Woke versus Awake

This post is largely, but not entirely a response to the confluence of a few tweets, one a nice tweet by Brad Warner, which can be found around here, but also this thread.  What I'd like to express in this post is:

• There's massive amounts of ignorance in the universe; it is an unfathomable amount of ignorance.
• As I wrote somewhere way back when,  regular Buddhist practice results in something, "awakening-wise" something like the way death is mentioned in the movie Beetlejuice:

• Just because you're highly experienced at whatever doesn't mean you don't have an obligation to learn more, do more etc. In such ugly times as these, not only is beauty true protest, but insouciance can be fatal.  The same applies for anyone who's ever had any kind of realization in practice.
• Just because you're highly sensitive to marginalized groups - because you may be in a marginalized group - doesn't mean you're not influenced by a massive amount of ignorance, especially since it tends to be the case with all of us.
• I don't consider myself woke, especially since I respect what a lot of folks are doing to realize their struggle in life is far more treacherous than mine. I won't opine on anyone's awakened state or lack thereof.  What I do know is privileged folks need to be more cognizant of marginalized folks regardless of what they do or know now, and people who are more aware of the issues and struggles of marginalized folks need to cultivate awareness, wisdom, compassion, and generosity.  Everybody anywhere along  the continua ought to try to excel in both ways.

So those are the points I wanted to cover in this post, and if I leave anything out here, well, consider it covered in my bullet points.  But I want to elaborate a little here and there at least:

I found this thread - pointing to this article - about a kid and a kimono, and how some that are derided as "SJWs" picked a target that revealed their ignorance, especially since it was later pointed out that kimono making is a dying industry in Japan, and wearing kimonos, and other Japanese stuff had been disseminated from Japan.  It was, in fact,  another example of what I mentioned in my post about Buddhist "cultural appropriation."  

I found it interesting because the thread I found on Twitter dealt with two people of Chinese ancestry talking about whether a Westerners using Japanese disseminated stuff was cultural appropriation or not. Yes, Virginia, they were Chinese-splaining proper behavior of Japanese towards Japanese culture.  I didn't know whether or not it was appropriate to White-splain Japanese culture to them, but they had unwittingly stepped on an inter-East Asian fault line (they're probably still unwitting, maybe not if they read this).  That fault line of course is that  if group X comprises subgroups A, B, and C, and A is the vast majority of those people in X,  people in B and C don't expect or desire that A is going to be the spokes-group for them.

I regularly work with East Asians, and there's certain protocols that are observed, because people need to get along with people in their work, and because there's laws, they're good laws, and they should be observed.  It is a tribute to the massive ignorance in the universe that laws that make people do the right thing for their business need to exist, but such laws do need to exist.  I try not to speak for any subgroups of people in which I work because of the law and because we have work to do.  Would that this would be the case in society at large, but it's not that way, even amongst those that favor social justice.

Back to Brad Warner.  Of late Brad Warner took a lot of heat (some of it from me) for his post here, which unfortunately sets of a false equivalence/comparison between alt-right buzzwords and the buzzwords of  what some deride as  SJWs.  I don't like the term SJWs,  because it reduces all people who hold certain positions to a caricature. (Such positions include some of my positions,  e.g.,  "Black Lives Matter" was a clever way to call attention to the fact that Black lives weren't being treated like White lives; it was a kind of koan: How are Black lives different than non-Black lives? That some liberals like Hilary would say "All lives matter" was precisely the point of Black Lives Matter. ) I also don't like the term "allies" either and that whole nomenclature that goes along with some of what those who (often mis)use critical theory use in advancing yes, justice and equality.  That was what Brad was decrying - the reduction of everything to shibboleths.  But, as I replied here and there to him, on one side, there's people trying to fight for people getting screwed by prejudice and bigotry, and on the other side there's racists and bigots who might be little guys screwed and exploited by others, but still racists.

The social justice folks, being human, are as capable of ignorance, violence, and hatred as anyone else, and, as Brad might point out, some of the people feeding into and exploiting bigotry and racism might make a mean apple pie and make you feel welcome in their home.  Maybe. But the current objectives of one group is not the moral equivalent of the other. It just isn't, regardless of who's in anyone's family.  And you know what? A million billion social  and cultural faux pas by a myriad number of social justice folk is not the same thing as a white person complaining that they are socially sanctioned for calling minority groups with derogatory names! There are however exact analogues for other groups in the world  because racism and bigotry are pretty widespread in the world.

There was something in one of Shunryu Suzuki's Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, that pointed to one's own self, one's own practice, one's own awareness as the locus of where any meaningful action should be initiated.   "Culture grows out of you," I think he wrote (and I don't know where my copy of the book is, so I'll rely on my memory here.)  Culture and you and/or culture and I are not separate. Cultural dissemination and cultural appropriation can't be completely separate either; and when something is disseminated the disseminated thing may not be bound to the social structures in which the thing existed prior to dissemination.  Bill may have to be killed because he used the skills disseminated to him for evil ends.  Or not.

Culture, social action, and any such related things can be used for good or bad ends; we have to have some degree of ethical principles to use them towards good ends, and we have to be aware of them to use them effectively towards good ends. 

So it's not enough to be "woke," you have to work towards being awake.  And what good is being awake if it's not helping yourself and others?  To the agree that we're awake, we're awake but we became awakened/died each in our own way, each with our own baggage. We still have an obligation to deal with the baggage.

Even in academia, this is a pretty serious offense, isn't it?

Despite what some denialists say,  even in the corporate world, there's a lot of effort made to get the science right, because the company wants to be able to make informed decisions.  It may not propagate the right science to the world at large, but at least it tries to figure out what's going on my experience  of my career of working at over 4 companies.  (Yes, that's 5.)

Seriously, if someone working in my organization was found to be deliberately making results up, results that were defining our company's future  he'd be fired. 

So I had to scratch my head when I read Jundo Cohen's piece on Brian Victoria the other day, and asked myself, "Where is that guy?"  And I read it again when I saw Jundo had sent me an e-mail asking me about his piece at Sweeping Zen.  But, Jundo, truth be told, I really started asking that when I read this at the Zen site: D. T. Suzuki and the Question of War by one Kemmyō Taira Satō, translated in collaboration with Thomas W. Kirchner.  Satō is a Shin Buddhist priest; unfortunately (I'm a bit pressed for time especially today) I wasn't able to look up further credentials of Satō  other than being a "scholar."  But as I'll explain shortly that doesn't matter so much.

Victoria, like Cohen, are Soto Zen priests.  Victoria is well-known in our neck of the woods for writing Zen at War, which did point out that there was some pretty nasty things said by Hakuun Yasutani, who has directly or indirectly influenced much of Zen in the West, including the Maezumi White Plum folks. (Yasutani's been said - I forget where - to have created a new school of Zen apart from Soto/Rinzai but I forget where I read that, incidentally.)

Victoria has been associated with Antioch University; assuming that last link is still valid apparently he can be contacted at:  bvictoria@antioch.edu .  Time permitting, I may try to contact him in the next few days, because it behooves all concerned to come to some kind of agreement here. I encourage Jundo to do so as well.

