Thursday 5th August 2004

Richard Sansom Writes:

Hi Gary,

Thank you for a bit of Bob’s personal history with Buddhism. I studied, and tried to practice Zen Buddhism for several years, but eventually slipped back into my lazy ways – of being simply “myself.” Though I certainly appreciate those who pursue Buddhism or Taoism it is important to understand that any religion that is chosen, as an adult, because of its intellectual appeal is bound to be quite different from that which one is born into and culturally surrounded by. I have read much Oriental literature/fiction, both Chinese and Japanese, and there one finds some of the meat of the matter – how the common person, the peasant, the intellectual, the politician, those in charge, see and practice their religion. For the “peasant” especially, the blind adherence to any faith is devoid of any intellectual choice, and there was (is) great dependence on the gods and a handful of the faith’s tenets – but never any intellectual choice involved.


GCM: It is not hard at all to fall in love with Japanese culture. it is understanding how it came about the way it did, and the same unsentimental gaze must be turned towards ourselves. I think the Japanese have much the same love-hate affair with us as we do with them. We have what they want. They have what we want. And this is at all levels. Even a fair amount of Chinese culture is only preserved through the Japanese. When I was in Germany in 1967, they either loved Americans or hated our guts and told us so to our faces as if we had just kicked dog shit on them. Again, mutually interelating desires. In fact, we may not even be able to live without each other anymore. We can talk to each other now and come to firm agreements each party will keep. We all have something we can give each other. We hold them to keeping a half-decent government in power and they give us culture and technology. And we altogether keep the World Bank going . . . but even I seriously wonder about that and whether anyone really knows what they are doing. After all, 9/11 is directly tied to that, and they could not see that coming, though most morons could.



I have known those who pursue Buddhism overtly, in meditation, study and practice, and I have known those who show no interest in such things, but live a life that would be considered as being close to that of a devout practitioner of Buddhism. For my own part, I pursued something that I believe I embraced beforehand – not the “eightfold path” but some quality of Zen Buddhism that simply had a kind of visceral appeal as well as an intellectual one. I once met a (real) Buddhist, one from birth, who thought the whole American pursuit was superficial and faddish, and I think he had a good point. Around the time (1964-1975) of the flower children, Ravi Shankar, Bob Dylan, Allen Ginsberg, Timothy Leary, lots of pot and LSD, in which I imbibed for many years, Zen was attractive to many young people who believed that the inner self was accessible with drugs and the lotus position and Ommm, etc. It has by now faded away. I suppose there are genuine practitioners of Buddhism who came to it by intellectual choice, and who use it honestly as a way of life, but I believe them to be quite rare.

I remember that at one point, a long time ago, I read some conversations (probably apocryphal) between Lao Tzu and Confucius, and something clicked for me regarding making a deep study of the whole matter. When Confucius spoke to Lao Tzu about goodness and duty, the latter pooh-poohed any fixation on such abstractions and any writings by the sages who discuss them. I believe he was right.

I imagine that an occidental can, like Kierkegaard and his Christianity, come to Buddhism through a leap of faith, but this is a process I have no real understanding of.

Perhaps Bob can say more about his experiences and what if anything he has gained from them.

You are touching on some very important things here that make me think. My first reaction is . . . how much is an 'educated' person's choice different from the "blind adherence" of the "peasant", how much more 'clear' sight is actually involved? Random observations to start.

(A) The structure and values of peasant society in China and Vietnam endured essentially the same over thousands of years. Is this a virtue or vice? I am trying to proceed with as few preconceptions as possible. They were very closed and extremely conservative societies minding their own business until the intrusion by landlords or tax collectors demanding MORE made them become violent and arrogant. It reminds me of a supposed Russian peasant's statement, "My soul is the Czar's but the land is mine." Which might translate into, "They can have all the money (cash) but when the money is gone and they still want more, mine and their asses are on the line." War maybe the key to the dissolution of peasant political 'persuation'.

