Buddhist Ethics and the Spirit of Global Capitalism

by Slavoj Zizek

Transcript of the lecture delivered at the European Graduate School 2012.

It may surprise you but I decided, because we debated a lot in class, that I will talk about Buddhism. It’s very open. Please do not take this as a rhetorical point. I am not sure how deep I am into it. Even if I be very critical, this is more, kind of a series of remarks to provoke you, because I know that some of you are much more substantially in it than me myself. So, why deal with Buddhism? Is it the fashion that we in the West feel much more organic, holistic or whatever? No, I claim there are two features which account for the, let’s call it naively Actuality of Buddhism in our today’s global capitalist, whatever we call it, predicament. As we all know, two features characterize our civilization today. To put it very naively:

A: Global capitalism with its unheard of dynamics and second, Sellers- the role of Sellers. And I claim in both domains, Buddhism and I am not now going into the is it authentic one or not, blah blah blah, but some reference of Buddhism, like if it’s not crucial, at least it plays a very interesting role. First, I would like to begin with what may be dismissed, but I don’t think it is as simple as that as some kind of a comical Western copy of authentic Buddhism, so called Western Buddhism. By this I mean groups in West who practice Buddhism and so on. Now if you followed this strength a little bit, you may have noticed something: How Western Buddhism presents itself as the remedy against the stressful tension of capitalist dynamics, allowing us to uncouple from this crazy frantic rhythm and retain this and enlightenment. But I claim, and you know what gave me to think this, when I read in I don’t know what- a journal- an interesting analysis of, let’s call this if not religious, spiritual trends among top managers, businessmen today. To cut it short, 80 percent of Tibetan Buddhists practice so called meditation and I can understand it because, for, us, if you are really engaged in modern capitalism at its craziest, you know like it’s really, one of the top managers claim that when he studied Buddhist ontology, the way he understood it, the idea being as you probably know, the fragility of existence, all are free think phenomena, everything can fall apart, but this is our market today. One rumour and everything fall apart. So, he got this correctly, this manager- sorry I forgot his name. He said if you really want to be fully engaged in this market, you get crazy. So what you need is a kind if a inner distance, which tells you okay it’s a crazy market, and I will teach you how to participate in it without being fully existentially engaged in it. That is why businessmen like this bullshit. You know, even if I speculate all the day, it is just a cosmic play for me.. “I am aware of the nothingness of it. It means nothing.” It functions perfectly, which is why to conclude this first point, that if Max Weber were to rewrite his legendary book on capitalist protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism today, the title of the book would have been I am sure, “The Taoist or buddhist ethic and the spirit of global capitalism” something like that.

Let me make one point. Maybe I cannot resist it, it is in my nature to make jokes, but I think Buddhism is something serious. It’s absolutely an authentic, I don’t like the term because it is itself Western, I’m the orientalist, Let’s call it subjective existential experience. So the other reason, for me at least much more interesting, is what some people call, the so called conginitivist breakthrough- the new stage of our understanding of our brain, our thinking provided by whatever you call them brain sciences, cognitivism and so on. Now, I don’t want to deal with the problem, are they true or not. What I am just saying is that more and more they are somehow generally received, Even those who should resist it most, psychoanalysts you know, often played the game of, how do you call this, if you can’t beat them, join them, you know. Like the claim, “oh but you see what cognitive sciences are driving up, this is just a paraphrase of what already Freud knew” and so on. You know, this kind of join the enemy.