What does Victoria think of what Satō  wrote? Why does that matter? From the Zen site:

Despite its many contributions, however, Zen at War left me with the impression that the author, in his desire to present as strong a case as possible, often allowed his political concerns to take precedence over scholarly accuracy. This was especially the case with regard to his portrayal of Daisetsu Teitarō Suzuki (1870–1966), whom Victoria depicts as an active supporter of the Japanese WWII war effort. This is a very serious accusation, given the importance of the issues raised in Zen at War.

I had the opportunity to become closely acquainted with Suzuki and his views on war when I worked at the Matsugaoka Bunko 松ヶ岡文庫 in Kama- kura under his guidance from 1964 until his death in 1966. This period of contact with Suzuki, as well as my own study of his works in the years since then, have left me with an impression of Suzuki and his thought that is far dif- ferent from the picture presented by Victoria. This disparity, combined with the desire to set the record straight, have inspired the present attempt to clarify what I regard as Suzuki’s true attitude to war.

All scholars employ quotations from relevant texts to support and develop their arguments, and are of course at liberty to select those passages that best suit their purposes. Even so, Victoria’s highly selective citations from Suzuki’s works often seem motivated less by a desire to clarify Suzuki’s actual views than by a determination to present a certain picture of the man and his work. As I read Zen at War, wondering if Suzuki had indeed taken the positions that Victoria attributes to him, I checked each and every quotation against the original Japanese texts, an experience that left me with a number of ques- tions regarding his use of Suzuki’s writings. Ideally, every position attributed to Suzuki in Zen at War deserves close reexamination, but considerations of space do not allow this. I will attempt, nevertheless, to evaluate the points Victoria raises and the evidence he presents as I clarify what I feel are Suzuki’s true views. In the process I will quote rather liberally from his works in order to provide the reader with as a full a context as possible. 

I've read most of Satō's piece and the charges he makes are pretty serious.  Either Victoria was working from highly edited texts himself, or was indeed cherry-picking quotes, but if Satō is to be believed, in any event D. T. Suzuki's not represented based on the context of what Suzuki wrote.  In particular, Suzuki's views of Japan after the war, and his views of Nazi Germany appear to be significantly misrepresented, though in the latter case,  it would not surprise me if a resurrected Suzuki would admit to harboring racist feelings in the 1930s.  But then that was the norm throughout the world then, and to a large extent is now.

One of the interesting notes in the piece was that Suzuki not only had deep connections with  Sōen Shaku (釈 宗演), the first man to bring Zen to America (and the 4th generation of myself), but also Imakita Kōsen (今北洪川)  Shaku's immediate ancestor.

Another point of contention, a serious one, in my opinion, is the idea that Zen and Buddhism should be automatically linked to pacifism.   This is absurdly ahistorical not simply considering the history of Japan, and famous Buddhists such as Suzuki Shōsan,  but geez, going all the way back to Shaolin-si, at least.

So I'm left scratching my head,  if the above is true, why would Victoria have written what he's written?  Does he plan to correct the record if  the critics are found to be true?  And how can that be done?  And what of the academic institutions linked to him? What's their position?

It is true that there was some horrible things done in the name of Buddhism in Japan during the 1930s-1940s.   But that doesn't justify faulty scholarship, if that's the case, here, which though I haven't read the Japanese, seems to be the case if the English versions of what I'm reading are accurate.

 

Christian Apologetics and the need to turn it down a notch

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The stupid...sometimes it's hard to take...

It may be down the memory hole pay wall by now, but the New Yorker had an article up last week about college kids taking speed...only they weren't calling it speed, and they were couching it an updated version of the language that was use in the 60s to describe physician prescribed pep pills. 

Not long ago, I met with Anjan Chatterjee, a neurologist at the University of Pennsylvania, in his office, which is tucked inside the labyrinthine Penn hospital complex. Chatterjee’s main research interests are in subjects like the neurological basis of spatial understanding, but in the past few years, as he has heard more about students taking cognitive enhancers, he has begun writing about the ethical implications of such behavior. In 2004, he coined the term “cosmetic neurology” to describe the practice of using drugs developed for recognized medical conditions to strengthen ordinary cognition. Chatterjee worries about cosmetic neurology, but he thinks that it will eventually become as acceptable as cosmetic surgery has; in fact, with neuroenhancement it’s harder to argue that it’s frivolous. As he notes in a 2007 paper, “Many sectors of society have winner-take-all conditions in which small advantages produce disproportionate rewards.” At school and at work, the usefulness of being “smarter,” needing less sleep, and learning more quickly are all “abundantly clear.” In the near future, he predicts, some neurologists will refashion themselves as “quality-of-life consultants,” whose role will be “to provide information while abrogating final responsibility for these decisions to patients.” The demand is certainly there: from an aging population that won’t put up with memory loss; from overwrought parents bent on giving their children every possible edge; from anxious employees in an efficiency-obsessed, BlackBerry-equipped office culture, where work never really ends.

Chatterjee told me that many people who come to his clinic are cognitively preoccupied versions of what doctors call the “worried well.” The day I visited his office, he had just seen a middle-aged woman, a successful Philadelphia lawyer, who mentioned having to struggle a bit to come up with certain names. “Here’s an example of someone who by most measures is doing perfectly fine,” Chatterjee said. “She’s not having any trouble at work. But she notices she’s having some problems, and it’s very hard to know how much of that is just getting older.” Of course, people in her position could strive to get regular exercise and plenty of intellectual stimulation, both of which have been shown to help maintain cognitive function. But maybe they’re already doing so and want a bigger mental rev-up, or maybe they want something easier than sweaty workouts and Russian novels: a pill.

Recently, I spoke on the phone with Barbara Sahakian, a clinical neuropsychologist at Cambridge University, and the co-author of a December, 2007, article in Nature, “Professor’s Little Helper.” Sahakian, who also consults for several pharmaceutical companies, and her co-author, Sharon Morein-Zamir, reported that a number of their colleagues were using prescription drugs like Adderall and Provigil. Because the drugs are easy to buy online, they wrote, it would be difficult to stop their spread: “The drive for self-enhancement of cognition is likely to be as strong if not stronger than in the realms of ‘enhancement’ of beauty and sexual function.” (In places like Cambridge, at least.)

See what I mean? Take a pill to make yourself "more."  Now I happen to be in the camp that would say it is possible to use technology to alter our behavior - this is in some ways self-evident: a pair of running shoes makes it easier to run.  A Wing Chun dummy enables one to practice Wing Chun without a partner.   A swimming pool helps one practice swimming. 

There are limits to this though.  Technology will extract a kind of "karmic debt" with everything else - it then becomes a question of one's willingness to use the technology at the price of the karmic debt.  I'm having a cup of coffee. If I want coffee in the future I'll have to make more soon - and the whole host of behaviors of having coffee come with the coffee.  If I have it late at night I can't sleep.   A technology that makes us feel happy all the time robs us of honing the skill of using depression, sadness and grief to benefit all.  The same goes for other kinds of technologies besides the chemical. 

