What I Read in 2022

     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.

The Phoenix on the Sword – Robert E. Howard

    For Christmas 2021, a friend was nice enough to purchase me a handsome volume of all the Conan stories.  In addition to this story, I also read the Scarlet Citadel and the Elephant's Tower later in the year; however, as my comments are mostly in regards to Howard's style, not the plots, I'm lumping all of them into this segment.

    I've been a fan of the Conan series since about middle school.  I loved (and still do love) the much-maligned 1982 film, and I was driven to read the short stories through most of high school.  Howard's highly descriptive, almost cinematic language brings the stories and characters to life in a way that I find few writers really do.  As I mentioned last year, I really don't care for prose fiction all that much, but Howard was one of the great exceptions for me.  Now that I've started rereading him, I believe I understand why.  The main "draw" of most prose fiction is the inner development and outer drama of the characters.  It may be that I'm shallow or that I'm a bit autistic, but interpersonal drama by itself doesn't draw me in.  I'm able to watch dramatic TV and movies just fine, and I believe that's because the acting, scoring, cinematography, etc. create a strong enough pull to get me invested in matters I'd otherwise regard as dull.  Words can be very powerful, but I find that there isn't much vocabulary that can really carry character drama all that well.  In contrast, English seems to have a great many words for describing action and environment.  This is where Howard excels as a pulp writer: he uses his pen like a paintbrush, conjuring lurid and dazzling imagery in every sentence.

    The more popular, opposing view is that literature is no more than drama between characters, and that their setting (domicile, technology, etc.) is just so much window-dressing—see, for example, how often Shakespeare's plays get re-done as present-day gang wars and such.  Taking the Spenglerian view that art expresses one's interpretation of the world as a whole, we might say that this view of literature sees the world as no more and no less than society itself.  Everything else amounts to so many vehicles and instruments for executing interpersonal drama; we might consider this a holdover from the old Classical paradigm of the body (σῶμα), and indeed even the ancient Greek and Roman plays consisted almost entirely of nearly statuesque characters talking out their conflicts, with no reference to the non-human world around them.  And I believe, right there, that's the key word for authors like Howard: non-human.  Howard's prose almost always centers around the non-human, both in the sense of the environment (the forests, the dungeons, the temples, the towns, the taverns, etc.) as well as the creatures (orcs, demigods, giant snakes, demons, etc.).  Heck, most of the descriptions of Conan himself make him out to be a beastly force of nature, much more than a mere mortal.  Not to mention, he strongly disdains socialization, regarding all the aristocratic politicking and peasant debauchery as a waste of time when there's adventure to be had (I suspect Howard himself of this attitude).  From these stories, one gets the same sense as the viking and celtic views of the world as filled with invisible yet very much real beings like elves, faeries, trolls, etc., as well as of the early European landscape artists, who sought to capture every last detail of their subjects while still capturing a strong mood therein.  In these regards, we might say that Howard fits much more with the Faustian view of the world, though I hesitate to categorize him there, since Spengler ascribed to Faustianism the symbol of Infinite Space, something I can't really find in the Conan stories, at least not very explicitly.

    In short, what makes these stories worth reading, beyond what might seem like cheap thrills, is the deep sense of something beyond mere humanity in this world.  I think the only other author of note to really express this worldview is H. P. Lovecraft, though in a far more pessimistic fashion than Howard's heroes.

The Fullness of God – Frithjof Schuon

    I wrote up some thoughts on this book here after I finished it.  I don't have much more to add at the moment.

In the Buddha's Words – Bhikkhu Bodhi (ed.)

    This was an anthology of suttas from the pāli canon, arranged in increasing order of profundity.  Bodhi's preface indicated that he meant for this to be a sort of overview using original texts; he recalls many students asking for a text, canonical or not, that does the same, and he decided that he needed to fill that void himself.  It starts off with basic texts on ethics and such, and gradually proceeds on to renunciation, contemplation, etc. until a final section on nibbāna.  Bodhi also prefaces each chapter with comments on the texts that prove quite helpful, both to orient oneself in regards to historical peculiarities of ancient India, as well as in regards to the actual doctrine.  Overall, this seems like a useful book to keep on hand as a Buddhist; even if one already owns the full canon, it's good to have some selections from the canon arranged as an outline, so that one can more easily refer to the big-picture perspective of Dhamma.

The Decline of the West, Volume I – Oswald Spengler

    I had quite a lot to say about this book here shortly after I finished it.  As with Schuon, I don't have much more to add at the moment.

True Love – Thích Nhất Hạnh

    This was a tiny book, really pamphlet-sized, of advice on the everyday practice of loving-kindness.  This is my first encounter with Hạnh's writing; previously I had no plans to read any of his work, as I had only known him to be the sort of Buddhist who presents Dharma as a mundane social movement.  The reason I picked this up was that, since I had recently decided to focus more on practicing mettā, I figured a work with this title would be good; not to mention, I was aware of Hạnh's Thiền lineage (Thiền being the Vietnamese equivalent of Chinese Chán and Japanese Zen, all of which are readings of the same character: 禅), so I figured he must have something worthwhile to say.  He just about succeeds on both fronts, but that's about it.  Being a small book, there isn't much depth to his teaching; though this may be a consequence of the taciturn nature of Thiền.

    By "both fronts" I mean that Hạnh successfully presents the integration of the loving attitude (though he seems to lean a little hard into "love" as opposed to "good will" or "kindness") into everyday life.  Since Thiền is characterized by integrated Dharma into everyday life—flower arrangement, music, combat, sports, driving, etc.—it makes sense that Hạnh would be well-disposed to provide such guidance.  The problem is that he does just that and no more.  He provides "mantras" which are no more than plain-speech formulas such as "dear one, I am here for you", as well as guidance on such things as answering the phone or working out a disagreement, and that's it.  This gives the impression that Thiền, rather than being about elevating the mundane through transcendent practice, is just about handling mundane affairs satisfactorily.  Nothing in his book is really wrong, it's just very lacking is all.

    I will mention one other thing.  In one chapter, Hạnh criticizes the institution of therapy on the grounds that, when a family sends its members to a therapist, it is deferring important familial duties (love, attention, etc.) to the domain of private enterprise.  In other words, this represents a failure on the part of the family to properly take care of each other.  I absolutely agree with this assessment, but I think an important takeaway is that, given how widespread this problem is, it is a good reason to de-emphasize the lingering Christian bias towards unrestricted childbirth.  Growing up, I knew a lot of people who either went to therapy or else direly needed it, and I can confirm in most cases that their parents simply lacked the discipline and patience to deal with their children's problems directly.  This is not to argue for antinatalism (I have criticized it more extensively here), but rather to say that we should perceive parenting more like a career that needs some personal qualification.  The phrases "so-and-so would be a great parent" and "so-and-so would be a terrible parent" should have the same currency as "so-and-so would be a great lawyer" and "so-and-so would be a terrible lawyer".  And in the same spirit, those who have great virtue and wisdom, the kind from practicing Dharma (or Stoa, Tao, etc.), should be the models for those interested in parenthood.  But here I am engaging in some political fantasy, so I shall cease at once.

Siddhartha – Hermann Hesse

    This was a short novel about a wandering brahmin named Siddhartha, who lived at the same time as the historical Siddhartha Gautama (who, remember, was a kṣatriyah).  The protagonist is born and raised a brahmin, but as a young adult he sets out with his friend Govinda as a wandering ascetic.  They encounter Gautama giving a sermon to many other wanderers, after which the majority of the present company takes refuge and goes forth as Buddhists, including Govinda, but not the protagonist.  Siddhartha talks to Gautama privately for a bit, and then wanders on his own for a while, lives with a courtesan, gets a job in the slums, has a kid out of wedlock, etc.  He stumbles through many episodes, but eventually settles as a humble ferryman, having reached a kind of enlightenment where his realization is some life-affirming optimism.  The occupation of ferryman of course encapsulates this; "the stream (saṃsāra) provides everything, the stream is perfect".

