Speculative Non-Buddhism
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Interesting choice of platform! Was this initiated by a moderator of the subreddit, or the publisher, or what?
Looking forward to seeing the kinds of questions that get asked. Looks like there are a few up already.
Yes, initiated by a moderator of the r/ShambhalaBuddhism subreddit. Why do you find it an interesting choice of platform?
The practitioners and teachers I’ve met who identify with Shambhala Buddhism have tended to be the most uncritical of x-buddhists, so I just thought it was interesting that they would initiate a critical discussion. You’d think that an x-buddhist platform would be the most appropriate one to discuss your critique but, it seems, the more Buddhist the platform is, the less capable its members are of engaging in such a discussion!
A question that is gnawing away at me – and I would love to hear your thoughts, as an old punk and a towering buddhist intellect –
Let’s take two groups of people, two reasonably well known groups under one banner, and put them, each at a different time, in a pub/bar.
Group one – the punk rockers.
Group two – Western Buddhists.
Both definitions capture a huge range of different people within each group. But let’s say they identify with their respective group labels and are happy to accept their labels as such.
Now the thing that gnaws at me is this – what would they talk about, over a period of say 3 hours?
I would predict:
The punk rockers would talk music, would talk concerts they have been too, wild drunken nights, drug trips gone wrong, radical politics, but the conversation would also move onto other things such as, what annoys them on public buses, the problems in northern Ireland, how to get rid of slugs from the garden, a great camping trip they had, what type of fish they like to fish for, how they cant work their new lawnmower, the downsides of libertarian politics, the failings of communism, the best way to get rid of mice in your house, etc. you get my drift.
Now group two, the buddhist – what would they talk about? I have a horrible feeling – that actually worries me as I carry on this solitary “path” – that the talk would not wander in this wonderful way between different subjects, entirely freely, not constrained by anything. Instead all roads would lead back to buddhism. All talk would be through a lens of a fairly narrow belief system. Even if non buddhist talk would break out, would it continue to break out freely, moving on and on through an infinite amount of talking points, or would it lead back always to the Dahmer, some how, even in a small way?
Do you catch my drift? Am I misperceiving something here. It can be like a violence against the soul, can’t it – this colonising of mind. Peace of mind and freedom, but at what price?
Hi James.
Thanks for your comment cum thought-experiment. Did you intend it to be part of the Reddit AMA? If so, can you post it at the link I provide in the post?
If not, here goes: I think you nailed it. But with a significant caveat. In my imagination (and actual experience!), the “punk” session would be a fecund field of discourse. Along with those topics you list, there would be arguments, passionate disagreements, creative slurs, humorous yet hurtful personal insults. Oh, and beer. In other words, a rollicking good time! BUT, it would all be identifiable as “punk” subjectivity. It would be punk, all-too-punk. I actually once got into an argument with guys from the LA punk band Black Flag on this very topic. I was riding with them in their van to a party after a show in Philadelphia. One of the roadies sneered at me, “you look like a college student, hahaha.” Everyone laughed. “I am a college student, you dumb fuck,” I did retort. I went on to make some comments about how people like them lessened the social impact of punk because they made it so easy to caricature, hence dismiss as a clownish farce. I have had similar scenes with anarchists and communists. The point is that membership in an ideological mutual agreement system is to be found even in supposedly liberatory practice formations, ones that, you would think, should know better.
When we come to your Buddhist discussion, it is more obviously marked by the principle of sufficiency. That’s the case, too, with punks and anarchists, in my experience anyway. And yes, talking to good-subject Buddhists is a mind-numbing experience. Everything must circle back to some x-buddhists this or that. In Laruellen speak, this is called auto-donation and auto-positing. Buddhist discourse interminably produces more Buddhist discourse. Buddhism is that which perpetually gives and re-positions Buddhism. Unlike punk discourse, which, as you show, can be sprawling and meandering and imaginative, x-buddhist discourse is disturbingly anemic intellectually. I once recommended to a fellow Zen practitioner that he read some poems by Hart Crane because he was invoking some themes from “The Bridge.” This guy looked at me like I had just offered to give him an enema. “That’s not a Buddhist book, is it,” he sheepishly muttered. “Fuck no, homie! You know what, forget it. You’re right, ‘it’s all in Dogen,'” I did retort. (That was an actual motto of the Zen group.)
Your thought-experiment makes clear to me both the necessity and real possibility of living within stranger subjectivity. Thanks again.
I thought you did great on this AMA, Glenn. I was very pleasantly surprised to see some really great questions and a good deal of critical enagement.
I would suggest reaching out to the moderators of other larger x-buddhist subreddits like /r/Buddhism or /r/Zen. I cynically expect you’d get a lot more pushback there, but based on the interactions I’ve had on those forums I know for a fact that there are may lurkers there who are ripe for ancoric loss and just need a little push.
Best,
FB