You get the point. Speed kills now just as it did then.  Taking that crap won't make us all John McAfee, but we might be something repugnant anyway.

The Limits of Religious Liberties

The recent flap about the contraception issue & the Catholic hierarchy & the Obama folks is reaching new levels of absurdity - and the reduction of that absurdity to even greater absurdity is satirized in a comic in today's NY Times.

While this was going on I was on travel/returning from Japan on business.  My travel reading was "Under the Banner of Heaven" by Jon Krakauer, which intertwines the doings of Fundamentalist Mormons with the historical Mormons.  I have to say, after reading that book, that I would not be very likely to vote for someone very far up in the Mormon hierarchy for any political office.

If it offends anyone, well, not much can be done, but when religious figures seek to impose their viewpoints on the behavior of others, whether it's through the clumsy efforts of the Catholic hierarchy to complain about other people's sexual behavior, or the Mormon church's efforts to rein in criticism of it by their members efforts at honestly discussing that church's history, reasonable people should object.

The Catholic church still hasn't quite accepted its institutional complicity in the physical and sexual abuse of untold numbers of children and teens.  The Mormon church still denies any official responsibility for their role in the Mountain Meadows Massacre. And regarding the latter, if you read Krakauer's book you can't but come to the conclusion that the Mormon culture bears a great deal of responsibility for the right-wing fringe in this country.

The simple fact is, the hierarchies of such organizations are acting out of hubris, greed for power when they posit themselves as some kind of moral arbiters whose "morality" gives them license to run roughshod over the obvious public good.

People can believe what they will, but when it comes to public policy, we should be doing things that benefit all. 

It's not exactly the main subject of this blog...

But seeing how Kim Jong Il has departed from this world, this is almost topical.   The 1985 (or 1987?)  North Korean movie Pulgasari is on Youtube.  It was made by a director who was kidnapped...fascinating stuff.  I can't believe they can watch this in North Korea today - there's just too many parallels to the current regime.

Class, Christopher Hitchens...and Genpo Merzel

In all the latest hoo-hah about Genpo Merzel - about which there isn't really nothing really new, just an acknowledgement of what's been going on for a while now - news came that Christopher Hitchens died.  And so here's a blog post considering what that all might mean - as if it has to mean anything at all.  It doesn't - but it's interesting to juxtapose unrelated things now and again.

I was one of those who applauded Hitchens lefty Trotskyite past, but was a bit startled when he attacked Clinton.  To me it was obvious  and strange and dangerous what was going on with the Clinton impeachment proceedings - it was an attempt to achieve by other means what could not have been achieved at the ballot box, even with the wildly rigged American rules favoring the wealthy.  But given Hitchens' stance as one of Clinton's critics it didn't surprise me when he went gung ho for the Iraq war. (For the record, I too, was appalled at the treatment of Salman Rushdie, so let's put that right-wing chestnut into the fire for good.)

What I became aware of most acutely in the last few months, though was that Hitchens was one of those upwardly mobile folks who kinda sorta catapulted into the social mesosphere of the top 1%.

I know that kind.  Their kids hang out in neighborhood bars on the upper East Side, before or after going to whatever downtown clubs they go to.  This kind of social set is best rendered by Christopher Buckley's rendering of his time with Hitchens in the New Yorker:

David Bradley, the owner of The Atlantic Monthly, to which Christopher contributed many sparkling essays, once took him out to lunch at the Four Seasons Hotel in Georgetown. It was—I think—February and the smoking ban had gone into effect. Christopher suggested that they eat outside, on the terrace. David Bradley is a game soul, but even he expressed trepidation about dining al fresco in forty-degree weather. Christopher merrily countered, “Why not? It will be bracing.”

Lunch—dinner, drinks, any occasion—with Christopher always was. One of our lunches, at Café Milano, the Rick’s Café of Washington, began at 1 P.M., and ended at 11:30 P.M. At about nine o’clock (though my memory is somewhat hazy), he said, “Should we order more food?” I somehow crawled home, where I remained under medical supervision for several weeks, packed in ice with a morphine drip. Christopher probably went home that night and wrote a biography of Orwell. His stamina was as epic as his erudition and wit.

When we made a date for a meal over the phone, he’d say, “It will be a feast of reason and a flow of soul.” I never doubted that this rococo phraseology was an original coinage, until I chanced on it, one day, in the pages of P. G. Wodehouse, the writer Christopher perhaps esteemed above all others. Wodehouse was the Master. When we met for another lunch, one that lasted only five hours, he was all a-grin with pride as he handed me a newly minted paperback reissue of Wodehouse with “Introduction by Christopher Hitchens.” “Doesn’t get much better than that,” he said, and who could not agree?

It is true that in my day I quaffed one or more with an editor of Rolling Stone in the local bar on E82nd St. - I believe it was the night that OJ went on his car ride, in fact, the night I called Herz to ask if they rented white Ford Broncos, because their chief spokesman was in one on I5...oh I digress, mais ça va sans dire.

All of which is to say...no matter how much Genpo Merzel charges for his silly seminars, he's never, ever, ever going to be admitted to this club into which Buckleys and Hitchens and their whole social constellation can  linger all day and talk about Wodehouse.  I don't care if he married and got divorced (or did he?)  from some descendent of Joseph Smith.  I'm not going to be admitted to this club, and I know people who have places where  I can always crash in if I happen to be summering in the Hamptons.

There's no point even going there, to try to engage that pretense of thinking you'll fit in.  Even if you see Tom Wolfe in the Islip Airport VIP lounge, it doesn't mean you're one of his kind. I'm not one of their kind, and I'm a lot more one of their kind than Merzel will ever be. True, I've never lived the Palm Beach lifestyle, where you have to get the police to bring you gas to your convertible on the road in the early morning hours of Sunday because you're on your way to an orgy with two beautiful...oh wait, I'm ripping off Hunter S. Thompson again. 申し訳では無。 (Bet Htichens couldn't do that!)　But the day-to-day tripping the light fantastic life is just not my lot in life, and I'm really glad for that, simply because the life I do have is far more rewarding and interesting, and the people I have met and live with are far more important to me than the dolphins of the Upper East Side.  Don't get me wrong; I like to visit and go back there, and especially to dine in the French bistro right near the Zen Studies Society (such a convenient location!)  But I'm a former New Yorker now (i.e. resident of Manhattan, for those of you who don't know);  I'm not quite a tourist and will never be when it comes to New York.  My son prefers the weather of the Pacific Northwest to that of the Northeast, and uses words and phrases that are indigenous to my current habitat.

So I'm kind of slightly amused at the accusations by some "Big" "Mind" apologists towards me on this thread.  I get the feeling some folks might think I have some kind of need to want what Merzel "has."  But I'm not overly surprised. Nevertheless I'll respond to one comment on that thread here:

you have a way to tell a Zen authority from a huckster? Does lineage make a Zen authority, and preclude the huckster? Does being a huckster preclude being a Zen authority?

