The sequel to one of my first posts is here. Unfortunately, this year was mired in personal obligations, a lot of them on a scheduled basis, so I did not have as much time to read (much less to meditate) as I would have liked. I'll also note that this list comprises the books that I finished this year, so some of the early ones were started in 2021.
This past two weekends, I've taken the time to attend some public meditation "services", all held at a Chinese Chan center. Last weekend, I signed up for a two-day retreat organized by the head nun there. Afterwards, one of the volunteers invited me to the center's mid-autumn festival, and to subsequent weekly meditation classes. So this past weekend, I attended the tea ceremony for their mid-autumn festival (also called the Mooncake Festival) as well as the meditation class the following day. What follows are my thoughts after each day.
Already on such a young blog I have dispensed with the notion of "book review", because I think my attitude isn't so much whether to recommend a book so much as it is to offer up some considerations on it. If I were a snooty university-type, I would call this "engaging in discourse" or "participating in dialogue" with the books, but I am not that type, at least I hope not. So these posts will be "Thoughts on ___" until further notice.
Anyway, I have recently finished, about a year and change after starting it, the first volume of Oswald Spengler's Decline of the West. It's quite a grand work of history, covering politics, art, mythology, religion, ethics, metaphysics, etc. in a sweeping survey that attempts to establish "a morphology of world-history". I would characterize Spengler as an anti-perennialist, not because he directly contradicts the idea of a perennial philosophy, but in that he very strictly emphasizes what Civilizations have in common within themselves and how they are all mutually incommensurable. This will be the subject of my first consideration, followed by sundry others in no particular order.
Having spent a lot of time reading Julius Evola's works, I've known about René Guénon and Frithjof Schuon for a while, yet only recently have I delved into these other two major perennialists of the 20th century. This book, received as a Christmas gift (appropriately), is a compendium of miscellaneous writings by Schuon on the subject of Christianity. The Wikipedia article will give a much better summary, but for now all the introduction I'll give Schuon is that he was originally interested in practicing Hindu advaita vedānta, however due to the caste-restriction there, he opted instead to practice Islamic sufism and Plains-Indian shamanism—nevertheless, he was essentially a perennialist along with Guénon. It seems he has written books and essays on pretty much every religion out there.
This post is an amateur meditation on two delusions: Buddhist antinatalism, and anti-Buddhist charges of "annihilationism" and "death cult". These may seem quite disparate topics, but it will soon become clear that they spring from similar errors in thinking.
To explain the former: many Western Buddhists seem to take it for granted that, since reproduction continues the cycle of death and rebirth, the reverse must follow: that non-reproduction stymies the cycle of death and rebirth. This is the reason many Western Buddhists take up the antinatalist stance.
As for the latter: anti-Buddhists argue that, since "all life is suffering" (a very slipshod version of the First Noble Truth, dukkha-sacca), a good Buddhist may end suffering, and thus attain "nirvana", by simply committing suicide.