(A. 1) The continuous civil wars of the warlords of Japan put every one at extremes of behaviour except the coddled emperor in Kyoto. The warlord demanded literally unconditional obedience from the samurai warrior. The samurai warrior did exactly the same to those beneath him. Everyone beneath the warlord was literally expendable. This was an alternate message of the Japanese movie THE 40 RONIN the Japanese at Sony thought it truly protrayed Japanese culture. The same message came, but this time the theme was deliberate and straight forward, from the socialist and anti-militarist Akira Kurosawa in THE SEVEN SAMURAI. The peasantry in Japan were deliberately crushed to near constant starvation -- if they were lucky -- and shamed into a total loss of any self-respect in any despicable way imaginable (I tend to get a little emotional about this). This theme occurs constantly in Kurosawa's films, the film in Japan being very possibly the only open means of expression that is popular. My reaction is always, "How can people even bear to live like that?" Some keen reviewer of Tom Cruse's THE LAST SAMURAI brought up the point that the film portrayed all the noble and Zen Buddhist aspects of the Samurai warrior as if the social classes in Japan lived in perfect traditional harmony when outside dispicable Western influences are 'corrupting' them, when in fact samurai authority was always inforced immediately and on the spot with the utmost cruely and there was no social harmony. The reviewer also pointed out the Westernized army was a liberating factor since peasants were learning Western technology to dominate samurai ways of thinking. Jud, what are your Trotsyite thoughts? Even Richard Chamberlain's SHOGUN showed the real relation of social classes better.


 
Jud:
I think Trotsky would have characterised ANY religion or philosophy the purpose of which was to urge a self-induced, auto-submissiveness or an imposed subservience and subsidiarity as being equally evil. Nowadays I would not categorise myself as a Trotskyist incidently. Like you are undoubtably a Moorist, and Richard is a determined Sansomist, I am  I believe a true Evansist.  The only "hero" I would own up to is the great Polish modern nominalist Kotarbinski.
Evansist is much easier to pronounce than: "Kotarbinskiist" anyway.

(A. 2) War in Sung China, when the Chinese ceased to possess a strong cavalry to control the nomads across the great wall, slowly and more indirectly wrecked peasant society as Sung ecomy started out becoming one of the strongest in the world even for centuries to come. Is this ringing any bells? But as nomad incursions became more and more threatening, the tribute paid them to keep the peace became greater, the necessity of maintaining a much larger standing army caused tremendous tax increases gradually that ended up over 75% of peasant income -- the higher the social class, the less the taxes: Ring any bells? This slowly drove the peasants off the land lord's land into small bandit groups that no one seemed to be able to organize into a real force. Mao tse-tung's hero Li-tzu at the end of the Ming dynasty was emencely more successful. Relate to the neglible status of American labor unions. The Sung emperors had actually and deliberately established a kind of democrasy. The founder established three rules all his sucessors were to obey, two of which were never execute officials for honesty doing their jobs and never raise the taxes on the peasants. We have seen the second go by the board, while the first created two legally recognized political parties among the emperor's appointed conselors -- ring any bells? -- the Reformers and the Conservatives. The conservative's policies failed continuously and so badly they only came to power when the emperor was a minor and the mother-empress was regent. As soon as the emperor was in power, the Reformers were back in place -- AFTER all the dage had been done. But let us consider the whole picture overall. The Sung, never regaining a strong cavalry as they had under the Han and the T'ang and would have again under the Ming (becoming however a different situation) even though they tried desperately to build such a force, still had such a tremendously strong economy they lasted in power from 968 AD to 1276 AD, about as long as the other three major CHINESE dynasties.