OK, here's the answer: Do your own homework.  Lineage doesn't make a Zen authority, but like having a Ph.D., it has "intial value." (If you've studied differential equations you get the metaphor in the pun.) Lineage does not preclude being a huckster. Being a huckster of Zen precludes being a Zen authority.  To some extent, you see, in the system we have we all have to promote ourselves somehow, sometimes.  But peddling feces as shinola, especially in regard to things that are dealing with the intimacies of how one lives ones interior and exterior life really goes against all that I think is the whole point of the orientation of practicing the Way.  It's not a question of being attached to picking and choosing and avoiding, because we can't but pick and choose and avoid in this existence.  But it is a question of what we pick and choose and how much we are concerned with what we can pick and choose and what results.

Patheos and the True Person of No Rank...

Have you ever had the fortune to meet one, or have you  at least  met somebody who's at least had a modicum of success trying to attain no rank?

It is hard because a lot of folks kind of like the rank, even if the rank is pretty meaningless.  Some people like the rank of being Buddhists so they can set that in opposition to some kind of straw-man "scientist."  (And some scientists like to point out that some Buddhists...)

Some folks want to be called European-descended, or Asian-descended, or don't care to be bothered that there are European descended or Asian descended...and amongst the two categories just mentioned there's a host of other sub-categories, too...(Asian? What kind of Asian? Laotian? Japanese? Nepalese?)

I could go on.  The "No Rank" in the title of course doesn't refer to the deliberate blindness to difference; it refers to the not making a big deal out of difference where it exists.  Sogen Roshi could make a 心 that could dance off the paper; mine ain't gonna be within a light year of that for this lifetime, perhaps. Perhaps not.  But vendors still sell me the paper and ink.

Assuming Rank or being blind to difference can cost you in the business world; I know of more than one manager who soured his relations with a company by not treating the very junior guy who met him with a modicum of respect. I can't remember how many times the gaijin　(外人) made a presentation to the locals assuming they were smarter, more capable, etc. than the  日本人 to whom they where presenting.  Deals have been soured because  vendors have perceived the customer as "Other" or because they became just a bit too aggressive and assumed to much of the customer.

All of which is to introduce - briefly - why I find the whole thing about Patheos more overblown than not, and  not because of the "Asian Thing." (What kind of "Asian?" Tibetan? Chinese? Is that a distinction or not?)  But because its kumbayasity is also creating a rank where none need exist.  The people who might ban the practice of Buddhism in the United States or fly planes into buildings or launch drones into places where they might kill innocent people aren't going to take the stuff at Patheos seriously.  Yeah, they won't take my blog seriously either; you got that right.   But I don't really pretend that it would; like I've said numerous times, the purpose of this blog is to more or less help in the struggle of memory against forgetting, and as a kind of practice in itself.   If somebody reads this and figures out that that they can still suck at 99.9% of what they do and perhaps improve, today, this moment some 0.01% of their life, perhaps in that moment their lives and the purpose of this blog can be made worthwhile.  And sometimes, - heck perhaps often - despite what this Ph.D. says,  it is profoundly difficult work of vital importance to change that 0.01%. (Kierkegaard was right - sometimes somebody's got to come around to make everything difficult.)  

I think the mission of Patheos is doomed to failure because it takes its "mission" too seriously to include that which would pop its bubble of inclusive self-righteousness.  Patheos's mission limits itself to the point where it excludes the very real fact that some folks are going to be jerks on the highways, including but not limited to yours truly on a bad day.  It excludes Kyle the Reformed Buddhist (sorry Kyle, but the "Men's Right's" movement reminds me too much of the He-Man Woman Haters Club to be taken seriously, even though I will grant that there are real issues with presumputions of the law and unequal treatment of gender that does give men the short end of the stick at times.)  It might include me; in fact I'm sure it would, but the reality is the work and the reward and the fun and the true changes that can be made are elsewhere for me.  I wish the folks at Patheos well, but when the Buddhist folks move en masse to the Next Big Spiritual Place (can the Huffington Post be far away?) well, re-read this.  Not to say the Patheos folks might not do some good, but as long as the on-line sutras and other stuff are elsewhere, I've no real need to poke around there very much.

Buddhism and race, from a guy of European descent nearer to it than most...

I'm not big on identity politics, which is to say I don't often write about race matters exclusively.  I often do write about cultural matters on the other hand, and to the extent race is a social construct (and race is a social construct to an extent that it's almost useless, as far as I'm concerned to deny the proposition) I guess in that sense I do write about race as culture.

As a guy with very frequent contact with Asian folk, who's conversant in Japanese (in limited topic areas; I can't really do botany, Jungian psychology and art criticism in Japanese), with an Asian wife, with Asian in-laws, with a 1/2 Asian grand niece (who's beautiful & bears a slight resemble to my son), who travels to Asia frequently, I'm quite sympathetic to Arun's point here (among other places), though I don't think he actually goes far enough, or perhaps he, too is too provincial (sorry Arun).

As I noted on my comment on that post, I don't think many Buddhists from American institutions don't quite get what they're missing (though in many cases the American-of-European-descent flavored Buddhism is light years beyond no Buddhism at all.)  The narrative is pretty pervasive: The Asian Teachers of Old came to America; They Taught a Select Group of Americans (mostly of European descent), and The Great Teachers of Old had all this Strange Asian-ness that - don't worry - the next generation of teachers has washed away so it's not as strange as it may appear, dear newcomer.

There's may be a reason there's also these stories about "how come there's no new young people coming into the temples anymore" by the way. And I think that reason's connected to the changing notions of race and minority in America; of course I have a particularly distorted global view of things; I bet I have seen more CNN International than everyone else in the Buddhist blogosphere combined.   Maybe more sumo wrestling, too (which, for the record, when your're jet-lagged, can keep you up on a Saturday afternoon with the same ethos that one brings to rubbernecking in a traffic jam, but I digress.)

People, I think, want more of the "real thing."  They don't see the "exotic" as "alienating" like they used to, except perhaps in Alabama.  At least that's they way that I see it on the coasts, in my admittedly rarefied circle of people in which I circulate.  But, suffice it to say, that circle mingles with people who mingle with other people who...you get it...6 degrees and all that. 

I spent the "Black Friday" day entertaining folks who I'm proud to call my friends and their families.  One family consisted of a Chinese immigrant who met her Lebanese immigrant husband at some company in the Bay Area.  An other family consisted of two immigrants from China who immigrated when they were kids (if I recall correctly it was both of them); both of whom had had a grandparent who...wait for it...was an American or Canadian.

It's all mixed up. 

Like I said, many of the folks don't seem to know what they're missing.  Some folks - like Danny Fisher - do seem to have somewhat frequent contact with Asian Buddhists (but I can't really tell; I don't know him personally, only blogosphere-ly.)  But - and here I kind of part ways with Arun - the notion of Buddhism and racial constructs, whether consciously observed, ignored, or otherwise - is about as impermanent and empty as you can get.

I've sat zazen in temples in South Korea, China, Japan, Hawaii, and numerous other places in the USA.  I've spoken with clerics and practitioners from all those Asian countries about the way Buddhism is practiced in their country.  Do I have a better handle on "Asian Buddhism" than Arun? Than Danny Fisher? 

