These are quick responses to Matthias Steingass’ “Check out The Imperfect Buddha Podcast => “, FB post, here; & the “9.1 Imperfect Buddha Podcast on the liberating force of non-Buddhism”, there. I’ve only heard about an hour & ten minutes of the podcast, so this responds to the content up to that point.
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The desire for ‘commitment’, for a ‘being together with’, whether with an ideology or communitarian sect, is inherently contradictory, if an identified form is sought, whilst at the same time, all ideological identities are proscribed.
[Laruellean Questioner?]: “Tell me something, but don’t specify anything. If you do so specify, you are susceptible to narrow literal interpretations of ‘sufficiency’; if you don’t, you are susceptible to accusations of vagueness.”
It’s the demand to free the questioner from his/her habits, & to expand his/her mind, but to conduct this liberation in the language of the habitual; which can actually be done; but then, to do this while the questioner engages in deliberate obfuscation & contradiction, whilst demanding that such deliberations not be analysed or critiqued.
This is an enforced framing, calculated to produce ‘non-communication’ & ‘non-commitment’, lol. This calculated militancy preserves, in a farcical way, an obligatory faceted & controlled critique, within tight parameters, as a superficial commodity that can be bought & sold in the Occidental marketplace, whilst leaving all the iniquities through which that marketplace arose, & continues to be sustained, unquestioned.
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On transcendence: ‘transcendence’ is always specific; it is ‘transcendence from’; it occurs as a relation, not being bound by, specified identity, or identities.
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One of my FB, & SL, friends, has had a ‘white light’ experience, which is often associated with religious or theological ideas. If one wished to absolutise a physicalist interpretation, to totalise the metaphor of scientific phusis, as it were, reducing to anthropically mediated conventional notions of ‘physical process’; it can be said that a ‘white light’ experience is a resonance of being closer to being driven by the liberatory flows of stellar energy, which is an ‘origin’ of the life force coursing through all biological instantiations belonging to ‘Earth’. It could be considered a ‘solar memory’, recalling this ‘origin’; an ‘origin’ we experience, & that is reinforced, everyday.
But to say it is exclusively that, & to identify it as such, is to cut off further contextual resonances & the insights they could bring. To justify such a scission, citing economy of thought in search of some ‘true’ structural necessity underlying an allegedly supervenient ‘phenomenal’ play, is merely to dualise in the service of some ‘purpose’ or expediency, some assumed teleological structure, that equally needs to be taken into consideration, & not left in the slums of unthought dogma. This is precisely what Occidental thought has a tendency to neglect, leaving unquestioned its own animus; & rejecting all other ways of thought, either blatantly, or through some positioning of trivialising exoticism alienated into the Orient or elsewhere, as, let us not forget, an ‘identity’, always an ‘identity’. An ‘identity’ that can then be run through all the regular procedures of an essentially Aristotelian bureaucracy typifying so much Occidental discourse. The algorithm of such bureaucracy, more often than not, stifles imagination & truly effective critique, necessary for the speed of understanding.
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Laruelle’s ideas are just obvious restatements of logics already within; Derrida, for instance; & in Buddhism, in Mahayana, Chan, & Zen Buddhisms; & even in prior Western receptions of those.
One has to ask the question, whether or not it is a conflation to contrast the practices of Buddhist institutions with the philosophical doctrines of a Laruelle, whilst avoiding the engagement of critical comparison between Nagarjuna, say, & Laruelle.
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Both Buddhist & Hindu institutional interventions in the West, are necessarily going to contain traces of, & be constrained by, the sociopolitical distortions which can affect any other institution, whether in the ‘East’ or ‘West. Using & pointing out these factors, can indeed, constitute critique of a praxis already conforming to Occidental (Christian-Islamic) modalities, but it doesn’t constitute an engagement with actual philosophical doctrine, not even to the level of prior Western receptions. It only continues the venerable tradition of exotic inflations & deflations, where the Occident continues to speak only to itself, whilst repeating the insights of others, which initially it always pretends not to understand, as discoveries of its own.
That, in short, is the business of Buddhism.
But the texts are something else, & they are freely available.
My own awareness of Buddhism comes solely from textual encounters, decades ago. I’m well aware of the fragility of collectives & sects, so have no expectations of them. If one expects Buddhism to be yet another social club, it’s obvious that actual textual encounter with its philosophies is not one’s priority.