Buddhism before. Madhyamika philosophers like Nagarjuna have been consistently (and mistakenly) accused of nihilism by their peers for centuries. Attachment to such views would be, according to Nagarjuna, like "a customer to whom a merchant has said that he has nothing to sell and the customer now asks to buy this 'nothing' and carry it home."<BR/><BR/>Yet Buddhist's from all backgrounds do attach to their beliefs about the dharma, sometimes very tenaciously. We have to hold onto 'the raft' to get across the river. Yet the extent that Buddhism is seen as some sort of ideology is the extent to which it is misunderstood.Shoninhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03635409886545725801noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5043003269935490917.post-24111297848407449112007-11-21T14:31:00.000+00:002007-11-21T14:31:00.000+00:00Hi Joe, great post. I think you well-captured bot...Hi Joe, great post. I think you well-captured both the intrigue and frustration I and others have had with Western philosophers taking up Buddhism as a subject. From Schopenhauer to Zizek, they seem to grab the pieces that fit their presuppositions (good or bad) and then bend the rest to support their own ideas. I have an essay on Zizek and Buddhism I may clean up and post here soon too.<BR/><BR/>I agree with Zizek (and other Marxist-Freudians) that Western society and its capitalism are ultimately dysfunctional. I also share his and your (I think) concern that in the West, the so-called Buddhism may be dysfunctional too; insofar as it is a tool of disaffected individuals attempting to mediate their capitalistic consumption with their sense that there is something deeply wrong with their own actions. Such people equate these feelings with Christianity's emphasis on right and wrong and rather than face them, they gravitate toward Buddhism's so-called teachings of "all is one, it's just an illusion, life is beyond right and wrong, etc." Thus Buddhism provides an escape from (conventional/Western/Judeo-Xtian) morality and makes being a cog in the immoral capitalist machinery palatable (to the mostly well-educated affluent white Western Buddhists). <BR/><BR/>But of course Zizek, Nietzsche, and the rest gloss over the critical elements of Buddhism and the real struggle which is Buddhist practice (which you have well elucidated).<BR/><BR/>As a progressive and educated Buddhist, I often wonder if it is my place to 'put down' what I see as the wishy-washyness of so much Western Buddhism.Buddhist_philosopherhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14246929532585980356noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5043003269935490917.post-5593374382196882492007-11-20T23:11:00.000+00:002007-11-20T23:11:00.000+00:00Many thanks Joe for sharing an intelligently writt...Many thanks Joe for sharing an intelligently written post you've clearly put a lot of thought into.<BR/><BR/>As usual these days I don't seem to have a lot of time, but I hope to be able to respond a little more fully later. <BR/><BR/>JustinShoninhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03635409886545725801noreply@blogger.com