I don't really know, and I largely don't care; I am grateful though that I have, within the confines of my Platinum Elite status, been able to meet and converse with a very diverse group of teachers.   I'm sure though that my particular experiential deformation doesn't make me or Arun or Danny Fisher any more or less Buddhist than they are or are not.

But this I'll say: much of what I see in the Buddhist blogosphere, and in American-of-European-Descent Buddhism is like the Buddhist analog of  Chinese food in American restaurants.  Sure, it's made according to a recipe that's been in restaurants for years, but the Chinese folk order stuff that "Westerners" wouldn't touch.

And they don't know what they're missing.  Not that what the Americans are ordering isn't Chinese food; it's just that there's so much more.

I do think Arun has a point, or at least is in the direction of a good point; I don't really know his background, but I do know that race and cultural issues are more complicated than a simple paean to "diversity" or denial that there's an issue in the first place would imply.  I also think there's another larger point behind what Arun's saying too - which I'll tangentially bring up here.  Much of the "Buddhist media" to me is reminiscent of a phenomenon that the defunct Spy magazine used to satirize with the recurring feature "Logrolling in Our Time."  In that feature Spy would present book-jacket blurb recommendations from authors of books who also wrote books which had book-jacket blurb recommendations from the authors of the first-mentioned books...if you catch my drift...It all sometimes seems like a Hey Let's Pat Everybody on the Back Club for Being Good Buddhists!

Of course, I'm not a member of that club...and I think, after all these years,  there might have been some wisdom after all in Groucho Marx's dictum that "I wouldn't joint any club that would have me as a member,"  though I guess the popular kidz evidently feel otherwise.    But it is really true about that old saw about the flower doesn't have to shout out loud to be fragrant and beautiful. It's really true.  But it's sad about the popular kidsz.

I think that's enough for today, but I'll  leave with one point, that underscores this, that I've not seen mentioned ever in the Buddhist blogosphere. Maybe Kobutsu Malone can corroborate what I'll say and expound further on my point, which is: Did you know Eido Shimano had Japanese students?  What ever happened to them? What ever happened to Seung Sahn's Korean students?

I've no idea.

Physical Activity and Cultural Deformation...

Humans do pretty strange things.  Many of them center around balls.   Many of them do not.  But regardless - or perhaps another instance of strange - is I'm still thinking about Nathan's post here as well as NellLou's pointing to this bit here on "Yoga and Exclusion."

Here in America, it has become "football season."  Football is the biggest cult in the United States. It is an absurd sport, in that there is a degree of artifice that is byzantine at a level present in no other sport, to my knowledge.   It is also absurd in that there is, to me, a most limited degree of body types for which this sport can really be effectively played, and they mostly center on attributes of brute force, with the exceptions of the quarterback and the guy they bring out to kick field goals, although the former must have the minimum brawn to be able to survive being tackled by a couple or three thousand pounds of beef-fed humans.

 

I am just 5'6" - about the height of Dustin Hoffman, about 1 inch shorter than Bruce Lee was.  I know, for my demographic, I'm not in the mode; I'm at the tails, and I have survived these 5+ decades of my life knowing that I was never cut out to play for the NFL.   Of course, I knew that in high school, and could not then for the life of me understand why some of my  classmates could not understand that their their lives were going to go all downhill after being tagged as "varsity."  There's tragedy throughout  high school, we all know.  I'm not sure it gets better for those whose high point of their life ended at homecoming and are now bouncers. I hope it does.

And yet, despite the tragedy, despite the ill-fitting nature of football to the rest of Americans' lives,  the American media sells football non-stop as an ideal for sport in order to piggy-back the sale of all kinds of crap to Americans...and they buy it!  It is sold so much that politicians feel they must connect themselves to it,  (see here, here, and here).

Football is sold to Americans as something that transcends class and ethnicity, but that's absurd, and everyone knows it, and yet still the pretense is observed and rarely questioned.  Basketball does a better job at transcending ethnicity, which is why it's wildly popular in China.  What we call "soccer" does a better job at transcending class and ethnicity, which may be why you're more likely to read about a riot following a non-US "football" game than a US football game.

 Why am I writing about this, when it all seems so obvious? 

To  a certain extent I would submit that most sports have some weird kind of cultural deformation, and when you think about it, it's kind of quaint to think that a "liberal" endeavor like yoga might be immune.  There's no reason it should be, other than that, hey, it's "liberal" and therefore we should see more faces and gender than we might from the U.S. Polo Association!

As I wrote earlier on this, the martial arts world has some weird representations in our culture. But there are martial arts and there are martial arts, to be sure. Boxing has been for so long in America a "last chance" for the poor, but has recently had some emergence as a yuppie/health club fad. If one is a great practitioner of kendo, and one wants a great sword, there's a money issue.  But in all of this, and I suspect this is a class issue too, the less well-off do not have as many resources to find a great teacher.

All of that said, I wasn't well aware when I was younger that there were ways of doing martial arts physical practices that are not only well suited to my body type, but actually give me an advantage over larger opponents.  Though I was not really bullied at all in high school after October of freshman year, it has simply never occurred to me the degree to which folks with even my body type are marginalized, to which people who are not small compared to football players are thought of as "less athletic" and all that (despite the fact that folks shorter than I have played for the NBA).

  

And this brings me to my final point: Football is inherently conservative. That's why there must exist a massive media machine to continue to sell it and sell its cultural relevance, at least the pro-variety.  And full disclosure: I have enjoyed playing in quite a few games of touch football in my life.  I stopped getting picked last when the more physically appropriate kids figured out I was blazingly fast compared to them.  But I stand by my points about how US football appears in US culture.

Martial arts can be revolutionary. One of the interesting aspects of the recent movie "Grandmaster Yip Man" and its sequel is the fact that Yip Man's martial art disseminates across classes in effect as a societal gesture of national survival.  That is, kung fu, "功夫" - the cultivation of a man (sorry that's what it means ladies, but please accept it as inclusive for my purposes) - is the cultivation of the nation.  The intermingling of class issues with personal development have been a staple of these movies for decades (see "The Karate Kid," e.g.)  but the idea of 功夫 as something building cultural and social solidarity is something relatively new to cinema, even though at least that part of Yip Man's life was true. 

American football pretends to be a broad positive cultural endeavor, but it is but a pretense.  The only things I can think of to compare "Yip Man"  are films like "Rudy," but to be honest, it was "The Longest Yard" that came to my mind first.

