Frank Jude's Reviews > Cruel Theory - Sublime Practice: Toward a Revaluation of Buddhism

This book is fascinating. Ironically, I find more passion and deep integrity of inquiry here than in just about any contemporary buddhist book. But then, the thesis of this book makes it clear why such a situation is not at all ironic! Many -- if not most -- practitioners of buddhism write-off Wallis and the others at Speculative Non-Buddhism, often singling out what they see as an overly "aggressive" or "angry" tone which conveniently allows them to ignore this powerful critique. In fact, I'd have given the book five stars, but it is true that Wallis at times sinks into a turgid verbosity reminiscent of the fatuous "post-modernist" french philosophes. However, his essay isn't all that encumbered and his points are sharp and penetrating if one has the courage to actually engage with what he has to say.

Perhaps my favorite essay is Tom Pepper's "The Radical Buddhist Subject and the Sublime Aesthetics of Truth." It may come as a surprise that Pepper is indeed a practicing buddhist in the pure land school -- but coming from a decidedly radical social perspective. What Pepper does in his essay is bring buddhist thought into dialogue with modern western thought for the very purpose of creating an approach to practice that can produce truly radical subjects in a late-capitalist world. He acidly critiques contemporary buddhism's tendency to (despite all claims to the contrary) produce illusions of "pure absolute bliss" and individualist quietism.

Pepper shows what a real and complete acceptance of the implications of "not-self" and "dependent origination" could lead to. In order to do this, he focuses on the idea of the non-atomistic, socially constructed mind and Althusser's concept of ideology. While most contemporary practitioners seem to denigrate the very concept of "ideology" and often assert that buddhism is "non-ideological," Pepper argues that buddhism is best seen as a theory of ideology and that the truth uncovered through buddhist thought is the insight that we always live in ideology and our ideologies are produced in aesthetic practices. Going against the over-whelming fear and antipathy to thinking found in contemporary buddhism, Pepper asserts that we can come to understand the truth of buddhism only in thought -- and not in some retreat or escape into the mystical, the ineffable, or the delusion of anything that can be considered "pure experience."

In Part Two, Wallis offers his theory of "speculative non-buddhism" as a tool (he just has to say "organon," of course!) to "uncover buddhism's syntactical structure; to serve as a means of inquiry into the force of buddhist propositions; and to operate as a check on the tendency of all contemporary formulations of buddhism...toward ideological blindness." The emphasis is his, and while I tend to agree with him, I think there are at least some individual teachers who are not only not blind to ideology, but actively investigate it in order to create a better ideology.

It's important to understand that the "non" here is not "anti" though it can be. And that's the point! Without making the "decision" to buy into buddhist thinking and all it's postulates as Wallis critiques as "the principle of sufficient buddhism" (a wonderful phrase that captures something all too common in contemporary buddhism: buddhism is sufficient, it has the final and superior word to say on just about anything and everything!), it may be a real 're-valuation' of buddhism as the title suggests, or it may be a radical critique and rejection of buddhism. A true investigation does not begin with an assumed and desired end!

Here is Wallis' definition:

"Speculative non-buddhism is a way of thinking and seeing that takes as its raw material buddhism. The prefix non does not signal a negation. Buddhism, as a positive value must remain intact for non-buddhism to proceed. Non-buddhism is a thought experiment concerning precisely buddhism, but one that assumes the need to think the subject matter unbeholden to its complex system of values, premises, claims, beliefs, and so on."

Matthias Steingass' essay, "Control," is the weakest in that while he valiantly attempts a text about history, his narrative often loses focus. He is attempting to show how in buddhism's so-called "malleability" that allows it to adapt there is often an ignoring of the multitude of conditioning factors that it is exposed to. In this way, buddhism gets to write its own "history," filled with distortion and often-time outright lies. For instance, Steingass enters into his critique by quoting Robert Thurman in a long passage that begins: "Pure Consciousness is bliss" and ends with "You have a terrorist in your brain, coming out of your own instincts and culture, who is pestering you all the time."

He goes on to show the delusion or perhaps outright deception Thurman spreads when he goes on to speak of Tibet: "Why don't we have a year-round blissful vacation? It could be summer all the time... That's what Tibet was like before the Chinese invaded. SInce 1409, they were on a blissful vacation... the whole country: I mean it!" Thurman really holds out feudalistic Tibet as "the most developed society on earth.

Reading such bullshit, I find myself cringing! This coming from a professor of buddhism at one of the most prestigious universities on the east coast? From 1409 (no accident this date was chosen as it was the date Thurman's own school of buddhism took control -- violently -- of Tibetan politics with the institution of the Dali Lama) historians of Tibet paint a very different picture than the rosy one Thurman wishes to promulgate: "The rise of the Dalai Lamas, however, culminating in the foundation of the Ganden Palace, the seat of the Fifth Dalai Lama, as the government of Tibet, occurred in tandem with the emergence of sharp sectarian rivalries (Kapstein, 2006) and in 1642, the Great Fifth as he is respectfully called, achieved "the historic reunification of Tibet under a single regime after some two centuries of intermittent civil war."

So the first two centuries of Thurman's "blissful vacation" was actually a time of civil war and unrest! And even today, the political mechinations of the Dalai Lama's office continues with alleged acts of subterfuge and assassination! But this isn't the main point of Steingass' essay. His main point is that we live in a particular point in time when capitalism is able to co-opt and integrate even the most adverse forces into its own structure. Note the corporate board rooms filled with ex-hippies. Note punk becoming a style, with gold-plated razor blades being sold to the united states of consumers. Steingass' conclusion is that if buddhism is (or remains) ignorant of the ongoing commodification of the human, then it is not only useless, but dangerous as a social institution of control.

Yup! Heavy stuff to be found between these covers. And a real feast for the intellect. Which is exactly why the great majority of buddhists will never read it: after all, thinking and the intellect is what we are attempting to "go beyond," right?