Time for the yearly roundup. Despite being rather busy with work, travel, family matters, and other worldly affairs, I managed to squeeze in quite a bit of reading regardless. As always, these are books that I finished in 2024, so I started reading the first few in late 2023, and there are a few I've started reading recently that will make it to next year's roundup (possibly next quarter; I keep meaning to do these more regularly, but I end up putting off my reflections too long). I did read a few other books this year, but looking at my past posts, it seems silly to include entries with just a short, perfunctory paragraph amounting to "no comment". So, for future posts of this kind, I am only including books I have comments for.
[NOTE: It's July 2024 as I write this little preface. This sat around untouched for most of my hiatus this year, so rather than go back and try to cook up thoughts inorganically about books I don't remember much of, I'm publishing this "as is", meaning some of these may come across a little fragmentary or just rough in general. To prevent this in the future, I might move to a more frequent book-review schedule, possibly a quarterly basis.]
Another year gone by of reading entirely too much for my own good. As I've done the last two years, I have put together a literary year in review, just quickly running through all the books I finished in 2023. Since that's books finished, that does mean the first few were started in 2022, and what I'm reading now will be counted for the 2024 roundup.
I recently partook of a retweet chain, with the simple premise of "My religious beliefs in 2016 vs now". I get the impression 2016 was chosen instead of "5 years ago" or "10 years ago" because that was a pivotal point in contemporary culture. Many people were radicalized that year, mostly in terms of politics, but also on the religious plane (for sincere motives or otherwise). That being said, I had to really think about what I believed at the time. In light of that, I've decided to take a step back and examine my religious journey up to now.
There are, bhikkhus, other phenomena, profound, difficult to apprehend, hard to understand, but that beget calm; joyful phenomena, not to be grasped simply by discursive thought, phenomena that only the wise man can understand. These are expounded by the Tathāgata, after he himself has known them, after he himself has seen them.
—Dīgha Nikāya 1.3
I have given some thought to writing replies to videos and articles that purport to critique Buddhism. Typically these consist of Christians and Nietzscheans making shallow arguments, or else demanding that everyone subscribe to their dogmas without much argument at all. There are many reasons I have not followed through on any of these, but primarily, we Buddhists have such a radically different view of what is to be done from Christians and Nietzscheans that it's not worth the effort. It would be as futile as a maritime explorer lecturing pleasure-cruise tourists on the proper use of ships.
However, the subject of this post concerns a new critique of Buddhism which is not only intelligent and well-considered, but also comes from what I consider to be a kindred school of thought: Platonism. The writer, Hellenic Saxon (I choose to call him Saxon for the remainder of this post), has composed this article which critiques dependent origination, the middle way, the two truths, and Buddha-nature from a Platonist perspective. As he points out in the opening, there has been no real confrontation between Platonism and any of the schools of Buddhism. If there was any such exchange during the Greco-Indian encounter in antiquity, we have no record of it, and in the modern era, Catholic polemicists seem to have totally abandoned their Platonist heritage. Today really is the beginning of a new encounter between centuries-old Buddhist schools and a burgeoning revival of pure Platonism. Not just for the novelty, but also for the intellectual nature of both schools, this should prove exciting; replying to something as cerebral as Platonic dialectic is not nearly as easy as dunking on Christian dogma. Even if both sides continue to disagree, I have high hopes that this exchange and those to come will prove both fruitful and cordial.
Having said all that, I should make this clarification before anything else: I subscribe to the Theravāda school of Buddhism. As such, the bulk of what follows will treat Saxon's criticism of dependent origination, not the uniquely Mahāyāna concepts that take up the rest of his article (I may come back to them some other time, but for now they are out of my wheelhouse, and the present post has taken long enough to produce). I will also stick to Pāli for technical terms, except where Greek and Sanskrit are appropriate.
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.
What follows is a list of the books that I read in 2021 (this counts books I started in 2020, but does not count books to be finished in 2022), as well as the thoughts I have to offer on them. Some may warrant longer posts in the future, but for now I have written this up as a reflective exercise.