I think the apotheosis of bad American culture can be summed up in this thought: Vince Lombardi's "motivational speech" "What It Takes to be Number One" - is thought of  as motivational!  And people sell framed versions of it! I quote:

Winning is not a sometime thing; it's an all the time thing. You don't win once in a while; you don't do things right once in a while; you do them right all the time. Winning is a habit. Unfortunately, so is losing.
There is no room for second place. There is only one place in my game, and that's first place. I have finished second twice in my time at Green Bay, and I don't ever want to finish second again. There is a second place bowl game, but it is a game for losers played by losers. It is and always has been an American zeal to be first in anything we do, and to win, and to win.
Every time a football player goes to ply his trade he's got to play from the ground up—from the soles of his feet right up to his head. Every inch of him has to play. Some guys play with their head. That's O.K. You've got to be smart to be number one in any business. But more importantly, you've got to play with your heart, with every fiber of your body. If you're lucky enough to find a guy with a lot of head and a lot of heart, he's never going to come off the field second.
Running a football team is no different than running any other kind of organization—an army, a political party or a business. The principles are the same. The object is to win—to beat the other guy. Maybe that sounds hard or cruel. I don't think it is.
It is a reality of life that men are competitive and the most competitive games draw the most competitive men. That's why they are there—to compete. To know the rules and objectives when they get in the game. The object is to win fairly, squarely, by the rules—but to win.
And in truth, I've never known a man worth his salt who in the long run, deep down in his heart, didn't appreciate the grind, the discipline. There is something in good men that really yearns for discipline and the harsh reality of head to head combat.
I don't say these things because I believe in the "brute" nature of man or that men must be brutalized to be combative. I believe in God, and I believe in human decency. But I firmly believe that any man's finest hour—his greatest fulfillment to all he holds dear—is that moment when he has to work his heart out in a good cause and he's exhausted on the field of battle—victorious.

This is why America loses wars, folks: they think like Vince Lombardi, but their fellow-world game players are thinking like Sun Tzu.

And  finally, as for yoga, it has its place, but in terms of liberal social sins, this is hardly a noticeable blip on the scale of things.  And I hope all beings get to enjoy physical activity...

Class and Buddhism....and conferences and Kung Fu - Updated

I had thought of making a post discussing the recent situation at Shaolin temple and how it has evolved from the birthplace of All that is Cool from the East to the Chinese equivalent of an American inner-city boxing club and that's OK because those students might at some point start asking the Big Questions, somewhat like it appears Bruce Lee was starting to do before his untimely demise. Or something like that.

And I was going to write that you can't really "stop" the dharma, 'cause somebody's going to figure it out anyway.  It's like how to make an atomic bomb.  Once you get the basic principles it becomes a matter of carrying out the steps necessary for making it, if you want to make it.  But humanity can't "un-know" how to make the bomb, and we can't "un-know" how to practice the Way.

Then I read NellaLou's post.  And I read James Ford's reply.  And Brad Warner's comments on Facebook.

So if the "elites" want to  gab about stuff, well, let them gab away. I still agree with about 80% of what NellaLou wrote.  And I disagree a tad with what I wrote in response on Warner's page about how Shotoku might have done X but Rinzai wouldn't do it or such.

The reason I have a different opinion today is simple:  to be of no rank is not to be a carbon copy of any teacher before.  It is also because after a certain age we wear our class like a tattoo.

So...are you keeping score?

• Tricycle, Shambhala Sun etc. etc. won't define the Way even if they try.
• Shaolin might provide the way, despite its commercialization.
• So perhaps even this confab might help define the way, though it won't be the way any more than commercialized Shaolin kung fu is the way.
• Oh, and Genpo Roshi is still kind of embarrassing to Western Buddhists.

Update
From Ven. Warner's blog,   I see he's also spoken on this issue.   What caught my attention was this bit in his article:

I’ve often said that what first attracted me to Buddhism was that it was the most punk rock thing I’d ever come across. It was far more punk rock than even punk rock itself. By this I mean that Buddhism is a philosophy that doesn’t just question the prevailing view of the mainstream. It openly and often even aggressively questions itself. In punk rock the attitude seemed to me to be, “Question everything… except punk rock.” It was cool not to follow accepted mainstream fashions, just as long as you followed the accepted punk rock fashions. Buddhism, I felt, took the punk rock stance to its ultimate conclusion.

My fear is that Buddhism in America is going exactly the same direction as punk did when it became codified into a single prevailing fashion and sound. There is an accepted group of tastemakers and trendsetters within American Buddhism. They are entrenched as such and seek constantly to reify their positions and to expand their influence.

 There's always going to be elites. I'm a member of an elite - some of the technology you probably use was made that way by things I said or did that were picked up by other elites and was decided - horrors - in meetings with these elites!

Elites don't often go in the direction you want, and as I implied above, and the Dharma will be the Dharma despite the Elite's attempt to pin it down like a butterfly and in the process distort it, all with good intentions.

Here's a secret: sometimes you can get elites to go in the direction you want.  It's politics being the art of the possible, as Bismark put it.

Suppose, I guess, that this confab had invited Brad Warner. He might have less legitimacy, unless he did something like mooned them or something, but that would not be a skillful exercise in the art of the possible.

Oddly enough, perhaps Warner's being on the outside is - at least for now - the most skillful exercise of the art of the possible.   Maybe not. 

Personally, I have a lot more and bigger issues in my life than this.   But if I see Chosen or Hogen Bays maybe I'll bring this up.  Maybe not.

I mean...  I mean... try bringing up a child and being married...

Not desirable...not repulsed

I have never watched more than a minute or two  or three of the Oprah Winfrey show (you know, the ones with Barack Obama and such), but like everyone else on earth, I've heard her, and heard her.

I don't know jack about her "religion."  But I do know that this analysis of "the church of Oprah" in the NY Times is deficient.

...The scholars found conflicting sources of Ms. Winfrey’s spirituality. It began, but definitely does not end, with the black church of her youth. In her 2003 book, “Oprah Winfrey and the Glamour of Misery,” Eva Illouz, a sociologist, quotes Ms. Winfrey as saying: “Since I was three and a half, I’ve been coming up in the church speaking. I did all of the James Weldon Johnson sermons” — Mr. Johnson being the poet whose “God’s Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse” was published in 1927. “I used to do them for churches all over the city of Nashville,” Ms. Winfrey said..

While respecting Ms. Winfrey’s use of her Christian heritage, Dr. Illouz ultimately concluded that the talk-show host might be something of a false prophet. That is because, she said, Ms. Winfrey and her cadre of self-help experts treated suffering as something beneficial. Ms. Winfrey turned the black church’s ethos of self-reliance in the face of suffering into an exaltation of suffering itself.

“By making all experiences of suffering into occasions to improve oneself,” Dr. Illouz wrote, “Oprah ends up — absurdly — making suffering into a desirable experience.” 

 It would be strangely masochistic if  "suffering as occasion to improve oneself" exactly equals "suffering is desirable."   I mean, we Buddhists sort of know that suffering is inevitable but to the extent that there is a "point" to suffering it's an occasion to learn to be not attached to nor repulsed by suffering.  Suffering is universal, and that should be an occasion for the cultivation of compassion.

 Dr. Illouz may be a sociologist  - and may even be a good one - but she really ought to learn more about religion.

And Oprah Winfrey certainly enabled all breed of spiritual hucksters and quack snake oil peddlers...I'm sure I must have said something negative about her in the past about all this...but that doesn't justify making uninformed statements about religion.

Interesting Times...

