Hacker News Reader

Comment by Talanes | Hacker News Reader

Specifically the "all is one" philosophy is a western misreading of the Three Marks of Existence, so it's easy to misidentify them as the same thing if you have never been properly exposed to the latter. An egocentric culture would rather extend the ego outward, rather than fully embrace the concept of ego being illusory.

View on HN

The absurdity I like to point out sometimes (usually with a lot of downvotes when I talk about this on HN) is how capitalism corrupts nearly all. Countless employers sell their employees on the idea of "Learn meditation to help with work stress" instead of "Lets talk about by work is stressful and how we can fix that." The former just buzzword dishonesty, the latter something that could affect profits, and even if only .01% of profits spent to make workers lives 100% better it would be deemed unacceptable in capitalism. Even if the stinginess of the capital owning class could be curtailed, this reform still wouldn't be acceptable because it would be a win for workers, and keeping workers from rising up in any form is a prime feature of capitalism. Remember, the most perfect capitalist entity hires no one, pays no salaries, and only makes money for its owner. The second most perfect form uses slaves for labor. Due to a loss of a civil war, this is no longer possible here, but we certainly spilled a lot of blood trying to keep it for capitalism. Now quasi-slavery is how the game is played by making sure life's expenses keep people in line and making sure wages never get anyone independently wealthy. Some slip through but that's a bug not a feature.

Of course capitalism can't exist without the ego. Everyone here is, as they say, a temporary embarrassed millionaire. Everyone believes in the CEO as this force of nature who does all sorts of things, because the CEO is crafty enough to steal credit from his underlings as self-marketing. Characters like John Galt are seen as realistic and people defend Rand's writing with a straight face. Capitalism is the ego's playground so of course, Buddhism translated here is littered with narratives that protect capitalism.

I also find it a little amusing at how casually we recommend meditation as a self-help tool for workers to be more productive. If done correctly, it should do the opposite.

Also this excellent piece explaining how the Pali canon refutes California Buddhism's "we are all one" belief:

https://tricycle.org/magazine/we-are-not-one/

“Remember, the most perfect capitalist entity hires no one, pays no salaries, and only makes money for its owner.”

This would essentially be a free energy machine and would be a wonderful thing (the owner is making money because value is being provided to society)

It’s not possible though because everything needs maintenance at some point

Much as I admire Thich Nhat Hanh, I don't see how Buddhism is an answer to a culture that operates primarily from exploitation, predation, status seeking, self-importance, and bad faith.

I don't think anyone has that answer, because it's an incredibly hard question - how do you de-toxify a culture whose true values are defined by varying intensities of of sociopathy?

You end up with what you described - vacation and workplace Buddhism, where the more superficial elements of a different moral tradition are used to decorate and sweeten a life of striving that remains oriented towards other goals.

That still has value for the people who can appreciate it - something is better than nothing, after all.

But the Buddhist ideals of community fundamentally contradict capitalist ideals of aggressive ambition, individualism, and acquisition. I see no way of truly blending them without one giving way to the other.

> I don't see how Buddhism is an answer

The origination story of Buddhism starts with a guy with the highest status and wealth, in a society of extreme inequality, leaving his fortunes behind to help everybody (hint hint).

The first ashrams where so radically inclusive, letting people from all caste and gender live as equals, that they were chased out from many villages by armed crowds. (hint hint)

If that's not clear enough, Thich Nhat Hanh literally called his practices "engaged Buddhism".

Reply on news.ycombinator.com