    If it's not up by the time I publish this, I am drafting a diatribe against this whole "life-affirming" nonsense, but for now, I say that Hesse fails to make a coherent response to Buddhist teaching because he fails, nay, refuses to look beyond the bounds of mere life.  Apart from some passing mention of the brahman doctrine, there's hardly a measure of transcendence to be found, which is a fatal flaw for any work treating of religion.  Even once Siddhartha "rediscovers" the original oṃ and brahman he learned of as a young priest, his conclusion turns out to be a load of trite Nietzscheanism:

With body and soul I have experienced my own great need to sin, to seek pleasure, to strive for possessions, to be indolent, and a need for the most shameful despair, in order to learn to cede my resistance, to learn to love the world, to learn no longer to compare it to a world I desired and imagined, to some preconceived sort of perfection, rather to leave it as it is, to love it, and to enjoy belonging to it.  (p. 113)

Basically, Siddhartha's reaction to the First Noble Truth is a lazy shrug and a flippant rejection of the remaining Noble Truths, even going so far as to reject the notion of perfection altogether.  My question to people like this—who jump into the midst of religious discussion about living the good life and say that actually, all life is the good life—is, why do you bother?  You add less than nothing to the discussion by saying that the baseline "f*ck b*tches, get money" lifestyle is actually all there really is to life.

Tao: The Watercourse Way – Alan Watts

    This was a fairly simple introduction to Taoism by perennialism's most mainstream posterboy, Alan Watts.  This was my first time reading anything by Watts, and to be honest, I feel lukewarm about him.  His hippie attitude is old hat by now, some 50 years after his death, but I wouldn't say that it distorts his reading of traditional religion all that badly.  I would say that, as with Hạnh, he limits himself to simple introductions and thus lacks in profundity.  In contrast to my experience with Hạnh however, I didn't know much about Taoism going into this book, so Watts was at least more informative to me.  I would say my expectations are set a little high, as my first foray into religious doctrine proper was Julius Evola's Doctrine of Awakening, and I've recently come to the conclusion that the real advantage Evola had was his experience with hermetic and tantric practice.  So even though he didn't practice dhamma itself, he had plenty of experience with supra-human states of consciousness, so he was able to better elucidate the nature of things ranging from the basic forms of sati to the higher jhānas.  Whereas Watts and Hạnh don't demonstrate any sort of experience with what is beyond this mere life (between Conan, Siddhartha, and these two, it seems this mundane-supramundane dichotomy has been a theme for this year).

    In any case, I have one comment about Taoist doctrine per sé, at least as Watts presents it, in the form of a correspondence with Dhamma.  The summum bonum of Taoism is wu wei, 無為, which is typically translated literally as "non-action", but I think Watts presents the meaning better by rendering it "non-artifice".  Watts indicates that 為 is acting or desiring against the natural unfolding of the world's pattern or li, 理, and that the True Man (zhenren, 真人) just lives in accordance with the pattern.  To me, this seems to be similar to the Second Noble Truth: the root of suffering (dukkha) is desire (taṇhā).  The similarity between taṇhā and wei is that they come from a delusional mind that only perceives the world after a good deal of processing; in Buddhism, this processing is described in the first few links of paṭicca-samuppāda prior to taṇhā (they are, from latest to earliest: sensation, contact, sense-doors, name-and-form, sense-consciousness, volitional formations, and ignorance).  Whereas the adept, in either system the arahant or the zhenren, has a pure mind that perceives without any processing or distortion, and is thus able to act "without disturbing the world"; in Taoism this means acting in accordance with li, and in Buddhism this means acting without generating kamma.  I do not mean to say that Taoism and Buddhism are identical; there's no Taoist equivalent of dukkha, nor a Buddhist equivalent of li.  And on an interesting note, Watts claims that some Taoists advise against seated meditation, that it's a form of wei, whereas it's utterly essential to Buddhism.  Nonetheless, I think this correspondence is the means by which adherents of either religion can learn from one another.

Esoteric Theravada – Kate Crosby

    This was an overview of the esoteric doctrines in Theravāda known as borān kammaṭṭhāna ("old practices").  Some Mahāyānists like to claim that Theravāda is not the original school of Buddhism, and the subject of this book is probably the most extreme form of evidence for that camp.  Though, Crosby emphasizes at length the fact that these are old practices that were close to eliminated by the Western imperialists, who, at least among those sympathetic to Buddhism, thought it was a perversion of the Buddha's original rational, anti-superstitious teachings (or at least, what they perceived as such).  This verges on complaints from Crosby that she has a hard time collecting good evidence as to the actual teachings and practices of this school.

    The actual subject matter of this book seemed interesting at first glance, but two things caused me to lose interest.  One: Crosby is first and foremost (if not exclusively) an academic researcher.  Her purpose in this book was to gather evidence and report findings, and not much more.  The result is that the book is extremely dry, even for my own tastes; this proved to be a problem both here and in the next two books.  The subject matter really deserves treatment by an actual practitioner who can convey the actual substance of the teachings here—though I suppose that would somewhat defeat the purpose of having "esoteric" teachings.  Two: whether by coincidence or by exposure, much of the esotericism here—alchemy, magic, mantras, yantras, etc.—is found in other right-hand-path magical systems with far better elaboration and more abundant sources.  So this branch of Buddhism seems little more than a curiosity; anyone wishing to revive it would really do better to just ordain under Tibetan or Japanese Vajrāyāna, then switch everything over from Sanskrit and Siddhaṃ script to Pāli and Khom script.

Winged Stallions and Wicked Mares – Wendy Doniger

    This was a collection of stories from all throughout Indian history, stretching from the Vedic period to modern times, all of which revolve around horses.  As mentioned above, this was really just a cut-and-dry exposition: the myths are presented in purely documentary style.  About the only interesting part was an introductory chapter on Aśvaśāstra, the ancient Indian art of horse-breeding, as well as climatic and geographic considerations about raising horses in India (TL;DR: India is not ideal for raising horses compared to the Aryan homeland of Central Asia).  I wound up selling the book almost immediately after finishing it.

Japanese Religion in the Modern Century – Shigeyoshi Murakami

    The third and final book in a row to finish out the very dry, expository run this year.  This was an assessment of Japanese societal developments in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with specific reference to religious developments.  It starts with the Meiji period and ends with the decades following World War II.  Murakami is a materialist historian, somewhat in the Marxist vein (though his conclusions are ultimately liberal-democratic), and boils the history of religion in Japan down to chiefly political and economic factors.  I'm not terribly interested in disputing the materialist-idealist split in the philosophy of history, though if my high praises for Spengler aren't an indication, I'm definitely more of an idealist there.  The problem with Murakami's book, at least for me, is that he treats religion as no more than an economic good: some peculiar set of beliefs and practices that just satisfies the masses' need for it, and perhaps even teaches them to be ethical citizens.  That may be well and good for nerds of his strain, but my interest in religion is diametrically opposite.  First, for me, religion is an almost totally solitary experience, not a social one (and for that matter, it's not some curiosity to put under an academic microscope).  Second, the experience of religion is meant to reach beyond this mere life, not to wallow in it with the masses.

