Personally, I discern (heh heh: after 'enquiry') that Buddhism (or one should really say 'Buddhisms' since there are many and they are not all in agreement with each other) is incompatable with 'Western processes' (but not completely incomensurate). While 'emptiness' (sunyata) is said
not to be synomymous with our own 'nihilism', I suggest that the abstract notion of 'emptiness' (which is part-and-parcel of an
extremely metaphysical projection, a subjective perceptive position,
a choice) is appropriated by (Western) neo-Buddhists and melded in a strange and deforming way with our own Western mental processes. Therefore, it
feeds a variety of nihilism, or perhaps is merely opportunistically destructive? or as I have suggested a 'survival strategy'? (in the face of terrible, mechanistic opposition: the 'true nihilism' of the present).
In this, with this
application of 'neo-Buddhism' (I pick up Dennis Mahar by the tail in precisely the same manner as one would pick up a dead rat and thump him down on the table as evidence), all meaning, all value, all
conversation that is not specifically circular within these appropriated but misapproriated terms, ceases. Handled in this way by a mediocre, uneducated lout who is also a sort of intellectual terrorist (or perhaps a Vandal?) these ideas are tools and are used in a
burrowing manouvre. The Ass Who Talks® begs you to consider and to think through what is suggested with this!
So, even if this (Eastern) notion of
sunyata might be considered a pertinent idea and something that could be conversed fruitfully, the way it is handled and employed is tragically flawed. I think that one could expand on this and speak about it a great deal more. Yet this 'it' (the destruction of meaning, the destruction of conversation, the negation of value, while another, subversive value-system is clearly asserted) evinces the capacity to desire to annihilate all critical stances. In this sense. 'it'
permits no enquiry!
The Nietzschean idea is useful: One, that Nietzsche considered Buddhism (though flawed in his view and 'decadent' in his sense) he nonetheless recognized that it has a 'noble' object: to relieve suffering. In contradistinction, he despised Christianity since its object is to eliminate 'sin' and so self-creates vast categories of activity and focus that are...absurd on one hand, partial on the other, diverting on yet another, and self-consuming. Yet still I think we need to mention the Nietzschean notion of How the Real World Was Transformed Into a Fable, and why this comes about, in respect to Buddhism. First, the Buddhist ideas originate in Fables. Take The Heart Sutra:
- "Avalokita, The Holy Lord and Bodhisattva, was moving in the deep course of the Wisdom which has gone beyond. He looked down from on high, He beheld but five heaps, and he saw that in their own-being they were empty."
I am willing to consider and look at elaborate metaphors, but I do believe still that we have to realize that these ideas arise from a peculiar form of abstraction, and this abstracted position can be questioned, inquired into. I will also say that this kind of metaphysical and even mythological platform (for looking at reality) must be understood as such. In this sense, 'we' Buddhists of the West seem to go about (merely) replacing one mythological construct, or metaphysical system, with another metaphysical system, but one that has a seeming tendency to feed on, even to devour and render mute, inutile and futile, an
ENTIRE structure or path or 'way-of-being' that is 'our own'. In my own case, I do not now nor have I ever felt attraction or sympathy with 'Buddhist' ways of seeing reality. Essentially, it seems to have a tendency, for aesthtic reasons I suppose, to enforce a game of perception as against another, or a group of others. It arises in the Indian context as a rebellion, a redefinition, a reassertion, and in this sense very clearly (from Nietzschean perspective, which is useful here) gives form to (another and unique) Will-To-Power. Again, in these conversations, I submit as evidence (again, taking him by the tail as if he were a dead, infected rat) our own Dennis Mahar. At every turn there is a declaration of a Value: 'it is valueless and meaningless'. One supposes or imagines that the 'value' or the 'thing' being explained and defended is (now) a Supreme Value, in the same sense that (generally) The Buddha is described and perceived as an ultimately incomprehensible center of all possible value, which is a projection of transcendent qualities (and rather typical).
