There are some developments worth mentioning.
Mr. Pepper has reactivated his blog The Faithful Buddhist and intends to write a new series of texts “to develop [his] philosophical position in a systematic way, ” as he writes in the about. The first text is The Metaphysics of Dependent Origination: an attempt at a systematic presentation of full-strength anatman.
Mr. Pepper mentions the most recent book by Jay Garfield Engaging Buddhism: Why it matters to Philosophie. This book is indeed a very welcome text about Indian Buddhist philosophy. The core chapters of it – chapter 4 to 9 – are a concise curriculum in this regard and are worth reading for everybody interested in the topic. Especially it enables one to deconstruct x-buddhist ataman-like views via Buddhist philosophy. Garfields main conclusion in chapter 6 is, I think, that from a introspective phenomenological perspective consciousness is unreliable (this regards to the x-buddhist claim that just to meditate in the right way long enough will clarify any question), at the same time from an ontological point of view this view doesn’t makes sense because it would only be possible from a perspective outside the phenomenologically unreliable consciousness. The nice thing about this is that it is a double-blow deconstructive bomb against any naïve view on selfhood. Garfield combines here a phenomenological analysis by Vasubandhu – whom he reads as an phenomenologist, not as an idealistic – with the ontological scepticism of Chandrakirti and the syncretist approach to both by Santaraksita. What results is a powerful explosion of the x-buddhist myth of introspection as a means to gain access to the ultimate truth (the latter being that of Madhyamka).
What seems not so clear is if Garfield keeps apart Mr. Pepper’s transitive and intransitive levels of appearance. At this point Mr. Pepper objects. Furthermore, in chapter 9 about ethics, Garfield takes into consideration, among others, Thich Nhat Hahn as an example how Buddhist ethics can be put into practice. Here he gets dangerously near to a just-be-happy-buddhism – although this might not at all be his intention. What can be totally misunderstood is Garfield’s insistence on the point, that to change anything, the perceptive process – in the Buddhist sense, which he explains thoroughly – has to be changed. In the capitalist appropriation of Buddhism this leads to the fact that x-buddhist practitioners just learn how to hover relaxed above a world they just do not have any clue about. Garfield leaves out this point and it might not at all be his intention in the first place to discuss it. In fact such a discussion might be a necessary consequence from his book: How, from a Buddhist analysis of experience and ontology and their consequences for ethics, follows a necessary intervention into the state of affairs we see politically, economically and ecologically.
Regarding ethics Garfield makes clear what distinguishes European from Buddhist ethics. While the former mostly take for granted some kind of subject based in the individual person, Buddhist ethics radically take as their starting point the dependent origination of this subject together with its unreliability about its own status. From this follows that any ethics based the least on any individual agent gets lost in the wilderness of unenlightened depend origination. My impression, after a first reading, is that Garfield is not so strong in this chapter as in the others. He seems to go back more than once to truisms.
But again, I think this is a very good foundation to develop a project of Buddhist ethics.
At another place Richard K. Payne has been quite busy since some time covering important topics regarding x-buddhism. One topic is the debate about the mindfulness craze which flooded the US since Matthieu Ricard and Goldie Hawn presented mindfulness to the World Economic Forum 2014. Start for example with Ignorance of the Buddhadharma is no excuse: Purser on Monteiro, Musten and Compson. Second Payne starts a discussion of Secular Buddhism with Secular Buddhism, I: Dale Wright in Insight Journal, which he continues here and here.
All mentioned topics would help contribute in important ways to the skeptical project of SNB. Garfield’s contribution helps in a Buddhist deconstruction of x-buddhist dreams and Payne helps deciphering another x-buddhism – Secular Buddhism – as just another reincarnation of protestant religiosity. His covering of the mindfulness debate shows that there is thorough and deeper reaching discourse than that of the trance-full dogs-bodies of capitalism.
Although I have been rather quite here, there are some interesting things going on at my place. I am busy with preparing a presentation of the Non-Buddhist project in Frankfurt on Feb 4th. Another important development in Frankfurt is the establishment of a group of people around the work of Achim Szepanski. This group will focus on capitalism as determined-in-the-last instance by capital. This is in contrast to a culturally turned marxism which in its most famous incarnation features Slawoj Zizek. This group has nothing to do with Buddhism but for me personally it is consequence from the debates we had the last years.
Regarding Buddhism in Germany, Switzerland and Austria it is the case that one cannot speak even with well informed people about that topic without meeting the most stupid presuppositions about it. Such is the state: X-buddhism managed to suffice the discourse about Buddhism with its assertions to an extent that a Buddhism which is shown, for example, by Garfield just vanishes and it becomes useless to even mention it.
In this regard German readers might find interesting a German book in which Garfield also features: Achtsamkeit, Ein Buddhistisches Konzept erobert die Wissenschaft. Reading the blurbs on the back cover, the list of contributors, and skimming a bit through the texts I doubt that this is more than one more naïve apology for sitting down numbed and starring at a wall in search for changing the world. I would appreciate it, if anybody would read the book and could convince my about the opposite.
Regarding other topics I have no opinion right now. That is, about the vector of this blog, if it should take on a new name, if we should work more together online, if the layout should be changed. Generally I think in this regards there is too much work for few, while a lot of people just lurk. Personally I think working on good texts (in any sense) is more important than going into intense debate online. But good text needs thorough grounding. I hope to get into this more with the Black Box Boys, the boyband of The New Frankfurt School – which is the group mentioned above.
