Today's discussion question

[Ian Livingston]

Thus Voltaire's cry to "Never forget the atrocities" of the Church.


On Thu, Aug 15, 2013 at 8:34 AM, alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com
> wrote:

> 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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