- All those who appear as Buddhas in the three periods of time fully awake to the utmost, right and perfect Enlightenment because they have relied on the Perfection of Wisdom.Therefore one should know the prajnaparamita as the great spell, the spell of great knowledge, the utmost spell, the unequalled spell, allayer of all suffering, in truth - for what could go wrong? By the prajnaparamita has this spell been delivered. It runs like this:
'Gone, gone, gone beyond, gone altogether beyond, O what an awakening, all-hail!'
---from The Heart Sutra
My impression so far, despite the fact that this sort of scripture can be considered and discussed (though any conversation of it always seem to take place on a non-existant platform, a no-place where everything has disappeared, mysteriously, and where those who dominate the conversation (and its 'meaning')(and note too that one has to rely very heavily on inverted commas! since now there is no real thing! there is no existence even! they all have to be written in mind-fuck: 'existence' 'meaning' 'value' 'self'!), is that any 'conversation' become startlingly circular, a game of a conversation in which he who handles no-value and no-meaning more fluently, or he who makes all the right declarations, 'wins'. It becomes very clearly a game of Assertions, a game of Defenses, and strangely a game of Winning. In this sense one notes the issue of Will To Power. And as M. Nietzsche noted we
have to will something, even if it is 'nothingness'!
- Diebert writes: "Causality as such stands above even sickness and health. It doesn't belong to any category or ontology. That's why it cannot be any psychological and physiological "outcome" of any kind. This is why the term "absolute" is applied. Perhaps one could say it's not even "philosophy" then if you'd insist that it would not be comparable."
To my mind, there are ideas and meanings and possibilities that can be discussed, with this. I believe I see your point in any case. But I differ with the second sentence, if only because the notion of Causation (as I have seen it handled) is part of a power-play of holding, handling, 'wielding' an 'ultimate' and 'absolute' sense. He who 'handles' this Absolute or some sense of Ultimate or Original or Infinite Causation, controls all sense of meaning, value, etc. It also becomes part-and-parcel of a new form of mysticism, and hinges into numerous mystical appreciations. Again, it all has to do with the way that these ideas are
used. This distinction has to date never been registered or considered here, in this place (GF).
[to be continued]
Thus, The Golden Ass,
That Master of the Trilokas,
Concludes This Morning's
Utterly Valuable,
Pithy,
Extremely wOndErfULiCioUs
and Really Rather Juicy
Prajnaparamita-Discourse!
All Hail the Ass Who Talks!
(And Stay Tuned...
Suite a la Prochaine!)
(
Ladies! I
MAY also include HD interactive images of my you-know-what!)
(
Someone has to compete with
Dan the Crooner...)
________________________________________________________
- PS: Dennis had earlier written:
"OK, you're off the tit,
now get back in the womb and stay there!
come back fit for inquiry.
It's just north of Ass if you can't find it."
The 'meaning' of this was a commentary (I assume) on my posting of a song and a scene from a modern movie. One assumes, though one cannot be sure, that any aesthetic or cultural expression (art in a nutshell) must, by virtue of the supremecy of these doctrines of illumination, freedom and 'Absolute Truth', utterly pale any human expression, any view to the beautiful (however defined, appreciated), and with this every single aspect of human life, human cultural life, human accomplishment, but specifically that of the West, must be seen as 'value-less', irrelevant, unconscious, 'ignorant'. Hence the reference to 'getting off the tit' (Diebert who provides real nourishment through his wonderful, old-European, matron's breast---with Buddhist, Baudrillardian and post-Christian flavored milk!) and crawling back into 'the womb', which is everything except what Dennis (et al) is holding as a Supreme Value. It is this tendency, this noted trait of the GF, that is one its most alarming characteristics: it is a form of terrorism by Vandals: northern hordes who sweep down on the plains for booty...
They are themselves culturally dead and even spiritually dead but they yet 'feed on' living structures. Beware when they set up home in
your town plaza!
Oh look! GF has a
new Get-Up!