A culture in imminent collapse?

True Buddhism views life in this carnal body of our birth as transient, suffering and filled with unconscious desires we have difficulty understanding much less controlling.  Still, far beneath this external shell, according to the Buddha, lies a light-like divine body which is unchanging and perfect. 

This divine body, which is our true nature or our Buddha-nature is, paradoxically, denied by us because of our ignorance (avidyā) which we constantly reinforce with the help of the limiting, five hindrances (pañca nivāraṇa) not to mention our bad karma.  As a result, we are not only greatly confused but also must dwell in the illusory realm of appearances which includes even our thoughts (manas).  This is a life of Darwinian fitness according to science.

Even those who are more advanced, which means they are more spiritual, can only reach the intellectual perception of this divine body of light which nevertheless helps to pave the way for its direct cognition although there is no guarantee of success.

Our defense mechanism for being situated in this horrible predicament is, oddly, faith that with our death this is the ending of all future suffering (the implication here is that there is no rebirth—life after death).  Death we believe is final and absolute freeing us completely.  This gives rise to hedonic materialism in which pleasure is sought for comprising something like the first two-thirds of our life followed by the acceptance of our doom (i.e., old age and the finality of death).

This defense mechanism contains many smaller, daily, defense mechanisms.  We are a veritable collage of defense mechanisms it would appear.  This is also part of our ego (Freud) of reason and circumspection that keeps our id from destroying us outright.  However, with the subversion of Western culture (the cultural superego) the ego and the id become gradually more indistinguishable (the ego reverting back to the id).  This merging reminds one of the Stalinist era which continued through the Frankfurt School (Critical Theory).

Today it is impossible to set up a Buddhist culture without it falling prey to the culture of postmodernism, the last phase of Western culture (Christendom, Age of Reason, Postmodernism/Critical Theory).  Buddhism, historically, had it much easier since Buddhism was already safely nestled in the culture of Vedic Brahmanism.  Given this, it is easy to understand why Buddhism flourished as it did by the time of King Ashoka.

The same will not happen in the West.  Buddhism and with it Zen and Tibetan Buddhism will not flourish except in Asian populations and still exist in academia.  The average westerner is just too far gone to grasp the context of the Buddha’s religion to make it popular.  Already Buddhism is being changed, used as a form of self-help therapy to help the typically fucked-up modern person cope with the ups and downs of a culture, seemingly, in imminent collapse in which the individual ego can no longer control the id to a civilized degree.

Turning to present day politics, it is just a reflection of the cultural superego undergoing change from a world of individual nations each with their unique culture, to a repressive central government which can only be described as psychopathic; totally bereft of empathy being, horribly, manipulative and destructive of timeless human values.  Buddhism can find no good soil for its growth in such a terrible condition.  In fact, modern culture is the very antithesis of Buddhism.

Comments

[Jack]

Every day I do my guru yoga visualizing Michelle Obama on my crown chakra while intoning my mantra "Om Mani Pay Me More."

OK, I don't do it everyday, only about once a week or so when I remember during commercial breaks. But still, my teacher, who is a very famous reincarnated Tibetan master, said I would reach enlightenment in this very lifetime after the last set of teachings that I purchased from him. So I know I will obtain it.

The iron eagle has flown westward!

[dave b]

Good article.

> "Already Buddhism is being changed, used as a form of self-help therapy to help the typically fucked-up modern person cope with the ups and downs of a culture, seemingly, in imminent collapse in which the individual ego can no longer control the id to a civilized degree."

Worse than that, they're being taught that Buddhism is denial of the ego which is leading them to have only an id and become even more sexually depraved. Fake Buddhism is hastening the decline.