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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

#211

Post by TedDoesntTalk »

rg111 wrote: post #198
supertofu wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your coworker needs to read the Suttas. Shakyamuni explains again and again and again that the teachings are for everyone .

Yes, this Chen person is so so wrong. She says that meditation is for some monastic elites, but that is far from the truth. Who even chose to publish her book? Buddha himself said to Ananda that several thousand of his household desciples attained Nirvana. Not only did these "laymen" did meditation, they even attained Nirvana.

> She says that meditation is for some monastic elites

She did not quite say that. She said that it was only practiced by monastic elites up until the early 20th century:

"Meditation was not at all a mainstream lay practice in Buddhism. It only became popular in the early twentieth century, when Buddhist reformers such as the Burmese monk Mahasi Sayadaw, founder of modern Vipassana meditation, promoted it as a lay Buddhist practice. Mindfulness, as it was practiced for most of its history in Asia, was a very elite practice reserved only for advanced monastics."

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

#212

Post by andsoitis »

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…

> personal shame, guilt, and self-loathing

Do you think the Christian concept of "original sin" planted (at least some of) the seeds for this mental model? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_sin

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

#213

Post by [deleted] »

nprateem wrote: post #152
emptysongglass wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a coworker recently tell me I was culturally appropriating the Buddha (I'm a Buddhist) presumably because I am "from the West". Apart from being one of the most offensive things I've ever been told (before anyone jumps on me for this: I can still observe it as offensive regardless of my attachment to the offense) it confirmed for me that whatever is going on in the US with identity politics has jumped the shark…

I wouldn't get offended. They just don't understand what cultural appropriation is by the sound of things. Their problem, not yours.

[deleted]

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

#214

Post by [deleted] »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #156
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…

Only narcissists and not very aware people are able to "enjoy the world as it is, in all its messiness." Because that's what it takes to ignore abusive levels of inequality and systemic threats to the continued survival of the species. The point is not about what happened in the past, it's about what is still happening now - and how the narratives from the past continue to be used to justify it. Ignoring this is neit…

[deleted]

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

#215

Post by harveywi »

_8zc2 wrote: post #210

An entire piece on Buddhism and corporations doesn't use the word "suffering" once.

The mass exodus from MS Outlook and desktop email clients to webmail with cloud-based virus scanning has removed the greatest source of suffering in the corporate world: Attachments.

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

#216

Post by pessimizer »

rg111 wrote: post #197

> Chen: For the overwhelming majority of Asian Buddhists, Buddhism is a devotional practice. Bowing to images of deities, burning incense, worshiping at an altar — those are all fundamental elements of Buddhist practice. There is this acknowledgement of worshiping higher beings. Meditation was not at all a mainstream lay practice in Buddhism. It only became popular in the early twentieth century, when Buddhist reform…

That paragraph has specific names and references so I can verify what is being said. You're just offering bare contrary claims and drama.

> Where do I even start?

Start with a claim you think is wrong, and explain how it is wrong with enough information that I don't have to trust you.

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

#217

Post by lappet »

I am not an expert on Buddhism, but I grew up in India and noticed similarities with Hinduism in two countries: Bhutan and Thailand. The Buddhist temples were very ornate and seemed to be focused on the devotional aspects. If you apply what Chen is saying to Hinduism, it strikes true to me: meditation and yoga are very recent trends in India, and most people focus on the ritualistic and devotional aspects.

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

#218

Post by abeppu »

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 think this calls for a more nuanced distinction than I think your comment draws. Yes, cultural exchange and transformation is fundamentally how culture happens. Buddhism started from one guy in what we'd now call India, built on some ideas that were already in the area, and has shifted and changed as it moved across time and space. Buddhism isn't owned by any one people or place.

But that doesn't mean that there's no such thing as appropriation, or that it doesn't occur in Silicon Valley.

I've participated in multiple work-place meditation trainings. In each case, the teacher was American, spoke English as a first language, and had done teacher-trainings at American institutions, and I think they were always white. Would my company have been equally willing to hire a Thai immigrant who spoke English but not with an American accent, whose credentials were years of monastic training? Or, is there an institutional preference for hearing Buddhist practices from someone who, as Chen says, looks just like the people they are teaching?

If one population is able to profit off of communicating the cultural practices of others who are not able to access the same opportunities, would you agree that could be called "appropriation"? If not, what should it be called?

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

#219

Post by realreality »

rg111 wrote: post #197

> Chen: For the overwhelming majority of Asian Buddhists, Buddhism is a devotional practice. Bowing to images of deities, burning incense, worshiping at an altar — those are all fundamental elements of Buddhist practice. There is this acknowledgement of worshiping higher beings. Meditation was not at all a mainstream lay practice in Buddhism. It only became popular in the early twentieth century, when Buddhist reform…

If you read the “Inquiry of Ugra”, you’ll see that the ideal layperson is nothing like the average American Buddhist. The layperson is supposed to live like a monk and hope to be reborn as a proper monastic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ugraparipṛcchā_Sūtra

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

#220

Post by pessimizer »

EdwardDiego wrote: post #42

I get a little tired of Western adoption of values or ideas from non-Western cultures being called "appropriation".

Far more people are tired of Westerners blacking up, dressing up in a parody of the people that they colonized and doing a little dance that seems like something a native would do, which is why it's a discussion now.
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