“if you use your mind to study reality,
you won’t understand either your mind or reality”
A line from the Zen master Bodhidharma.
What I take this to mean is that for all the undoubted and necessary value of intellectual analysis in various fields, what is produced by intellectual labour is only ever a tool in the broadest sense. The intellect manages, maps out, arranges, manipulates, but it's products are always only derivative from the experience of reality. In that sense, it’s a secondary activity to the activity of being.
I’ve made this point before, but I think it’s worth repeating given what I see (what we can all see) with the easy conflation of the usefulness of intellectual tools in relative existence, such as ideologies, with the assumption that those ideas are absolute in their grasp of reality. That’s the first misstep with regards to the products of the intellect. It’s a primary, and oftentimes not malignant or of even much significance, loss of necessary ambiguity.
Propaganda is also an intellectual product as a tool or tactic. However the relationship of propaganda to understanding reality is mediated through an unequal relationship between people. The propagandisers are in a sense covering over as much of reality as they are revealing, and shaping according to their interests. The propagandised cannot know themselves to be propagandised. For propaganda to really work, the propagandised have to believe that they are simply coming to a greater awareness of reality. Putting the moral question of abuse aside, it is still clear that those who produce the propaganda have a different, and sceptical, view of it’s content than those towards whom the propaganda is directed.
Whether it’s uncomfortable to admit it or not, some of our greatest philosophers in the west have leant their philosophy, explicitly or not, to some of the worst political circumstances and most absurd and malevolent movements. Heidegger, of course, spoiled the legacy of his works by a cavalier, and indefensible embrace of the nazi regime. Today in less authentic and more plastic, debased forms, the identity political-cults, or identitarianism, including the now fashionable Duginism, la Rouchism, along with what has aptly been called the ‘synthetic left’
With the above acknowledgement of the dangers involved in any articulation of a relationship between the absolute and the relative in social matters, or the spiritual and political, as a caveat, I repost this older essay from a previous site of mine.
Marxism and Buddhism revisited
“There is one feature in which Buddhism transcends and yet falls short of Marxist analysis, and it is an epistemological feature. While both acknowledge, in different terms perhaps, dependent origination (all things arise from causes and conditions) and the interpenetration of all things (any ‘thing’ has its being through interconnection with every other thing, and this constitutes the world), Buddhism regards the absolute complexity of this flux (and the ultimate identity of the flux) as non-understandable in terms of ordinary knowledge, and rather as indescribable, impenetrable to relative language. Thus, while acknowledging that there are patterns of causation and regularities of manifestation and appearance, the ultimate reality, which includes the human mind/body complex, cannot be more than situationally or provisionally pointed at from the midst of the world.
The relationship of consciousness to matter is rather cleanly stated in Marxism as one wherein the mind reflects external reality, and is one polarity with the other being a prior material world, in a progressive dynamic or dialectic. In Buddhism, or more particularly, Mahayana Buddhism of the consciousness-only school (Yogacara/Hosso), the relationship is more thoroughly non-dual. That which is (existence) is indeed a dynamic flux of dependent origination, but neither matter nor mind (ordinary, thinking consciousness) is prior. In fact, the body of reality (the Dharma-datu/Dharma Kaya when realised) is prior to even the bifurcation of subject and object. Therefore, ‘experience’ rather than either matter or idea, or spiritual or physical, or self or world, is the closest to a primary manifestation of reality. The thinking subject and the objective world rise out of what is prior to these dualities. It's referred to as the “Storehouse Consciousness” (alaya-vijnanna), a dynamic receptacle of past activity’s ‘impressions’ and a conditioning force, neither an “I” nor an object of “I”, neither matter nor mind. In fact, this alaya, could be regarded in a way as an “historical dialectic”! (In it's aspect as the ultimate, the Dharma Kaya, personalised it can be regarded as Buddha Mind, or even as a Divine Mind.
It’s certainly sensible, even necessary, for humans etc to engage in a relationship with the world as if there were a real ultimate distinction between them. But this, and the subsequent way of constructing an articulated view of the world in philosophy, such as Aristotle’s, makes a presumption to regard the subjectivity of the human , and thus all other subject and object relationships, as the primary mode in which reality is constructed, and not simply the consequence of our nature as beings who need to regard the world in opposition to ourselves (eg, we look at things and decide whether or not they are edible; in other words, we need to distance ourselves from the phenomenon in order to make useful decisions about it). This is
Representative of Marxism, Engels, following Hegel said a thing is known thoroughly as it's qualities are known- quite rightly. A Buddhist would say while it may be known as a particular object for a subject, the beginningless complex of causes and conditions and the full extent of its interpenetrating relationship with everything else cannot be known to a subject as the subject, since it’s constrainedly subjective position is so limited to the interests of the human being. It’s a question of scope. What are the implications of this difference in the aspect of scope?
I think it is a very subtle yet immensely consequential difference (different emphases or views, but not mutually exclusive). It’s a question of certainty. An analysis of the forces and conditions that produce a certain character of society is practical in it’s potential power to persuade. It allows for building a consensus on a sound narrative for what has led us here, and should be done to further the progress of the society. Like a scientific analysis which includes both theory and analysis of observations, the Marxist can take an earnest attitude of certainty and present a compelling position for organized change with reference to history, to current events, and even to the present state of broader scientific understanding itself. That is it’s power.
The Buddhist understands this, and yet has recourse to foundational uncertainty and doubt – not as something to be despised, but to be accepted. The analyses and narratives of the Marxist can be supported, but there is also an awareness that these are only ever expediencies. They are not more than relative understandings and truths.
Ok, but what good use is this Buddhist doubt for, you may ask? Isn't it in the nature of humanity look askance at doubt? Didn’t Aristotle describe man as a character who longs to know? Yes. But that doesn’t mean everything is knowable, certainly not in the ordinary sense of the term. Uncertainty and the shadow of inscrutability are likely every bit as constant and constitutive for humanity as the mandated desire to know.
By embracing doubt and uncertainty we are acknowledging an aspect of the human experience. It may not be in our remit to satisfy it. But, if we don’t embrace it and rather cover it up with convenient ‘certainties’ we can become something less than humane; fanatics. The space of uncertainty makes room for those often derided ‘eternal’ virtues of kindness, compassion, empathy- and an intuition that not everything can be excused with an appeal to expediency. Cruelty is always cruelty. And we will always be aware when we are knowingly indulging in it. That is within scope of all spiritual paths, including the Buddha’s”
More Anil Seth. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyu7v7nWzfo
You hallucinate your reality from moment to moment.
How's that for creating doubt?!
There are some teachings and practices I take from Zen.
I always seek to undermine the certainty of my own opinions, which is a Zen teaching. It's easy to become righteous, particularly when I am completely mistaken. If I get locked in to my own point of view and come to see it as the "right" one, I am almost certainly wrong. "Rightness" and correctness are usually inversely related.
I try to reduce or eliminate any expectations. Each moment should feel fresh and new, surprising even. With expectations, I feel righteous, and I look for confirmation of my presuppositions, which invariably leads to arrogance, which becomes a block to learning.