Many people are surprised to learn that Thich Nhat Hanh’s main teacher was ‘Thich Quang Duc‘ – a Vietnamese Buddhist monk who burned himself in protest to the Western (and ‘Catholic’) imperialist invasion of Vietnam. This is because Thich Nhat Hanh and his Western acolytes were highly successful in distancing his perceived history from this fact. Why did this happen? What drove an Asian Buddhist to side with his Western persecutors? The West has appropriated Asian Buddhism with very little protest from the small number of ethnic Buddhists living in the West. This has nothing to do with condoning this process of what might be termed ‘spiritual theft’ and everything to do with the reality that Buddhism as conceived and practiced in the West is a perverse ‘inversion’ of what it is in Asian and has been throughout history for over 2,500 years or more. Most Westerners, for instance, are so used to reaching for their credit card when they pick up their ‘mala’ that most would be incredulous to learn that the historical Buddha himself, considered it a spiritual offense to demand money (or any form of payment) in exchange for receiving instruction in the ‘Dhamma’ or his understanding of reality. Indeed, whilst thousands of Westerners crammed into meditation halls ‘at a cost’, the only genuine Buddhists in the world were living in poverty-driven enclaves throughout Asia (these being the products of Western imperialism) and suffering from periodic bouts of ‘death’ caused by the tens of thousands of bombs dropped upon Asian countries by the US Airforce. This historical process of the aggressive West blowing the bodies of ethnic Buddhists to smithereens has happened throughout India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, China, Japan, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, etc. Individual Buddhists, their temples and their communities were thoroughly destroyed in the name of Eurocentric dominance and greed – whilst elements of that destroyed culture were imported into the West to be used in the process of capitalist exploitation – a preferred bourgeois mirror-image of the hellish reality generated out of sight and out of mind. The misrepresentation of Buddhism has been a lucrative business fie not only the White community, but also to those Asians who have aligned their minds and bodies with it, such as the 14th Dalai Lama, Li Hongzhi and Thich Nhat Hanh, etc. All these are examples of Asians who have sat at the head of a vast money-making empire that has ‘sold Buddhism’ to Westerners – whilst those same the governments elected by those same Westerners have chosen to blanket-bomb large swathes of Asia for ideological reasons. Surely, such Asian leaders in the West are guilty as Buddhists of breaking every one of the prohibitions and guidelines contained in the Noble Eightfold Path and the spiritual guidance contained in the Four Noble Truths. Not to mention the hundreds of moral restrictions formulated throughout the extensive Vinaya Discipline! This betrayal of Buddhism and the Asian people is exactly how I would like to remember the Traitor to the Vietnamese people – Thich Nhat Hanh – who sat quietly counting his money (a practice termed ‘pacifist’ by his Western admirers and hangers on), whilst the bombs paid for by the tax dollars of this followers were dropped by the governments those followers elected into power! This is the image I have of Thich Nhat Hanh and the image through Thich Nhat Hanh will be remembered by the vast majority of ethnic Buddhists living throughout Asia!
0 Comments
Dear M
The problem is a lack of genuine Buddhist material in the West. However, the book 'What the Buddha Taught' by Walpola Rahula is a sound Theravada text that explains that the Buddha rejected the notion of a spirit as opposed to matter. Indeed, the Buddha even described 'thought' as a material phenomenon. The Buddha, like Marx, stated that human suffering is premised upon an inverted mindset that perceives things the wrong way around. The answer to eradicate this inversation and develop a true consciousness. The Buddha defines reality through the Four Noble Truths. This contains the Five Aggregates explanation of reality. The Buddha places the world of matter as being primary, from which emerges sensation, perception, thought formation and consciousness. Consciousness only exists as long as the human sense organs are in regular contact with the physical world. No contact (such as in death) no consciousness. The Buddha also says that when greed, hated and delusion are fully uprooted, then a practitioner realises that there is no rebirth and no divine realms, etc. Trevor Ling has written a number of books about the similarity of Buddhist ideas and Marxist thinking. Marx learned his Buddhism from his friend Karl Koppen (a renowned Early European expert upon the subject) - but his excellent books have yet to be translated from their native German into English. Marx even writes to a friend saying that he had tried Buddhist meditation to help relax his mind: https://buddhistsocialism.weebly.com/when-karl-marx-practised-buddhism.html The Soviets appear to have known about this association as Joseph Stalin opened a Buddhist Academic Centre in 1928 as a means to gather and focus good quality work about Buddhist thought. You might be interested in this: https://thesanghakommune.org/2017/02/21/ussr-fi-shcherbatskoy-1866-1942-expert-in-buddhism/ Best Wishes Adrian Within Early Buddhist thinking – premised upon the content of the Pali Suttas – the Buddha explains that material reality is the basis of all existence, and that the physical body is the basis of ALL aspects of what is collectively referred to as the ‘mind’. Although the Buddha never knew of the physical organ of the ‘brain’ encased as it is in the skull-bone – he nevertheless described the ‘mind’ as emerging from conditions that involve the physical body. Not only this, but the Buddha on occasion referred to certain thoughts as being entirely ‘physical’ in nature! Within his teachings of the Four Noble Truths, the Buddha explained human existence as comprising of a physical body from which emerges sensation, conception, thought formation and consciousness. Within the Pali Suttas he describes why he thinks this with a crystal-clear clarity! For the Buddha, the capacity to ‘think’ is not a matter of a ‘spirit’ being divinely placed the body in opposition to ‘physical’ reality. Although like Marx the Buddha acknowledges the existences and usefulness of the ‘mind’, he is of the opinion that regardless of how apparently ‘ethereal’ the thought-processes might be – they are not in origin a product of a ‘divine-being’ placing his or her spiritual ‘essence’ inside the heart of human-beings! This observation of the Buddha broke the assumed connection of each individual to an assumed but unseen spirit-world that supposedly controlled human affairs from afar and justified the ‘racist’ caste system! This is why the Buddha’s alarmingly ‘modern’ method of defining and assessing physical existence immediately placed him at odds with the Brahmanical religion of ancient India which still holds so much sway over the imagination of modern India! Neuroscientists have recently released research that demonstrates that the brain’s capacity to ‘think’ is a physical act. This confirms the Soviet assertion that ‘consciousness’ is a ‘special arrangement of matter’ and has nothing to do with the existence of an assumed ‘hidden’ realm involving all-seeing spiritual entities with the power to affect each life entirely through a whim! The human brain has evolved the ability to generate the ‘mind’ - which is an ‘internalisation’ of the experienced external conditions that exist ‘outside’ of the body. Originally, human life has three-bodies. First there is the conceived foetus, secondly there is the womb of the mother’s body, which (thirdly) exists within a physical world. These are the multiple worlds available to the ‘new’ human. The ‘external’ world of other human, animals and varying conditions is mediated through the body of the mother for the first ten months of gestation prior to birth. The developing individual ‘learns’ about the external world through the body of his or her mother and as the brain slowly grows and becomes more capable of ‘sensing’. When the baby is born, he or she loses the body of the mother as a mediating device and it must experience the outside world entirely upon its own. Yes, adults may well provide auxiliary care, but reality from now on is strictly a matter of ‘direct’ sensation which is processed in a brain which is forever developing and learning to build an ever more efficient ‘internal’ (holographic) representation of the external world in its interior, or so it seems. There are now only two bodies that a human individual inhabits – the individual (organic) body and the physical (material) body that is the external environment! The biological body – although comprised of a certain biological blue-print – is nevertheless considered ‘unique’ to its owner, whilst the physical environment will be generally the same, albeit comprised of differing conditions, circumstances and survival characteristics. A life of opulence Is generally easier to live than a life of grinding poverty, etc. science, etc. The human mind can predict the past, contemplate the present and speculate about the future. However, other than being ‘aware’ of existential reality that is happening ‘now’ through the senses, the ability to ‘remember’ the past and to ‘speculate’ about the future are skills of pure ‘imagination’ regardless of the accuracy of such capabilities. In other words, these are ‘illusionary’ abilities developed during the course of human evolution, designed to assist humanity with its ability to ‘survive’! These abilities are ‘illusionary’ because they do not pre-exist the birth of the individual, and do not post-exist the death of the individual, as each ability is the product of a fully developed and functioning brain within a living body! Thoughts are hollow constructs within which humanity can ‘imagine’ or ‘import’ any content he or she wishes! This is a remarkable human ability as each thought construct can be ‘imagined’ as containing the entirety of material existence, or ‘speculate’ as to the nature of the infinitesimally small quantum universe! A thought construct in the mind is essentially ‘empty’ in nature so that its interior can be filled-up with whatever content the individual requires – although, of course, the Buddha suggested ‘emptying’ the thought constructs so that their empty nature can be fully comprehended and understood ‘here and now’. Furthermore, the reality of the interior of the thought construct is mostly empty space. This mirrors the construction of material reality in the external world – which is mostly ‘empty space’ with the occasional passing piece of matter. Before the advent of modern science, the Buddha found a way of explaining the nature of the physical universe by having each aspirant ‘look’ directly into their owns minds! Again, the Buddha’s ancient wisdom often dove-tails with the findings of modern science to a remarkable degree! This is why I believe that Karl Marx may well have been influenced by the philosophy of Early Buddhism when formulating his theory of historical materialism! Reference:
Neuroscientists Track Thought’s Trip through Brain http://www.sci-news.com/othersciences/neuroscience/thoughts-trip-brain-05648.html |
AuthorAdrian Chan-Wyles PhD - Political Commissar and BMA (UK) Historian & Researcher. Archives
April 2024
Categories
All
|