(A. 3) War in Vietnam: Essentially the pattern is this -- Vietnamese identity, essentially peasant nationalist identity, became so strong after the breakup of the T'ang empire, a series of PEASANT Vietnamese warlords established themselves throughout what is now known as the northern part of North Vietnam (JUST the Red River valley). The point is -- their territory compared to China was TINY. The warlords fought amongst each other until, when the Sung came to power, the Chinese wanted to reassert their dominance again. Now, there was a lower cadre of Vietnamese civil service type Chinese style officials leftover from the T'ang in Vietnam. But all social classes united in kicking Sung butt out of Vietnam SEVERAL TIMES! This is not a propaganda ploy. Think about it. It would be like New Jersey or Delaware kicking the butt of the rest of the United States. Mere pragmatic necessity mandates absolutely everyone in Vietnam whole heartedly supported the war effort. And peasant rebellions and/or support was behind the assession of several royal families in Vietname afterwards. The Tay-son rebellion I mentioned before establish their own emperors from their own peasant class. However, peasants are socially (in a communistic sense) and technologically conservative. The technological superiority of the French was never adapted to like the Japanese did to Britain and the USA and Germany. However, Vietnam stayed in a constant state of rebellion under the French because the geographical terrain gave the Vietnamese the advantage. There were numerous different nationalistic groups compeating for political dominance. But only the Viet-Minh appealed directly to Buddhist peasant values. This is key and relevant to the discussion of Buddhism.

The United States never understood the nature of Vietnamese Buddhism that was held by 80% of thec population. It was NOT sophisticated like the Buddhism of China or Japan. It appealed to NO Western elite whatsoever . . . until the last five years! That's a kicker isn't it! The French totally despised and disregardede it, touting the intellectual superiority of French Catholicism. No wonder Pol Pot killed anyone that spoke French who was outside the Khymer Rouge. The Vietnamese middle class that was Buddhist was so desperate they created an artificial religion that was an amalgum of Buddhism and Catholicism whose Saint was Joan of Arc and whose symbol was a dragon with the face of Victor Hugo!!! But the Vietnamese peasant endured everything and survived.

Why Hugo's face and not Heidegger? Oh yes - the French connection - I forgot.
(wink.)

The American soldiers coming into contact with Vietnamese Buddhist peasants thought their religious expressions primitive and downright stupid. And they were as abstract expressions of religious thought. But Vietnamese Buddhism was not religious, it was SOCIAL! It was a social commitment of class solidarity against the class of French educated Catholic landlords which the Americans could never crack. The South Vietnamese Army routinely collected land rents from the peasants for the landlords till JUST THREE MONTHS before Saigon fell in 1975.

(A. 4) Buddhism in Korea: Korea had a distinct nationalistic culture from China starting from about the same time as Vietnam. After strong nationalistic governments were established -- unfortunately often several different ones -- they were able to able to kick Chinese butt enough to gain respect. However, they had a different problem that the Vietnamese had until the French came -- they had the Japanese across the Straits of Tsushima. In about 1570, the Japanese warlord Heydioshi decided to conquer Korea since their merchants were doing so well in Japan, their craftmen were extremely highly valued, and their food supplies shoring up Japanese insufficiencies since samurai so loved to kill peasants. He invaded and started a war that lasted about fifteen years, enforcing Japanese values so much with the edge of the sword that the Japanese literally were committing genocide, and killed off so many Korean peasants that they, though they had occupied most of the country, were literally starving to death. Then the Korean Navy with their armoured turtle boats attacked and completely destroyed the Japanese navy. You can see representations of the turtle boats on modern South Korean coinage. The Japanese made peace and left. But they never forgot the humiliation.

In 1895, the Westernized and industrialized Japanize Army ( a lesson in Marxist Adam Smith-type economics) went to war with China and smashed them. They got in the treaty Chinese recognition of Japanese possession of the Rykuyu Islands (a Chinese tributary and otherwise independant empire untill around 1877), the island of Taiwan/Formosa off Hong Kong and the Phillipines, "influence" in southern Manchuria and "influence" over the Empire of Korea as a Protectorate. Jud knows how "Protectorates" operated under the British Empire. In 1910 the Japanese annexed Korea outright. They erased Korean culture. One only learned Japanese in school. The Korean was made more subservient even than the Japanese peasant. And the Koreans still hate the Japanese.

