Date: Sun, 17 Feb 2002 22:22:25 +0200
Subject: Re: AUT: Re: Re: Star Wars and Archetypes


Hi People.
May be out of the spectrum, but I will dear to remark.

Thomas Seay wrote:

> 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?

Atheist were all along history... though mostly a tiny
minority.

In the Eastern cultures which were much more advanced
than the European ones, the various atheist world opinions
were much more prevalent.

> 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.

The Vipassena watching of sensational phenomena -
i.e. bodily sensations is far from being passive.

Like the Chinese acupuncture and herbal medicines (and
other pieces of practical wisdom) drawn from long observations
and experimentation, are valid... Though the explanations given
to the facts are usually erroneous.

The "passive" to the eye of the observer is misleading as the
allocation of attention to the various bodily sensations is
very active. Arrived at a very similar technique based on
scientific psychology,  (http://www.shalif.com/psychology/)
I searched and have found in the scientific literature plethora
of texts proving that.

> Now if generalized to all of life, and I think this
> does happen sometimes with Buddhists, this means a
> type of passivity.

If you generalize the training of Vipassana (or that of my technique)
You will find that the "passive" treatment given to the bodily
sensations, result in lot of energy available for other activities.

> 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? ;)

Just look at the seemingly personal desertion of the life of affluence
many Bundists turning from common life to the poverty from choice.
It is in a way one of the strongest demonstration against the rule and ideology
of the rich.

> It's true that some people go into these things and
> abandon class struggle.  That may be true.

(mainly in the developed countries.)

> However, I
> dont think that should be a reason for rejecting any
> good aspects Zen may have.

It is always a question of alternatives. It is a bad choice if the
alternative is our kind of struggle, but it is better than most other
choices of either adhering to the mode of life of the capitalist system,
or dropping out to drugs and other such "alternatives".

> 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 and she can
> tell you where that mentality leads to.

For a person to be engaged in political activity 24 by 7
 is not a bad thing... if one enjoy it, and if one do not abuse
hir bodily resources.... (and of course if the political activity
does not stink.)

Ilan




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