    But speaking of the history of religion, I have a brief remark that's not long enough for a full blog post.  Often it comes up in dialogues between different religions that such-and-such group declined in popularity or was stamped out by a rival group, and that these are somehow indicators of which religion is supreme.  What this comes down to, fundamentally, is again what the meaning of religion is.  If, like Murakami, you treat religion as a largely social experience, with its purposes extending only to goals in this life like national prosperity or the health of "the people", then sure, whoever came out on top of each struggle is probably of interest to you.  Of course, the problem with this Hegelian attitude of "the world's history is the world's tribunal" is that you must affirm the present-day victors at all times; and I don't think many people truly believe that the good life is simultaneously outlined by Western liberalism, Chinese communism, Middle Eastern Islamism, and Russian etatism.  But more to the point, for religion to have any meaning, it must be ultimately solitary and transcendent in orientation; and anyone of such a disposition would surely disregard historical rises and falls as mere curiosities.  "One would no longer be virtuous, thinking that pieces of wood and stone and, by Zeus, the deaths of mortals are great matters" (Plotinus, First Ennead 4.7).

The Essential Epicurus – Eugene M. O'Connor (ed.)

    This was a collection of extant fragments from the philosopher Epicurus.  I had only ever heard of Epicureanism in "History of Philosophy" courses, usually paired with Stoicism.  As far as I knew, the two fundamental doctrines were an atomistic physics and a quasi-hedonic ethics.  On the latter point, the summum bonum in Epicureanism is ἀταραξία, or freedom from stress and pain.  I was curious to what extent this would parallel the Buddhist ideal of cessation of dukkha.  From what I could tell, Epicurus' system only reaches up to the Buddhist virtue of upekkha, or equanimity, which is of critical importance, but nonetheless is just a stepping stone to ever higher states of mind.  Epicurus seemed to utterly reject anything supernatural, either flatly denying the existence of spirits and the afterlife, or, at best, admitting the existence of gods but claiming they were far-off beings totally uninterested in humanity (something which is true for only very high gods, in the Buddhist view).  So as a result, Epicurus wrote only on the physical dimension of achieving equanimity: eating a mild diet, having few possessions, abstaining from politics, learning natural sciences, etc.  That's all well and good, but the result is Epicurus doesn't say anything more profound than those modernists who repackage Eastern religion for therapeutic and dietetic self-help books.  Perhaps if Epicurus had covered his writings in rainbows and stars like those fellows, his works would have had more staying power!

    On a less flippant note, I would say that someone who follows the Epicurean lifestyle would be very healthy of body and mind, and indeed for one who follows a religious path to enlightenment, those are essential.  But since Epicurus has no regard for what is beyond mere life, a strict Epicurean would do no more than live out an adequate life.  And for that matter, anything of value in Epicurean writings is already contained in other, much more profound systems.

The Upanishads – Eknath Easwaran (ed.)

    This was a collection of passages from the ten major Upaniṣads, plus a few minor ones, with introductory commentary by an interesting fellow named Easwaran.  While it doesn't seem he was ever ordained nor initiated, Easwaran's writing indicates that he did practice and study very deeply, and that he was oriented beyond this mere life.  He translated three major Indian texts (the other two were the Bhagavadgīta and the Dhammapada—one of these things is not like the other), considering them to be the most critical handbooks for any spiritual person.  He likened them to documents from explorers of consciousness: the Upaniṣads are like an album of photographs, the Dhammapada is like a field guide, and the Bhagavadgīta is like a guidebook with a map.  He, like Gandhi, regarded the Gīta as the most valuable of the three, being the most systematic and comprehensive.  Thus his outlook was markedly Hindu, as he regarded the depths of consciousness as a universal homeland of sorts:

We are not cabin-dwellers, born to a life cramped and confined; we are meant to explore, to seek, to push the limits of our potential as human beings.  The world of senses is just a base camp: we are meant to be as much at home in consciousness as in the world of physical reality.  (p. 10)

Contrast that with the Hesse quote from earlier; what a breath of fresh air!

    Anyway, Easwaran's commentary was good, but it was not the star of the show here.  As with the Bhagavadgīta last year, I found the Upaniṣads edifying and brimming with wisdom, even despite the gap between it and orthodox Buddhism.  The selections here were all beautiful poems and dialogues treating of the heights of reality (brahman) as well as the individuated states thereof (atmān), the nature of life and death, the phases of consciousness covering the atmān, the subtle currents emanating from it, etc.  Nonetheless, per Easwaran's analogy of the traveler's documents, these are like a slideshow—certainly useful and delightful to review, but they are not nearly so systematic and didactic as other works in the Indian canon.  But then, system-building can be a weakness, as one can get lost in the weeds of discriminatory knowledge, whereas such ecstatic visions and experiences as contained here can be a good reminder of the goal.  "Don't miss the forest for the trees", as the saying goes.

East and West – René Guénon

    This was a basic, very early manifesto of the Traditionalist™ School by its posterboy, René Guénon.  As I've discussed on this blog many times, I have read a lot of Evola and a little bit of Schuon, but until this year, nothing from Guénon.  To be honest, this was an underwhelming work to start with.  Guénon diagnoses all the problems with the modern West: secularism, individualism, democracy, metaphysical materialism, economic materialism, etc.  At time of writing (1924), the East still retained a lot of Traditional™ trappings, so he held up Chinese Taoism and Indian Vedanta as living models for the West to emulate during the RETVRN™.  In the same respect, Guénon also emphasizes Christianity as the basis for a revived Traditional™ West, since Christianity is still somewhat alive in the West, and was the main current in Western culture for most of its lifespan.  I think it's horribly ironic that he tightly circumscribes his Traditionalist™ project so tightly by the limits of what's still "alive" to be learned from, because, as I understand it, one of the key concepts in traditional (non-trademarked) thought of any kind is that the permanent (Being, Heaven, etc.) is much more important in anything from metaphysics down to politics than the impermanent (Becoming, contingent details, Chaos, etc.).  So it cannot be that the only objects of consideration are what's alive right now, because right now constitutes Becoming.  This is something I think Evola handles much better, because he extends his considerations to ancient, long-dead civilizations like Egypt, Rome, and Greece, and likewise he understands that in studying them, it's important to penetrate the essence, and not to get tied up in just bringing back the old rituals and aesthetics as verbatim facsimiles.

    Nonetheless, Guénon still has a transcendent orientation at heart, and so this issue, despite my whinging, just sets limits on the scope of the book.  The heart and soul of the Traditionalist™ critique of Western degeneracy is still there.  The real issue, as far as I'm concerned, is that it's already done much better and more thoroughly by Evola in all of his works, but most especially Revolt Against the Modern World.  I'll keep my eyes out for other works by Guénon, in the hopes that they'll be more profound than this one.

Dream Yoga – Andrew Holecek

    This was an exposition of four of the Six Yogas of Naropa: in order of increasing profundity, Illusory Form Yoga, Dream Yoga, Clear Light Yoga (a.k.a. Sleep Yoga), and Bardo Yoga, though primarily with focus on the first two.  I admit that I'm a little skeptical of works by non-ordained writers, especially non-ordained Americans, but it seems that Holecek did extensive study and practice, including a three-year meditation retreat.  So while his tone is a little pedestrian (a particularly bad line was his comparison of pre-sleep prayers to "the buddhas tucking you in at night"), he does seem to know his Dharma fairly well.

    The book is heavier on practice than on theory, which makes it useful to keep around for reference in one's own practices.  I tend to be tepid about Vajrāyāna practices given the danger inherent in such things as invocations, sex, alcohol, etc., but the practices outlined here seemed to be on the safer, more contemplative end of the spectrum.  I especially enjoy Illusory Form, which is, as I understood it, basically just vipassanā with a focus on the dream-like nature of what you observe in waking life.  As for the other yogas, I've only had one very short lucid dream since integrating all of this into my practice.  The few seconds that it lasted were shockingly real, almost more real than my waking life, but I think the sheer surprise is what cut that short.  I'll be sure to write more about my experiences once I have more fruitful practice.  In any case, I think this book is worth checking out for its readability and practicality, but I would prefer to find one that is, again, not so pedestrian and American in tone.

