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Buddhism has found a new institutional home in the West: the corporation

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Re: Buddhism has found a new institutional home in the West: the corporation

#141

Post by stared »

throwawayacc2 wrote: post #93

I stopped reading upon seeing at the very stop this “ Silicon Valley is the latest player in a history of Western appropriation of Buddhism” I was very curious about the article. I am wondering if it treats ideas such as “hire fast fire fast” - In a way a concept related to the Buddhist ideas of detachment, or the opposite, “bing your whole self to work” which in a way seems contradictory - you have attachments, cont…

Ad cultural appropriation - in the US, it seems that no matter what you do (in some eyes), at the same time, you ignore another culture and appropriate its traditions.

For me, there is a distinction:

- Adapting, mixing, etc. is (as you said) the bedrock of humanity. It is learning from other cultures.

- Claiming that one is doing "real Buddhism" (when it is a version far from any tradition) or serving pepperoni pizza as "genuinely Italian", or being a "true Christian" for having Xmas with a Coca-Cola Santa Claus.

The latter is essentially a Cargo Cult of some other traditions and cultures.

I asked a few Italians about "pizza as an international dish". One opinion was that there is nothing wrong with baking "bread with other ingredients". What pissed her off was when people said such a dish was similar to one food prepared by her mother or in her town.

Re: Buddhism has found a new institutional home in the West: the corporation

#142

Post by ImageXav »

throwawayacc2 wrote: post #93

I stopped reading upon seeing at the very stop this “ Silicon Valley is the latest player in a history of Western appropriation of Buddhism” I was very curious about the article. I am wondering if it treats ideas such as “hire fast fire fast” - In a way a concept related to the Buddhist ideas of detachment, or the opposite, “bing your whole self to work” which in a way seems contradictory - you have attachments, cont…

I suspect you might enjoy reading the rest of the article. It goes into some depth on what Buddhism was, is and how it has been adapted in the West to mostly focus on meditation and why. Rather than a critique of "Western Buddhism" it is an exploration of it in a wider context. The term appropriation might have been off-putting due to its current cultural load, but in this context it is not wrong.

For others that are curious about meditation and Buddhism, I would suggest reading the article and making up your own mind, rather than the comments here.

Re: Buddhism has found a new institutional home in the West: the corporation

#143

Post by prox »

javajosh wrote: post #139

>It feels anti human. Because it is. The zeitgeist on the left (so, academia) is consumed by personal shame, guilt, and self-loathing, and a great deal of intellectual work has been done to post hoc rationalize these feelings and package them in catchy phrases. Terms like "cultural appropriation" and "privilege" or "systematic racism" or "toxic masculinity", may have some technically useful meanings to anthropologist…

While I find some parts of your sympathetic, conflating the left with academia is not really a valid approach. That some (on the left) have picked up on academic usage of some words or models is perhaps more accurate, and the misuse of words and terms. Which is far more prevalent in my experience.

There was an interesting article about some social inequalities where when we talk about something more -is actually making it worse-. Apparently doing sensitivity and diversity trainings have the effect of making outcomes worse or ineffective , counterintuitively (its this part of your comment I find most sympathetic) https://hbr.org/2019/07/does-diversity-training-work-the-way...

Re: Buddhism has found a new institutional home in the West: the corporation

#144

Post by fredgrott »

throwawayacc2 wrote: post #93

I stopped reading upon seeing at the very stop this “ Silicon Valley is the latest player in a history of Western appropriation of Buddhism” I was very curious about the article. I am wondering if it treats ideas such as “hire fast fire fast” - In a way a concept related to the Buddhist ideas of detachment, or the opposite, “bing your whole self to work” which in a way seems contradictory - you have attachments, cont…

The appropriation tone becomes apparent in the middle of the article where the author explains that its not all of Buddhism and is neither wrong or right.

But then again I would not know how those of the religious tones of Buddhism might look upon my non-religious practice of the Buddhism teachings except that they might see it as neither wrong or right but hope for my future progress towards Nirvana

Re: Buddhism has found a new institutional home in the West: the corporation

#145

Post by throwawayacc2 »

javajosh wrote: post #139

>It feels anti human. Because it is. The zeitgeist on the left (so, academia) is consumed by personal shame, guilt, and self-loathing, and a great deal of intellectual work has been done to post hoc rationalize these feelings and package them in catchy phrases. Terms like "cultural appropriation" and "privilege" or "systematic racism" or "toxic masculinity", may have some technically useful meanings to anthropologist…

> Terms like "cultural appropriation" and "privilege" or "systematic racism" or "toxic masculinity", may have some technically useful meanings to anthropologists, but within the public sphere they function only as a combined virtue signal and rhetorical weapon.

