Why I am not a Buddhist (more on the mental health ideology)

To a Buddhist:

What is your theory of karma? I think most invocations of it I have heard are quite mistaken. I recall people in California saying things like (a) avoid enthusiasm because it is probably neurotically blind, so (i) don't have or be on a "trip," like some schmuck who thinks that what he thinks about is important, and (ii) do not "put out an energy," because it is surely negative, and that is sinful.

The idea that actions that aim to modify the world in some way are expressions of negative energy that will only turn back on the self is (a) conservative and quietistic (do your work but pursue the good through a life of contemplation rather than action), (b) it is an autonomic process being theorized that (i) fits well a totalitarian state, and (ii) assumes that the divine is impersonal and dispassionate, as it lacks purposive engagement.

This can fit equally well an Aristotelian/metaphysical (most Western metaphysics, be it Jewish, Muslim, Christian, or atheist is Aristotelian) or Stoical view of reality (metaphysics) and God (all philosophical theology is metaphysics, though that of more purely literary inspiration need not be) no less than some of those that flourished in other Indo-European languages (Chinese thought is different because it is generally cosmic rather than transcendent: God is immanent in world order and realized in wise and good governmentality rather than transcending world and Being itself on the basis of a position of the enunciative subject or mind considered as essentially transcendent and empty of its contents (a possibility of both Indian and Greek/European thought). Judaism is often now thought of as positing God as a passionate and involved rather than contemplative subjectivity (Aristotle's prime mover must himself be unmoved), and this seems to me correct, and it marks a point of difference between both Jewish and Christian traditions at their best and the Hindu-Buddhist ones.

(Much of Protestantism of course merely worries about whether existence actually applies to a God who is an actual authority paternal authority making demands on people for obedience, and it simply avoids the theological/metaphysical questions altogether in favor of placing credit in the existence of literary figures of divine authority, which is also the fundamental move of all Jewish and Christian religious thought that is not, as the Catholic church traditionally was, also philosophical, if only to legitimate the forms of social and moral authority that for most people could only rest on such naive thinking, as well as remnants of pagan magic and superstitution).

It probably is true that (a) being lucid is better than being depressed, anxious, or confused, (b) practices like meditation facilitate this lucidity, (c) they counteract obsessional tendencies of thinking if not every kind that might be thought "dysfunctional" from the point of view of doing anything well, (d) they do this partly by maximizing calmness, and in that way (e) can easily and well be considered part of the self-management of those who desire to possess or enjoy "mental health." I am sure that the best Buddhist practices bring their practitioners both greater happiness and enable them to do the tasks of their job or projects with a simplicity and focus that facilitate their effectiveness. Therefore, they have much to recommend them, though I would find all this insuffficient as a philosophy, even if the idea that philosophy primarily answer the ethical question, how can I live a good life in the world I live in, which is different for example from any political question, since then the question of what that world is like can be raised with the desire, considered legitimate, of perhaps trying to change it in some ways. Buddhism is good for you, and it does not destine you to be a conservative, perhaps a compassionate one, but alone it seems to me an insufficient philosophy for our time.

Note that Buddhism now along with some Stoical motifs and encouragement of things like (Lutheran Protestant) 12-step groups, has become part of the American ruling ideology in the guise of the ideology of mental health and absolute therapy (that is, people should want, and this is as absolute as anything and so too may be the principle demand of the "God" the state's legal and other institution often claim to be subject to) everyone to engage in correctional procedures to facilitate their more effective self-management.

The heir of neo-Freudian ego psychology, cognitive therapy, an early form of which was touted as a way of living well even in Auschwitz (Victor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning), rests on Stoical assumptions and uses a kind of Socratic method to "teach" the "truth" that there is nothing or almost nothing that can possibly happen to you that is so traumatic or catastrophic that you cannot cope with it (and go on with your job and life as they are). And a principle variant of cognitive therapy, Dialectical Behavior Therapy, which is advocated widely for people who not only have dysfunctional thinking but excess emotional affectedness, is overtly based on Buddhism, and its principal theorist, Marsha Linehan, is also a Buddhist cleric. Such principles are now part of the dominant American "mental health" ideology. Its popular variants among amateurs who are adepts and enthusiasts of some "spirituality," serve the function sociologically of a conservative ethics of good governance by management of a population of people who have tendencies to think and feel (if not, which is what is feared, do, if not make, since art has exchange value and is used with other legitimating functions) that seem to the ruling elites to call for social control. Universal social control in a world of dangerous precarity attributed to the risks posed by persons: this is the reigning ethos and ideology today.