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Dharma-protector Manjusri |
Slavoj Žižek criticizes Buddhism in two ways: by ridiculing
the Dalai Lama's dictum that Buddhism makes you happy—My God, hasn't this man heard about Freud?—and by referencing the
support afforded to nationalist militarism in WW II by the Japanese zen sects,
citing in particular laudatory remarks expressed by D.T. Suzuki.
The second argument is more easily dispensed with: the
political ideologies associated formerly with the zen establishment in Japan have as
much relation to the teachings of the Buddha as the Spanish Inquisition does
with the teachings of Christ. The abuse and perversion of religious ideals by
institutional authority is a sad and ancient story, but there is nothing
especially Buddhist about it. Indeed in all the Asian countries where Buddhism
flourished, there are remarkably few instances.
The Dalai Lama however can be criticized for advertising the view that
Buddhism makes you happy, giving critics the chance to speak of it as
"fast-food religion," or see it as simplistic New Age-ism. It's not
that Buddhism doesn't make you happy—why would so many people practice it for
2.5 millennia if it didn't?—the question is rather whether the Buddha actually
taught that and that the answer is clearly no.
The original teachings of the Buddha—as closely as we can
discover them through philological analysis of the earliest layers of the Pali
Canon sutras— are contained in the Four Noble Truths and Eightfold Path. These
teachings say that suffering exists, that the unreflected pursuit of desires is
responsible, and by committing to certain ethical precepts and to the practice of meditation, such
suffering can be overcome. This is anything but some "Don't worry, be
happy" species of spiritual dumbdown. In truth the practice of Buddhism is
really quite challenging.
Slavoj Žižek would be better advised to view the Buddha as a
kindred spirit, since he was in fact an early philosopher working at the dawn
of human literacy, addressing themes common to the Greek Pre-Socratics, and, as
evidenced by the early Pali Canon narratives which show him in dialectical exchange
with all kinds of contemporary philosophers, ready and eager to respond to any
kind of criticism.
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