Date: Thu, 14 Feb 2002 10:57:28 -0800 (PST)
Subject: Re: AUT: Re: Re: Star Wars and Archetypes


Tahir, Commie00,All

I think that there are some interesting aspects
to an a-theistic buddhism such as Zen Buddhism.
I think the practice of experiencing the world,
without the mediation of abstractions is interesting.
I dont know if this has any applicablity to
"revolution"...and if it doesn't, so what?

On the other hand, there does seem to be this tendency
in Zen to just accept things as they are.  I once did
a 
week long silent meditation, not in Zen, but in a
somewhat similar school of Buddshist meditation,
Vipassana.  The emphasis was on watching phemomena
arise and pass without intervening...just observe.
Now if generalized to all of life, and I think this
does happen sometimes with Buddhists, this means a
type of passivity.

Tahir, you did ask if there were any instances of
revolutionary activity among Buddhists.  I dont know
much about it generally..but who can forget the
picture of that Buddhist monk in Vietnam who set
himself on fire in protest of the war?  Maybe this
isn't the type of revolutionary activity that we would
recommend...but I bet that picture had a huge
influence on people's subjectivity...I think it was a
revolutionary act.
And in a very strange way, wasn't it a type of
revolutionary exodus? ;)

It's true that some people go into these things and
abandon class struggle.  That may be true.  However, I
dont think that should be a reason for rejecting any
good aspects Zen may have.  Let's not get into this
habit either of thinking anytime someone has a
pass-time that has nothing apparently to do with
revolutionary activity that he/she is an escapist.
I mean, one of the things attractive about autonomism
to me is that it does promote the "noble
worker"...it's for eliminating work as much as
possible.  So too, I should hope that we would not
want to promote the professional revolutionary...the
person engaged in political activity 24 by 7...if it
does then, to hell with it...my wife lived through the
Proleterian Cultural Revolution in China ans she can
tell you where that mentality leads to. 

Now as for taoism, there seems to be a lot of
transcendentalism there...much more than in Zen.
What commie00 may find attractive there is there seem
to be a lot of characters in the taoist tradition that
sneer at authority, particularly in contrast to the
authoritarian secular transcendentalism of 
Confucianism.

Anyway, my view on these things is that there are
things to learn and things to glean from them. 
Heidegger may have been a fascist but that does not
mean there are not things we can learn from his
philosophy.  Ezra Pound may also have been a fascist
but I still find some of his verse among the most
powerful in the English language.  My point is, let's
not reject things/ideas ad hominem or in toto, just
because we disagree or even find repulsive certain
aspects.

Thomas


===="The tradition of all the dead generations
 weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living"

-Karl Marx

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