Rev Left Radio - [UNLOCKED] Buddhist Perspectives: Self-Immolation and Political Struggle

Episode Date: March 18, 2024

This unlocked patreon episode was originally released Feb. 27th 2024 To get access to more bonus episodes like this every month, and support the show, join our patreon at patreon.com/revleftradio --------------------------------------------- In this patreon exclusive, Breht reads and reflects on Buddhist writings including Thich Nhat Hanh's letter to MLK Jr. regarding Buddhist monks in Vietnam engaging in self-immolation and how it differs from suicide,  and a response by John Peacock to criticism by Slavoj Zizek of so-called Western Buddhism wherein he argues that mindfulness meditation is merely a way to cope with the depravities of capitalism; a new Opium of the Masses.  Along the way, Breht takes many detours, and touches on the self-immolation and martyrdom of Aaron Bushnell, the ongoing multi-faceted evolution of the human species, and much more.   Check out other Rev Left episodes on Buddhism and related topics, including the ones mentioned in this episode HERE 

Hello, everyone. Welcome back to Rev. Left Radio. Okay, so today I was kind of, you know, confused as to where I should take this episode. Obviously, I'm talking the day after Aaron Bushnell self-immolated outside the Israeli embassy in the United States, the confirmed airmen in the U.S. Army Air Force, and it's obviously on everybody's mind. It's on everybody's mind. It's on everybody's Twitter feed. There's so much to say. But instead of just me addressing that in this moment, I'm going to have Allison on tomorrow to have that discussion with me because I think it is one of those things that's worth having multiple perspectives. And there's some issues that I want to work through in a way that is more conducive to more than just one person talking, et cetera.

So I'm very much going to get into that. We're going to have a deep-ass episode just on that. its implications, what it means, how we should orient ourselves to it, you know, the feelings we have around it. It's a, I mean, it's a traumatizing event in a long line of sort of traumatizing events. And I don't like when that word trauma is, is overused. But I don't think it is watching a human being set themselves on fire and scream free Palestine as the flames burn every nerve ending in their body. Um, while a fucking dumb pig pulls out of a gun like a little fucking scared child and points it at a fucking burning corpse. That's a traumatic experience.

And we are living in a period of upheaval and chaos and suffering, which is not new to humanity, but what's new about it is that we can open up our phones and see it in real time. I've never, you know, think about, and we'll talk about this today, but that self-immolation of the Buddhist monk from Vietnam where he sits in the lotus position meditates, sets himself on fire. We see that picture. The picture is haunting.

It's beautiful. It's tragic. It's wild. Right? But that's a snapshot. What modern communicative technology allows us to do is to see from the first person perspective somebody walking up to self-immolate

and talking about his politics, Aaron was. as he was doing it, set up his camera, pour the gasoline on his head, fidget with a lighter that doesn't seem to want to cooperate, and then eventually the spark occurs. And to be able to see it at that level, to see it almost in real time,

we saw it probably hours after it actually happened by the time it made it online and made the rounds. So it's just a deeply traumatic experience. And I don't think it behooves us. to pretend it's not. I mean, I guess lots of people can and if you go on Twitter you see people do shut their hearts off completely to that out of their own moral cowardice, their own ideological insanity, mocking a person that does that, making fun of them, stripping away its meaning, Zionists saying, you know, our enemies kill themselves, ha ha ha, revealing how cruel and

heartless and fucking insane they are. And then all the little fucking Twitter trolls or with the maturity of a 13-year-old boy trying to be edgy, laughing about it, etc. I mean, that's a disgusting thing to have to deal with as well when there are those of us who are actually human who actually have functioning hearts

who are rightfully impacted by such a traumatic event. You know, there's us and then there's just hordes of desensitized, cruel, heartless people who have been made in the image of society. right who have been made in the image of this heartless and cruel um disgusting alienated selfish society um so all that is to say that alison and i are going to cover that tomorrow we'll

get that episode out as soon as possible and um hopefully we'll will be able to dive into what what it means work through our feelings and act as a catharsis to people who are feeling similar ways which obviously if you listen to a show like this you resonate with the stuff we talk about and with the emotions that we wrestle with and so um i think it is helpful for for people like allison and i to walk through it and to have people have that outlet that's not just twitter scrolling where it's just the fucking insanity of like here's a person self-immolating here's a stupid dick joke here's somebody calling you know somebody racist for using rest in power um you know here is a little child being

pulled out of the rubble. Here is Elon Musk's 15 year old meme, a 15 year old mindset meme that he posted to his dumbass following. That sort of back and forth, that sort of whiplash, emotional whiplash, it is crazy making. And I get sucked in, right? Whenever a big event happens, there's no better place to be than Twitter because of the enormity of the people talking about it, the uncensored nature of that platform for better or worse, that you can fucking see everything from hardcore pornography to the mutilated bodies of children and everything in between. You see people just casually now using racial slurs, the N-word, the F-word, constantly in people's replies, but if you post something about Hamas or post something about the self-immolation

or pro-Palestine or even say the word cis sometimes, You get locked out of your account and you get at just a fucking insane platform. But for better or worse, that insanity is a reflection of humanity. And when big events happen, people tend to gravitate towards that platform in particular. Again, for better or worse. So hopefully having a long form, deep, thoughtful conversation between with Alice and tomorrow will be a nice break from that insanity, as well as hopefully allow us to get a little deeper on many of the issues that have been kicked around like a football on social media and specifically on Twitter. So that is coming.

But today I wanted to take a slightly but related different approach. I want to read two essays. Now on the last episode of Red Menace, Allison and I did our episode on Mysticism. I think it was called Ego Suffering and Love. very happy with that work very happy to put that episode out very fucking happy to see people's responses to it um i i really love people on the marxist left getting interested in that stuff um and wrestling with those tensions and those contradictions and and just you know that whole subjective side of life it when i started putting episodes out like that it was different

you don't often see it that sort of those sorts of discussions on the left and i was sort of hesitant the first couple episodes I did on Buddhism and stuff like that because I just didn't know how people would receive it. Maybe people who are into Rev. Left and Marxism and socialism and politics, you know, have no interest in that stuff. Or maybe they find it contemptible that I do have an interest in it. I wasn't sure how it was going to land. But over time, it's become incredibly clear that people on our side of the political aisle certainly have an interest in this aspect of life. And why wouldn't we? Right. We're hopefully curious, compassionate, people who are always learning, and are seekers of truth.

And Marxism is one path of truth to apprehend the objective outward world, how societies evolve over time, political and social and economic questions, etc. And these methods of looking inward of spirituality have really tried and true spiritual practices like meditation and Buddhism and the mystical traditions within the various religions. That's also a whole other side of life. that's trying to go into the subjective inward realm and try to find truth and clarity in that direction. And so I think, you know, in retrospect, it would make sense that people who are interested in truth, who are already motivated in some part by their love and compassion for other human beings

and who feel deeply connected to the suffering of other people and who suffer themselves. It makes sense that they would be interested in that stuff. And it's very cool to see people constantly being engaged with those topics and reaching out to me and saying, You know, because of you, I'm interested in Buddhism. Because of you, I've made it an effort to spend more time in nature. Because of you, I've started my meditation practice, et cetera. Those, that's high, high praise. It makes me feel incredibly, incredibly happy to hear that I'm playing that role for others,

that others in the past have played for me, right? When I'm in my teens and in my 20s, and I'm still to this day, right? searching up Buddhist teachers or, you know, spiritual adepts or different perspectives on mysticism, et cetera. And sometimes something I'm reading or engaging with just hits so hard and it's so inspirational. And it connects and resonates so much with feelings I've had, but I haven't been able to articulate. And to be able to play that role, even for a handful of people, is really, really rewarding. And it's really cool to see. So anyways, today, what I'm going to do is read two pieces.

and respond to them, as I always do, that are sort of centered around that, right? So one is from, I have a subscription to the Buddhist Review tricycle magazine, and there's an article in here called The Elephant in the Dharma Room about interesting, like a criticism of Buddhism by Gijs, and the issue of politics, et cetera. Now, I haven't read this article. I like kind of going into articles without having already read them, because if I read them beforehand, I sort of start having a little. all these different thoughts and then I've got to start organizing and create an outline.