Pagan Mysteries of Halloween – Jean Markale

    This was a history and discussion of the Celtic origins of Halloween (fittingly, I read this in October).  It begins with the original pagan holiday of Samhain, then proceeds into the Christian era when it was morphed into All Hallow's Eve, and concludes with an assessment of the modern holiday of Halloween.  I was pleasantly surprised by the author's insights into the esoteric meanings of the many stories and practices surrounding this holiday.  Markale's general thesis is that, since the holiday has historically heralded the darker half of the year, it has acted as a literal and spiritual boundary between light and shadow.  The two prevalent themes in Samhain stories are travels to and from the Underworld and violent deaths followed by victorious resurrections.  Markale uses these, along with similar themes of helping the spirits of the deceased along on All Hallow's Eve (whether through Christian prayer or modern candy-giving), to portray Samhain festivities as a symbolic "victory over death".  His references to contemporary Grail stories as well as alchemical practice indicate that he had an eye for the transcendent, practical element in these matters.

    While his orientation certainly sets him above most authors (especially the ones I've read this year), Markale's work isn't quite so serious as I would like.  Consider this excerpt:

Is it necessary to be "initiated" in order to cross through the stages of this "death and resurrection"?  The question can be raised, but it cannot be answered.  Certainly, the Bardo Thodo [sic], the Tibetan Book of the Dead, insists on this slow process of initiation that allows the soul, at the moment it takes flight from the body, to avoid the vexing and terrifying ghosts who persistently strive to throw off balance the newly deceased upon the paths of the Other World.  And the Bardo Thodo prescribes remedies against the phantoms of all sorts who assail the soul emergent from a physical body and still arrayed in the deceptive powers of the illusion of existing.  . . .  But here again, Celtic tradition reveals itself to be much more prudent in this regard, going so far as to say that contact with the invisible can be made in a completely natural fashion with no necessity of prior preparation.  (p. 104)

This lack of caution towards occult matters indicates a flippant, perhaps whimsical attitude.  Markale attempts to illustrate the above point with a reference to Nera crossing into the underworld without realizing it.  My reply is: Nera wasn't any old slouch!  Nera was already a trained warrior, and he set forth on his quest (knowing or not) after driving a bunch of ghosts out of his land.  If Markale meant that the difference between this World and the Next was so thin that one could fail to notice it, I could accept that much—that's adequately illustrated by Bardo and Dream Yoga, as I learned one book ago—but his specific mention of initiation, to me, means Markale meant to diminish the vocational requirements of the spiritual life (the courage of the warrior, the austerity of the monk, etc.).

    Having said all that, this book was very valuable as a kind of "case study" (or a palate-cleanser) for one who's already read a general morphohistorical work like Revolt Against the Modern World or Decline of the West.  Rather than run the whole gamut of metaphysics and politics with references to diverse cultures and eras, this work focuses on one aspect of Tradition™ (the Afterlife) in one civilization (the Celts), though granted across most of their known history.

Vietnam: Lotus in a Sea of Fire – Thích Nhất Hạnh

    This was an overview of Vietnamese history leading up to the Vietnam War of the 20th century (it was published shortly before the actual breakout of war).  I spotted this in a bookstore, intrigued to find Hạnh's face on the cover of a book in the History section.  After skimming it and reading the blurb, I was interested to see what Hạnh had to say about more concrete matters as war and statecraft.  As this isn't a political blog, I will keep my comments brief here.

    The book in general is a call for peace.  Western imperialism brought three deadly C's (my term, not Hạnh's) to Vietnam: Christianity, in the form of Ngô Đình Diệm's brutal regime, Capitalism, in the form of American soldiers crowding out the Vietnamese markets and making the locals destitute, and Communism, in the form of rampant guerrilla warfare.  Hạnh argued that all the native peasants of Vietnam wanted was simple and inoffensive, yet denied to them by the Western incursions; respectively: to practice their Buddhist faith unmolested, to make a simple agrarian living, and to stay clear of any violent factionalism.  Thus, Hạnh called for the United States to lighten up on the three fronts: stop supporting repressive puppet states, clean up the economic damage to the Vietnamese people, and seek peace with the communist militants.  If I'm honest, this all sounds like standard anti-war talking points regarding the contemporary American interventions in the Middle East.  Funny how the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Middle Length Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment – Jé Tsongkhapa

    This was an in-depth treatment of the practices to be undertaken as a Buddhist, written by the teacher of the first Dalai Lama.  These range from the virtues and contemplations to be cultivated by those of low capacity (that is, those who are very much ensnared by worldly matters) all the way up to the analyses and mind-states to be practiced by those of high capacity (dedicated bodhisattvas).  Tsongkhapa was obviously a brilliant and accomplished monk, as he has both an expert command of the scriptures and commentaries to illustrate each point on the path, as well as a wealth of experience with each stage that allows him to elucidate every point in a way that is both comprehensive and succinct (fitting for the middle-length version of a larger work: Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment).  As this is work is an expositional summary, it is also of great value to Buddhists of any school, even Theravādins if you set aside the bodhicitta chapters.  More philosophically minded Buddhists might also find disagreement with his specific Prāsaṅgika-Madhyamaka exposition of emptiness toward the end.  I myself found that section quite helpful in clarifying the meaning and nature of emptiness, something which many writers try and fail to make comprehensible.

Reflections on my first retreat and tea ceremony

     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.

Retreat, Day 1

     The day began with a dhamma talk by the senior nun.  She first gave an exposition on the purpose of meditation, which she gave as the traditional Chan formula of quieting the mind so as to reveal "the original face".  As I've come to expect of Chan (Chan, by the way, is the Chinese reading of the character 禅, which is Zen in Japanese), she did not spend much time at all hashing out the meaning of "the original face", for Chan is intensely anti-dialectical and anti-metaphysics.  The rest of her talk was on the practice, which on this retreat was taught as focusing one's attention on the tip of the nose.

    My experience with this nose-focus method started difficult but grew easier as the day went on.  The trouble, which was revealed in my interview with the senior nun, is that I have trained almost entirely on active objects: breath, qi, mantras, walking, etc.  Whereas, the tip of one's nose is fixed in one spot, with no independent movement.  So, today was pretty much my first time meditating on a simple, unmoving object.  Later in the day, during walking meditation, the junior nun (who led the practice sessions) said that, if you find it hard to concentrate on the nosetip, it may help to focus on the breath first in order to get there.  Once she said that, I found it relatively easy to just focus on the breath passing in and out of my nostrils, with particular attention to the tip of my nose.  However, when I revealed in the interview that I stuck with that for the rest of the day, both nuns clarified that the attention needs to ultimately rest on just the nosetip, with the breath being no more than a temporary aid to correct a wandering mind.

    One of the questions I asked during my interview was how to know when samatha is attained.  I gave the example of my past experience with "activating my qi" (I had this confirmed when I corresponded with the senior monk of another monastery), in which my thoughts became quiet and I felt an intense burning inside of me.  For a long time afterwards, I was under the impression that the two put together implied samatha, and that whenever I felt my qi even a little bit afterwards, I thought I was reaching some kind of samatha.  The senior nun clarified for me that the samatha is the stillness of thoughts and focus on the object; in my case, that was the breath, while the burning of the qi was an incidental phenomenon.  She clarified further that the method is very straightforward, no more than what it says on the tin: you focus on the tip of your nose, and when you attain that clear, singular focus on the nose-tip, that's the samatha.