In 1945, through the truly liberating beneficence of the atomic bomb (and I am NOT being sarcastic), both Japan and Korea were liberated. The Communist Russians got the Noth above the 38th parallel and the United States got the South. The Koreans loved the Americans . . . . but they also loved the Russians. Even Russian rule was wonderful compared to the Japanese. Now I hope some of the intentionally created American political fog -- as in Vietnam -- begins to clear. Korean culture had been degraded and devastated for fifty years under the Japanese. There was no Korean culture really viable any more. Communism was taken to whole heartedly in the North and Christianity with all its really weird quirks in the South. Buddhism became a mere cultural artifact, very quaint. The Korean CIA was created after the Korean War under the Syng-mun Ree dynasty, and suddenly Tae-kwan Do masters appeared all over the United States. After all, Koreans not liking Communists or Syng-mun Ree imigrated to the United States and someone must control them since the US is so slack, right?

Now: CHOICE. History determines our intellectual viewpoints. It determines them allowing many variations, but always within a distinct context. Every variation relates to that context primarily so that any influence coming from outside that context gets severely re-interpreted. Vietnam is a glaring example. Korea is an example when that context is destroyed. David Hume in his wisdom decided the Established Churches should be left alone. So he essentially became that 'contradiction', an atheist Tory. But this was allowed for and had its place in the context of British society -- do you agree Jud? Therefore Buddhism in the US is a purely American phenomenon. How goes Buddhism in Britain, Jud? There have been some notable British Buddhists.

Richard :

I think you are partially correct. I am born into Popper’s World 3, there is no doubt of that if I am an American or Brit or German, etc. All the accouterments of that world inform me, if I allow it, about life, religion, morality, society, money, work, etc. But I am also unique, and my intellectual viewpoint is an amalgam of those influences together with whatever my genes may dictate – not to mention the influences of my immediate early family upbringing. Here's an interesting aside: I was in Japan for a while during the Korean war, in the small town of Misawa in northern Honshu. I hated everything about the country, the scenery, the people, the absurd sounding music, the fact that we were hated more or less openly except when we went into a shop and wanted to buy something. Many years later, perhaps twenty, I took an interest in things Japanese. (Why? I have no idea) Lately I have taken lessons in kangi calligraphy, and I still read Japanese and other Oriental literature. My son, probably catching this from me (?) married a woman who speaks fluent Japanese and he has learned enough to get by when they visited Japan. Why did this happen to me? How was my turnabout influenced by history? I believe the process of CHOICE is a complex one, too complex to claim that history is the strongest determinant, though it is certainly part of the process. Generalizations are always risky.

CHOICE is only possible within the conceptual language one has inherited. This is one thing HEIDEGGER promulgated but but sure the hell could have made a great deal clearer than he did. So, Richard, we speak and think American, not English. The English have a tradition, we don't. We have done to ourselves what the Japanese did to Korea intentionally. Buddhism appeals to us because no real tradition competes with it. And I must admit Buddhism, especially Ch'an Buddhism, appeals to me a whole hell of a lot more than Christianity or Wall Street, the real Established Church in the US. The Japanese business establishment, extremely conservative and careful, criticize and fear, not only our lack of education but, most of all, our PAPER economy. The American dollar is solely based on the stock market and American government bond rating which HAS TO stay at a A PLUS PLUS rating or everything goes to hell. The Japanese Yen is the same way, but the Japanese want to get rid of their Yen and buy dollars, yes, American companies and stock, yes, but also American COPYRIGHTS (other countries are very skiddish about selling the Japanese their copyrights -- ask the French), and material items as such in general. One is very stupid to have large static accounts in Japanese Yen. What does that say about the dollar? Karl Marx believed that gold was the only sensible security behind money . . . but I could be wrong? Dispute me. (Surely someone wants to note my arrogance and ignorance.) It at least gave a material entity behind paper money other than simply more paper.