And sometimes it's nice to just go into an article completely free of pretensions and free of any sort of outline in my head and just sort of give my honest extemporaneous thoughts as they occur when I'm reading the article. So I don't know exactly what direction this article is going to go into, but we'll explore that together. And then I wanted to read an essay by the Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Han. on the Buddhist self-immolations in Vietnam from the Vietnam War era, you know, the division of the country into North and South Vietnam, et cetera,

and sort of touch on that because, you know, so here's two things that relate to what we just covered, mysticism, right? Politics and Buddhism and how they relate. And then what we're going to cover next, the self-immolation of Aaron and what self-immolation means and the history of that self-immolation and go back several decades to see how, you know, Buddhists who were self-immolating were doing it, why they were doing it, what the West viewed that as, and how Thick Nhat Han tried to communicate to Westerners about what this

means and correct misperceptions about, you know, why does somebody self-immolate? They must be crazy. They must be mentally ill. That's the only thing a sort of Western liberal individualist mind can grapple with. They can't, you know, many people genuinely cannot imagine you know death they can't imagine living and dying for something bigger than themselves they'll think they do but but we're made so small in the modern era because we're hyper atomized and individualized because we have been conditioned to be neoliberal subjects in particular we were made so small and i've talked about this before and that that smallness comes out in the incomprehensibility of how somebody could do this and you know the immediate attempt

to label them as just oh this is just a deeply mentally ill person and that's something i want to wrestle with as well i mean we're going to wrestle with it a little bit in this thick knot han article but i want to wrestle with it in depth with alison because of course we can push back on this idea that he's mentally there's no evidence of that he made his will he was very systematic about his planning he seemed you know completely coherent in his political statement it would make sense given his position as a sort of, you know, lackey of empire as a soldier, that he would want to have deep repentance and to make a political statement about his own participation in the brutalities of empire, et cetera. But then other people would say to, you know, to be

suicidal at all, is, indicates mental illness. And so there's lots of hot takes floating around. And, you know, on Twitter and on social media, you've got to take a position and go hard at it, you know, no, he's not mentally ill. Yes, he absolutely was mentally ill with with very little to no evidence. And so I want to wrestle with that idea. Can you, is it possible is it possible to take such a bold and intense and permanent action while being completely mentally healthy by any, by any standard? Is it possible to end your life out of moral outrage without being mentally ill without being necessarily suicidally depressed

is that even possible these are sorts of deep discussions you're not going to be able to get on social media because of the nature of the platform but these are things that hopefully I want to cover with Allison in depth tomorrow because Allison also is incredibly intelligent and incredibly deep and is one of those people that

when I'm wrestling with stuff that I'm unsure about she's one of the best people in the world for me to talk to and bounce ideas off of and to learn from and to listen to so i figured that broader conversation should be between two people and not just a monologue of my own but let's go ahead and get into this stuff today so i'm going to read one article like i just said by think not han on the buddhist monk self-immolations in vietnam which they were more than one and then i'm going to read this elephant in the dharma hall by john on Peacock and talking about Jijsik's criticism of Buddhism and what to make of it. And we'll see. You know, this is Tricycle Magazine. I'm not expecting principled Marxism to come out of the politics of this. But we'll see. Maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised.

So first and foremost, let's get into the Thick Not Han article. So this is, I went to the Ethics of Suicide Digital Archive, which I didn't know is a thing. I guess the University of Utah. puts it out pretty interesting the ethics of suicide and it's a whole archive about it and so there's essays on martyrdom apologies for suicide etc lots of essays just on this topic which fucking is fascinating going back to like aristotle and thomas aquinas uh to albert camu um up to thick not han and the vietnam war right um thomas hobbs they have they have stuff from people all over the map here carl yung uh etc so that's actually kind of cool maybe this is a website i'll

poke around and try to see if I can find some more interesting thought-provoking articles. But today we are reading Thicknott Han from, the title of this is from Vietnam, Lotus in a Sea of Fire in Search of the Enemy of Man. And so this first part is just an introduction to the text, and then I'll read the text, and it's actually pretty short, and give my thoughts along the way. So this is just the introduction. It says, and of course, when it comes to like, like, you know, Southeast Asian names and stuff.

I'm going to fuck them up, but I'm going to do my best. I'm sorry. I'm a fucking dumbass from Omaha, Nebraska. You can't expect me to have perfect pronunciations of people across the world and different languages and shit. So let's get into it. Thick Nhat Han, a scholar in the field of philosophy of religion and an internationally revered figure of Zen Buddhism, was born Nagyuan-Zun Bao in Vietnam in 1926.

Again, I apologize. The word thick pronounced tick is not a title. but a name that for Buddhist monks and nuns replaces the family name to which they were born. Tick Nhat Han became a Zen monk at the age of 16 and was ordained in 1949. He founded the School of Youth for Social Services, a neutral relief corps, and the Von Han Buddhist University in Vietnam in 1957. In 1969, Not Han was the representative for the Vietnamese Buddhist peace delegation at the Paris Peace Talks during the Vietnam War. When the Paris Peace Accords were signed in 1973, he was officially denied re-entry into Vietnam.

He had been a student at Princeton and a professor at Columbia. Having lived in exile since 1966, he has been allowed to visit Vietnam regularly since negotiations in 2005. He now lives in Plum Village, a Buddhist retreat center he co-founded in southwestern France and conducts mindfulness retreats in Europe and North America. To protest the anti-Buddhist policies of the Catholic President of South Western, South Vietnam, No Din Diem during the Vietnam War. Sorry, that was the name of the Catholic president of South Vietnam. In June 1963, an elderly Buddhist monk, Tick Kwan Duck, went to the crossroads at Fondin Fung Street in Saigon, sat in the lotus position, poured gasoline on himself, and set himself on fire in order to call attention to the sufferings of the Vietnamese people under Diem's oppressive regime.

As he burned to death, a disciple read his last words to the press. Other Buddhist monks and nuns followed Kwan Duk's example. Six burned themselves to death within a short period. Unimpressed, Madame Niu, Diem's sister-in-law, described these self-immolations as a barbecue. It is the self-immolations of Tick Kwan Duck, Tick-Guechthon, mentioned in the selection presented here, and the other Buddhist monks and nuns that Not Han is attempting to explain to a skeptical world in the letter reprinted here. The letter is intended particularly for Westerners who see these acts as suicides,

acts of self-destruction stemming from lack of courage, loss of hope, or the desire for non-existence. Although Gwyck Thon was young at the time of his death, Kwong Duck was over 70 years old. Nathan had lived with the older monk for nearly a year at Longvin Pagoda before he set himself on fire and describes him as, quote, a very kind and lucid person, calm and in full possession of his mental faculties when he burned himself end quote so again this is tick not han knowing the one of the the monks who self-immolated and you know westerners immediately mental illness lack of courage right loss of hope this is self-destruction this is just basic suicide right

that's how a lot of westerners received the news of those self-immolations but tick not han describes him who he personally knew as a very kind and lucid person calm and and and in full possession of his mental faculties when he burned himself. So, you know, that goes a long way. And if you see the footage, I mean, the picture, which I, you know, if you haven't, I highly encourage you to look it up. What's fucking fascinating is that he gets in the lotus position and he meditates. And he sets himself on fire and then he goes into a deep meditative state.

And people on the scene said, you know, he didn't move a muscle. So, you know, Aaron Bushnell, obviously, not a Buddhist monk, obviously doesn't have the capacity of a 70-year-old Buddhist monk to go into deep meditation and to, you know, experience sensation as such, etc. So his self-immolation was brutal in that the pain was, I mean, the screaming, the, he tried to stand on his own two feet and, like, he kept doing this jerking action where he'd throw his hands down and scream, free Palestine, and then he started just screaming from the pain. and then he caught himself after a few gutteral screams and he tried to get it out one more time. Free Palestine as he's burning alive. And I mean, that sensation is just absolutely unfathomable.

But it is interesting. Aaron was 25. It's interesting to see a 70-year-old Buddhist monk who spent their entire life deepening their capacity to meditate to be able to set themselves on fire and not move an inch. to sit there seemingly completely peacefully in a lotus position while they burn to death and not make so much as a muscular twitch or a groan or anything. I mean, that, if nothing else, that speaks to the profundity of what you can achieve in meditation.

That speaks to the profundity of what this practice can do for somebody. because no matter what you believe about the world no matter what your spiritual religious beliefs are right if I set you on fire you would scream and roll around and your body would jerk in horrific ways and noises you didn't even know you could make would come out of your mouth

to any human being to be able to sit there and be engulfed in flame and not move a muscle and anybody that says oh Buddhist meditation is just sitting and resting your eyes There's nothing really happening there. Okay. Back to the text.

This is the very end of the intro. Not Han insists that these acts of self-immolation are not suicide, which he says is one of Buddhism's most serious crimes. Not Han's letter, in search of the enemy of man, is addressed, interestingly, to Martin Luther King, Jr., who nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize. So that's the introduction. This is a letter to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.,

from the Buddhist Tick Nhat Han in June of 1965. So let's read this. Now we're into the letter proper from Tick Nathan. To MLK Jr., which is just another layer of really deep interest for me. So let's get into it. Okay. This is Tick Nathan now. The self-burning of Vietnamese Buddhist monks in 1963 is somehow difficult for Western Christian conscience to understand.

