Abstract
This paper offers a Zen Buddhist analysis of the systems of social control in the United States: the individual, family, neoliberal, and online. As a system, the U.S. political economy is purportedly governed by individuals composed of a solid, separate entity called self. The logic is that this mechanical object, subjectively reaches out upon “the world,” in order to have for itself, by itself. The ideology of the system is an insatiable desire to have for “me,” or what the Buddha called craving. The antidote is to penetrate the illusion of self via Zen kōan. Unionizing is the means to go beyond one’s personal conditioning via real world, teacher-student relationships: a social revolution. The aim is to die the obscuration of self, to wake up in relationship to “other” by examination of conditioned roles and ideologies of social systems. The prescription is to be a systemless system: to truly know that you don’t know who you are. Just this. When there is yang, offer yin. Be the bodhisattva role, but do not believe you are the role. Emptiness as no-thing-ness. A revolving teacher and a student to others and a teacher-student to oneself. Using transactional analysis (TA), personality structure and other clinical models, the Zen concept of No Mind will be illustrated. Going beyond one’s cultural conditioning, what Erich Fromm broadly called the “having mode”, is the spiritual solution to our collective misunderstanding of ourselves and a rebuke of neoliberalism.
Details
Presentation Type
Theme
Religious Community and Socialization
KEYWORDS
Zen Buddhism, Revolution, Psychology, Analysis, Ego, Self, Neoliberalism, Systems, Social
