Re: AUT: Re: Re: Star Wars and Archetypes

["commie00" <commie00@xxxxxxxxx>]

> 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.

i agree that this is a primary problem. and yet for many buddhists, being
able to think and understand in this fashion is the *begining* of their
activism (and, for some, revolutionary activity). it might seem like a
strange contradiction, but...

well, take some of the material in the chaung tzu... in it, he advocates for
this kind of thnking, etc. but then says flat out that if this makes you
passibe in the face of injustice, you've fucked it up. (and what you find
here is an early way of putting: don't become a professional revolutionary,
a "militant", in the s.i. sense, etc.) for chaung tzu, this way of thinking,
etc. is the begining of how to take an active part in the world, including,
esp., politically. thus, taoism became one of the prime instigators of
revolution and revolt in china for more than a 1000 years.

> 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? ;)

its also important to remember that there are a slew of folks who have
claimed to be revolutionaries and practiced zen buddhism... john cage, ken
knapp, etc.

and lets not forget ursela le guin, an anarchist and (gasp) sci-fi writer,
who did a translation of the tao te ching.

> Now as for taoism, there seems to be a lot of
> transcendentalism there...much more than in Zen.

it depend, of course. philosophical taoism rejected any notion of
transcendentalism out right. some aspects of religious taoism didn't.


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