Buddhism and Zen Buddhism

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. 
 
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.
 
Gary. C. Moore:
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 to either church or state as being equally  evil.  
It reminds me of the evil Nazi Statist Heidegger and his  Hitlerite Rectoral 
Address. 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. I steer clear of cults,  unless I am 
interested in studying them out of curiosity that is. 
 
Gary. C. Moore:
(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 le
ftover  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. 
 
Jud:
Why Hugo's face and not Heidegger? Oh yes - the French connection - I  forgot.
(wink.)
 
Gary.C. Moore:
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.
 
Gary. C. Moore:
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? 
 
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?
 
 
 
Gary. C. Moore:
Abstraction. 
 
I am finding 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 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 and enduring. Marx was a parasite  off 
of 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" (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  
untypically did NOT back up his argument) and understand the thorough goingness  of his 
logical, not practical, scepticism.
 
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. "
 
Regards,
 
 
Gary. C. Moore.


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