    Nonetheless, during the initial dhamma talk, the senior nun did also indicate that samadhi is the basis of all advanced practices, of which she listed hua tou (similar to kōan meditation), silent illumination, and nianfo; so, she said, this retreat was focused on the Buddha's earliest teachings.  On a minor note, I found it interesting that nianfo was considered advanced, because I had been under the impression that all Pure Land teaching was basically "easy mode" in preparation for asceticism in the next life.  On a more important note, this somewhat clashes with a belief I got from Evola's exposition on Theravāda (see the relevant passage in this thread), which was that the qi (or prāṇa) is the vehicle by which these advanced contemplations may be realized.  I don't think the two are irreconcilable, though.  It seems to me that qi, being the root of the senses or "life of one's life", is the instrument by which one may effect contemplative techniques, whereas samadhi (the absorbed state resulting from both samatha and vipassanā) is the attitude or state.  If I may make my own analogy, the qi would be like a warrior's sword, whereas the samadhi is the warrior's technique and discipline.  So in that sense, my meditations up til now have been like a warrior who works tirelessly at smithing and sharpening a sword, but spends little time using it.

    One more note.  At the end, when the noble silence was broken and the attendees were allowed to speak, the only one who said anything was a middle-aged Chinese fellow, speaking in Mandarin.  The junior nun translated, saying that he had an easy time at the beginning of the day, but that his legs began to hurt during the afternoon sessions, making it difficult to concentrate.  Everyone had a laugh, and the senior nun replied that of course, one could move the legs in order to alleviate this, but the important thing is to maintain focus on the nose all the while.  I have a feeling she was obligated to reply this way, as many of the attendees were elderly—one fellow, bless him, was so sickly and old that he required a chair instead of a zafu, and he had to take breaks during the walking meditation to keep an eye on his heartrate.  On the other hand, this is in line with the general Chan teaching of "always meditate, even when you do something else"—after all, this is the school that merged into the martial and aesthetic arts of China and Japan, imbuing samatha into archery, painting, tea ceremonies, flower arrangement, and so on, so it stands to reason that samatha could be maintained in adjusting one's posture just as in firing an arrow or what have you.  On the subject of discomfort, though, I was reminded of the story in which Milarepa is said to have parted from his student, Gampopa.  Before leaving, Milarepa raised his robes and showed Gampopa his buttocks, which was covered in calluses (this was before comfy zafus were invented!), and emphasized that he became as accomplished as he was only through intense and dedicated meditation.  Likewise, we must endure much more than a day's worth of leg pain in order to make spiritual progress.

Retreat, Day 2

    This day's meditation was, in addition to focusing on the tip of the nose (stilling the mind), maintaining one's awareness of the breath.  The nuns were very careful to specify that this was awareness and nothing more: the breath was not to be controlled (as in qigong or prāṇāyāma) nor to be directly analyzed/counted (e.g. as in popular Zen teachings about counting 10 breaths).  This was changed up a bit during the walking meditation: one could continue the meditation as before or, instead, still focus on the nose but instead turn the awareness to the act of walking.  Again, the walking was not to be controlled nor analyzed ("heel rises, toe rises, heel descends, toe descends...") but merely observed.  The purpose of producing both samatha and vipassanā at once is to cultivate samadhi: the luminous, tranquil mind, what the senior nun calls "non-arising".

    What struck me about this was that, while the senior nun did mention that vipassanā involves the application of wisdom, she nonetheless instructed that the breath (or walking) be merely watched, and nothing more.  My impression from other expositions is that vipassanā requires some knowledge of Dhamma going into it: that one observes with the intent of seeing impermanence, for example.  As is so characteristic of Chan, there's not much prescribed beyond just sitting and meditating.  During the second interview I did with the nuns, they emphasized the concept of ziran (自然), or "spontaneity", that with the development of both samatha on the nosetip and vipassanā on the breath (or gait), insight would arise of its own accord.

    During this same interview, I also asked how often one should practice just one or the other; after all, I just spent all of the previous day on samatha alone, wouldn't I do that again some time, or perhaps would I spend another day on vipassanā alone?  The nuns replied that this was only part of the retreat's program; in reality, the two should be practiced together whenever possible.  They did mention, though, that in my daily life, I should try as best I can to just develop samatha on the nosetip while driving, working, speaking, etc.  I asked then, would the activity (driving, working, etc.) be the object of vipassanā then?  To this, they replied that it would certainly be possible, but it is an advanced practice, so a beginner like me should only worry about cultivating samatha in such cases.

    We also brought up my meditation history again.  I mentioned that, when I meditated on mantras, one of the mantras I used was that of Acala, who in Chinese is apparently called Budong Mingwang (不動明王), meaning Immovable Wisdom King.  The junior nun pointed out to me that the third character, 明, indicates wisdom (vijjā) as well as "clarity", as it is a compound of the sun 日 and moon 月 radicals.  This, she said, is a way of thinking about samādhi, the state to be reached through the combination of samatha and vipassanā: bright, singular, and clear, just like the sun or moon would appear in a cloudless sky, an idea which was later brought up during the mid-autumn festival.

    As far as my experience during the meditation, it was a great deal easier than the first day.  Part of me wonders if this is perhaps a carryover from the first day of "training", that the focus on the nosetip had already been exercised, so it was easy to get into that before becoming aware of the breath.  Part of me also worried that I was doing something wrong, that perhaps my focus was "false" somehow.  In the interview, neither nun seemed to find a problem with what I related about my experience, and affirmed that I was on the right track.  I suppose part of my confusion comes from what I noted yesterday about qi; the couple of times I have felt my qi are thus far the only times I've felt anything supernatural in my life, so I suppose there's a lingering bias in me for meditative states to feel equally "extraordinary".

    One final note.  There is a website available that shows the lineage from the senior nun going back to Mahakāssapa (traditionally the First Chan Patriarch) who, of course, was the successor to the Buddha himself.  Counting these up, then, the transmission of the Buddha's teachings passed from the Accomplished One himself through 85 successive monks down to this retreat's senior nun.  It is interesting to think that the whole lineage could potentially fit inside the hall we practiced in, and it is also somewhat compelling to think that the teachings disseminated in this retreat have the backing of the Buddha.  After years of just reading expositions and some suttas on my own, it was nice to get some direction from an ordained practitioner with that kind of qualification.

 Mid-Autumn Festival

    At the end of the retreat, the volunteer receptionist of this center invited me to come to weekly meditation sessions, held every Sunday, but also to the following Saturday's "Mid-Autumn Festival".  From some cursory research, it seems to be a pre-Buddhist Chinese holiday, though everyone at the center was nice enough, so I decided to attend.

    The festival began with the showing of an elaborate Chinese shadow-dance from CCTV on a projector.  It seems the Chinese are very fond of these big musical productions which are heavy on coordinated acrobatics and historical aesthetics.  Once that was done, we were all invited to do a brief breath meditation, after which tea was served to each table.  The ceremony was very simple: the host at each table would pour tea into each cup, and everyone would quietly "enjoy" the tea.  We were instructed to first hold the cup (which was more like a shotglass-sized bowl), feeling the warmth of the tea, then to bring it close to smell the tea, and then to drink it, holding it in the mouth for a bit to taste it fully.  All of this was done with the general spirit of "being in the present moment".  I think this phrase has lost some of its weight, having been popularized by those who treat dhamma as no more than a method of—may Amitābha forgive me for using this word—"self-care".  Nonetheless, the ceremony was very nice, though I would like to some time attend a smaller one without any instructions, basically an "authentic" one.  After two servings of tea (one oriental beauty, one pu'erh), we were allowed to discuss amongst each table about the flavor of the tea.

