Endgame Volume I_ The Problem of Civilization - Derrick Jensen [158]
Attempts to “transcend” anger emerge from this fear, and also from the same old body-hating traditions that want to rid us of all of our “flawed” animal nature: transcendent spirit (cosmic consciousness, God’s eyebrows, and so on), good; animal nature/emotion, bad.
Outside of this abusive context, of course, none of it makes any sense at all.
LOVE DOES NOT IMPLY PACIFISM
At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality.
Ernesto Che Guevara289
ANOTHER PROBLEM I HAVE WITH BUDDHISM IS THAT BUDDHISM, like other “great” religions of civilization (including science, and including capitalism), isn’t land-based. It’s been transposed over space, which means by definition it is disconnected from the land, and also means it values, by definition, abstraction over the particularity of place. A religion is, I think, supposed to teach us how to live (which, if we’re to live sustainably, must also mean that it teaches us how to live in a certain place). Also a religion is supposed to teach us how to connect to the divine. But people will live differently in different places, which means religions must be different in different places, and must emerge from specific places themselves, and not be abstracted from these places. Thus a religion that emerged from the Near East a couple thousand years ago may or may not have been helpful then and there, but quite probably will not apply so well to where I live right now. It is insane—literally, in terms of being disconnected from physical reality—to believe that a religion that tells someone how to live in, say, the desert of the American Southwest would be applicable (or even particularly helpful) to someone living in the redwood rainforests of the homeland of the Tolowa. It is similarly insane—and disrespectful of the divinity inherent in any particular place—to believe that a religion that helps experience the divine in the desert will particularly help me experience the divine at the ocean’s edge. The places are different. So will be the experience of the divine.
Even as I was writing the previous ten or so pages, I could hear in my mind the howl of outraged Buddhist pacifists (mainly white Buddhist pacifists: my Asian Buddhist friends aren’t nearly so defensive about Buddhism as are many of the American Buddhists I’ve encountered, and in fact they often share the same criticisms, both of Buddhism and of American Buddhists). It’s all very strange and interesting. I’ve found that there are many things I can bash with no one raising even an eyebrow, much less a fist. I can bash the unholy trinity of capitalism, Christianity, and corporations. I can bash schooling, wage jobs, civilization. I can bash environmentalists. I can even bash writers who bash civilization. Few seem to mind. But at the slightest hint of criticizing Buddhism (or science, which is another unholy cow that evokes the same response as Buddhism, as does, at least occasionally, pornography) I can see many of the faces in the audience harden and can feel their guts churn, their sphincters start to quiver.
During a talk a couple of days ago, I amplified my analysis of Buddhism. I was surprised and pleased that the audience interrupted me with applause when I discussed the possibility that equanimity in the face of the culture’s destructiveness can mask “cowardice, stupidity, and an appalling lack of creativity,” and can be an avoidance of responsibility for acting to halt the atrocities. But I received an email the next morning that typifies the magical thinking of so many pacifists. The letter read in part: “While I would agree with every word you spoke about our civilization, I wouldn’t agree that morality is always situational—there are certain acts that are soul-destroying, and advocating violence is one of them. Little word-games about Buddhist monks or innocent children