Okay. But, there is nonetheless, one interesting point for me. And here I agree with..we have many problems with me and Volguard. But at one point I agree with him, and I will make this point. If we want to retain Martin Heidegger as a reference, it is crucial not to read Heidegger along the lines of some kind of anti technological or romanticism. You know, Heidegger walking in his stupid forest up there and cursing all the technology, blah blah. No, Heidegger is quite rational here. I read in one biography of Heidegger, like, okay it’s nice that authentic …. but in the end he wanted air conditioning, fuel, electricity, etc. ok so what I am saying is that the question that we should ask in this spirit is, it’s a very naïve one, if we really accept, we don’t have to, but if we, the result of brain sciences, which is, but it is already a stupid debate, but I don’t want to enter it, that our subjective freedom or the unity of our ego, it’s a free ego, as a free and responsible agent is an illusion. That in reality, we are just functioning normal mechanism, whatever you put it. Ok the problem is how to subjectivize this. That is to say, how should or does this affect your innermost, even everyday sense of an agent in socialization and so on. So, here I think that Buddhism, to be vulgar, is doing quite well, without any irony. Because there are three main attitudes. The way I can see, I mean, I am talking about only those who accept cognitivist breakthrough, and Buddhism is the first one I see.

The first predominant attitude is simply to resign ourselves to the gap between the scientific view of ourselves, as normal out of matter or whatever you want, and our everyday self experience as free, responsible, autonomous agents. The idea is that, because of, you can be very materialist here, because of how we were produced through revolutionism, through revolutionary choice and so on, we came out packed experience ourselves as free, responsible agents and so on, so that we are simply condemned to live in the gap. Scientifically we know, but in everyday life, you know, it’s the same, some of them like to use this metaphor- S we know very well how big moon is, but cannot help perceiving moon as that small circle out there. That is the same- we cannot step out. The second attitude is, I hope we agree again here because many other reasons to kill other, so here we can agree- this is my declaration of love, is the Habermasian position, which is he also fully asserts the duality but the non-naturalist aspect is for Habermas is not simply an illusion that we should tolerate, but the kind of a transcendental a priori, which is necessary and even points to an immanent limitation of scientific knowledge. No, his reasoning is here is a very transcendental philosophical one- it is that science is a certain social practice. Inter-subjective practice where we formulate universal statements, we confirm them through experiments, debates, blah blah and in this practice, the transcendental a priori of this practice is that we are free responsible beings, reasoning in a certain way and so on, so even if the result, for example, of our scientific investigation is we are normal puppets, whatever, we should not forget that this result is the result of an exercise of our transcendental freedom of scientific thinking, which is a priori, you know, we cannot say no that is false. If you neglect that the result also disappears.

Then we have an even more naïve, but in a way sympathetic to me, attitude—that of some radical brain scientists like the big couple from Lahoya, I feel California, Patricia and Paul Churchland. They claim, I don’t think it works, but they are saying, it’s a beautiful position, they claim that, the term among some brain scientists for this everyday etiquettes, as you probably know, form of psychology is spontaneous idea, that my God, I do whatever I want, we are free and so on, okay they claim that this form of psychology does not have such a deep status as some Darwinists think. That it is not a kind of a biological, revolutionary a priori, but simply a reflection of our old, naïve ideologies.

They say self like in old times, I think this is Patricia Chruchland example, when so called primitive people saw a lightning they thought God is sending us a message or there is a higher force behind, and they claim when we act and think “Oh I had a free self in me, which is the true source of it” it’s exactly the same type of superstition. And in the same way that even if you are scared shit of a storm as I am, I admit it, especially if you are up on the plane when it happens, nonetheless, at least mostly I succeed not starting to pray and claim it, you know, naturalize it, we no longer think like so called primitives, they- the Churchland couple think the same thing is possible with even our freedom of the will and self. And in a pretty naïve way, they describe how such a society would look- it wouldn’t be simply a society without punishment as some people think. The idea being if I am an automaton and there is no freedom of the will, what right do you have to punish me? I am not responsible. No, a punishment can nonetheless be a regulative mechanism which works and so on. Just a more kind, less oppressive society and so on. The reason I don’t agree with this solution, is it’s implicit naivety, and the man who is my good guy here, the German brain scientist, maybe you should invite him, he did not come over- Thomas Messinger. It would be really nice to get him. Maybe you can. If he has some to make him you know mafia- everything is printed to get good people here to Saas-Fee. You know, maybe your son would have an accident who knows.