The press spoke then. of suicide, but in the essence, it is not. It is not even a protest. What the monks said in the letters they left before burning themselves aimed only at alarming, at moving the hearts of the oppressors, and at calling the attention of the world to the suffering endured then by the Vietnamese. To burn oneself by fire is to prove that what one is saying is of the utmost importance. There is nothing more painful than burning oneself. To say something while experience this kind of pain is to say it with the utmost courage, frankness, determination, and sincerity. Let me read that again and think about Aaron.

To say something while experiencing this kind of pain is to say it with utmost courage, frankness, determination, and sincerity going on. During the ceremony of ordination as practiced in the Mahayana tradition, the monk candidate is required to burn one or more small spots on his body in taking the vow to observe the 250 rules of the Bikshu, to live the life of a monk, to attain enlightenment, and to devote his life to the salvation of all beings. One can, of course, say these things while sitting in a comfortable armchair. But when the words are uttered while kneeling before the community of Sanga and experiencing this kind of pain, they will express all the seriousness of one's

heart and mind and carry much greater weight. The Vietnamese monk, by burning himself, says with all his strength and determination that he can endure the greatest of sufferings to protect his people. But why does he have to burn himself to death? The difference between burning oneself and burning oneself to death is only a difference in degree, not in nature. A man who burns himself too much must die. The importance is not to take one's life, but to burn. What he really aims at is the expression of his will and determination, not death. In the Buddhist belief, life is not confined, to a period of 60 or 80 or 100 years. Life is eternal.

Life is not confined to this body. Life is universal. To express will by burning oneself, therefore, is not to commit an act of destruction, but perform an act of construction. That is, to suffer and to die for the sake of one's people. This is not suicide. Suicide is an act of self-destruction,

having as causes the following. One, a lack of courage to live and cope with its difficulties. two, defeated by life and loss of all hope, or three, desire for non-existence. So those are the, as an aside, those are the three things that would qualify in Ticknon-Han's definition of somebody actually committing suicide. And he's trying to say this is fundamentally different from what this is. The goal is not in and of itself death, but a deep, profound, committed expression of will, determination, principle, etc. I wanted to reread this part. He says, quote, in the thing I just read, he says, quote,

in the Buddhist belief, life is not confined to a period of 60 or 80 or 100 years. Life is eternal. Life is not confined to this body. Life is universal. And that's an interesting quote. And maybe it's not worth fully wrestling with here. And there will obviously, like in any tradition, be deep disagreements about exactly what this means. But one thing I could say from my personal perspective as a non-expert on Buddhism,

but as somebody who is deeply interested in it and a practitioner of it for much of my adult life, all of my adult life, is this idea that, and Tikkna Han writes a book about this, about the fear of death, which I got during my deep existential crisis when I was deeply terrified at the prospect of death, which is this idea that the ego, the sense of self that is overcome in Buddhism, right, through Anata, through no self. is a sort of separate isolated entity by its very nature you are you your ego your sense of self would however you want to talk about it you are a little thing inside your body and everything outside your body is not you right and that's of course crucial to have in order to develop along lines of evolution to be able to protect yourself to get food you need to make that distinction very clear animalistically um what is inside you and what is outside you very young infants haven't figured that that out yet and so they sort of live in this sort of oceanic consciousness where it's not clear where they stop and the world begins it's certainly not clear where they stop in their their caregiver or

their mother begins which i think is very interesting but that's a sort of pre-self a pre-self oceanic no self right you you have a no you have no self but you haven't gone through the upward dialectical spiral of developing a self and then transcending it your pre-self oceanic awareness. And then you grow up, you develop a sense of self, hopefully you develop a pretty solid, stable sense of self. And then you can engage in these practices where you go through the other end. You're higher up on the dialectical spiral as you then have experienced self and then you transcend self once again. Like Mark said about communism, it is a return to community at a higher level, having gone through non-community, having gone through the depravities of class

society of capitalist alienation and individualization. We come back to community with a new embrace of it, a new understanding of its importance, right? And we could only garner that understanding of its importance at that higher level by having gone through what it is not, by having gone through non-community, right? There's a pre-individualism, right? A pre-class community, collective, tribal, you know, forms of proto-communism, you know, before ancient slave societies, there's that, and then there's going through slave societies, feudalism, capitalism, and then socialism, and eventually communism, where we reattain community, but perhaps a global community, which is fundamentally different in quality from earlier modes

of community, which were tribal and small, and they were deeply collective. We evolved as a social animal in deep communal bonds with 150 to 250 other people, and everything outside of us was a threat other human beings were a threat right we would go to war and all that stuff for for as long as humans have been around that's been the case to come to global community to literally see somebody across the fucking planet who speaks a different language who looks very different who has a different culture to see them as yourself to see them as somebody 20,000 years ago would see, you know, somebody in their own tribe as deep family, right, as bonded deeply, that is returning to community at a higher level, transcending all those divisions that in the earlier level of community, you know, tore people apart, created war, created conflict. Is it possible for humanity to overcome that impulse within them and to return to the normal collectivity that we are used to, that we evolved for?

but at a higher, more mature level, I think it is. And that's an interesting tangent, but to this Buddhist aspect, there is, and Tick Nhat Han talks about this in his book, I think it's called like no death or something, no birth, no death, something like that. When you transcend that self that is scared to die, that little alienated atomized voice in your head, that sense of self, that sense of an isolated being in here, confronting a world out there, however you want to talk about it, When you can, when you dismantle that in Buddhist meditation, you come to what they call pure awareness. It is an awareness, a hyper-cosmic awareness, right? The bright, shining light coming out of your eyes, looking at the world, your conscious, qualitative experience. You return to that, kind of what an infant has, also what an animal has, but you return to it at a higher level, having gone through having a sense of self, having gone through the terror. of realizing that your little tiny, you know, self, this little, this little tiny ship on these rocky seas of life will one day crash, will be obliterated.

You've felt that terror. And then you then transcend the thing that is terrified, the ego, the small sense of self, and you come now back to, but at a higher level, deep peer awareness. And that deep peer awareness, now we're into the realm of speculative philosophy. But you can see that as like if consciousness, if it is the subjective side of the cosmos, as I've argued, if it is a real thing and you can experience it without self, what you will feel viscerally in your bones is that there is no death. Because you are no longer identified with the little ego that does die. You are now identified with the pure awareness that transcends ego, that transcends atomization, that transcends distinction into non-dual. unity. And you realize that this focal point, this particular candle might go out, but light in the cosmos, consciousness in the cosmos, never goes out. And if you're identified with that deeper awareness,

with that pure, selfless consciousness, that non-dual awareness, if you can get to that, this is enlightenment, right? You get to that level where that is your perspective. Death literally stops making sense. There is no death. And that's one thing to hear that and to think about it as like a philosophical object of speculation. And it's probably quite another to experience it in your bones on a daily basis. And if you're a Buddhist monk who has been extensively training in the Mahayana tradition

for 70 years, you know, you are a profoundly realized being. you can set yourself on fire you can obliterate yourself in an act of defiance you can not twitch a muscle while it happens and you can easily and openly embrace your own personal individual death because from the broader perspective of things from your point of identity with the whole of pure awareness nothing dies at all but again that's a that's kind of a deep end big to philosophical discussion that you could spend literally hours debating and mulling over and bringing up criticisms and counterpoints, et cetera, too. And I love those conversations, but I'm just putting that on the table. So in that quote, I'm going to read it one more time that I've been talking about

for the last 10 minutes. In the Buddhist belief, life is not confined to a period of 60 or 80 or 100 years. Life is eternal. Life is not confined to this body. Life is universal. That is what I believe Tikna Han is gesturing torn. Back to the letter. this self-destruction is considered by Buddhism as one of the most serious crimes of suicide he's talking about the monk who burns himself has lost neither courage nor hope nor does he desire non-existence on the contrary he is a very courageous and hopeful and aspires for something good in the future he does not think that he is destroying himself he believes in the good fruition of his act of self-sacrifice for the sake of others like the buddha in one of his former lives as told in the story of Jitaka, who gave himself to a hungry lioness, which was about to devour her own cubs. The monk believes he is practicing the doctrine of highest compassion

by sacrificing himself in order to call the attention of and to seek help from the people of the world. Let me re-read that sentence, because sometimes I fuck it up. Like the Buddha in one of his former lives, as told in the story of Jitaka, who gave himself to a hungry lioness, which was about to devour her own cubs, the monk believes he is practicing the doctrine of highest compassion by sacrificing himself in order to call the attention of and to seek help from the people of the world.

