Slavoj Zizek asserts that Buddhism has a discernible role in two key features of our society - science and capitalism. In this lecture however he primarily focuses on Buddhism itself and what its teaching may appear as from a Christian perspective.
In the West at least, that is among the groups who practice it - Buddhism appears as a kind of antidote to capitalism, that is a way in which an individual subject can attain a kind of distance from the market, which can seemingly always bet against the actions of any singular party or agent. And indeed often runs on rumours fuelled by bad press.
In Slavoj Zizek’s own terms, it (Buddhism) provides you the opportunity to obtain a proper existential distance from the market and yet participate in it.
A question which links against this background is the issue which philosophical approaches towards Buddhism always come up against - that is the question of free will and the agency of the self.
The point which fascinates Slavoj Z, and any proletarian position is that there are no higher powers. Entailing that karma is essentially immanent to the way we act. Zizek I think reduces this to the ultimate position of responsibility of the understanding that our acts leave traces and have consequences.
In terms of the form in which this is expressed, we are introduced to the renunciations which on the face of it are not dissimilar to the Greek notion of sophrosyne. This inculcates as it were the acquisition of a dispassion for the objects of our clinging.
SZ even notices the crucial difference of interpretation which the Buddhist understanding of karma would be as compared to a western reading. This concerns the concept of Samsara or the suffering of the world, or the cyclicality of life. The encounter with karma here would entail, unlike the prevalent western interpretation, not the doing of good deeds to accumulate good karma so that good things happen to you, but rather to step out of the wheel of suffering.
So who is the figure who can effectively step out of this wheel of suffering? That would be the Bodhisatva. Here, especially viewing this lecture from India, I think it is important to note the different forms of embodying this Bodhisatva ethic as presented. Zizek lists three. 1. Kingbodhisatva 2. boatmanbodhisatva 3.shepardbodhisatva. The king seeks to reach Nirvana as quickly as possible and then turn around to help others. 2 Boatmanbodhisatva, which Zizek alleges is more communistic holds the basic idea that, yes (to Nirvana) but not me alone - ‘together with others’. The most dangerous tendency identified by Zizek is what he refers to as the shepardboddhisatva, which consists of those who have reached nirvana but because of their compassion for others choose to turn back and help the people etc. And I am sure, notwithstanding the glee taken by Zizek in his chiding of this position, its similarity with Christian doctrine is unmistakeable - in the sense of an appeal to a redemptive saviour.
Zizek here presents what appears to be a radical proposition to Buddhism, and I think it is deeply in the spirit of how the religion is commonly interpreted. That is, if the core of authentic Buddhism consists not in some transcendence of a monk meditating in a cave or whatever, but on the other hand a Bodhisatva can be entirely present here among us, and not in some kind of western esoteric concept of heaven then maybe they don’t have to turn back. In this sense, the shepardbedhistva for example would not have to step back. He would attain Nirvana and still be active here.
The question which Zizek seems to be returning to is that of structural causality. Or rather to set it up differently, Buddhism advocates a preparation for Nirvana, right eating, no cursing, not too much sex etc. The question presented here is whether there is actually any link between the two. What if a person who was already at the Nirvana level saw that their act left no traces etc. because of the pure position?
There is another way in which Zizek appears to be making the same point. He quotes Owen Flannagan, a professor of philosophy who states that a person who “gains happiness via a magic pill or which is due to false beliefs does not count because the allegedly happy person must be involved in cultivating their own virtue and that happy states borne of delusion are undeserved. Zizek objects to this on fairly pragmatic terms ie. who cares how you are happy. Once you are in you are in.
There are also dangerous tendencies identified, especially in Zen Buddhism, in the words of its great populariser D. T Suzuki, despite the prohibition on the taking of life by the Buddha, without the harmonious compassion or unity of all sentient beings uniting together, there would be no peace. To bring into harmony those things which are incompatible, killing and war are necessary. A truly dangerous argument whose appropriation can be well imagined for a range of scapegoats and perpetrators.
Such tendencies do not appear to be isolated in Suzuki who also seems to have directly dealt with the problem of how to make the Japanese military machinery more efficient.
