Slavoj Zizek criticizing buddhism

Slavoj Zizek criticizing buddhism

But the problem I have with, ok, I should slowly conclude so you will have to suffer a little bit more.

Nonetheless, ok I have a systematic--ok the point is not critique, the point is rather, and I've had debates with budhists here and they have admitted

so I'm not bullshitting here, totally at least. The limit, you know what is for me the limit?

Look, we know how Buddhism starts, you know, the problem is suffering. All living beings want happiness, want to suffer less

and how to, then what is the source of our suffering, desire, attachment to worldly objects, you know the story.

Here comes my first problem, but I will not go into it.

If there is a lesson in psychoanalysis it is precisely that we want to suffer.

It's a simple phenomenon like it is so fascinating about, you know, the old film noir,

Humphrey Bogart, Robert Mitchum, and so on.

It's a typical noir scene that for example, you get a guy, normal guy suddenly he's seduced by an evil femme fatale.

His life is ruined at the end. He's betrayed by her, everything and at the edge of his death at the end, somebody tells him:

Oh my God, now that you know how evil she was, do you want, would you like to go back in time and start again avoiding her?

And the typical noir answer is: No! It was worth every moment even if I know, this is the true noir spirit, you know,

even if I know that it's a catastrophe, it was worth it.

But that's another problem. What I want to say, what I want to draw your attention to is

first, ok, I have to go quickly so just a couple of coordinates.

The first problem I see and it's nicely rendered by the first big split in Buddhism

between Mahayana and the more traditional early one it's that, I think, to put it very naively,

Mahayana is for me the source of evil. You know why? Mahayana introduces the notion of bodhisatva.

Bodhisatva is the one who did attain Enlightenment, got rid of karma, his acts no longer leave traces, but

he decides in a none egotist way, out of sympathy with all other human, and even living beings, suffering

that he returns to our Valley of Tears. He postpones his final salvation so that he returns here and

helps others reach salvation.

I think, I found this from original, radical, Buddhist stand point deeply problematic.

Because for me--and I wonder, I would like to have maybe even violent responses from you

the point of authentic Buddhism is the precisely reaching Nirvana. It's not this bullshit, you know, you are out there or whatever

You are still fully here, maybe even more fully here than before. You can still interact with others and so on,

just in a different, let's call it naively spiritual mode. This is already I think a wrong metaphysical reading that Nirvana

means you go somewhere else out. You don't. But I think the moment you introduce the notion of Bodhisattva

you already have to hypothesize in a metaphysical way Nirvana.

As it, again, it means you go somewhere then you return here--no yo are all the time here.

Second problem, I claim, connected with this one and it's I think the problem of Buddhism, believe me,

I've read books, I've debated with them, it's the following one:

Buddhism starts as--ah yes sorry, another ambiguity here, if you noticed it, I think that Buddhism, the way I see oscillates

between two goals, one is minimal, the other is maximal.

On the one hand, the way, and I love this descriptions, great Buddhist thinkers describe nirvana or sunyata or however you call it, satori in zen Bhuddism,

they always emphasize it's always spiritual heat in you. Nothing changes in reality.

You change. Your entire attitude, everything remains out there.

On the other hand, you have this, let's call it radical ontic, in the sense of covering all entities, reading where the idea is that

since life is suffering, the global goal should be to basically to change everything so that even worms and so on

so that life as suffering would be redeemed, would no longer be here, you know.

So these, I find, an effect of the same deadlock than the third one.

Buddhism tries to argue that you, that the problem is less suffering and that somehow less suffering means you have

to begin by elementary ethical training, you know, be kind to others, don't steal, don't engage in promiscuity or too much passions,

help others, and that these are necessary steps towards high meditative self-enlightenment.

This is up to a point true and it's typical, this is, I think, the big difference between our Western perception of Buddhism

and the practice of Buddhism in countries like Thailand where Buddhism is a way of life.

That we , if you--if somebody tells you "I'm a Buddhist", it mostly means "I meditate".

For us it's identified almost with meditation. But you know that very few people meditate in Asian countries.

They--to be a Buddhist means mostly, be kind practice certain ethical codes and then

monks who meditate are more like a reminder to you that there is hope. You see there are people who are there

who did achieve wisdom. But ok, the problem with which many many people are fighting is that

why the hell should there be a necessary link between all this elementary goodness and nirvana enlightenment.

And the more I think about it the more I agree. And they are among Buddhists also present.

With those, especially here zen Buddhism is the most honest. I almost admire Suzuki Hu (?). You know that's just Zetaro Suzuki.

When I was young in hippie times he was the same, the main popularizer--who says quite openly.

Zen Buddhism is a technique of meditation and that's all. You can be, he says, totalitarian, fascist, communist, capitalist, it doesn't matter.

It's just certain meditative stance. And I think that one has to accept this gap, and it's a very painful gap.

And here I think the predominant Buddhism sheeps, they try somehow to convince you that in order to arrive at nirvana ,

or whatever we call it, the zero point, redemption, liberation of your false self, that you should be a good person

that you should start with that and then grow up, up, up. Things are here much more problematic.