I believe with all my heart that the monks who burned themselves did not aim at the death of the oppressors, but only at a change in their policy. Their enemies are not man. They are intolerance, fanaticism, dictatorship, cupidity, hatred, and discrimination, which lie within the heart of man. I also believe, with all of my being, that the struggle for equality and freedom you lead in Birmingham, Alabama is not really aimed at the whites, but only at intolerance, hatred, and discrimination. These are real enemies of man, not man himself. In our unfortunate fatherland,

we are trying to plead desperately. Do not kill man, even in man's name. Please kill the real enemies of man which are present everywhere in our very hearts and minds. Now, in the confrontation of the big powers occurring in our country, this is during the Vietnam War, hundreds and perhaps thousands of Vietnamese peasants and children lose their lives every day, and our land is unmercifully and tragically torn by a war which is already 20 years old. I am sure that since you have been engaged in one of the hardest struggles for equality in human rights, you are among those who understand fully and who share with all their heart the indescribable suffering. The indescribable suffering. of the Vietnamese people.

The world's greatest humanists would not remain silent. You yourself cannot remain silent. America is said to have a strong religious foundation and spiritual leaders would not allow, okay. Yes, America has a strong religious foundation. It does not have a strong spiritual foundation. It is, as I've often called it, especially in modernity. A fucking screaming, howling, spiritual desert.

But ostensibly, there's a, there's a religious. tradition here unfortunately so often those religious traditions are dog shit reactionary insanity cult like bullshit which we see all the fucking time but

that's neither here nor there okay so you yourself cannot remain silent America is said to have a strong religious foundation and spiritual leaders would not allow American political and economic doctrines to be deprived of the spiritual element you cannot be silent since you have already been in action and you are in action

because in you, God is in action too, to use Carl Barth's expression. And Albert Switzer, with his stress on the reverence for life, and Paul Tillick, with his courage to be and thus to love, and Nibir and Makai and Fletcher and Donald Harrington, all these religious humanists and many more are not going to favor the existence of a shame such as the one mankind has to endure in Vietnam. Recently, a young Buddhist monk named Tick Gwakdan

burned himself, April 20th, 1965 in Saigon, to call the attention of the world to the suffering endured by the Vietnamese, the suffering caused by this unnecessary war, and you know that war is never necessary. Another young Buddhist, a nun named Huah Thin, was about to sacrifice herself in the same way and with the same intent, but her will was not fulfilled because she did not have the time to strike a match before people saw and interfered.

nobody here wants the war what is the war for then and whose is the war this is the last part yesterday in a class meeting a student of mine prayed quote Lord Buddha help us to be alert to realize that we are not victims of each other

we are victims of our own ignorance and the ignorance of others help us to avoid engaging ourselves more in mutual slaughter because of the will of others to power and to predominance end quote. In writing to you, I profess my faith in love, in communion, and in the world's humanists, whose thoughts and attitude should be the guide of all humankind in finding who is the real enemy of man.

End quote. So, I find that very fascinating. I find it very interesting that Tick Nhat Han is addressing this letter, writing this letter to Martin Luther King Jr. Interesting quotes about, you know, is it other men, other human beings that we are fighting or is it this deep sickness within the minds and hearts of all of us which is there right and victor frankl's a man's search for meeting um victor frankl was a victim of the holocaust he survived it most of his family did not he in his book he recounts the um his own experiences in the camps and how people dealt with it right um and he has this sort of philosophical um extractions that he pulls out of his experience there which are very deep but that famous line you know

the line between good and evil cuts down the heart of every human being. I think it is true. You know, there are people who are won over by their better angels and people who are won over by their worst angels. But at the end of the day, we all do have that within us, that capacity in the right conditions to be a monster and that capacity in any condition to be a saint. We have that within us, right? The modern meme is there are two wolves inside of you, and we could take that in a million

different directions. But, you know, the basic point is true. And I think we do ourselves a disservice spiritually, if not politically, when we insist that these are really good people inherently, intrinsically good, and these other people are categorically ontologically bad. That's all too convenient. And that's certainly been the move that people have made throughout history, religious fanatics, fascists, you know, people of various different sex and groups and whatever that you know the every genocide is basically premised on this idea they're fundamentally evil we are fundamentally the good guys right even the fucking nazis the quintessential bad guys thought of themselves genuinely thought of themselves as the good guys as these scrappy fighters

for german integrity right and so um i think it's spiritually existentially politically socially important for us to not be naive about that and I think Tick Nhat Han makes that point in this article quite well

so that's it I think it's an interesting distinction he draws between an actual act of suicide and the causes of real suicide and how this act

of political self-immolation this act of extreme moral clarity is a fundamentally different thing and I think that does apply to the discourse

if you will surrounding the self-immolation of Aaron Bushnell. And so again, we'll talk about that more with Allison. Now, let's shift into this other article, still in the realm of Buddhism. Let me take a little drink real quick. Still in the realm of Buddhism from Tricycle Magazine, which I do like. I mean, obviously, I'm broke as shit, so I can't afford the subscription anymore,

but this is the last one that they sent me. and I have a bunch of them from over the years it's you know to subscribe to magazines is pretty rare these days but I really do enjoy the aesthetics of tricycle and you know I learn a lot there's lots of great articles

all about Buddhism very interesting if you are interested in Buddhism and if you do have some extra disposable income tricycle might be something worth looking into of course they have a website and stuff too you can check out I find it very interesting and useful obviously don't agree with everything how the fuck could I but it's good stuff

so let's get into it this is called the elephant in the Dharma Hall it's a little bit longer maybe I won't do as many asides maybe I'll try to hold off until the end but you know me I get I get distracted and I have to follow my impulses and detours so we'll see

but this is the elephant in the Dharma Hall by John Peacock and this is sort of the this is the little description the author in what he describes as an intentionally polemical piece meant to invite discussion, writes that, for too many, Buddhist practice is a retreat into quietism

that ignores the pressing social and political realities of our time. Despite modern Buddhism's history of engagement, many in the meditation-centric schools, he argues, continue to view practice as a personal and private undertaking. Political discussion in the author's view must find its way into the Dharma Hall and be made integral into our everyday practice. Okay, so already I have an aside. Sorry about that. which is there is this you know it would be fallacious and we just fucking read an article about buddhist self-immolating over injustice right it would be completely flagrant and fallacious to assert that this is a feature of buddhism writ large that this retreat into quietism and solipsism and this lack of engagement with the political and the social is something inherent in Buddhism no no no what i would argue and of course it does take this this form and

other places at other times. But when you bring it to America, especially in the neoliberal era, right, what happens to these traditions as they move around the world? They change, they evolve, they adapt to the cultural context in which they are now being ushered into. This is true of all religions. Every religion started somewhere, began to spread, began to mutate, created branches and sex and different agreements. It went into new places. It took in some of the already existing cultural baggage of a certain thing about Christianity right going into pagan areas and bringing on some of those pagan holidays but giving them a Christian spin fundamentally sort of shifting and evolving and changing the tradition of Christianity in the process

Buddhism itself comes out of sort of you know the Buddha was like sort of a Hindu and in India and Buddhism is like you know like Protestantism is a branch off of Catholicism you can think of Christianity as a branch off from Judaism. Buddhism in lots of ways is a branch off of Hinduism and as it moved out of the Indian subcontinent and into the rest of Asia, into China, into Korea, into Japan. It changed. It took the cultures and the already existing sort of historical realities and background cultural and spiritual beliefs of those peoples, and it added in the Buddhist elements. And so you get these different branches of Buddhism, Theravada, Mahayana, you get Zen Buddhism, you get Thai Buddhism, right? You get all these different, you know, Korean Buddhism is a little different than Japanese Buddhism, all these different things. And they spawn these beautiful versions of, of the original thing. And far, you know, I'm not one of these people that believes in, I mean, there are ways in which people culturally appropriate for profit and shallow that doesn't respect the things. But all human traditions, philosophically, spiritually, religiously, politically, they are not the sole.

possession of one culture and one people at one time in place. We are human beings. These things are meant to be shared and to evolve. And if somebody living in Omaha, fucking Nebraska can get deep insights and make their life better and profound ways from a 2,500 year old tradition that started in the Indian subcontinent, that to me is fucking gorgeous. That is gorgeous. And it's actually true about pretty much everything, including Marxism. Marxism comes out of industrializing Europe, comes out of, you know, specifically Germany, Marx went around Europe, of course. So it comes out of Europe. And then what happens? It goes into different place, goes into Africa, goes into Asia as those people in their political context with their historical backgrounds wrestle with this