He sees very well how this type of simple acceptance- okay so what we change your view or still lives even if in words it recognizes- so what’s the problem okay I’m an automaton what the hell. But the factor in your activity, you still treat yourself as the good, old, free self. You don’t really existentially accept it. And here again we come to Buddhism. Because Messinger who is a serious scientist, not some kind of a city new ager, like those who claim the tower of quantum physics, were not talking about that. He is in. But at the same time, for very precise reasons, though he is also totally materialist, he is Buddhist in the sense that he claims that although it may appear that we are, as the first position which I described claims, that we are condemned to this duality. That is to say, scientifically we are normal, automaton, but in your immediate self experience you experience yourself as free agent and so on, that there is nonetheless, possible, and this for him, as you can guess, would be precisely, when you arrive at enlightenment in Buddhism, when you accept so called “anatman” that your self does not have any substantial identity, it’s a beautiful thesis, I like it in a way, that he is not in that sense a mysticist. He claims that he is totally a scientist. He just claims that if you go to the end in Buddhist meditation where you arrive at a state- this is some popular book on Buddhism- John Epstein I think- the title is “Things without a Thinker” that literally you arrive at the stage where you have thoughts, but you no longer can say there is an I agent who is thinking these thoughts. And that he claims although for large majority of us, he puts is very nicely, we can, he agrees with the first position, we can scientifically objectively accept as an object of study our brain okay we are automata, but he puts this beautifully. He says we simply cannot really believe in it, in our everyday life. Even if you claim, okay so what, I’m bit kind of automaton, in your innermost identity you cannot really believe this, except if you come to the end of Buddhist meditation. I love this position although, and Messinger is aware of this, although, do you know that the beauty of all these debates, cognitive scientists, Buddhism, because you know, many of them are idiots, but some of them are really bright guys. And for example, my God I forgot his name, there is scientist Jewish, because this affects this notion of free will, he’s so well known in San Francisco, his name will come to me, who is the very author of the crucial experiment, his name will come to me, I’m sorry- Benjamin Libet, the author of the crucial experiment demonstrating allegedly that there is no free will. You know it’s that famous experiment, don’t trust me how- I’m giving you a Reader’s Digest simplified version- that he wires your neurons and then he asks you to do some extremely elementary gesture. For example, grab this pen. And he tells you just to say now or whatever, to somehow signal the moment you decide it. Okay you know the story. I don’t know how much part of a second before you decide your brain already knows it. Signals are already on the way. But now comes the beauty. That’s why I like this guy. A big shock to this common gang of scientists, is that they automatically took this as a proof of there is no free will. Because, when you think you decide you just, what’s the term, think cognizance, assume what your brain has already decided. But you see this is not libel expressive. And he as, that’s why, not out of any praising of the Jews, that’s why I emphasize that he is a Jew, because he makes here a very nice theology, but he’s a materialist, just as a spiritual point, reference to 10 commandments (prohibitions) and he claims there is also the very problematic topic, that we are looking for freedom of the will at the wrong point. That the basic, he’s very Hegelian here- negativity, that the basic form of freedom is not unto this. There we are over-determined by neurons, blah blah.

This is already interesting because you know why because I read recently in a book, I think it’s a book of the guy, very interesting guy, I think, what’s the title, Buddha’s Consciousness or what, or Owen Flanagan, one of the cognitive scientists who is also doing Buddhism, draws attention, and here begins our western distortion, to an interesting fact that for us in the West, if you say I’m a Buddhist, it usually means I practice some stupid transcendental meditation or whatever. It’s automatically meditation. While he draws attention to the fact that for the majority, for the nations, rather no but Thailand, I do not know which other is there but Buddhism is really a way of life for the majority. The large majority of people don’t meditate. For them, being a Buddhist means two things. First, to respect this ethical, moral rather than ethical, moral rules- you know don’t be violent, don’t cause suffering, blah blah, and where does then meditation enter? It’s very interesting. It’s just as a kind of imagined, presupposed point of reference. You need, even if they don’t exist to be cynical, you need to know that there sre some people who made it to the end. You know, so that it gives you hope. It’s just kind of a subject, to paraphrase Lacan, subject presupposed to meditate. People need it as a fixed point of reference.

