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.

Book Review: Fullness of God

 

    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.

Buddhism, Antinatalism, and Suicide

     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 I Read In 2021

    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.

 

Meditation from Patañjali to AmaZen

 

    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.