European mode of thought. They change it. They better it. They deepen it. They expand it. They stretch it. and Marxism is all the better for it and nobody, no Marxists would disagree with that unless you're an insane chauvinist and you know you deserve to be humiliated for saying Marxism actually it is European and it should be European and only European like if if Marxists ever said that

they'd be slapped in the face by other Marxists and I think the same thing is true here but when things do move when a tradition like Buddhism does move into a new culture like the fucking West there's going to be goods, bads and uglies that are generated from that. Some of the uglies is the Amazon Zen booth

is this idea that we should meditate to increase our productivity at fucking work. Don't make me puke. And is also the hyper-individualism of neoliberal capitalism. So when somebody in the 80s or 90s or whatever, 2000s, right now, has a Buddhist, they are soaking,

they're marinating their entire life in the cultural baggage of neoliberal America. And even before neoliberalism, everyday America is still deeply alienated, deeply individualistic, deeply atomized. Neoliberal is like a tripling down on that insanity. And that's why we had this insane health crisis, health care crisis, mental health crisis, the society is falling apart at the seams. Because neoliberalism is applied libertarianism and libertarianism doesn't fucking work. But, you know, it's neither here nor there. The point is that when it comes to the U.S., there is this way.

and if you get into these Buddhist communities or these spiritual communities in the West that are influenced by Buddhism, you'll see it immediately. There is this hyper-individualism that manifests grotesquely. And there is this way in which their spiritual practices, their engagement with Buddhism, is held up as a bulwark against having to have social, political, and economic responsibilities to others. Which is, in some sense, anathema to some of the core tenets of Buddhism. And in another sense, there's elements of Buddhism going all the way back to the early days where that's not necessarily anathema to it, right? Mahayana and Theravada Buddhism are kind of different. They're very different.

Like Protestantism and Catholicism, where there's things they share, for sure. There's also things they deeply disagree about, and they took the traditions in slightly different ways. And Mahayana does sort of, you know, somewhat maybe not as much in Zen Buddhism, which is technically a Mahayana branch of Buddhism, but Mahayana writ large is a more, this is where the idea of the Bodhisattva comes from. This is where, you know, compassion in particular is deeply front-loaded. And so you get more of probably people interested in social and political engagement

out of this Mahayana tradition, which is what Tikna Yan was talking about and from which he comes, right? Then you might get from like super old school forms of Theravada Buddhism. So it's not, again, not purely a Western phenomenon, but there is a specifically and uniquely, American version of individualism that gets expressed here. So all that's just something that

okay, we're not even in the article again. I'm sorry. All right, here's the article. And I'll try to shut the fuck up. The time is ripe for contemporary Western Buddhism to examine its ethical conscience. Let me take as my starting point a comment by the Slovenian philosopher Slavoy Zhijek. Quote, this is Zhijek.

Although Buddhism presents itself as the remedy for the stressful tension of capitalist dynamics, allowing us to uncouple and retain inner peace, it actually functions as capitalism's perfect ideological supplement. The quote-unquote Western Buddhist meditative path is arguably the most efficient way for us to fully participate in capitalist dynamics while retaining the appearance of mental sanity, end quote. Okay, well, just as an aside straight up, I'm not going to make it super long, that is an indictment

of quote unquote western buddism which just means buddism as it originates and as it expresses itself in in europe and in north america right when it comes over here it takes on these different forms so he's not talking about buddhism you know from 2500 years ago or how it manifests in vietnam 50 years he's talking about how it manifests here so be we should be clear about that but it's a deep indictment it's saying this is this this is the opium of the people this is an more efficient salve for the cruelties and deprable of capitalism such that you become sedated by this practice and thus you are no longer interested in combating capitalism in fact you are now just going along with it it's actually an innovation

in some ways of capitalism to act as this more efficient and effective opium of the masses so that's a brutal critique for somebody like myself in particular that's a brutal critique we have answers But let's see what this guy's answer is. So that was the Xijek quote. Now we're back to the original author. When I first read this about eight years ago, along with his other comments on Western Buddhism and mindfulness, I felt mildly outraged. How, I rationalized, can an academic philosopher who is clearly not a Buddhist scholar,

make such sweeping comments, which could arise only from the ignorance of one who has never studied or practiced Buddhism? Having seemingly justified my reactivity, I quietly put aside Jizek's. In the summer of 2022, I was teaching a mindfulness retreat in Ireland. It was one of the hottest summers on record in Western Europe, approaching 30 degrees Celsius, a temperature unheard of in Ireland. One evening, as I was giving the obligatory Dharma talk in the sweltering Catholic chapel that served as our meditation hall, the familiar words of the Buddha's fire sermon

impressed themselves upon me in a way that they had never done before. Quote, Bikus, all in Bikus, by the way, is just a term that the Buddha would talk about his followers, right? A biku is a practitioner. So he, you know, Buddha is talking to his followers, the practitioners, he calls him bikus. Bikus, all is burning, burning with the fire of greed, with the fire of aversion, with the fire of delusion, end quote. Throughout various parts of Europe, uncontrolled fires were raging across ancient and precious landscapes, destroying everything. Before traveling to Ireland, I recalled seeing a photograph in a daily newspaper of a scene that looked akin to a desert with a lone figure wandering through it. This devastated and straw-colored

wilderness turned out to be Hyde Park in central London. The world, it seemed, was burning with the effects wrought by climate and environmental changes, a direct consequence of the ways that our consumerist societies, together with the politics that feed and bolster these societies, are organized. And yet, here I sat with a large group of mainly middle-class people speaking about the psychology of mindfulness and the beneficial effects of engaging in its practice. The elephant in the Darmahal was the unquestioned social, political, and ethical dimensions of the structures that we all inhabit. Despite its looming presence, this elephant is mostly ignored. There is a refusal to recognize its existence, let alone address it in any significant way.

It appeared to me then, as it does now, that unless we bring into full recognition our implication and the devastation of the world via our unexamined complicity in the capitalist and consumerist structures that bring about that devastation, then something is horribly awry with contemporary Buddhism and the mindfulness movements

that have their origins in Buddhism. If our quest for personal flourishing in this world through the study and practice of Buddhism doesn't lead us to question the structures that give rise to hunger, inequality, prejudice, and injustice, then our so-called Buddhism exists in a rarefied atmosphere, divorced from the struggle for existence of billions of beings on this planet.

Amen. In the pursuit of an all-inclusive apolitical Buddhism, we reinforce the perception that Buddhism is otherworldly and not interested in or engaged with the most pressing issues of our time. In taking this stance, the various Buddhisms of the Western world acquire a pacified face, firmly set against forms of political partiality, which renders them incapable of critiquing the current socio-political status quo. This, it could be argued, is an abnegation of the ethical responsibility that we have, not just as Buddhists, but as human beings,

to find ways of living in the world that benefits all, and both recognizes and names, injustice, inequality, exploitation, and the causes of environmental devastation. To take a line of least resistance, concentrating on softer targets primarily associated with the individual, rather than the social and political structures that we as individuals inhabit, is a failure of ethical responsibility. Okay, so far so good. When we look around the world, the Western world, and observe the current fragility of our democratic structures and the wholesale sellout of our political institutions to corporate and commercial interests, does this not at least require us to mention these facts, together with the ethical dangers that they pose? does not the sheer mendaciousness

of much of the political discourse we hear need highlighting do not the patently observable inequalities and injustices of our societies call upon us to respond not just with a distanced compassion but also with a practical and engaged activism

okay as an aside that distance compassion is a problem that that solipsistic individualist I feel for you at a distance but I'm not going to do anything about it. The act of feeling compassion in and of itself is sufficient. No, it's not. Compassion for me

entails action. There is no compassion without action. That's a false compassion. That's something more like sympathy, even pity. Compassion for me is deeply rooted in love and tied to action. And if it's missing either of those two components, it's not really compassion in my book. I say that as a Buddhist and as a Marxist and as a human being. Back to the text. In Buddhist thought, we are more familiar with asking questions about the right way to live in the sphere of individual action, yet we tend to shy away from examining social and political questions

in Dharma contexts. The failure to do so can be attributed only to an inability to grasp the complex ethical vision of the Buddha, which not only encompass the individual, but also the lived experiences of our social realities. It is far easier, I would say, suggest to address individual psychological problems than socio-political issues. In evading the sociopolitical, we lay ourselves open, however, to the charge of an ethical cowardice that

prioritizes the individual over the social. We often justify this neglect with the generalized claim that we wish to avoid giving offense and possibly alienating people. There is something disingenuous in such assertions, and they can be seen as a smokescreen for the fear of not having all the answers. End quote. Absolutely perfect. As an aside. Yeah, I really do love that.

