[Buddha-l] liturgical languages

[Dan Lusthaus]

Stuart wrote:

> Yes, he [Kapleau] chose to study with Yasutani and never left him! In
fact, Kapleau
> writes of being impressed with the Japanese, as opposed to the Germans ,
for
> accepting their fate/karma after the war.

Now *that* I would be willing to historically contextualize. Today, as
current events in China, the Koreas, etc., demonstrate, the degree to which
Japan soul-searched after the war turned out to be superficial. Without
going into a long discursus on post-War developments, key turning points
would be the post-war self-scourging in order to get on with things (the
Emperor had been saved after all), the reinvention of post-War Japan as (1)
victim of the war (Hiroshima, etc.) rather than sadistic prosecutor and
initiator, and (2) the very same Japanese "soul" that expressed its Buddhist
compassion during the war by merciless carnage throughout Asia and feeding
its own civilians to lethal and suicidal efforts was suddenly a soul that
stood for "peace," tranquility, contemplation, spirituality, flower
arrangement, aesthetic harmony, etc. The latter proved to be great PR for
exporting a new, redeemed image of Japan overseas -- wildly successful PR.
Internally the generation of Japanese students who grew up in this
refashioned image, failing to see social justice, etc., domestically though
they had learned to expect it, began protesting -- to which the govt.
responded by radically revising the educational system, removing all social
ethical soulsearching elements, engendering a few generations of students
who no longer think about, much less reflect the pacifistic post-War
Japanese ethos of the sixties and seventies students (making the possibility
of remilitarizing in Japan today more than an academic question).

For Kapleau to have been impressed with the apparent changes Japanese
society underwent in the decades after the war is understandable. That they
would lead to where we are today was not on the radar screens of many at
that time.

> Kapleau was expecting to receive Dharma transmission if the last visit
> worked out well. As it happened, it did not work out well.

One might see this, as you apparently do, as Kapleau fundamentally
misunderstanding Yasutani. Another possibility is that Kapleau viewed the
road to inka, etc., as something separate from (above?) the mundane
intercourse and disagreements of ordinary life -- perhaps the original
blindness with which he entered into training with Yasutani in the first
place. All I'm suggesting is that his disappointment was deeper than missing
out on a certificate, and may have something to do with the disappointment
of having so thoroughly misjudged Yasutani and the degree to which certain
attitudes were entrenched in him.


> But it seems to me what they really were afraid of is the the Western
> liberal values, not Jews.

The "not" does not logically follow. For them, these were not two
distinguishable items. The former were a manifestation of the latter. Jews
were envisioned as the cause, not the other way around. They were afraid of
their imagined Jews, like antisemites everywhere. Only the antisemites in
some places get to act out their fantasies on real people who happen to be
Jewish.


> It is not surprising to me that Japan is filled with antisemitic
literature
> given their right wing party/nationalistic stance.

It's not just right-wingers or nationalists. Jews as "master-capitalists"
remain the mirror onto which to project envy, admiration, fear, and threats.
As the economic downturn of the last couple decades developed, the Protocols
clones spiked in availability and popularity. Now the failure of the
Japanese economy touted as the miracle of the world only moments before had
someone to blame for its suddenly souring. The "Jews" they blame are no more
real than the ones Yasutani ranted about. That doesn't mean it's not
antisemitism -- on the contrary, the lack of correspondence between actual
Jews and the ideological projection is precisely what makes such parikalpa
antisemitism. Japan merely offers the extreme case of this principle.

> Years ago I heard Master Hua (at the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas) make a
> disparaging remark about Jews and money [...]
> Hua replied that he only speaks
> the truth and if people cannot take it that is there problem! So much for
> dialogue and enlightened mind.

Shit-sticks everywhere. We need to come up with a Buddhist pooper-scooper
just to make buddha-ksetras safe to walk in without stepping into vile
defilements. That a Buddhist teacher, respected in the West and East should
unabashedly act as a conduit for antisemitism in the name of Truth is a
sickness and tragedy.

Dan Lusthaus