Zizek on Western Buddhism

Slavoj Zizek has a generous critique of Western Buddhism. Quote:

... "Western Buddhism" thus fits perfectly the fetishist mode of ideology in our allegedly "post-ideological" era, as opposed to its traditional symptomal mode in which the ideological lie which structures our perception of reality is threatened by symptoms qua "returns of the repressed," cracks in the fabric of the ideological lie. The fetish is effectively a kind of symptom in reverse. That is to say, the symptom is the exception which disturbs the surface of the false appearance, the point at which the repressed Other Scene erupts, while the fetish is the embodiment of the Lie which enables us to sustain the unbearable truth. Let us take the case of the death of a beloved person. In the case of a symptom, I "repress" this death and try not to think about it, but the repressed trauma returns in the symptom. In the case of a fetish, on the contrary, I "rationally" fully accept this death, and yet I cling to the fetish, to some feature that embodies for me the disavowal of this death. In this sense, a fetish can play a very constructive role in allowing us to cope with the harsh reality. Fetishists are not dreamers lost in their private worlds. They are thorough "realists" capable of accepting the way things effectively are, given that they have their fetish to which they can cling in order to cancel the full impact of reality. In Nevil Shute's melodramatic World War II novel Requiem for a WREN, the heroine survives her lover's death without any visible traumas. She goes on with her life and is even able to talk rationally about her lover's death because she still has the dog that was the lover's favored pet. When, some time after, the dog is accidentally run over by a truck, she collapses and her entire world disintegrates. ...

Here's another thinker who can join the ranks with Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and other skeptics who seem intent on forcing themselves on a notion (whether "religion" or "faith" or, in this case, "Western Buddhism") and incapable of distinguishing at least two major, significantly distinct meanings of it. While some of Western Buddhism indeed deserves a bashing as quasi-Western pseudo-Buddhism, it being an insidious newage flirtation with general Buddhist signifiers, and a shallow understanding and application of Buddhist spiritual methods, there is surely an authentic Buddhist mysticism for the 21st century being questioned and formulated here in the West by at least some. Slavoj Zizek, a rather famous postmodern philosopher and cultural critic, should be aware of the difference between legitimacy and authenticity, and eager to apply this basic distinction to his otherwise worthy critique, thus avoiding several seriously damaging fallacies. For a way out of such mess, read chapter "Legitimacy, Authenticity, and Authority in the New Religions" in Ken Wilber's "Eye to Eye", or see the online essay "A Spirituality that Transforms".

Read the whole article by Slavoj Zizek.