Richard:

I am not sure I agree that “we speak and think American, not English.” This suggests that there is an all pervasive “American” intellectual and historical milieu to which we belong and cannot avoid.  I can't see how you can say: “. Buddhism appeals to us because no real tradition competes with it.” Who is this “us?”  Certainly not the general American public! As far as our tradition, or lack of it, that is an interesting point. What is “tradition?”  If it is habituation to what has gone before, how long must that “before” exist to create tradition? A thousand years? A hundred?

GCM: I would definitely say -- and I want to be clear about this -- it is a DEFICIENCY upon our part, else why would we be so blindly arrogant and careless in foreign affairs? Buddhism DOES have a real tradition, however I may dissect it in its political reality, and, for an American intellectual provides a fascinating field in which one discovers every aspect of life tied together. If nothing else, it provides a worthwhile strawman to fight against. Buddhists investigate in depth what goodness is, many times without even evil to balance it. The English, at least in my rose tented lenses have developed a fine sense of good and bad, not eveil, in many variations and subtlties. In America, I run into constantly that what good and evil are depend upon what "my" mood is at the moment, a sense of constant hysteria running through all decision making at every level, and I am truly amazed we manage to continue to exist from day to day. Radical contradictions of plain logic abound everywhere and I can no longer see any single ascpect of American life that makes any sense any more.

I can tell you this: I feel I have much more in common with Jud, than I do with some creationist cracker from Mississippi. There is also the “Western tradition” that can cast a broader net than the national one – depending on the person. Do you agree?

GCM:

RICHARD I am surrounded by them every day. Total nonsense is my existence I must thread through, relying upon everyone's thinking I'm somewhat cracked in the head and never saying what I really believe. Insanity and hysteria, and I mean it literally. I can definitely understand an authority figure laying it down a tradition everyone must visibly respect because it creates a mutual ground of human understanding even with a tradition with many things wrong with it. THERE things can be said that can be taken seriously, that is, people must consider the rational consequences of their acts. Here, American managerial theory is, as long as you don't get caught, do it. And the example of someone else being caught doesn't mean anything to them. And since each managerial type has something to hide, every other manager is afraid to squeal on them because they have dirty laundry also. So whole huge structures of open, naked corruption grow up mutually supporting each other because they all know no one will blow the whistle. And if someone does, as with Enron, they manage quiet damage control, and people literally get away with murder. A typwritten suicide note, Jesus! And taken seriously!

RICHARD: There is also the "Western tradition" that can cast a broader net than the "national one" depending on the person. Do you agree?

Gary. C. Moore:
Western European definitely.

Abstraction.
I am finding this is the real issue in Karl Marx. He inherited this from Hegel because Hegel was by far the most logically consistent Idealist thinker and regarded the problem of the solid, enduring though not eternal, reality of material finiteness as something that, not only had to be recognized, but incorporated wholesale into Idealism so that material reality could neither claim a dualistic reality with the "infinite" Idea or even be more substantial. Marx was a parasite off Hegel because Hegel was truly a genius at Idealistic abstraction and recognizing how an Idealist metaphysics MUST adapt itself to the threat of material reality. And Marx seems to be one of the few who really understood Hegel -- not Engels, he seems (dispute me) to have wanted to make the very matter of nature "dialectical", something both Colletti and Sartre have pointed out and Colletti doesn't like Sartre so the observations are not interdependent, (reminding me of a Scholastic theologian gone mad) -- and it gratifies me than it is the British Hegelians in the 19th Century who most truly appreciated Hume (NOT an Idealist like Lenin said -- and who untypically did NOT back up his argument) and understand the thorough goingness of his logical, not practical, scepticism.

