“Was not their mistake once more bred of the life of slavery that they had been living?—a life which was always looking upon everything, except mankind, animate and inanimate—‘nature,’ as people used to call it—as one thing, and mankind as another, it was natural to people thinking in this way, that they should try to make ‘nature’ their slave, since they thought ‘nature’ was something outside them” — William Morris


Thursday, January 14, 2016

What I've Got against Stephen Batchelor

Buddhism, like phenomenology, is not about what you think but how you think. For example, it's not quite what you believe but how you believe that could be violent. There are beliefs about belief, and those are the problem.

One belief about belief is that believing means clutching a concept for dear life.

This belief about belief is shared by fundamentalists and Richard Dawkins. Which is why Dawkins gets incredibly angry when fundamentalists point this out, thus proving my point.

Stephen Batchelor also has this belief about belief.

QED.

...and the consequence of this belief about belief is that your Buddhism becomes this milquetoasty dispassionate pallid version in the service of modern totalitarian-bureaucratic reason. Sexy stuff that actually saves your ass in the long run gets wiped.

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