Spring has arrived the radioactive spring the spring of the shortage, the dark spring.  Spring has arrived.  Now visible  are the first shoots of plants that will destroy the granite, that will overturn the order, that will lead to a bright tomorrow after the catastrophic misery yet to be endured.

Spring has arrived. There is still the remote hope of the Catalan sun, burning bright, and the satori which will transcend the complete loss of everything which will enable us to be free to do anything.

Spring has arrived, and remotely the promise of the sticky hot Zhejiang summer, the smile on the face of the abbot of the timeless temple which endures despite the temblors and upheavals and poison.

Spring has arrived.  And with it the thieves and patriots are emboldened, the citizenry is outraged, the children rebellious, and the rocks and stones cry out, "Let me be your messenger!"

Spring has arrived, with and all the timeless wisdom and ignorance and compassion and hatred permeates space like the dew and fog that abound outside the outskirts of the benighted city.

Spring has arrived, and for a few weeks it is Wednesday, Anything Can Happen Day.

Spring has arrived, and like this  it is none but a tragic farcical replay of Matinée d'Ivresse, and few care or are aware because it ain't squat, it ain't a paper cut even, compared to the horrors of Kampuchea and Auschwitz and the Great Leap Forward.

But it still early Spring. And I'm actually pretty optimistic despite the pervasive gloom that can be found that things won't be quite that horrible. May your near future be far better than the worst it could be.

間 (ma), Parent Practice, Mac Arthur Park, the iPhone

In helping my son with a project for school I have oddly enough had to teach my son the value of leaving something out.  Clearly every engineer knows that this discipline does not come second nature to most engineers, and we have a term for the opposite ingrained tendency: creeping featurism.  The opposite tendency is an aesthetic that has been referred to by some as  "間  (ma)" - which translates as interval, space, etc. 　A Japanese word which expresses this in the opposite sense is 間も無く (mamonaku), which means basically in a very short time - "no interval," from the kanji.  You hear the word on the shinkansen when they announce in Japanese that the train is about to arrive in a station.

I haven't been that much aware that this is a strategy Apple builds into its products until I read about it recently, but in helping my son with his project I noticed that this principle is all around.  It is why overall horrid song MacArthur Park sold phenomenally well: it has a hook.  It is why Rush Limbaugh is still there after all these years: the Oxycontin addled demagogue repeats right-wing talking points well to the masses so they get the "hook."   (And Glenn Beck, since he's been  going off the metaphorical  reservation, is the natural target for other right-wingers now.)  It is also a good explanation of Suzuki-Roshi's idea of the Worst Horse.

We in the West like to hold up the "Renaissance man" as some kind of ideal, but clearly we prefer  that with a more carefully chosen set of features than "everything."  If you can do one thing well, or make something that is so incredibly excellent in one or two features, you can leave out something, and people seem to like it better; you can include your version of "Someone left the cake out in the rain..." it seems, and it seems to make the whole thing better as far as we humans can tell.  Very strange.  But that allows me too to embed a really otherwise sucky song in this blog post.  Enjoy!

Doubtful that will enlighten you today, but it's just a Note in Samsara, you know.

What's up with the Tricycle blog?

Tricycle a few months ago removed its blogroll from its blog, and evidently in the process changed the RSS feed for its site.  I have been thinking about removing the Tricycle blog  from my own blogroll, come to think of it, though it remains a convenient "handle" to see what the well-funded Buddhist press in the US is churning out and how they're trying to exploit online social networking trends. Otherwise, I think Tricycle and its ability to propagate Buddhist ideas and values is becoming marginal at best.

As I mentioned in a recent post on Frederick Lenz, Tricycle employee James Shaheen is on the advisory committee board of the Frederick Lenz Foundation - clearly in my view a conflict of interest with the stated mission of the Tricycle Foundation - I cannot imagine the what parallel universe in which hawking Frederick Lenz's "Buddhism"  is in any way consistent with the Tricycle Foundation's desire to make "Buddhist views, values, and practices broadly available."   (Then again, Genpo Merzel seems to be on the same committee of the Lenz Foundation! ) Nor can I see how his participation in the Lenz Foundation helps make Tricycle  "the most inclusive and widely read vehicle for the dissemination of Buddhist perspectives."  The "mission" of the Tricycle Foundation is purportedly:

...to create forums for exploring contemporary and historic Buddhist activity, examine the impact of its new context in the democratic traditions of the West, and introduce fresh views and attainable methods for enlightened living to the culture at large. At the core of the Foundation’s mission is the alleviation of suffering that Buddhist teachings are meant bring about.

 I'm trying to parse the above.  It's not easy.  By "forum" I might assume that they mean "an assembly, place, radio program, etc. for the discussion of public matters or current questions;" I hardly think they man a "law court or tribunal" but they might possibly mean a public square "where legal and political business is conducted,"  albeit not in an ancient Roman city or town. 

Can a magazine or a foundation "introduce fresh views and attainable methods for enlightened living" to the culture at large?  I mean, I wouldn't rely on a magazine to teach me how to swim,  or to judge my own 書道 or how I was raising my son, or how I was getting along with my wife or even - eventually - rely on a book or literature to gauge whether I was performing singular value decomposition on a given matrix properly or even making a meal! And Tricycle aims  to introduce to us, dear reader "attainable methods for enlightened living.

Can you see my point?   Their stated mission seems to involve the tacit assumption that they can assume the role of providing methods for enlightened living.

And I haven't even gotten to the point about Buddhism transcending versus alleviating suffering!

Moreover,  I think we can see the results of such muddled expressions of "Buddhism"  in the recent entries and selections from the Tricycle blog.

 Is knowing that a Watkins review of "spiritual power" people includes the usual New Age hacks people going to help all beings?  Is criticizing Genpo Roshi well after the animals have left the barn, well after accepting advertising and pimping "Big Mind" for years going to help all beings? Are lame defenses of airbrushed portrayals of Zen teachers helping beings?    Is being ignorant of basic science and logic helping all beings?

Don't get me wrong - at least they're mentioning some of these issues, and frankly, this was the first place I'd heard that Merzel was trying to do a "do-over" with respect to his disrobing.

But people, the issue with Tricycle stems from its muddled mission and issues inherent in associations to the Lenz Foundation. It is perhaps why I cannot remember seeing anything in Tricycle remotely critical of Lenz? Have you? I'm willing to be corrected on this point, but I think this point is worth noting.  Tricycle criticizes all manner of teachers after the fact - with, it seems to me, the possible exception of Frederick Lenz????? WHAT?  And they have a guy who's the editor and publisher as listed on an advisory committee board of the Lenz Foundation????

I will admit that when I was first investigating Buddhism in America, the information provided to me by Tricycle was invaluable in providing a context for my learning about Buddhism, and of course if they had any connections to Lenz and his ilk it was not known.  And wide propagation of associations with the Lenz Foundation - if there were any at the time, which I don't remember (until at some point the Lenz group was "supporting"  "Change Your Mind Day") would not have helped any beings familiar with the hucksterism of Lenz.

