Re: Eurocentrism

[Nemonemini]

Having been scorched as a New Ager, I would inject a perspective nonetheless
along those lines. Press the delete button, if you prefer. Thinking about
Blaut's book I was reminded of the deep confusion over Eurocentric issues now
engulging globalization, it would seem, with total incomprehension on all
sides. Modernization, most ironically, is a two way street. Especially is
that true with the ancient legacies of India and to a lesser extent the
half-breed Islamic sufism, with their buried traditions that responded
immediately to Western style information-transmission disgorging themselves
globally in a diffusion headed in the opposite direction, starting in the
nineteenth century. Nothing to sneeze at, and the attitudes of the typical
member of the Skeptics movement are pygmy stuff and very insulting, if not
dangerous, in their idiotic Enlightenment arrogance that considers the
slightest interest in Buddhism a form of mental derangement (no kidding, it
happened to me). These movements are fighting for survival and succeeding,
and have to be reckoned with in a broader leftist anthropology than that
current, A hard thing to do, because the whole process simply degenerates
into a mess at each stage.  

Along these lines, cruising through Amazon's endless database I was surprised
to see listed a book called "Communism and Zen Fire, Zen Wind" by that
strange character Rajneesh some may remember from the seventies.  I cannot
vouch for any of that, but I do remember it vividly as it happened at the
time, since I simply couldn't avoid a host of people associated with that,
thousands, now with changed stories, never heard of him. He took on the USA
government and got deported.  His movement was a strange concotion of the
good and bad, getting worse as it became a cult, not my issue, who knows, all
gone now, and the remains have degenerated into a sort of Buddhist health
club.
But for all the vicious hatred induced against him, and not forgetting his
flaws, Rajneesh was, most surprisingly, one of the rarest of the rare genuine
exemplars India alone can produce of the 'Buddha phenomenon'. He induced
desperation, almost panic in psychologists, deprogrammers, and the
established Weberian propaganda machines (+ the Creationists,who he called
retarded). He was super loud mouthed, and spent years denouncing the pope,
and running off ad infinitum. Almost four hundred books.
All this in passing just to note the book, now out of print, probably
forever. An absolute shocker of a book for a guru. He really scared the pants
off the yogi profession. It appeared as Gorbachev began to dismantle Russain
society, and it was a scorching protest, DON'T. A Communist Buddha? Who will
ever know.
Whatever the case, I wouldn't be fooled by the floodtide of Tibetan phonies
soon to crack a deal with the system, and destroy the memory, as always, of
the real mcoy. Anyway, the endless struggles over materialism and idealism
don't exist in that psychology, done right,  and generally, in their genuine
forms are superior to anything in the West, as Schopenhauer was one of the
first to suspect.
Anyway, a new left must get these issues straight, instead wandering around
trying to cram an ultra narrow scientism down everyone's throat, in the midst
of postmodernist evaporation. Anyway, Rajneesh's book is but one example of
the fact that Marx has buried his seeds all over the planet, and will be
taken in their own way by the next generations of resurfacing lefts, thar she
blows.....

Communism & zen fire, zen wind
by Osho [Rajnesh]


John Landon
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Website on eonic effect
http://eonix.8m.com
http://www.eonica.net