The reason that this is not true, is precisely, for example, you will say but the whole point of Buddhism is compassion

compassion towards all living beings and so on. Yeah yeah but then you know you get the notion of compassionate war, for example.

For example Suzuki himself wrote that in the late 30's were he fully supporting Japanese invasion of China claimed this is a compassionate war.

We intervened in China killing millions globally to lower the the--the Chinese are like naughty children they have to be disciplined

to diminish their suffering and so on and so on. Even more, do you know that there is and I have many cases of this,

from Suzuki to others for example, a book by Vernon Turner, "Soul Sword. The Way and Mind of a Zen Warrior."

Suzuki himself wrote about this and he claimed that Buddhist enlightenment can be even very helpful in a war

because, to cut a long story short, it makes much easier for you to kill people.

No no he's very open here, Suzuki. He claims that if I'm till caught in my false self, perceiving myself as a free autonomous agent

then though you are the victim I'll reply to you:"let's say in combat I have to cut out your eyes and slaughter you. Unfortunately, I don't know why I would have some problems doing this."

But then a Buddhist friend comes and tells me: "Yes I feel responsible, blah blah,because I misperceive myself as an agent."

And here comes Suzuki, I quote Suzuki, Suzuki claims: "if the soldier is trained by Buddhism to abandon his false self then the whole perspective changes."

Let's say, again, me, knife, you. I no longer experience this "I'm sticking my knife into you", but it would be rather something like

"I'm a totally neutral--I lose myself, impersonal observer of phenomena.

I see there in the cosmic dance the hand with knife dancing around and somehow in this cosmic dance your body or your--what can we do, your body, forcefully."

You think I'm exaggerating, look at, this is quote from Suzuki:

"It is really not he, the warrior but the sword itself that does the killing. The warrior has no desire to do harm to anybody

but the enemy appears and makes himself a victim.

It is as though the sword performs automatically its function of justice, which is the function of mercy."

And I'm not kidding here. This was the attitude of Japanese army. Now let me, to conclude, be very clear here:

I'm absolutely not mocking Buddhism in any way. It's a tremendously important spiritual experience.

I'm just saying don't expect from it what you will not get. It's a spiritual experience and the tragic gap that we have to accept

is that you can be authentically enlightened in the Buddhist sense and at the same time a terrible torturer or whatever.

It's even that, when I was in Brazil, I always, I don't know how, I have this misfortune of encountering people

who tell me interesting but horrifying things and I wonder if you to provoke you agree with me but in Brazil,

I had an experience which allowed me to imagine a situation, I wonder if you would agree, where I would be ready to kill someone,

simply to kill him. And even in this hypocritical way only I go even a step further, to kill someone who is not himself a murderer, who didn't kill anyone.

You know what, when I talk with friends in Brazil who were tortured in the times of military dictatorship and so on, no?

They told me that every unit of the secret military police which was kidnapping Leftists, torturing them, the same in Argentina, Chile, and so on

had a doctor who examined the patient and then basically told the torturers, gave the diagnosis, like, this guy has a weak heart

torture him in this way but you can torture him up to this level but, what do you want? If you want him to survive don't do this, if you don't care do that

what will hurt him most--he didn't do anything he just gave his opinion. But in way I wonder if you would agree, I,

ethically this seems to me even more disgusting than to do the torturing itself.

I just said my opinion. It was all correct. I didn't do anything. If I were to be at coffee or tea with such a guy and I would, like,

I would tell him: "look, there is a bird up". he looks up I put poison to his tea or whatever.

What they told me, also in Brazil is very interesting. It's how the secret police--of course, people are still up to a point, people.

They were very traumatized by... you know nobody, very few people, maybe some top Nazis, maybe Pol Pot, of Khmer Rouge army can be

calm murderers and torturers that of course they needed some kind of wild religion to survive psychologically.

And it's extremely interesting what happened, they told me, that within these circles of secret policemen torturing, arresting,

a kind of wild spontaneous religion emerged--Christianity didn't work, too much, you know "help your neighbor", blah blah,

a kind of pseudo-reinvented-New Age Buddhism were the point was precise, you know, there is no real other, we don't have selves,

it's all a game of phenomena, and so on, and so on. So this is--ah! The last problem with Buddhism, and they have great debates here,

is they admit it, many honest Buddhists, that, we already can through some chemical means, pills and son on, artificially generate,

ok it's a debate, can we really, but something that resembles to liberation, nirvana.

So how can we then distinguish between let's call it, authentic enlightenment, were you work hard,

all the meditating bullshit to come there or simply taking a pill? It's very problematic you know?

Some of them cheat, I claim, because they introduce an ethical clause. They claim you should work and deserve nirvana.

If you do it directly it doesn't count. Well sorry, why not? They admit it it's exactly, the result itself,

they claim, they admit it, it's indistinguishable. You know, you see now where I see the problem. It's a beautiful,

spiritual attitude, Buddhism, this type of--and I would like to be able, sometimes I think I'm almost there. I'm not sure.