But today, I think, the only way Tricycle could even approach its mission of helping to "alleviate" the suffering of all beings would be for it to look itself in the eye and publicly distance itself from the Lenz foundation.

It might also help its blog, too.

And speaking of the absurdity of categorizing East and West

This guy is slated to speak at the Buddhist Geeks conference. Obviously he's of Asian heritage. But listen to what he says when he opens his mouth...

He seems to have the background, mannerisms and grammatical styles of a management consultant, and his topic at said conference is "Why Buddhism Needs To Innovate Now."

I could write a whole series blog posts about the myriad issues associated with this,  but to be concise I would hardly say that I would expect this young man to be a "leading" teacher and/or thinker, since I have not heard or seen  or read any "leading" thoughts or teachings.

But my real point in mentioning Mr. Gunatillake is just to point out - even in the UK - how ridiculous it is to split the world into these Eastern or Western or ethnically based categories.

Buddhism fits well with consumerism? Huh? And sorry, but a Protestant Reformation in this case is not needed.

While I agree with Kyle regarding the nipples aspect of this subject, I want to expand on a couple of other points that are lying around on that "Buddhism is the opiate of the people" Guardian piece. (Yes, I'm very proud of myself for starting a post about Buddhism, philosophy, history, etc. with a sentence containing the word "nipples.")  Besides, Paul Krugman's right, Kyle, and if you'd listen more to liberals and Marxists you'd have a better retirement portfolio. See, when it comes to economic stuff, one-time Zen practitioner and some kind of monk Thomas Merton was right: their diagnoses are spot on; their prescriptions suck.  I won't get into hummus - or Bearnaise sauce for that matter. (If thee didst not click on Kyle's post, well ,thee couldn't figure out that sentence at all, could thee?)

But I digress.  I'd rather get back to the fact that some guy is quoting Slavoj Žižek, whom I've previously discussed here.  As I wrote on that post - a critique of Ethan Nichtern in fact - this Slovenian Marxist doesn't have a clue as to what Buddhism is:

To Žižek, it is the rapacious "capitalist game" that's the bête noire of human existence and Buddhism is yet another opiate, a palliative, that does nothing to remedy the fundamental issue. This is horse feces as far as this Buddhist is concerned; because regardless of whether or not the capitalist game continues, regardless of whether or not the revolution comes, regardless of whether or not Richard Gere saves Tibet (and wins valuable prizes in doing so), suffering will continue.  And dammit, it's incumbent to do something, and if you're not paying attention, you can't do squat. Political battles must be fought. Yeah, capitalism is inherently unstable.  But I think Žižek, like many people like him, is so alienated from himself (please note the irony in that statement - most likely due to projection and replacing one ideology with another) that he doesn't recognize there's a plethora of human functions besides economic and political ones.  I have that impression of  Žižek's alienation  because he posits a straw-man "Western Buddhism" as a foil for his Marxist Critique.

Mark Vernon, the guy who wrote the Guardian article says, "What is it about Buddhism, she mused, that makes it such a perfect fit with modern consumerism?"  And here's his "analysis" citing Stephen Bachelor, one John Peacock, and that Marxist Slovenian to "prove" his point:

[Žižek's, Peacock's and  Bachelor's] analysis  is [sic] different. [Nota bene: That means there are three  analyses.] Western Buddhism is undergoing its Protestant reformation, Batchelor observed. It is about two centuries behind western Christianity in terms of its critical engagement with its canonical texts. The quest for the historical Buddha – an exercise that parallels the 19th-century quest for the historical Jesus – is only just under way. An essentially medieval Buddhism has been catapulted into modernity. It's hardly surprising that it will take two, perhaps three centuries for an authentically western form to emerge – by which is meant, in part, one that resists, not supplements, consumerism. For if Buddhism is to live in the modern world, it must be treated as a living tradition, not a preformed import. As the reformation leaders of the 16th century knew, this is a profoundly unsettling project – though it is also compelling for its promise is new life.
An important task is dismantling the common assumptions about Buddhism that do the rounds, assumptions that are made within Buddhist circles as frequently as without. For example, Peacock noted, there is no word for meditation in the early Buddhist lexicon, though it is often taken to be the defining Buddhist practice. Instead, the Buddha encouraged his followers to "cultivate", to "grow", to "bring something into being". He deployed a host of agricultural, not existential, metaphors.

What is also missed in the focus on meditation is the ethical challenge implicit in his call. Any practice must concern your whole stance towards the world, and it's a stance that is intensely, relentlessly critical. The aim is to enquire into all aspects of your form of life. A meditation class on a Friday evening that makes no impact upon your work on a Monday morning is an exercise in Žižek's decoupling.

Or take the commonly cited Buddhist truism that everything should be questioned and nothing should be taken on faith. Lip-service is paid to it, Peacock continued, but Buddhists typically adhere to all manner of doctrines, from the law of karma and reincarnation, to the truth of suffering and no-self. The result is that Buddhism becomes a religion, even as it's insisted it is no such thing. Western categories of thought are being deployed at the same time as they are presumed to be being subverted. The very word "Buddhism" is a western neologism, in fact.
And yet, it's mistaken to think that the western categories that shape us can be circumvented. You can't chose the gods that you worship. To hope you can, by adopting someone else's gods or a cluster of eastern ideas, is the fundamental error.
Instead, the individual who seeks to continue in the Buddha's way must "enter the stream", must continue along the ever-changing flow that is the living tradition. It's a tough calling. Peacock and Batchelor attract as much opprobrium as praise. And as Albert Schweitzer concluded after his quest for the historical Jesus, it can often be a misguided and dispiriting process.

We don't need a Protestant Reformation, thank you very much.  What makes you think the first one was any great shakes anyway, with the way in which those churches have been transmuted into the Trinity Broadcasting Network, creationists, and "witch" murdering in Africa?  

Moreover,  it seems that while "Buddhism" may be a western neologism, there are so many Buddhisms that just because some of them don't fit into The Critics Criticism, they fall off the table.  Needless to say, in Japanese at least, "Buddhism" as the exact word may not exist, but 仏教　-　ぶっきょう　-  pronounced "bukkyoh" - certainly does.  And it means,  "Buddhism"  - the "kyoh" part means "faith" or  "teaching."  

So there.

Yes, Buddhists adhere to all manner of doctrines - and all should be questioned.  But Vernon's complaint is the complaint of a guy who plays soccer but belittles American football because the rules are different. Or some other metaphor like that.  Hey, I regularly play neither American or the other football, and while I'm more amused by both footballs than a fan of it, I wouldn't claim that no professional player lacks skill in what he does.  If we're talking about Buddhists who adhere to all manner of doctrines,  as long as they're enabling themselves and all beings to become more skilled at transcending suffering, it's no skin off anyone's body.

I don't care much about David Beckham, and simply because he's rich and successful and has a beautiful wife and tattoos and sponsors advertising  and practices Buddhism (or maybe he doesn't - I don't know; the article stated he has a Buddha statue) doesn't mean that he's not concerned about all beings.  His success is not particularly important to The Matter at Hand.