And this is where dialectics can come in and make this point even further, which is to say that the individual and the community are deeply interlinked. To try to cut off one of the other and address them, thinking you're addressing something substantial, you know, is to sort of, you know, cut yourself off at the knees to prevent the actual health of the thing you're aiming for. So in this context, if you are thinking, as he is talking about, Buddhism is for me individually. It's for me to work through my own psychological problems.

I can't have anything to say about social, politics, economics. I don't know anything about that. I'm just going to focus on this. Well, why are you sick in the first place? Why do you need fixing or healing or a spiritual practice in the first place? It's because you live in part. It's because of your existential situation as a human. human being meant to die in the cosmos, but also in your cultural and historical position as

somebody living in a broken and tragic world. And the pressures of modern capitalism puts on us have deep psychological impacts, which then we try to deal with individually, as if we are ever going to be able to solve those problems at their roots if we look away from the collective outward political struggles that would necessitate actually fixing those problems. And as I've said a million times, and I'll keep saying, healthy communities are premised on healthy individuals and healthy individuals are premised on healthy communities, and those two things feed into one another. Just like the Marxists who completely disregards the individual, who completely disregards psychology, existential questions, spiritual practices, anything to do with

the inner life, with your own existential situation. We all know Marxists, these crude Marxists who are like that, and merely focus on the political, on the outward, are often them themselves broken, flawed, deeply blinded people to certain aspects of life. It reduces their ability to actually go out and make that change in the world because they've lopped off half of the world, the subjective individual inner side of the world as well. So the best approach, and this is in line with dialectics as well as I think with Buddhism, which is deeply dialectical, is to deal with both. To really go all the way in both directions and you find yourself out, you find yourself at the end of that holistically back into the hole.

because those are two sides of the same coin and you have to account for both there's the hyper-liberal individualists who use spirituality as an escape route from their collective responsibility and there's the cold calculating sort of one-dimensional um you know political types who just focus on the outward and are themselves you know whatever greedy egoic narcissistic delusional you know have their own issues can't relate to people well you know can't go out and talk to random people they can't relate to them can't connect with them which hinders their ability to do

what they want to do politically both of those are errors and it's very obvious it should be obvious to all of us listening that both of those are errors and so a lot of what I do here on Rev Left with trying to cover both sides of this coin is to re-enchrench this idea that you can and should

deal with both and in fact if you're interested in truth and if you're interested in real change you have to deal with both. Back to the text. But the social and political impacts us all. This is the arena in which our lives are played out. To turn away from this aspect of life is to become complicit in the actions of governments

and corporate bodies that affect us all, though not necessarily equally. Some, the wealthy and the middle classes, are more able to insulate themselves against the ravages wrought by bad governments and economic inequality. Absolutely. This leads to the question that we need to ask. ourselves, does our practice of the Dharma, whatever form it may take, simply give us a greater ability, as Jizek suggests, to cope with exploitation, inequality, and the devastation of the environment while we focus on our quote-unquote spiritual development? Even more to the point,

is the question as to how contemporary Buddhism actively or implicitly abets the status quo by diverting our attention from external issues to concentrate on the inner life of the mind and the awakening and flourishing of the individual. Let me rephrase that, because I phrase these sometimes expecting a question mark, and they don't quite come. So this is a period at the end of this sentence. Even more to the point is the question as to how much contemporary Buddhism actively or implicitly abets the status quo by diverting our attention from external issues to concentrate

on the inner life of the mind and the awakening and flourishing of the individual. Zizek stresses in his critique that Western Buddhism assists the individual in the individual in developing strategies that counter the unpleasant effects of modern life. He suggests that by engaging in the practice of Buddhism and mindfulness meditation, we can somehow anesthetistize ourselves to the harmful effects generated by living in a capitalist world that is institutionalized greed as its hallmark. Buddhism becomes the perfect adjunct to capitalism by focusing upon the individual and turning away from the socio-political.

By taking Xijet's remarks seriously, I have now begun to address some important issues that have bothered me for a considerable time around, quote, the elephant in the Dharma hall. Politics, economics, and socio-ethical structures are topics generally absent from, or at best addressed only obliquely, in most of the Dharma discourses that I have heard. Now, I believe, the time has come to find a way to engage with them. It must be borne in mind, however, that individual psychology is, to some extent, always reflective of a social psychology.

I agree. If greed and desire are, for example, primary drivers of individual action, then these will also be major forces in the social system. In addition, it may be the social system that dictates the kinds of desires that you have and how they manifest in your behavior. A capitalist system has, it might be added, a vested interest in generating certain kinds of desire that are aimed at selling goods and increasing profits. The maxim here is that if the desire doesn't exist, then you create it. So as an aside, the three poisons of Buddhism are greed, ill will, or hatred, and delusion. Greed, hatred, delusion, right?

And these are seen as inward psychological, antagonistic traits that need to be overcome individually, psychologically, et cetera. Let me pull something up here. But I have made the argument. In my, I believe it is in, you know, let's see here. Yep. It is, I've made this many places. but in the argument or in the episode of Rev. Left, transcending capitalism, insights from Buddhism and Marxism, where I have on Graham Priest, the professor of philosophy, Graham Priest, we talk about exactly that. And we discuss how these psychological things of greed, hate, and delusion are institutionalized in the forms of capitalism, greed, imperialism, ill will, or hate, and ideology, delusion. And so what we do with in that episode, and I've done it at other places as well, including the speech I gave at ASU, which you can also find on Rev Left, is institutionalized, those ostensibly psychological things to point to the fact that there is this dialectical relationship that if you're only trying to uproot greed, hate, and delusion in the psychology of your own individual mind, you are, but are unwilling or unable to see and confront how that is institutionalized at the collective level.

Right? You're not actually solving the problem. And I think that is incredibly crucial and that is exactly more or less what this person is arguing for here, which is very nice. I kind of thought this was going to be more liberal. I'm glad to see capitalism consistently being brought up because it's very obvious that that is fucking crucial to all of this. So let's get back into the article. Okay. Why do we find ourselves in the position of fixating almost wholly upon the individual rather than the sociopolitical? The answer to this, lies in the way that Western Buddhism has become defined by the various meditation techniques derived from the historical traditions. Buddhism for the individual practitioner is often defined by the brand of meditation that is practiced, Zazen, Vopassana, Zogchen, etc. Meditation becomes the dominant trope of much of Western Buddhism, and its centrality is reflective of a wish to develop a mind that is less reactive to the turmoil of the world. We live amidst political, economic, social upheaval, all of which create a sense of insecurity and of not feeling entirely at home. While it's difficult to criticize the desire for a less reactive mind, this should not be at the cost

of a disengagement with society and the world. That we nonetheless must accept the as it is of the way that we find ourselves in the world, that we inhabit structures dominated by capitalist, libertarian, consumerist ideas, and politics, does not discount engagement with and critique of those systems. To place one's primary focus on individual human flourishing is to lose sight of the locus wherein that flourishing can or cannot occur. The flourishing of the many, as opposed to the few, is a political issue that we ignore at the peril of simply reinforcing the status quo. We inhabit societies that are permeated by a dominant sociopolitical ethos that inevitably and in inescapably pervades and excludes any alternative that we may wish to actualize. As an

the side. I've always had this idea and maybe other people have experimented with it, but of taking this idea all the way, which is to like, is it possible to create a sort of Buddhist community, a spiritual community wherein politics and in particular principled Marxist politics are woven into the practice? Because if we take seriously that these issues of capitalism and imperialism and suffering and consumerism are at the core of so much unnecessary suffering in the world, then it behooves us when we're trying to, as Buddhists, address that suffering in ourselves and in others, to take that shit head on. And it might at first sound almost sacrilegious to think of, like, what you're going to make

like a Buddhist, Marxist school where you come to learn Buddhism, but you get indoctrinated with communism? I can see how liberals and stuff would be, like, kind of disturbed by that and even make an argument, oh, this is not Buddhism. That not, you're just, you're shoehorning in your politics to Buddhism. But no, these things are deeply connected. Look at the core of what Buddhism is trying to address. Look at the core of what Marxism is trying to address.

I made this whole argument, this long 45 plus minute speech on exactly this. At my speech, I gave it ASU. Let me, in fact, really quick, because I fucking forget the title of it. Let me just tell you guys that title, in case any of you have not yet heard it. And for those that have, I'm sorry to just bear with me here. Let's see. Is she a speech? Yes, okay.