This is so true. It’s a very beautifully expressed feeling I had trouble articulating before. Thank you for putting it into words like this.

It’s also ridiculous to me there is a push to “teach” these concepts to kids when it’s fairly obvious they’ll just abstract them away to something stupid like “man bad” or “white people bad”. I feel like it’s sort of like trying to explain to kids with no CS experience some nuanced tradeoff like, I don’t know, the CAP theorem for example. They’ll probably understand that if you go with AP instead of CP you risk losing data and that’s bad so now we always use CP. All they’ll be left of with is “AP bad, CP good”.

Re: Buddhism has found a new institutional home in the West: the corporation

#147

Post by [deleted] »

toyg wrote: post #14

In Italy, in the '90s, we had a popular tv program with comedians doing sketches. One of those sketches was written and interpreted a guy who used to work in important advertising agencies. The sketch had a corporate manager who always started as a calm and devout supporter of buddhist-like tranquility in the workplace, all meditation and zen and care for personal wellbeing; by the end of the sketch his schizophrenic…

[deleted]

Re: Buddhism has found a new institutional home in the West: the corporation

#148

Post by bsedlm »

throwawayacc2 wrote: post #93

I stopped reading upon seeing at the very stop this “ Silicon Valley is the latest player in a history of Western appropriation of Buddhism” I was very curious about the article. I am wondering if it treats ideas such as “hire fast fire fast” - In a way a concept related to the Buddhist ideas of detachment, or the opposite, “bing your whole self to work” which in a way seems contradictory - you have attachments, cont…

absolutely agree, but I take it further

The language of appropiation implies a sort of 'property'-like dynamic for ideas.

If I learn, get to know, understand an idea from somebody else, I have not appropiated them in any way. I merely have adopted their idea.

This way of copying/adopting of other's ideas is what makes a cultural society thrive. On the other hand, a society where all idea transfers are in fact an exchange of something, is exactly what I consider the essence of a market.

The critical difference is that in a market, widgets are exchanged. And whenever somebody takes a widget from somebody else, only one widget remains.

However when somebody adopts another's idea, the idea is now it two places (and quite possibly, with a slight difference); that it, until "the idea" becomes a digital artifact, then it's the exact same "digital" copy which exists in more than the one original instance.

It's the dumbest action to try and enforce that digital artifacts (and later on, ideas themselves) behave like widgets in a market.

Re: Buddhism has found a new institutional home in the West: the corporation

#149

Post by CiPHPerCoder »

michaelt wrote: post #131
CiPHPerCoder wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're begging the question. Why should monks and priests be a model, rather than a reminder of human nature?

For the same reason I'd expect the pope to be catholic :) Wouldn't you expect a full-time professional footballer/dancer/poet to be better at football/dance/poetry than the average person on the street?

How does one measure "better" when it comes to philosophy or spirituality?

The notion that priests and monks should be holier than the common folk strikes me as very Abrahamic. This forms a hierarchy in the mind.

I'm not a Buddhist, but if I were, I would interrogate (and probably reject) such hierarchies.

Re: Buddhism has found a new institutional home in the West: the corporation

#150

Post by nabla9 »

michaelt wrote: post #81
nabla9 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason why you saw what you saw is twofold. 1) You did not see nuns. Formal lineage of nuns died in Theravada lineage hundreds of years ago. Women were wearing white robes right? Those are the robes of novices. You need 5? female nuns to ordain a new nun. Sri Lankan monk, Bhante Henepola Gunaratana (aka Bhante G) asked Tibetan nuns so bootstrap the tradition in Theravada, but it's just starting and there is resis…

> Women are considered less than men in Asian cultures (equality of sexes is new in the West too). Religions are not separate from the culture around them. Sure - but aren't monks and priests also supposed to be a model, demonstrating what a really dedicated, pious follower of the religion should look like?

Buddhism is not some progressive movement to change the world.

Ethnic Buddhist traditions are usually among the most conservative forces in the society. They try to be conservative models. In Burma and Sri Lanka many of the politically most active monks favor ethnic cleansing and preach religious intolerance.

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