AUT: response to tahir Re: Re: Re: Star Wars and Archetypes

["commie00" <commie00@xxxxxxxxx>]

> Tahir: Oh but they do! They do exactly that; they form these loving caring
communities which attract people precisely because it seems a way out of
their alienation. Islam in particular makes a very big deal out of the
community of believers.

you are seriously confusing the notions of destroying alienation and
creating community in a sense familiar to revolutionaries (and which appears
in taoist and zen buddhist literature) with this weird cultish thing.

that is: basically, you're kinda just showing that you don't know what
you're talking about, and trying to make generalized pot-shots at ideas
because in some instances they appear as religions. its kinda silly.

> Tahir: What I am saying is that there is nothing unique in Buddhism on any
of the criteria that you've come up with.

the absence of any possibility of transcendence into an after-life certainly
does change things a bit, methinks.

> the kind of 'conservation of energy' views that you associate with
Buddhism.

i've not said anything about "conservation of energy", and its certainly not
what i meant in my discussion of chi / ki.


> I suspect that your isolation of the 'pure' Buddhism, as opposed to the
'religious perversions', has as much to do with what you want to discover
there ,  i.e. your preferred brand, as it has to do with any real original
purity of doctrine. But I'm not expert enough on Buddhism to take that
particular point further. (I did however read the Tao of Physics some years
ago...)

i'm not terribly interested in purity, and i could prolly point out more
problems in buddhism than you have so far... but the problems you are
pointing out are strew targets you've built up for some reasons, and have
very little to do with actual problems in the ideas.

> What I would like to ask is when Buddhism just exhorts us to get on with
the business of living, as you put it, rather than thinking about life and
death, etc., what does this 'living' mean? How for instance does it differ
from Nietzsche's atheism and celebration of Dionysus?

in some senses there isn't too much that different from neitzche, which is
one of the reasons that buddhism has a striking resemblance to
existentialism. (and this would be where some of my criticisms come in.)

> There is nothing in what you said that points us in the direction of
dialectics as you claimed earlier.

we'll, we've not gotten around to talking about this aspect... i just
suggest checking out the tao te ching and the chaung tzu (toaist texts,
which are also important texts in zen buddhism)... there is a striking
similarity with marx in the dialectics you'll find there (esp. in the chaung
tzu).

> Further on the question of romantic nostalgia. I think the attraction of
young people today to Buddhism and other similar phenomena are in inverse
proportion to their willingness to engage with capitalism in any critical
way.

and this is precisely opposite of my experience. nearly everyone i've ever
met that has more than a passing interest in buddhism and taoism are
revolutionaries.

> None of this means that I don't understand the psychological realities
underlying these phenomena or that some of the people who are into religion,
cults, etc., aren't helluva nice guys or anything. What it does mean though
is that we shouldn't treat romantic escapism as if it is something else,
something revolutionary.

who said anything about "romantic escapism"? all i was saying is that people
get into this stuff (sci-fi, fantasy, etc.) as an aspect of their desire to
be dealienated. that's also why people tend to go to bars, which is rather
ironic i think.

is this necessarily revolutionary? no. can it have revolutionary
implications? yes, in the sense that it can help us to understand some of
what is going on, etc.

> And if what you claimed for Buddhism were true (dialectical, materialist,
etc.), Buddhists would be leading the anti-capitalist revolution.

i know tons of marxists who purport to be materialists and dialectians who
also openly state that they are not revolutionaries, than revolution is
impossible at this point, etc. etc. this kind of thinking is possible
anywhere, and is not indicative of any school of thought.

as to the rest of what i'd say... see thomas' post. he made the rest of my
points, and also starts discussing some of the things that i agree are
problems in taoism and zen buddhism.


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