Today's discussion question

[alice wellintown]

There are common misunderstandings of other religions, cultures,
peoples, often perpetuated by popular media. Like the notion that
Native Americans were peaceful Earth worshiping souls, Quakers didn't
own slaves, carry weapons and "police" runaway slaves, fund slave
kidnapping and the shipment of enslaved Africans, etc.

Nixon was a Quaker.

And Melville's M-D shows us how some Quakers were hell on the
environment, the sea, whales, not to mention other Christians and
non-Christians, who were, as Ishmael discovers, all slaves on ships.

It's a tangle of lines.

When Frederick Douglass sees tha the Irish in Ireland, the Catholic
Irish, live far worse than the Narrow-Back Irish Catholics in America,
many who lived far worse than  his own enslaved African Americans, he
is struck dumb. Though inspired after reading Catholic Emancipation,
and of the Rights Irish Freedom, and by the Irish men and children in
America who helped him, taught him, supported him and his cause, when
Douglass has the chance to speak against the genocide in Ireland, he
takes the money for his cause and turns his back on the poor.


On 8/14/13, malignd at aol.com <malignd at aol.com> wrote:
> Not willful.  I guess the context was Buddhists in America, but your
> question seemed addressed at Buddhism in general.  There are after all
> people who seem to find Buddhism the one unimpeachable religion.  And, to be
> honest, when these  Burma stories first started coming out, I was, perhaps
> naively surprised.  I think of Buddhists in the east setting themselves
> afire, not wantonly murdering practitioners of another religion.
>
>
> But you're right about my attitudes; the idea that the DL is a reincarnated
> spirit is as bubble-headed as any other religious myth.
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com>
> To: malignd <malignd at aol.com>
> Cc: pynchon-l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Sent: Tue, Aug 13, 2013 7:46 pm
> Subject: Re: Today's discussion question
>
>
> Your answer willfully ignores the context of the question.  I know you are
> being disingenuous, because I know you are:
> A) Not that dumb.
> &
> B) Anti any form of spiritual practice.
>
> On Tuesday, August 13, 2013,   wrote:
>
> You live as a Muslim in Burma.
>
> How does one run afoul of any Buddhist, of whatever stripe.
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com>
> To: Ian Livingston <igrlivingston at gmail.com>
> Cc: alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com>; pynchon -l
> <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Sent: Mon, Aug 12, 2013 8:07 pm
> Subject: Re: Today's discussion question
>
>
> How does one run afoul of any Buddhist, of whatever stripe.  Did someone
> criticize your words or behavior?  Did you cruely squash an innocent bug in
> his presence?  Or is it that the Buddist ran afoul of your prejudices?  From
> your harsh judgement of their aspirations, I would guess the later.
> "Equanimity" is a foundational goal of Buddhism.  Tolerance is equanimity
> toward others.
>
>
> David Morris
>
> On Monday, August 12, 2013, Ian Livingston  wrote:
>
> Well, I still wouldn't dare speak for P, but, parsing the statement just a
> little, I will speak for myself, as someone undoubtedly influenced by
> Pynchon rightly and wrongly by turns.
>
>
> I have had the great displeasure of running afoul Westerners in Buddhist
> robes. These people who go bowing to the East in the certainty that they
> will attain enlightenment through Eastern teachings take with them all the
> shit they already believe, all the bunk they have learned in school, and all
> their prejudices and try to shoehorn those into teachings from sages who had
> no relation to the world we live in. They're like Cinderella's step-sisters
> but that they go on believing that they are wearing the glass slipper that
> never fit on their foot in the first place. The whole delusion results in
> comically tormented psyches. It's a lot like the people in the big
> Bible-thumping cults calling themselves Christians. They are ruled by their
> own Shadows, living in darkness that wastes the good any of them might
> accomplish in the world.
>
>
>
>
> On Mon, Aug 12, 2013 at 8:47 AM, alice wellintown
> <alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Mencken was, as is the average western philosopher, satirist, pundit,
> blogger, spirit-hungry westerner...what have you, ignorant of the traditions
> of Eastern philosophy, religion, literature, art. But given the global
> problems we face, the urgency of many of these problems, climate change and
> population growth and depletion of the planet are three that are obvious, it
> seems foolish to ridicule those who would seriously turn to the East, if not
> for solutions or wisdom, for insights into how East and West may find common
> ground. This is not likely to succeed if the West continues to insist that
> all that science and math can not take the measure of is superstitious
> nonsense, Emersonian naked eyeball transparencies that once viewed through
> the superior lens of science are stripped of the rose and under the rose
> colorings of the observer and made black and white zeros and ones. Mencken
> is a good tonic for the youthful longings of those who read Herman Hesse,
> who fail to heed the wit of Voltaire, who live in what most would call the
> best of all possible worlds, and who run fast from the magic of their own
> traditions and into the trappings of ones they can never begin to make
> meaningful. But his scientism is now endemic and allied with a haughty
> exceptionalism. A little humility is called for. The planets can not be
> charmed from the sky. We must observe them with our feet on the ground, but
> what Galileo teaches us about what moves, and what moves, may be better
> appreciated if we treat the ancient wisdoms with more respect than the great
> man was given by the sages who grilled him (though not literally). The East
> is hungry for Western ideas, culture, philosophy, science, literature, art.
> The exchange is promising. But why march in with the scientific method, our
> new cross?
>
>
> On Monday, August 12, 2013, Mark Kohut  wrote:
>
>
>
>
> HL Mencken @HLMenckenBot
>
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