     Now, having re-read the chapter in volume 1 of CAPITAL on the fetishism of the commodity and exchange value (1) I am astounded how little I understand Marx the first time I read him, and (2) completely missed the point the whole dispute between capitalism and communism in Marx himself revolves around the abstracting or fetishizing or reification of commodities and exchange value. His dispute with Adam Smith and David Ricardo is that they almost but not quite realize the depth of the problem, yet have otherwise got it right. And if you simply realize the literal situation, however you may further interpret it, there is the contrast of "use value" where a human being in their literal existence use things to achieve the material desires and their is the "commodity" and "exchange value" that are calculated in all their important economic relations according to abtract formulas. All reality is material reality dependent on factual particularities and abstractions are merely convenient tools that shave off WHAT SEEM like irrelevant particularities and are JUDGED PURELY, are VALIDATED PURELY by the success of their application however much REAL DETAILS are left out of their consideration. However, the structure of scientific revolutions comes from the realization that precisely these "unimportant" details, left unaccounted for, cause MAJOR PROBLEMS IN THE APPLICATION OF THOSE "SUCCESSFUL" ABSTRACTIONS OVER PERIODS OF TIME!!!!!!!

     Now, what Marx wants to constantly insist on is the utter devaluation of the literal and particular hand of the worker as well as the literal and particular mind that invents the process the worker works through. Modern managerial theory and modern economics utterly ignore these things in their ACTUAL APPLICATION, abstracting them beyond all meaningfulness although they are the VERY BUILDING BLOCKS OF THE REALITY THEY ARE ABSTRACTING FROM!!!!

     One image of this is coinage in precious metals that operate as use values which Marx says "Monetary Theory" dispises such crudeness of thinking, AND THEN "modern Monetary Theory" despises the crudeness of the "old" "monetary Theory". Two of the causes of the GREAT DEPRESSION were (1) the literal and particular collapse of the whole farming environment in the SPRING of 1929, and (2) the gigantic towers of "holding companies" build on top of each other ACTUALLY BASED ONLY UPON ONE REAL AND ACTUALLY OPERATING COMPANY AT THE BOTTOM OF THE TOWER!!!!! However, each "holding corporation" issued stock on itself so that IN ACTUALITY for THE REAL COMPANY there were numerous shares of stock issued for the price of each individual share of stock for the REAL company. So if the real company failed, a hundred holding companies would also fail.

     Now, go to present day Wall Street where a company's value is purely based on paper reports from the company and very rarely on actual objective assessments of of productivity versus the issuance of stock AND ITS VOLITILLITY!!!!!! ESPECIALLY BY CEOs and BOARD MEMBERS issued with numerous different kinds of stock bonuses THAT IS STILL NOT AT ALL CONTROLLED BY COMMON SENSE, AND THE LAW IS TOTALLY INEFFECTUAL. You you see the problem? Once again there is little relation numerous times, especially Enron, between actual productivity and the actual issuance AND SELLING of stocks.

     NOW, FOR THE HEIDEGGERIANS . . . Heidegger once said somewhere: "I don't remember where, Hegel ALMOST got it 'right'. I do not understand what he meant though I have read his lectures on the PHENOMENOLOGY OF SPIRIT. "

'Sincerely',

Gary. C. Moore

RICHARD:

One reason I left my home state of Texas, in 1959, was to escape that nonsense. While at UT there were places to escape, like minded friends, poets, philosophers, and some very far out strange folks -- this was 1957-1959 -- pre-hippie. I know all the Texas is not hard over conservataive dummies, but fiding those who are not must be hard for you. Where I live now is more left, very diverce, rather laid back, as one would expect N. California to be. My sympathies, Gary!

Regards, Richard

PS This discussion on Buddhism is very enjoyable and I have taken down some texts I have not read for many years and found my underlines, and rememebered why I did ithem. I will comment on your other post later.