    After some further discussions about some Chan verses and gathas that were passed around, the senior nun from the prior retreat got up to speak.  This time, she taught the room a technique that, to me, seemed more like an old kasiṇa from Theravāda; she indicated that this, too, was from the Buddha's earlier teachings, prior to Mahāyāna.  For this teaching, the projector showed an image of the full moon (necessary due to the festival being held during the day), and the nun asked us to contemplate the moon visually, then close the eyes and generate this image in our minds.  The idea was, as I had discussed privately regarding that character 明, that the Moon shines brightly and clearly in the cloudless sky, just the same way that "the original face" would shine brightly and clearly in the cloudless mind.  Having never really done a kasiṇa or any in-depth visualization practice, I had a hard time with it, but I found it very interesting.  I often feel wary of techniques that interest me, especially those of Vajrāyāna, because I doubt my own intentions: am I interested because the technique seems effective and congenial to me, or am I interested because it's "sexy" or resembles things such as fantasy games?  Having now been plunged sort of by surprise into such a technique, I feel a little more secure about trying such meditations on my own.  Sort of like learning to swim by being thrown into the deep end.

Weekly Class

    This last day I wish to reflect on was probably the most different.  No monastics were present at all, this time.  The leader of the "workshop" was a volunteer: a middle-aged female sociology professor.  This is of course a very far cry from the ordained nun with 85 direct links between her and the Buddha.  She didn't do a bad job, by any means, but it was certainly underwhelming compared to the aforementioned experiences.

    Being merely a workshop, and not a retreat, this was a lot shorter.  It began with an hour's meditation which was, to my dismay, guided verbally by the volunteer.  She had good intentions here, as a couple of people indicated it was their first time meditating, so I can't fault her for trying to be helpful, but I found her narration to be more of a distraction for my own purposes.

    After this and a few post-sit stretches, there were two workshop portions.  In the first part, she opened the floor for questions.  The questions from the fellow meditators were more about personal life and ethics than about meditation per sé.  For my own part, so long as I am a layman on the outside, I try as much as possible to be a hermit on the inside, and so I don't tend to trouble myself about these matters.

    In the second part, at the conclusion of the day's workshop, the volunteer gave a dhamma talk.  She began, surprisingly, with a reading of the Maṅgala Sutta from the Sutta-nipāta.  At this point I would like to note that, for a Mahāyāna Chan center that also caters to Amidists, I'm surprised how much I've encountered practices and teachings that are basically Theravāda.  Anyway, she focused her talk on the first item in the list of highest blessings:

Not to associate with the foolish, but to associate with the wise; and to honor those who are worthy of honor — this is the greatest blessing.

She went on for a good 30-40 minutes about this.  She stressed that the foolish, in this case, are not dull and unintelligent, but worldly people blinded by hatred and craving.  Now this is all well and good, but she used this as a springboard to talk about discrimination in the workplace and such.  Being a sociology professor, she brought in some statistics detailing how women in such and such situations are treated worse than men (they have to work harder, they get punished harder, etc.), and how we (A) should not associate with people who perpetuate those problems and (B) should not allow ourselves to fall into those patterns of behavior.  To be sure, this is not adhamma at all, though the volunteer's tone and choice of subject sounded like she had an axe to grind.  My main problem is that, again, these are worldly issues, the discussion of which can never get very deep nor very insightful; it paled in comparison to the aforementioned interviews I had with the nuns.  It stands to reason, for example, that one who cultivates the brahmavihārās of good-will, compassion, sympathy, and equanimity would treat all his fellows equitably and with detachment—but that's the end of the discussion.  All the statistics and bias-studies in the world cannot improve upon that simple teaching.

    As ascetics—and surely anyone who trains (ἀσκέω) in the doctrine of awakening is an ascetic—we resolve that worldly struggles and dilemmas lead us nowhere, and that only through interior, transcendent struggles with the mind and spirit can we arrive at truly worthy goals.  In the other three events discussed here, the nuns had this same general spirit, almost taking it for granted that everyone had come to learn methods and techniques for treading this path, despite engaging in mundane distractions such as jobs and travel; not, indeed, so that we may work and travel better.

    I am again moved to share a quote from Milarepa, one which I have tweeted before:

All formations suffer; the root of this suffering is desire; putting an end to desire puts an end to suffering; this is accomplished by the Eightfold Path, the most critical part of which is, per Milarepa's quotation, Right Contemplation.  This is why I have previously indicated that I do not care for sociology nor for politics, because they consist of worrying and fantasizing about other people's lives on the most grandiose scale, verging on megalomania in the case of politics.  Therefore, we must learn from monastics instead of academics, and become like monastics ourselves.

Thoughts on Decline of the West Vol. 1

     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.

History Can't Step Into the Same River Twice

    According to Spengler, each Civilization in world-history is governed by a single Prime Symbol by which its constituents (especially its great men) perceive Nature.  For example, the Classical civilization's symbol was the Body (σώμα).  In Classical art this is reflected in the preference for sculptures, the lack of backgrounds or perspective in painting, the lack of scenery-changing in theater, and the appreciation for nudity in clothing.  Politically this is reflected in the model of the lone city-state and the general lack of empire-building; Alexander's expedition was a very short-lived episode, the Anabasis is always related as a journey back home, and the Roman "Empire" scarcely expanded beyond the Mediterranean banks.  In theology, this is reflected by polytheism: the world, even in its divine aspect, is a grand sum of individual bodies, that is, the many and diverse gods and spirits, who possess a very substantial, material existence (e.g. they all literally live on Mount Olympus).  Spengler contrasts this with Western (what he calls Faustian) Civilization, whose symbol is Infinite Space, the opposite of Body.  In Western art we see this in the tendency towards landscape paintings, contrapuntal music, tall cathedrals and towers, and the disdain for nudity (since the Body opposes Space).  In Western politics furthermore we see this reflected in a constant theme of expansion: the Vikings, the Age of Exploration, the Crusades, the Napoleonic Wars, Manifest Destiny, the Third Reich, NATO, etc. as well as "universal" programs of healthcare, vaccination, welfare, compulsive service, education, etc.  As regards religion, this yields a kind of monotheism that informs even the pre-Christian Germans and Celts.  The Norse had a definite Allfather and the Celts had the King of the Faeries, roles that Zeus did not play at all for the Greeks—after all, in the Iliad, Zeus is on the antagonists' side.  Furthermore, the realms of these gods, faeries, etc. are utterly ethereal; Olympus and almost all other locations in Greek mythos can be found on a map, but Valhalla is nowhere.

    Spengler spends his book treating all of these and more (math, science, epistemology, metaphysics, etc.) in much more depth and with a couple other civilizations, but one of the more off-putting conclusions, for me, is the impossibility of conversion.  It is impossible, says Spengler, for one to change one's fundamental view of the world from one prime symbol to another.  Rather, the "worldview" changes for whoever receives it.  Consider how drastically Christianity has branched off and morphed wherever it has gone.  It started out in Magian (Arabian, Persian, Jewish, etc.) territory, but even the New Testament itself adapts Christ's message, since the authors were Greeks and Romans from the dying Classical civilization.  In the West it transformed into Catholicism, literally "universalism" (καθόλικα), as well as later Protestant sects.  Here, its theology included derivations of God's existence from Motion, Causality, Ontology, etc., concepts entirely missing from the Bible itself, to say nothing of Classical philosophy.  It transformed furthermore to suit Russian civilization (Prime Symbol is the Plane, which Spengler does not elaborate on) as well as later developments in its Magian homeland (gnostic sects, Melkite and Coptic rites, etc.).  All this is to say, nobody ever converted directly to Christianity; they merely took the material from the Bible and re-tooled it for the needs of their own worldviews.  That Christ pushed out Odin is, for Spengler, a trivial detail.

