[Buddha-l] Aung San Suu Kyi and the latest Burmese prosecutions

[Richard Hayes]

On Fri, May 22, 2009 at 8:46 AM, Jim Peavler <jmp at peavler.org> wrote:

> I must admit my experience is quite a lot like Richard's. Buddhist
> masters are authoritarian by definition. If they weren't there would
> be no point in calling them masters, bowing to them every time you spy
> them in the distance, groveling at their feet trying to tell them what
> is the meaning of the brown stuff on the stick without seeming to use
> English, trembling with fear of failure the thirtieth time you fail to
> get the koan, etc.

We might as well bring our old friend Nietzsche into the picture. He
famously argued that good and bad can be seen from the perspective of
the master or from the perspective of the slave. From the master's
perspective, what is good is power, domination, the ability to get
whatever one wants whenever one wants it, having such influence over
others that they immediately do one's bidding, What is bad is
weakness, submissiveness, deference to others, meekness, gentleness
and hesitation. From the slave's perspective, evil is the exertion of
power, and what is good is kindness, meekness and gentleness.
("Blessed are the meek" and all that.) Nietzsche despised both
Christianity and Buddhism for fostering weakness and promoting a
fraudulent advocacy of values that no living being actually and
sincerely holds. The fact is, everybody wishes to be a master, so it
is fraudulent for anyone to claim to long for kindness and gentleness,
since one has those things only when one has no choice because one is
being dominated by someone more powerful.

I think Nietzsche would have admired Sasaki Roshi. You don't have to
spend very much time at all around him to see that the Will to Power
is alive in well in him and that he is every inch the master. Now part
of being a master is to be quite unwilling to share one's power with
others. Only one master can occupy the top of the pyramid. If another
master is to occupy the pinnacle, then he must wait until the present
master is dead and gone. If the master REALLY wants to occupy the
pinnacle and share it with no one, then just before he dies he says
something like "After me there will be no human master. Let the Dharma
be the master."

Staying with Sasaki Roshi as an exemplar of masterdom, it is very easy
to see that Fromm's distinction between rational and irrational
authority is bankrupt and practically impossible to apply. There are
those who question a roshi's behavior or even criticize it. Those
people are quickly marginalized, deemed "disturbed" or "self-absorbed"
or "deluded" or "incorrigible", and sent to the back of beyond. People
who claim to have been abused or exploited by the roshi are seen as
paranoid and delusional. Those who are loyal to the roshi, no matter
what he does, (that is, those who explain away the roshi's every
action as the noble effort of an enlightened mind to reach through the
dense fog of the disciple's greed and hatred and delusion) are
rewarded in various ways for seeing how very rational his
authoritarianism is.

So we may have exactly the same behavior from exactly the same
authority figure being assessed differently by different people. To
some it is rational and benevolent and skillful, while to others it is
irrational and destructive and unskillful. Who gets to say which
assessment is correct? The master, of course. The master and his loyal
disciples. Being a master means never having to apologize, or at least
never having to be sincere when one manifests the external form of
apologizing.

> This does not mean that that they are not extremely valuable teachers
> who can really help change lives for the better.

The ambiguity always remains. Changes that seem better to some may
seem worse to others. We both probably know a number of people who
would say their own lives have been changed for the better by, say, a
conversion experience (or by a counter-conversion experience). Their
kith and kin, however, might see them as changed dramatically for the
worse. The Buddha himself thought he had changed for the better. His
wife, left to raise his child by herself, reportedly thought he had
been changed for the worse. Who was right? One way of answering this
is to ask "So how many people around the world go for refuge to the
Buddha's abandoned wife?" That is the rhetorical question of a true
patriarch.

 > On the other hand, if they weren't authoritarian they would be
> practically useless, except for doing chores around the house.

This is the kind of uselessness I personally applaud. Anyone who can't
or won't lift a finger to do a few chores around the house has a kind
of master I personally can't find a way to put to good use.

> What went wrong? Nothing. But the Roshi was always telling me
> "Peavler. You think too much!"

For heaven's sake, Jim, you don't need a roshi to tell you that. Your
good wife could have told you that. Hell, even I could have told you
that!

> I am still completely dedicated to the Roshi, whom I love like a
> father

That is exactly the right standard of comparison. Who of us is not
deeply ambivalent about our father? Zen masters, like fathers, are
best adored at a safe distance. I'd say being about a one-day's drive
from the nearest roshi or father is almost safe enough. If they call
and ask you to come see them, you can always say you have a flat tire.

> I've had other experiences, but I will save them for over the next
> campfire.

I'll bring the marshmallows if you'll bring the tofu hot dogs.

>I don't decide myself what buddhism should be but
> try to understand authorities where I find them.

That is exactly the right way to go about it. There is no point in
trying to decide what Buddhism should or should not be. The only
pointful practice is to decide under what circumstances one should be
a Buddhist, and under what circumstance it would be better not to be a
Buddhist.

As my granddad said, "Never quote another man, Ricky."

-- 
Richard Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico
http://www.unm.edu/~rhayes