Brian Daizen Victoria’s
Zen at War is a study of how Zen Buddhism became deeply complicit in Japanese militarism
Brian Victoria, a
Soto Buddhist priest, directly challenges the “touchy-feelie” good image that Buddhism has in the West. Especially
Zen Buddhism in the US. Zen at War is particularly confronting in what it shows about
D T Suzuki’s
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Is this the Projection Thing happening again? As in: I will become an intellectual follower of the guys I hate the most, because... I spend too much of my life obsessed with them....
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I think projection is very much part of it. It is surprisingly easy to end up mirroring the logic of those you are opposing. See French Revolutionaries/Communism and Catholicism/Orthodoxy. Or, for that matter, American theocons and the Left.
But it also simplifies things in all sorts of encouraging ways. Determination Is All You Need and If Only Folk Were As Determined As I, All Would Be Well are not complicated ideas ...
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I would be interested to hear more about Steyn/Hanson and the 'worship of will' tendency, I'm not sure I totally understand it.
cheers,
deathbeast
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Without denying that determination matters, this is not a good way to look at things. It is the Anglosphere's enemies who operate like that. Both Hitler and the Japanese Militarists were all about how they were going to be victorious because their Wills were greater. (The Americans in particular were discounted because they were all weak and materialist and decayed by the good life and lack of racial/cultural fibre.) There is a fair bit of that among the jihadis as well ( ... )
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