It's called dialectics and liberation, insights from Buddhism and Marxism. So just Google that. It's in our catalog. You can find it on any podcast app. It's totally free. It's out there. Many of you will probably already have listened to it for sure. It's the speech I gave at ASU, but I come back to Omaha.

I get in the recording booth, and I give the speech again, so it's very clear. It's not like you're in an audit. hearing like audience people shift their chairs and stuff it's a high quality recording of that speech it's called dialectics and liberation insights from buddhism and marxism where i take these arguments and i go all the way with them um so if you're interested in that check it out but maybe as as my life progresses i don't know where life is going to take me uh wherever my life goes uh one of the possible trajectories is something in that direction i don't think that i am practiced enough to to masquerade in any way as a Buddhist teacher right and so that holds me

back from trying to make that jump I don't think I don't think I'm ready or can be considered you know realized enough to take on that role but if I continue to develop that aspect of my life perhaps as an older man I could play that role but again life will life will create the opportunities and the flows and the trajectories and I'll have to make the best of them so that very well might not ever come to fruition but it is something i've thought about for an incredibly long time and that speech dialectics and liberation as well as what i'm reading right now as well as so much of the work we've done on spirituality and buddhism on revel-left are all gestures in that direction marxists can benefit from buddists insights buddhist can can can benefit from

marxist insights wouldn't it be fascinating if we could somehow build some organizational structures that incorporate both i don't think we're there yet i don't think we're necessarily ready for that yet. I don't even exactly know how that would happen, but it is a latent background idea that I've had forever that I try to work towards in these rhetorical analysis sort of stuff that I'm doing with political education at this point in my life, and maybe doors will open down in the future where I can take that idea and put it into concrete practice. We shall see. All right, back to the text. Capitalist and consumer structures haunt our expectations and horizons of understanding in ways that are often concealed

and less brought to light by sustained reflection. That our present societies uphold inequality, repression, greed, and hatred may be obvious in some areas, but their pervasiveness is revealed only when those structures are subjected to intense scrutiny, Marxism. Inescapably, the forms of prejudice, hatred, greed, and delusion

nurtured within those societies have a direct effect on who we are and who we think we are. The individual and the social are thus inexorably entwined. That's dialectics. The individual and the social are inexorably intertwined. That's essential. And that really is the main point, right?

And then it's about taking that point to its full realization. Continuing on. I'll try to interrupt less because there's a little bit more here. To question and subject to critique the givens of our societies without opting for quick and neat solutions, encourages us to engage in an ethical thinking far greater than that merely associated with ideas of individual liberation. Waking up becomes not just a task for the individual, but one for the whole socio-political structure.

Engaging exclusively with the individual quest is to address only a small portion of the elephant that lurks in full view of the Darmahal. As an aside, incredibly quickly, okay, it's probably not going to be very quick. This idea, I do, I play. with this idea I don't want to I don't want to assert it as a dogmatic fact but there's something that's always been in me that if or to the extent that people participate in this deepening

and broadening of consciousness under these Buddhist practices and other practices within all traditions and the mystical strains of various but in Buddhism it's so concrete it's the practices are made so clear when we do that are we in the same way that when we politically strong struggle for progress. We are pushing forward the evolution materially and socially of humanity. When we engage in such practices of deepening and expanding our consciousness and transcending our ego, are we also involved in the evolution of human consciousness, the evolution of human moral development? When you weep as a total stranger sitting in the United States for the suffering of Palestinians who you don't know, you've never met, you never will meet across the

world, speaking a language you don't speak, worshiping a God you might not worship, and you are doubled over in extreme weeping pain for their suffering? Are you on the moral edge, the leading, cutting edge of human moral development? I think you are. So when we think about dialectically, humanity as evolution, everything is in constant flux, everything is in a state of evolution. We understand that politically through our apprehension of dialectics within Marxism. We understand that morally in the development of that part of our human heart that cares about complete strangers and refuses to other eyes, right? That looks at the suffering of somebody doesn't otherize it, doesn't distance itself from it, but embraces it, open its heart to it,

suffers with it, and to the extent that it can. You're on the cutting edge of moral human development. because that sort of universalism is what transcends individualism, is what transcends tribalism, is what transcends the us versus them dichotomy. No, I am a human being, and because I'm a human being, I relate to and I suffer with the suffering of other human beings. That is a, that is motivated by love, and it brings humanity together, universalizes the human experience and transcends petty divisions. That seems to me like moral evolution. how many people a thousand years ago would cry at the suffering of somebody on the other side of the world if you could go show right some fucking guy in France and in the 1300s hey look at this guy over in China who suffered this horrible unfair death do you care at all

would they care maybe one in a billion there's always been that spot within humanity. The Buddha and Christ had it 2,500 years ago. There's always been people that have felt that way, but they've always been the minority. Today it feels like more and more people, especially with our communicative technologies that allow us to see the world in ways we could never before. Seems like more and more people are starting to feel that way. And the moral implications of that developing over time and becoming entrenched in every human heart seem like moral evolution. Okay. And then we look over to the consciousness realm. Is the transcendence of self the identification with something deeper and bigger than the ego and all of the spiritual and existential

and psychological and conscious impacts of spiritual practices also a way in which humans push the boundary of consciousness and thus the boundaries of conscious evolution? And when all three of these things, the socio-political, the moral and ethical, the spiritual and conscience, consciousness aspects, if you can embody the cutting edge of all three of those things, I think you unify and make holistic this evolutionary force. You are now not merely an individual choosing a lifestyle. You have now put yourself with other human beings who are on the cutting, edge of evolution of our species evolution you represent the leading edge the buddhist the realized buddhist represents in some respect the leading cutting edge of what human consciousness can do and how deep it can go the person who feels deeply love and compassion and connection to total strangers across the world and who share in their suffering and wish nothing more than to stop it are actively

engaged in the moral evolution of humanity and are giving rise to are manifesting through the individual this collective moral evolution. Don't lose that part of yourself. Don't ever lose that part of yourself that cries when a total stranger suffers. Lots of people cut that part of themselves off. We know these people in our lives. They can't be moved. You could show them pictures of Palestinian fathers pulling children out of the rubble and they'll say something like, well, Israel does have a right to defend itself and, you know, that's horrible, but things need this, you know, life has always had war and these people have shut themselves off and they've made themselves small. And we see those sorts of people all around in our families, amongst our friends, in our communities. They are the average moral person in the world. They're not bad people. They're not serial killers and sociopaths.

They care about their family. They'll help a neighbor who needs help. but they can't open their heart to people to all. Those people are two other. Right? I can't open my heart to that. Now, if my neighbor suffers, my neighbor's house on fire, I'll heroically run in there and try to save their cat. I'm not a bad person.

I'm even willing to sacrifice my life in some instances for other people. But zooming out, I'm on that average end of the bell curve of morality. There's nothing wrong with that. But to be on the far, edge of the progressive side of human moral development is exciting and it's something you can contribute to by feeling those feelings and not shutting off your heart. So I want people to think about that. As dialecticians, we understand evolution, right? And even in dialectics and liberation, the speech I gave, I used Darwinian evolution to highlight

dialectics. I used evolution via natural selection as a perfect example of dialectical materialism in the world it is the quintessential example of dialectics evolution and how that process occurs and materialism no supernatural or idealist cause

needed this is how nature itself in the material realm animals and organisms and genes unprompted from some creator right how this evolves naturally so that's materialistic it doesn't It doesn't need supernatural or idealist explanations for it.

Metaphysical explanations for it. It's material. So, yes. So those are my thoughts about evolution. And once you accept that, you're invited to participate in the fucking evolution of our species. You can, in your own, not by yourself, but through yourself, express the cutting edge in all three of these terrains. And that is fascinating. and if you're going to dedicate your life to something, is this not worth it?

Is not trying to make yourself an instrument for the evolution of our entire species a great way to spend your life? It seems much better than pursuing status and wealth and money and fame. My God. Food for thought. Back to the article. Firstly, we must begin to actively confront and then talk about the injustices created by the system that we inhabit. As the philosopher Hannah Arendt, said, quote, We humanize what is going on in the world

and in ourselves by speaking of it, and in the course of speaking of it, we learn to be human, end quote. To remain silent is not an option, for to do so is to lose something of our humanity by accepting the status quo and becoming complicit in the inequities of the system. We are all ethically responsible,

even by our own omissions. The path of the Dharma is above all about becoming human, by engaging in a conversation, talking about what it might mean to wake up and then enacting the fruits of that deliberation. We wake up not just individually but collectively by exploring an imaginative version of the form of societies might take,

of the form our societies might take. But we also must see clearly how the present structures fail us, both individually and collectively. We are crying and crying out for a new vision of what it may mean to live ethically and collectively. secondly we must act talking is not enough because the world can be changed only by our acting upon it talking is a necessary but not sufficient condition for change to occur there is little time for passive approaches that delay action let us not however underestimate the vital need for the conversation to take place for our societies to be moved toward greater equality there must be an analysis of the origins of the inequalities and other violations of the inequalities and other violations of human and environmental justice that be devil the present system.

