American Neo-Buddhist Polemics in the Information Age

"There are two things I know to be true: there's no difference

between good flan and bad flan, and there is no war in Albania."

                                                              --Wag the Dog (1997),

                                                                           David Mamet

Our masthead -- long may it wave -- proclaims Buddhist Polemics as an integral ingredient of our fare. The word "polemics" is derived from the Greek polemikos (πολεμικός), meaning "warlike, hostile." In contemporary American English, it is used in reference to heated theological argument or controversy.

I am acutely aware that some readers do not like it when we engage in the practice. Such readers prefer our translations, our mildly interesting news items, or our colorful pictures. Some are even willing to tolerate our occasional rabbit-interest story, and can smile patiently when we blather on about the desert. They wait us out, hoping for stories about wise, old lamas of the past, who say wise things, and witty, young lamas of the future, who say witty things.

I fear such readers fail to appreciate the sometimes challenging, mercurial character of Vajrayana as a lived-through experience.

Indeed, one of the fondest memories of my youth is accompanying a now very famous lama -- at the time, nobody was famous -- to the theater, to watch a Japanese samurai film. The battle scenes were graphic and bloody. One character was horribly and repeatedly sliced, yet kept on fighting until he vanquished his opponent. When the hero finally succumbed to his wounds, his eyes were wide open, and his sword was still firmly in his hand.

Upon witnessing this, the lama began vigorously punching me in the arm, saying, "That's what I want you to see! That's what I want you to remember! That's Vajrayana! That's what it takes!" He made such a ruckus, that the people seated around us told him to shush.

The other day -- and it was Pearl Harbor Day, if I recall -- we published passing notice of a heated theological argument or controversy surrounding [take a deep breath -- hold it] a  militant, quasi-religious, Not-So-New Age cult with a fingernail grasp on a mish-mosh of Buddhist-in-name-only, idiosyncratic beliefs meaningful only to themselves, [exhale] and an on-line journalist with all the savoir faire of a lion upon the Veldt.

Stated briefly, the journalist threatened to write about the cult, and the cult threatened to sue the publisher. 

Thus, it seems, did a lion's heart come to suffer at the quaking hands of a  large yet woefully timid soul. The publisher, who has adopted "walk the talk" as brand rhetoric, came a cropper, managing only to stagger and stutter. He searched in vain for the courage of conviction, and finding none, shot his own messenger.

The journalist was fired, and the cult's already swaggering bellicosity swelled to even greater proportions.

So, then... what to make of suffer, stagger, stutter, swagger, and swell.

I am told -- by canny circus folk, who make keen study of such matters -- that if an elephant farts rather terribly, and makes a fool of himself, a concerned care-giver of infinite compassion must actually crawl in the elephant's ass to locate, and if need be, hose out any poorly digested artifacts that may be festering in the poor pachyderm's bowels.

Giving enemas to elephants is the work of those who, if they are not bodhisattvas, will surely do until those who are bodhisattvas happen to come along. Oh, churlish is he who calls the man with hose warlike or hostile, given the intimacy of the ministrations, and the absolute imperative to keep one's head firmly upon one's shoulders even whilst being squeezed by a sphincter of epic proportion.

Inspired by this image of compassionate activism, I set out to research the matter at some depth.

I found out it was a put-up job.

“All the universe depends on the love that you are at this very moment.”

There's sophistry for you, and just what we need to hear, right? Didn't Amy say something like that to Gully when they were with the aliens?

 

Yet, when the door is closed and the elephant is steadied, it seems as if all the universe depends on spin doctoring. The cult in question has formed an alliance with the publisher in question, who has wittingly allowed his staff of authors to be infiltrated with the undigested straw of cult members, sympathizers, fellow travelers, and what Lenin always referred to as govnoed -- this last, useful Russian slang that could in theory be applied in the vicinity of the elephant's asshole.

 

Seems that while the publisher was crying that he feared the cult's lawyers, he was simultaneously publishing the works of a member of the cult's board of directors. Naturally, public demand was made for the "lawyer's letter" the publisher claimed to have received. To stagger and stutter we may now add stammer. After a considerable interval, something rather specious was cobbled up on cult letterhead. There was a little hue, a little cry, and here came yet another excuse to fire the lone hold-out in our tale, the long-suffering lionheart.

 

Thus, as the tale progresses, we have something very much analogous to what the United States government presumably has in mind for WikiLeaks. It is being perpetrated in the name of Buddhism, in sub-rosa fashion, accompanied by plausible denial, for the purpose of fraudulently manipulating public opinion.

 

Why would people do such a thing?

 

A circus employee who regularly crawled inside elephants, eventually developed an almost paralyzing depression. Unable to bear the anguish, he sought out a doctor who asked him to explain his problem.

"I don't have any friends," the circus man cried. "I try to have friends, but people seem to avoid me."

"I see," said the doctor. "Well, can you tell me... what is it that you do for a living?"

"I crawl up inside an elephant's ass with a hose," the man replied, "And I hose out his bowels. That  elephant shit splashes all over me. It ruins all my clothes. It gets in my hair. It gets in every pore of my skin. I stand in hot showers, and I soap myself over and over again, but I just can't get rid of the smell of that liquified elephant shit!"

"My word!" said the doctor. "Well, let me ask you this... have you ever thought of trying another line of work?"

"What?" cried the man, incredulously. "And give up show business?"