BY HENRY BLANKE
About 10 years ago I was hungry for an alternative to the vapid, platitudinous pablum that passes for discourse on American Buddhism. I was and am practicing Soto Zennist, albeit a critical one. Immanent critique of the non-thinking, willful anti-intellectualism and arrogant Dharmic sufficiency of the upper-middle way was my game. Then I stumbled upon Speculative Non-Buddhism and it was like dispatches from the Naraka demons. It took me some months before I began to crack the egg of the rather daunting Lauruellian jargon, but something about the scathingly polemical tenor of the site was bracing to me. (I suggested to my friend Mark, who was a veteran of Marxist ice pick fights and whose partner Anne was dabbling in Zen, to take a look. He commented that even the most vicious internecine Lenin-Trotsky brawls he had participated in were not comparable to these fanged, non-dharma duels.) So I read comments on comments which were often longer than the original posts. I came to the point where I wanted to discuss with Glenn some of ideas which SNB had ignited in me. I found him to be personable, gracious and happy to discuss my views. Some time later I joined his Practice Posse seminar and remember the group trying to invent non-Buddhist rituals (eg. we chanted the Stranger Sutra. How wonderful!). And I submitted a couple of things to SNB which Glenn posted.
Now, several years later, I am in Glenn’s Non-Buddhist Mysticism seminar at Incite Seminars. I would define mysticism as the experience of numerical oneness with the mystic’s environmental surround or postulated absolute. And it frequently involves ecstasy or “enstasy” as Mircea Eliade would have it. But whenever I have tried to introduce this crucial component of the mystical experience in our discussions Glenn has been apologetically and politely dismissive. Glenn, is it your self-admitted nihilism which leads you to elide or downplay ecstasy, jouissance, eudaemonia and joy as peak human experiences in favor of ferreting out all traces of ideological capture and the transcendent?
We seem to spend so much time reducing Buddhism, mysticism, utopia, theology, anarchism (?) etc. to their raw material that there is nothing workable left. I understand that Laurelle’s thought is the inspiration for your entire non- project, but maybe its time to consider other critical options. Even the notorious polemicist in-chief Pit Bull Pepper writes of the radical potential of Shin Buddhism. He does not perform an operation rendering it non-Shin.
As I understand it, Glenn’s nihilism calls for an unblinking gaze into the abyss of dissolution and void: the recognition that the world is utterly indifferent to human values and meaning. And that the human species is but a mere pip … pip in eons of the simmering cosmic ragu. But does this preclude a full-blooded engagement with the psycho-experimental methods which culminate in ecstasy such as Hindu and Buddhist tantrism. St. John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila and other Christian mystics were tormented by the dark nights when they had no mystical experience and God had abandoned them. They were totally dependent on God’s grace for bliss. Hindu and Buddhist mystics have no such problem. They have the ritual and meditational toolkit to occasion the experience. And if it comes or doesn’t does not disturb them. No God has deserted them and they know it will come again. It would be intriguing to a have a seminar on cross-cultural mysticism investigating the approaches of perennialism, both social constructivism and mediation as well as neurobiology. But please let it not be non- and let’s leave Laurelle out of it.
That being said it is a pleasure watching a top-notch and subversively anarchic mind such as Glenn’s thinking through multiplex, abstruse and compellingly urgent/useless issues with the rest of us in real time. I am a bit in awe of his erudition, commitment and lancet intellect. And I thoroughly enjoy and have learned from the wonderfully eccentric and insightful contributions of the other seminar participants. I look forward to the hearing everyone’s thoughts, comments, disputes and critiques on this matter.
Proleium incipient!
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Henry Blanke is a Soto Zen Buddhist and Marxian socialist. He had a nearly 30 year career as a Bataille inspired academic librarian and now counsels those struggling with substance abuse. He has written on Herbert Marcuse, the politics of information and most recently on the possible intersections between Zen practice and socialism. He lives in New York City and fancies himself a bohemian cosmopolite, a flaneur and a passionate jazz lover, poet, and home cook. See also, “A Thought Experiment for X-Buddhists,” “Keep It Simple, Stupid,” “An Erotic Theater of Flow: The Sexual Aesthetics of BDSM,” and “Han Pira Roshi.”
Non-Buddhism 
What do you think?