Then and only then can this be followed by positive action that redresses the balance of society? This is, once again, not simply an individual problem, but a political and ethical issue that can be dealt with collectively only by the body politic, you, I, and the myriad of others that make up that body. A new society can come about only by a collective forging of the form that society might take to not engage is simply to follow unexamined ways of living both collectively and individually and to be driven blindly by the powerful forces of self-interest so as an excite you know prefigrative politics is something we hear about and anarchists often claim as their own and um i think i think there's something to be said for the prefigurative

possibilities of this sort of inner work right to to go inside and uproot greed and hatred and delusion makes you more capable of not only being a friend, a family member, a brother, a daughter, a mother, a father, a coworker, a neighbor, but also deeply, deeply impacts for the better your ability to be a Marxist,

to be an organizer, to be an activist of any sort. And that is so fucking crucial. And we all have had, had the occasion of somebody who believes good thoughts about Marxism and socialism, but are themselves pieces of shit. They are ego monsters. And no matter if they had all the right beliefs, they couldn't do shit about it, because they are so small inwardly. They are so underdeveloped individually that even if they have the right ideas, they don't know how to go about making those work or making those, you know, compelling to other people, etc. I mean, just go

on Twitter and you can see a bunch of people who call themselves socialist and communist who want to build a better world. And you can see how petty and gossipy and backbitey and small they are. You think those are the sorts of people that are able to create the better world? Or are those people that have been shaped in the image of the world that exists? And then there's this cognitive dissidents about the world they want to achieve, but they're fundamentally unable to because they're still reflecting in every aspect of their personality the old way of being you see this all the time social media is a great place to go and look for it it is wrong for us to separate ethical and political issues as if they are two distinct spheres we may talk about ethics in the

dharma hall but neglect to emphasize how this impacts the social the social and ethical world this is a huge omission as the ethical is the political it is about living together in the best way possible. If, as Buddhist thought suggests, compassion, kindness, and understanding are values to be developed in the individual, then these are ethical qualities we should wish to see cultivated in the political realm. Far from compassion and kindness, what we see generated is the cultivation of a great deal of violence, hypocrisy, exploitation, coercion, and inequality, even in the most democratic societies, so-called democratic. This situation has led, among many Buddhist practitioners to a progressive disaffection with the political as the realm of action

and to retreat to the isolated cave of the individual wanting nothing to do with politics. Buddhism, in all its forms, espouses compassion and altruism as central ethical concerns. And yet these are clearly at odds with neoliberal economic ideals based on rather crude Darwinian assumptions about the survival of the fittest and the meritocratic primacy of the individual. Contrary to this, an emergent-awakened society would need to embody compassion, kindness, and desire for social justice in a politically viable and collective form. How to make this manifest is the large question that calls upon us all to give it consideration. We have to put aside romanticism and idealism to enter into full and frank discussions about what needs addressing and what can and cannot be achieved through such discussions. When the human domain is subjected to and subjugated by extremist political ideologies that privilege and prioritize individuals and their desires, this in turn impacts the realm of the non-human.

If there is brutality, violence, exploitation, and objectification, both performed and sanctioned in the human realm, then this is equally true of that which is enacted on the voiceless non-human animals and the environment with even greater force. ethically that which is without voice must be spoken up for and protected as a side note when you feel yourself to be one with nature when you when you have even for brief moments overcome the illusion of a separate sense of self that is somehow distinct from the rest of the world around you and you understand yourself as embedded in in a reflection of the entire planets and cosmos that created you you are naturally inclined to feel more compassion in a St. Francis ass way towards animals, and you are more naturally inclined to see the beauty and have a deep, deep desire to want to protect the beauty of the oceans and the mountains and the deserts and the prairies. Because you don't see those things as external things to be extracted from and used in a utilitarian manner, but you see those things as yourself. That is me. And more than that, that's not me. Because there is not. self so your deep connection when the self drops away you are that when the self isn't present

you can look up at the moon you can look out over the mountains and see that as you and that that sounds sort of contradictory there's no self but that's you because yeah that's a bigger you i talked about this in the mysticism app in hinduism they'll talk about the self with the capital And enlightenment or Moksha is this identification with this big self, this cosmic awareness. In Buddhism, they invert it. They say no self.

Anata. You transcend the very sense of self. They end up at the same place. Whether you're everything or your nothing is the same fucking thing. Because to be nothing, to have no individual sense of separate self

is to have that distinction between outside and inside, obliterated. Therefore, you are that. I think that's beautiful. Because you get to the same place whether you annihilate the self or you join the big self. Whether you go to nothing, become nothing in Buddhism, or become everything. I am God. In Hinduism or the mystic traditions of the Abrahamic religions, you end up at the same place. You are God. You are everything because you are nothing. Where were we? We may despair at the the individual and institutionalized greed that has brought the world to the point of collapse.

And yet the silence of the Dharma world toward the political forces that have brought us to this point is not question or critiqued often enough. I'm trying. Such silence amounts to a complicity by omission. There should be a constant highlighting of the political forces that have brought us to the critical juncture that we find ourselves in. Although we speak of compassion, kindness, and nonviolence, we assume it's sufficient to adopt these only at an individual level, without any need to apply them at the political sphere to the political sphere. Yet it is this realm that concerns us all, and we cannot wholly divorce ourselves from it.

Capitalist economic structures don't have much room for ethical values unless they can be monetized, and yet they infiltrate every dimension of our lives. To think we could affect such a divorce from the political world is extremely naive. Even Dharma centers stand in the midst of our political structures and are subservient to them. where do such considerations leave us though ultimately to regain its ethical conscience contemporary buddhist thought and practice must own up to its dependence on the status quo and confront its reluctance to address issues of a distinctly political nature this change can occur only when we recognize that any division between the political

and the individual is purely spurious as the two realms are wholly dependent upon one another If this is the case, then focusing upon the individual to the exclusion of the socio-political justifies the kinds of criticism aimed at Western Buddhism by Slavois-Jijek. Buddhism, on this reading, becomes simply a form of passive nihilism that seeks to create meeting for the individual by social withdrawal, leaving the social and political to the forces that dominate society. That the individual and political are not wholly separate can be seen in the life of the Buddha. In the texts of the polycanon, we can see the Buddha engaging with the social and political structures of his time, critiquing his society and its parameters by redefining and addressing many of its accepted tropes that issue from the dominant forces within that society, as well as recommending strategies that enable the individual to lead an ethical and good life.

If we reduce Buddhist thought and practice solely to a personal and private undertaking, then we lose something immensely important that has the potential to change many aspects of the societies that we live within. The Buddha appeared to know this 2,600 years ago. To re-inogurate what the Buddha began in his own lifetime will require us to step out into less safe zones of discourse and start a conversation about how the political structures dominating our societies manifest and what vision we have for our societies. This can commence only when we have the courage to speak and confirm our humanity in that speaking. And that is the article from John Peacock,

who is the former director of the University of Oxford's Master of Studies Program, mindfulness-based cognitive therapy. He is also one of the co-founders of Bodie College in Toteness, England. That is from the spring 2024 version of or imprint of tricycle, the Buddhist review. All right. Well, my voice is a little cracky right now. I'm going to go ahead and I think end it there. Again, if you're more, if you're interested in this stuff and you haven't heard, if you're a new patron, for example,

you haven't heard some of our work on Buddhism in the past. I'll try to link to that in the show notes here. but if you want that full articulation that I gave as a speech to students at ASU that is called dialectics and liberation insights from Buddhism and Marxism and you can check it out

I'll put it in the show notes but you can also just Google it and find it and I also did an episode with the comrades over at Upstream the upstream podcast where they had me on to talk about Buddhism and Marxism as well where I got some questions You know, the dialectics and liberation is a monologue speech I gave.

I got questions when I gave it at ASU, of course, and I wish we had that track, but we don't. But I went on upstream, and then they asked me questions about that, and so I could kind of take ideas a little further and deeper and flesh things out that I didn't get a fully flesh out in that speech. So if you're interested in that and you haven't heard that, go check out upstream. Just search Brett O'Shea, Rev Left Radio, Upstream, and you'll find my a couple episodes. I've done with those good folks over there. So that's going to be it for today.

Allison and I's episode on the self-immolation from Aaron Bushnell is coming soon. And in the meantime, love and solidarity.