The above post has made the rounds for a while now on the imageboards I frequent. This particular capture of it has an image of the hieromonk Seraphim Rose over it, for reasons I am unsure of (I am not terribly familiar with his writings). It seems that the AmaZen Booth was quashed by popular ridicule back in the spring of this year, but I have a few thoughts to give on this. I will focus on the idea of Buddhist meditation as an instrument of control, as I am not very familiar with Stoicism as of yet, though I would love to read a Classical Stoic's assessment of Modern Stoicism as sold in bookstores to businessmen, college students, etc.
Up until now Spengler has made many allusions to the idea that Stoicism, Buddhism, and Socialism form a category of a declining civilization’s phenomena (“old age attitudes”). To be sure, here he means that form of Socialism by which the lower castes are subsidized to do nothing: “welfare socialism”, in contrast to his more-vaunted Prussian socialism, which is socialism in the sense of Soviet-style economic management. Either way, I have had a hard time even beginning to understand how Socialism would relate even remotely with Stoicism and Buddhism. Here, at the end of this section, he has just now explained it.
In a shadowy, gloomy forest, there is a grand mountain with a blazing, eternal flame at the peak. Only a qualified few are able to ascend the peak and acquire this flame—most men lack the constitution to make the journey. These qualified men, the sages, periodically go to this source to bring back a flame for their peoples. By this flame they are both able to survive in their dark habitat, as well as to see its true nature more clearly. Sometimes it happens that some flame is exchanged by neighboring folks. Some folks never produce a sage of their own, and rely entirely on couriers to others, but nonetheless they possess the discipline to preserve the flame as long as possible.
At some point, the flame of the Jews has become quite weak, as they are notably insular, refusing to get flames except from their own sages (who they call prophets). A fellow named Josh appears amidst them, successfully scales the mountain, acquires the flame, and returns to the Jews with it. He proclaims that only he could ascend the mountain, and that from now on, everyone—not just the Jews, but also the occupying Romans, neighboring Greeks, etc—must only live off this very flame he has brought, and it can only be transmitted using his torches. Despite some scuffles amongst his followers, this community of mountainless torch-bearers prospers, keeping the flame alight for some time after Josh passes on.
Eventually, as we would expect, the flame begins to dim. Up until now, any ordinary community would acquire more fire either through the efforts of a sage, or from neighboring folks. Unfortunately, the rules laid out by Josh prohibit this—only he was allowed to go get that fire, and only the fire he acquired may be used or distributed. Those who attempt to prove themselves sages are barred from seeking the mountain, and those who attempt to find fire from others are treated savagely. Thus, life slowly becomes more difficult and the world less comprehensible for these followers of Josh.
Now the flames have gotten quite dark, and only cinders remain among the many communities sprung by Josh. This has resulted in a tremendous, unique crisis. Nobody disagrees that Josh was the only one allowed up on the mountain, and that his flame was the only flame. However, some begin to think there is no mountain at all, and that Josh and his flames were just fantasies. As they are left groping in the dark, their social structures begin to deteriorate, and their knowledge of the world clouds up. Some groups are able to live in the darkness somewhat well using their senses other than sight, but never so great as if they had illuminated vision. Others can hardly get it together.
After a long time of groping in the dark, these descendants of Josh’s followers encounter other flame-bearing peoples. This does not resolve the crisis. Some descendants still hold fast to the idea that only Josh could acquire flame from the mountain, and that only his flame could be spread; they are even so brazen as to offer their smoldering ashes to those with brightly shining flames. Some descendants doubt their eyes, clinging to their conclusions that the mountain and its fire were all nonsense anyway, or else stubbornly arguing that life is better based on the senses besides sight. A few are willing to accept these foreign flames using their foreign torches and foreign fire-maintenance equipment (a fewer still use the torches handed down by Josh to violate his precepts), but for the scorn from both the fire-doubters and Josh-fundamentalists, they wind up assimilating to these foreign communities, forming smaller communities of their own, or else persisting alone in the woods with a little fire.