To quote Suzuki, ‘It is really not me, but the sword itself which does the killing. He, the killer has no desire to do harm to anybody, but the enemy appears and makes himself a victim. It is like the sword automatically performs the function of justice, which is the function of mercy.’ Two crucial points are to be made here. 1. How beautifully this metaphor of the instrument itself being the agent fits as a mask or covering, let us call it a blanket for the structural causality inherent in bourgeoise relations themselves, that is in class relations. Or to update the lexical topography - how easily it may seem that the sword being referred to is nothing other than the state machinery which automatically identifies, perhaps via profiling, and executes or does justice to its victim.
Having said this I think it is endearing to recognize that SZ does not relegate Zen Buddhism to a mere psychological mechanism, and perhaps this is his strength - to make better warriors in the military or whatever - but holds that it may be an absolutely authentic existential experience.
Having presented the views of the leading Zen buddhist injunction, SZ proceeds to point out that inspite of this there is an irreducible chasm between the Buddhist relation to desire and that which is found in Christian ethics, even when the object of desire is the same and this is what makes Zizek’s philosophy, indeed his Hegelianism truly a subject oriented interpretation.
In Western or Christian ethics, the the truth is out there. The whole point is excessive attachment. What Buddhists see as evil is the good itself.’
Zizek makes the point in another way too. Quoting Chesterton - ‘All other religions want to unite the world. Christianity is not like that. Christianity separates… the Christian gesture however, he claims - is to choose this, to stick to this even if it turns everything around.’
The possible objection to this even within the continental tradition is to see in Hiedegger’s hyper-humanism, even conceding its Luddic tendencies to say nothing of its blindness and complicity with the hegemonic political dispositions, which may ultimately reduce its quest for some essence to a mere spatial phenomena - another path to the Buddhist goal, hence positing the two as similarly oriented. The search for some hidden inner harmony etc.
SZ emphasises that Hiedeggerian ereigniss is not the same as Nirvana. Ereigniss for Hiedegger is radically historical and in this sense finite, unlike Nirvana which is seemingly detached from historicity.
The position which we may yet redeem from this apparent philosophical duality that is between Hiedegger’s notion of the historicity of essence and the Buddhist notion of detachment is precisely a certain distance. An irreducible gap from things as they are as such. To put it in Slavoj’s crude terms of jokery, to extricate oneself from the circle of life. And here we will have to admit, that this means to extricate oneself from any naturalistic cosmology which sees us as just a part of nature. In other terms to create the distance required for Nirvana - that is to extricate oneself from the cycle of nature we require excessive attachments, which serves as a precondition as it were, to liberation. This is the properly Christian breakthrough.
We get what seems to be Zizek’s Hegelian approach, or reading if you prefer of Buddhism in the form, as is characteristic of this philosopher - of the ultimate question ie. ‘is Samsara a fact, or is this all Maya?’ To present the circumstances in another way, Buddhism asks how can we leave the cycle of desire and suffering whereas as Hegelians we should ask, how did we fall in.
We are presented with three possible answers. 1. Buddha was a practical guy, he just wanted to get out of suffering, he did not care about these metaphysical questions. 2. To understand how the fall occurred you already have to be in Nirvana, but once you are there you don’t care about it, which seems to be a variation of the first position really. 3. The third possibility presented to us is very interesting, not the least because it involves a discussion which Zizek had with a group of Tibetan Buddhists themselves. His question, it appears to be is what if instead of us being caught in shit something might have gone wrong in the higher domain of Nirvana? Zizek puts this in gnostic terms, drawing from figures such as Jokob Bohme and Shelling regarding the origin of human evil. Human evil begins not when we have fallen from God. What if human evil is a result of something going wrong in God himself, perhaps as a kind of madness? A curious encounter in Waco, Texas between a group of 7th Day Adventists and the FBI that actually involved an armed standoff is narrated, Zizek claims that one of the strategies of psychological assault deployed was the blaring of religious chants and music such as the Tibetan horns to flush the Adventists out. From a group of Tibetans in Beijing SZ even heard that those horns are themselves the very voice of evil. His basic position in confronting this Buddhist ethic it would appear that perhaps it is not simply us stuck here in our Hegelian illusion and above there is Nirvana. The question posed is what if something were to go wrong up there itself.
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