    This presents quite the issue for people like me: Western Buddhists.  How, after all, can a Western man, raised with a view of the world as Space, embrace unadulterated Buddhism, which comes from a worldview based on Illusion, Emptiness?  One may identify some commonalities here and there, but according to Spengler, I will never not be a Faustian.  If you've spent time in Buddhist circles at all, that might ring true to you.  Take, for example, how very desperately Western Buddhists try to contradict or distort the idea of anattā, no-self.  For the Faustian, the rejection of the soul, the individual consciousness, comes off as rank heresy; the complement to Western Space is identity. Who is there to experience and perceive Space?  Whose perspective do we take in a landscape painting?  Who mans the voyages over the Seas or to the Moon?  Someone is there to experience the vastness and loneliness, to learn about it and wrestle with it.  A Western Buddhism has to cater to these questions in a way that no preceding sect has had to, just as much as Roman Catholicism had to answer Faustian questions about the nature of God that the Bible didn't provide for.

    This, however, is not an unprecedented case.  Buddhism, like Christianity, did morph to fit the Civilizations it was transmitted to.  In Zomia, there wasn't much need to adapt, hence Theravāda's very conservative character.  In China and Vietnam, it catered to Taoist and Confucian biases, giving rise to the Chan and Pure Land sects, respectively.  In Japan, the shamanic Shintō adopted the buddhas and bodhisattvas as an extra class of deities, resulting in a Buddhist-Shintō fusion that continued to elaborate on Chan (now Zen) and Pure Land.  In Tibet, meanwhile, the Chan sect was ignored, and instead they took on esoteric Vajrayana and mixed it with the dark sorcery of the native Bön religion.  Some of these sects are quite aware that they are adulterations.  The Vajrayana school, borrowing from Hindu Tantra, argues that their more sensuous practices are required because they are in Kāli Yuga, the Age of Decline, when men are no longer spiritually equipped to take up the original practices laid out by Prince Gotama.  The Japanese monk Shinran echoed this observation, that Dharma has declined, and that we have no chance for enlightenment whatsoever in this world, and that we can only hope therefore for Amitābha's grace to lead us to a rebirth where we can undertake original Buddhist sadhana properly.  Julius Evola, even as he remarks on these later branches as "degenerations", admits the positive value of Tantric and Zen practices (though he seems less conciliatory to Pure Land) for "men among the ruins".

    Former mahathera Paññobhāsa has already sketched out some thoughts on a properly Westernized Buddhism, that is to say, Buddhism adapted without left-wing politics, and he has more recently joined up with a few others to continue this project in a broader direction that includes Hinduism and other religions.  I shall meditate more on this matter in future posts, but here I'll cap this thought off with praise to Spengler for offering a strong case for a properly meta-historical perspective on religion.

Postmodernism and Scientific Knowledge

    I have been allergic to this word and the attitude it connotes for a few years now.  This is leftover from my phase as a milquetoast MAGA sort, parroting Sargon of Akkad and Armored Skeptic all through high school and college.  Unlike shallow YouTubers and plebeian politicians, however, Spengler's strong argument and multitude of sources for his main thesis (again, the incommensurability between Civilizations) leads quite convincingly to a postmodern conclusion.  Permit me to quote him at a little length; after contrasting Classical and Faustian views of astronomy, that is, limited spheres against infinite space, he writes:

    Our denial of the "vault" of heaven, then, is a resolve and not a sense-experience.  The modern ideas as to the nature of starry space—or, to speak more prudently, of an extension by light-indices that are communicated by eye and telescope—most certainly do not rest upon sure knowledge, for what we see in the telescope is small bright disks of different sizes.  The photograhic plate yields quite another picture—not a sharper one but a different one—and the construction of a consistent world-picture such as we crave depends upon connecting the two by numerous and often very daring hypotheses (e.g., of distances, magnitudes and movements) that we ourselves frame.  The style of this picture corresponds to the style of our own soul.  [emphasis mine]  In actual fact we do not know how different the light-powers of one and another star may be, nor whether they vary in different directions.  We do not know whether or not light is altered, diminished, or extinguishes in the immensities of space.  We do not know whether our earthly conceptions of the nature of light, and therefore all the theories and laws deduced from them, have validity beyond the immediate environment of the earth.  What we "see" are merely light-indices; what we understand are symbols of ourselves.  (IX.I.viii)

    Now, a naïve Westerner would probably insist that this is the result of  Spengler writing in 1917, prior to space exploration (something that, incidentally, consummates the Faustian symbol of infinite space more than anything else), and that now we have manned missions, robotic rovers, and far-off telescopes going out into space to confirm our observations.  Men have walked on the Moon, robots have ridden over (and got lost) on Mars, and telescopic cameras send us all manner of images from different perspectives.  Against this, the easiest thing would be bring up the issue of so-called dark matter, hypothesized mass used to correct erroneous gravitational calculations for some distant bodies.  Why, Spengler might ask, is that the sole correct view of the world, and why is the correct view not that gravity simply works differently elsewhere in the universe?  As Chess Grandmaster Řżëḱâ has put it, for two equally workable models, how can you know which model is "more right" in that case?  Řżëḱâ affirms the modern scientific method:

    [A]nother way of explaining the usefulness of hypothesis, then, is that by affirming a hypothesis at the outset, you are openly declaring your "belief system"/hypothesis, and trying to judge whether 1) the experimental results can be accommodated into the hypothesis or 2) the hypothesis needs to be negated for the results to be accommodated.

On this note, Spengler accords some praise to the Western scientists for not just presenting a very convincing model of reality, but also for including model-formation itself into the model.  Nonetheless, there is no one unconditioned science, for the very simple and inexorable reason that you are running this data through your conditioned, individuated consciousness, which uses its own formations (sankhāra to borrow a Buddhist term) to work things out.  And, just as a computer simulation is limited by the nature of its underlying code structure, our Nature-knowledge is limited by what Spengler calls "the form of our Soul".

    Numbers, formulæ, laws mean nothing and are nothing.  They must have a body, and only a living mankind—projecting its livingness into them and through them, expressing itself by them, inwardly making them its own—can endow them with that.  And thus there is no absolute science of physics, but only individual sciences that come, flourish and go within the individual Cultures.  [emphasis mine]  [...]  To the Classical therefore belong the conceptions of matter and form, to the Arabian (quite Spinozistically) the idea of substances with visible or secret attributes, and to the Faustian the idea of force and mass.  Apollinian theory is a quiet meditation, Magian a silent knowledge of Alchemy the means of Grace (even here the religious source of mechanics is to be discerned), and the Faustian is from the very outset a working hypothesis.  The Greek asked, what is the essence of visible being?  We ask, what possibility is there of mastering the invisible motive-forces of becoming?  For them, contented absorption in the visible; for us, masterful questioning of Nature and methodical experiment.  (XI.ii)

    As this is a religious blog, not a scientific one, I will conclude this thought on the note that, while Spengler does affirm that there is no one true science (something we might say also of religion, since he equates them as different expressions of Nature-knowledge), he maintains that there is one Nature that all the sciences study.  So, unlike most postmodernists, he's not a nihilist or a social-constructivist.  If anything, he seems to be in line with the perennialist attitude, that all the sciences and religions are "right on their own terms", and that they all study the same object.  In emphasizing differences instead of commonalities, he produces a strong admonition to Christians and Hegelians: those who see time as a line of progress, with continuity between the Civilizations, culminating in Western science, ethics, politics, etc. as the final and only true way for all mankind.  Spengler more lucidly concludes that the Civilizations are not continuous, they rise and fall, they are incommensurable, and there is no neutral perspective from which one can judge any of their sciences supreme among the rest.