But this idea of, you know, that, this is something that what Gilles Deleuze, in his best book, maybe, The Logic of Sense,

describes as the pure momentary event of sense, you know how, reality loses its substantial weight and becomes just a tiny, tiny, like a momentary lightining phenomenon

which stands for eternity devoid, an so on. This is why of course, the poetic form of Buddhism, specially Zen, we all know is

the Japanese haiku Matsuo Bashō. You know, the best known one, I give you a vague English translation,

"old pond
frog jumps in
splash"

typical three line. First you have the situation, material, old pond.

then you have the act, a frog jumps in and then you have what the poem is about, this pure effect,

as Deleuze would have said referring to Stoics, incorporeal, this just bodyless, pure phenomenon.

The problem, I claim, now I warn you, to conclude, it doesn't go with me, you have to get a little bit of vulgarity, no?

Is, if you are truly Buddhist you shouldn't cheat. And by cheating I mean always stating these innocent, noble cases,

you know, like water, bond, pond, splash--ok, first a vulgar way. What about this, when I was in Japan I talked with a friend.

He agreed with me and we together composed this haiku where also you have "splash", pure effect.

It goes like this:

"toilet bowl with stale water
I sit on it
splash"

My shit. Sorry! If you are seriously Buddhist you should say, I have no right to cheat and say this is not authentic.

Why not? If your shit drops, it splash, it can also be a pure phenomenon.

Now let's go even further. Are you ready to do this? Let's say you are a murderer. A person is hanging on a rope in front of you and in a moment of wisdom you compose this haiku:

“Fat body wiggling in front of me
The swing of my sword
Splash"

He's blank. You have to go to the end here. I think if you humanize, know it should be ethically good, blah blah, it's not Buddhism.

Again, I have, please again, now really to conclude, don't misunderstand me. I really think that, like, there are only two serious ethics in the world

Buddhists and properly re-read (???) Judeo-Christian ethics. The way I tend more towards Judeo-Christian ethics is,

and with this I will conclude is a very simple reason It's an ethic of external traumatic encounter. I think this is the difference

that, you know, Buddhism is like, distance, don't be too attached to objects, don't fall, I think our ethics is precisely the ethics of the fall.

What we celebrate is precisely what, let's take falling in love. This is why I really don't like the ideology of Star Wars where is all this bullshit, you know,

why did Anakin Skywalker became a bad guy because he got too attached to objects, to Natalie Portman, and to her mother, and so on,

I think that's for us, proper spiritual event, like, what is love? You are in your ordinary shitty life, you might be very happy even,

you know like, one night stand maybe, here and there, drinking with friends, blah blah blah, then you meet the one.

You literally, I insist on this term, which works only in English and French, (other languages as far as I know don't use this terms) fall, to fall in love.

It's a fall. You fall. You are attached, all--lavish the catastrophe in this sense, you know, all your life turns around this traumatic encounter

and it's lavish, nice example of what Hegel calls this reversal of contingency into necessity, no, lavish like, I don't know.

You sleep on the street. You enter a store. You see there a girl or a boy. It's love of your lifetime and retroactively it is as if,

you know this beautiful retroactive teleology of love, all my life was secretly moving towards this moment and so on,

and no wonder that today, that's the saddest thing about today, it is connected with what I mocked at the beginning as healthy sex

that today we like to avoid this type of falling in love. My friend (???) but you told me in France that many dating and marriage agencies

refer to this phrase, and incidentally in the United States I also found some agencies.

Namely, the formula that they use is this one, we marriage, dating agency, we will enable you to be in love without the fall.

You know like, none of these encounters, just, we will tell you oh, you like these, breasts, this type of that, blah blah, ok, ok, we bring you together.

But, something is lost here, precisely what is lost is encounter. Now, as a final compromise I will, and with this I will end, I will maybe correct myself a little bit.

Now that I'm really trying to get deeply, into, more deep into, Buddhism--my friend, maybe you know him, he wrote a good book on parallax, the book on Kant and Marx.

In one of his recent texts he found some Japanese minority of Buddhists where they claim that the true nirvana, in the sense of getting over of your false self

is not withdrawing into you but it's precisely to fall fully. That we, as far as we stick to ourselves, we are not ready, fully, to fall.

So, if you read it, Buddhism in this way, God knows, maybe something wonderful can happen, and even, to end up in a more conciliatory note,

even with Tibetan Buddhism, something, I found attractive there, namely first idea came to me when I heard

do you remember, when was this, 10, 15 years ago, that crazy Seeds of the Fundamentalists, Waco Texas. I read, do you know--to terrorize them,

to make them break down. You know what music FBI was playing to them? You know those "woo woo", low Buddhist horn songs, no?

And then I ask Tibetan friend of mine, whom I met in India, and he told me that, yes, Buddhists are aware that there is what in Star Wars terminology we would have called the Dark Side of power.

that's it's not simply nice nirvana and then we fall into. That already at the level of void, the absolute something can go terribly wrong.

That's what, for example, fascinates me in Tibetan Buddhism. So again, the dialogue is open here.

I just wanted to complicate things a little bit, that's all. I'm really greatful for your patience.

I saw that only two, three people, left the room, but I hope my police agent out there put their names down and tomorrow you will be asking who saw them the last time and so on.

Thanks very much.