[Buddha-l] Nietzsche was a bachelor (was: Batchelor)

[JKirkpatrick]

RH:
"The arhant hates life, fears life, seeks to escape life; he
cannot face the prospect of an eternal return." 
JK:
Alas for them, that shows-- as Batchellor claims-- how deeply
their minds were enmeshed in the imaginary of their times, with
its literal belief in reincarnation (the wheel to get off of). As
an anthropologist, especially, I find agreement with SB easy and
an intriguing position from which to research the ancients. I
suspect that that particular negative feature of arhanthood
(assuming that he even deals with arhanthood) would be
distasteful to SB. But perhaps it was the only view open to the
intellectuals of those times who apparently were unable to view
samsara as anything but evil. 

SB's idea on evil is provocative to say the least: Mara and
Buddha are one--it's not dualism, either-or. Mara is the
un-controlled un-insighted three poisons within us and our
motives.  He says (like Jesus said of the poor) that Mara will
always be with us--it's how we deal with Mara that counts.

SB loves life, as he says -- as  opportunity to be a human who
works, achieves, and enjoys what life offers while practicing
(because au fond he is a Buddhist) to handle and remove the power
of as much of the 3 poisons as he is able. 

RH's take on Nietzche and Buddhism, well-said.

Joanna




On May 19, 2010, at 12:05 PM, Gary Gach wrote:

> Nietzche's will-to-power often translates as what he calls the 
> overcoming of the self ...
> unclear whether his idealized super-person is arhat or
bodhisattva

I have always understood the will to power (and the term
Nietzsche used earlier, the desire for power, Machgelüst) as the
desire to overcome others, to dominate them, to master them and
subdue them and to liberate oneself by overpowering everything
that stands in the way of one's desires. Nietzsche even
associates the desire for power with the pleasure that comes of
cruelty towards others. The will to power, Nietzsche says, is the
principal driving force of life itself. His utter contempt for
systems of thought and practice that foster weakness in the form
of meekness, gentleness and kindness is apparent in many of his
writings from The Gay Science on through Beyond Good and Evil.
The arhant and the bodhisattva would be the antithesis of
Nietzsche's Übermensch. The arhant hates life, fears life, seeks
to escape life; he cannot face the prospect of an eternal return.
(One finds a similar appraisal of Buddhism in some of the
writings of William James, especially in his last lecture on
Pragmatism.) An exemplar of Nietzsche's Übermensch might be the
Biblical Joshua, who kicks Canaanite butt and takes no prisoners
as he grabs a land away from its peaceful former inhabitants and
destroys all remnants of their religion; Joshua's namesake,
Jesus, on the other hand, is the exact opposite of that: a
pathetic loser who dies a pitiful death nailed to a tree by cruel
Roman conquistadors who delight in tormenting him. As his life
oozes out of his pain-wracked body Jesus asks God why God has
forsaken him, and in the last moment Jesus forgives his
executioners. What a wimp! Hardly a Nietzschean Superman.
Bodhisattvas would be even worse!

Although it is well known that Nietzsche knew little about
Buddhism, I think if he had known about Buddhism what scholars
today know of it, he would have hated it even more than the
wimpy, life-fearing Buddhism he imagined on the basis of the
scanty evidence available to Europeans of his day.

Richard