Buddhism, Stoicism, and Socialism Revisited

    The second-ever post on this blog was a critique written of his drawing a parallel between Buddhism, Stoicism, and Socialism.  That was written quite soon after I read an early section in the book, so I didn't have time to really absorb his argument.  Now I understand that he was not intending to set these three up as equivalent phenomena, but as analogous phenomena: that is, the practical systems of thought that reign over the latter half of a Culture's lifespan.  India was a Culture while it was still Vedic, but after it was crystallized into a Civilization by Brāhmaṇic and Upaniṣadic thought, the Buddha appeared and heralded an austere, myth-free sadhana against the Hindu status quo.  Classical Culture was vibrant from the Homeric period up to the Pre-Socratics, then became Civilization due to the influences of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, but it was the Stoic and Epicurean schools that brought in the emphasis on private practice and the attainment of αταραξία.  Our own Faustian Culture lasted from the dawn of the Vikings through the Medieval period, crystallized around Kant and the Enlightenment philosophers, after which appeared Socialism.  Spengler's use of this word is much broader, however, than the ordinary meaning it has today (which is to say "government welfare programs").  Here, Spengler takes Socialism to be an ethical system, "that world-feeling which seeks to carry out its views on behalf of all" (X.II.i).

    Now, anyone can see that there is a strong kinship between Buddhism and Stoicism, but a pointed opposition between them and Socialism.  Spengler notes that the wisdom of Buddha, Epicurus, and Seneca are all given as stern, take-it-or-leave-it counsels, without a hint of injunction, whereas the Socialists consider their political programmes as utterly mandatory; the State shall, the citizens shall, the workers shall, etc.  In this view, even such radical individualists as Nietzsche and Rothbard could be considered Socialists, painful as that is to even type.  But Spengler's point is this: all three are the antipodes of the ancien regime, but still within the bounds of the Prime Symbol.  Let me elaborate on that, since that's a bit of a dense statement.

    Brahmanism and Buddhism are opposed in that the former hold invocation, devotion, ritual, etc. as valid means of spiritual practice, whereas the Buddha writes those off as worthless; in one discourse, he compares this to a man who wishes to cross a river by hoping that the other shore will get up and walk to him, whereas Buddhist practice says there is no choice but to swim across with one's own effort.  Nonetheless, extending that analogy, the Brahman and the Buddhist agree that the river (saṃsāra, Becoming; or perhaps māyā, Illusion, the Prime Symbol of Indian Culture) is an obstacle that we must get across.  In Classical Civilization, the Deity Cults and Stoa are opposed in that the former mandate devotion to the various gods through public ceremony and worship, whereas the Stoa and Epicureans hold that the gods care not a wit for any of us mortals, and that we are better off looking after our own well-beings instead of theirs.  Nonetheless, the two agree that there are a multitude of powerful divinities (again Prime Symbol of the world as a multitude of Bodies).  Finally, in our own civilization, the Medievals (Aquinas and the Scholastics) affirm Natural Law and the feudal system of fiefdoms, later plebeianized by Locke into private property for citizens as well, whereas the Socialists reject private law, private wealth, private life in general, and move all concerns into the domain of the State; but they have all agreed that the central problem of politics is how we are to divide up the land and its resources justly (so they all share the Prime Symbol of Space).

    Such is Spengler's point.  The take-away here, I think would be most applicable to those invested in ideological politics, whether staunchly reactionary or boldly progressive: that there is an arc to each Culture-Civilization's life cycle, and that there is no reversing past the apex (sorry reactionaries) and there is no avoiding the decline and death of the civilization (sorry progressives).  In this regard, the Buddhists and Stoics wisely regard these matters with indifference, while the Socialists stubbornly go on without any meta-consciousness of the historical forces at work.  It seems that Spengler himself took a while to really absorb this, however; he remained quite involved with German politics until about the last few years of his life, after the Nazis quashed his criticisms and censored his books.  Then again, the same could be said of my much-vaunted hero Evola, who kept up with Fascist and Nazi inner circles quite a bit longer before the war put him in a wheelchair and forced him to give up on politics (Ride the Tiger has a pointedly apolitical, nay, antipolitical attitude about it).  One would think that any study of history, religion, etc. with the persepectives both of them bring would lead straight to a disillusionment with democracy and a retreat from politics.  But hey, that's just me.

MacIntyre and Moral History

    Last year, I read another "conservative postmodernist": Alasdair MacIntyre.  Despite sharing the same two labels, MacIntyre is quite the opposite of Spengler.  MacIntyre sees continuity between Classical and Western Civilization where Spengler points out extreme opposition.  Critically, where MacIntyre identifies continuity (the transition from Antiquity and Aristotelianism to the Middle Ages and Thomism) is for him the apex of moral theory, the blending of Greek and Christian ideas of virtue.  We've discussed now at length that Classical Greece, Magian Christianity, and Faustian Europe were utterly incommensurable, and that any dialogue between the three has resulted in adaptations of foreign material, not their acceptance; so that transition period MacIntyre vaunts is really the big disconnect between the two Civilizations.  Now I see more clearly the problem that MacIntyre's view of history causes: he is operating on a Classical assessment of Faustian civilization, and when he comes up with problems, he tries to formulate solutions with yet more Classical thinking.

    MacIntyre's evaluation of pre-Enlightenment communities is that they all had their own "narrative" with corresponding "personas" for their citizens to fit into.  Before, I thought this was a fine model for him to hold up, but here's the problem: he's borrowing the model of Classical theater, the theater of bodies and masks, with no scenery, presided over by the Chorus, a feature Spengler calls intolerable for Faustian tragedy.  The Chorus embodies what MacIntyre loves about Antiquity, that is, the enforcement of civic values and communitarian identity, the drawing out of all private sentiments and action into pompous, public displays of piety, of mourning, etc., the assignment of rigid destinies and, indeed, personas; all utterly foreign to us, as Spengler explains:

    In comparison with this kind of drama, Shakespeare's is a single monologue.  Even in the conversations, even in the group-scenes we are sensible of the immense inner distance between the persons, each of whom at bottom is only talking with himself.  Nothing can overcome this spiritual remoteness.  It is felt in Hamlet as in "Tasso" and in Don Quixote as in Werther, but even Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzeval is filled with and stamped by the sense of infinity.  (IX.I.vi)

    So MacIntyre's problem is that Westerners are atomized strangers, but this is a tautology; MacIntyre's problem is that Westerners are Westerners.  There is no West without solitude or inner monologues, and therefore there is no West without atomization and individual moralities.  The Enlightenment project that MacIntyre devotes his criticisms to was the inexorable conclusion of the Faustian "cult of Space".  So far from being a reactionary, MacIntyre is a fish out of water, a man who longs for somatic, public morality in a Culture of spatial, private ethics.  I retract my original judgment that he "successfully identifies what we're missing for social order", because he fails at even that much.  The best I can say about him is that perhaps he himself is a good case against what Spengler said, that conversions between Cultural outlooks are impossible; for we have here an ardent Classical man living in Faustian modernity.  Perhaps, then, it's entirely possible for one to convert out of the Faustian mode of thought into Chinese Taoism or Indian Buddhism, and we might save ourselves the trouble of going through any adaptations before we properly embark on the quest for immortality.