Okay so let’s go on. How do we then fight our enslavement to desires? Here we have the first point of Buddhism, which is I think very nice materialist. There are no higher powers. You should forget about the later religious misreadings of Karma and so on. The idea is simply that Karma, or fate triggered by your desires and actions is a kind of, is immanent to the way we act, because, as Buddhists like to point out, you know they have this wonderful, no wonder, even some Stalinists, Marxists like this idea of co-dependent origination, which Stalin called dialectical unity of all phenomena, to be slightly cynical. I precisely try to give you an idea of Karma, which is not some kind of a divine up there. It’s simply that our acts being part of a rich texture of the world, leave traces, have consequences, Some consequences are good, wholesome, others are not and so on. And in this way, top deal with your Karma, means to regulate, try to diminish negative traces, consequences of your acts.

And again as you’ll know, I will just enumerate then, just to give you an idea of basically how in a good sense, it’s not a criticism, how commonsense this first step of basic morality is. You have this Buddhist classification where they claim actions can occur at three level- body, speech and mind. And at each level, already Buddha, but it was elaborated later, proposes a whole categorization of bad acts as it were. First at the level of body, there are acts which are to be avoided- killing, stealing, sexual misconduct. By misconduct, it’s not meant so much perversion or what, but it’s excessive passion, excessive attachment. Then at the level of speech for actions- lying, slander, harsh speech, malicious gossip and at the level of mind- greed, anger, delusion. So the idea is that, this is vaguely the first step. Now to as it were, clam yourself down, in what the Buddha calls the middle way. Not the Tony Blair third way, but the more authentic middle way you know, like neither excess of, I don’t know, gluttony, sex or whatever, but also not some kind of a sadomasochist, radical renunciation and so on. The goal of all this is to acquire dispassion, as some translate it, for the object of clinging. That is to say, the point is your subjective attitude of how much you cling, you attach yourself to objects. Because again you will notice, I’m just repeating it, this what in Buddhism is called Samsara is precisely this wheel of life of suffering. And the point, this is crucial I think without this you don’t get it. It is not that from bad Samsara we should get good Samsara or Karma. The point is not if you do, this would be the Western reading. If you do bad things, you will have bad Karma. So let’s do good things so you have good Karma. So when you die, you will profit. No no here Buddhsim is not this type of bullshitting, it’s serious, which means that the point is not to get good Karma. The point s to step out of it. But again I’m well aware how refined this is. Stepping out doesn’t mean melancholia, from here the end of the world. In one version of Buddhism even nothing has to change materially. Only your, let’s call it, although it sounds too Californian, your attitude. And then, now I see slowly emerging problems, which are not imported by me. I register these problems in the very ambiguities, conflicts, the way I found them in the Buddhist teaching itself.

Okay the guy, sorry for vulgarity, who reaches this stage of acquiring a distance, maybe the term stepping out is wrong, because we have no where to go out. There is no transcendence in Buddhism. That’s beautiful about it. It’s as we know is called Bodhisattva, the one who is concerned with freeing all sentient beings. Not just himself or herself even not just humans from Samsara and its cycle of death, rebirth and suffering but what makes it so interesting here is that and this brings me to the first conflict that I see- conflict, tension.

You know that traditionally, at least according to my informations, we get three levels or notions of Bodhisattva. They are called very nicely King-like Bodhisattva, Boatman Boddhisatva and Shepherd Bodhisattva. King Bodhisattva aspires to become Buddha as soon as possible, and then help all others like I do it myself, I try to reach Nirvana, and the way that is by doing this it’s either me as an example or by acting in a more gentle way I will help others.

Boatman is already more communist. The idea is yes, but not me alone. Together with others. Now the highest, according to some classifications, but for me I agree here with contexts with the other tendencies Buddhism, the lowest, the most dangerous, where things go really wrong is Shepherd like Boddhisattva. The idea is the following one, that the greatest ethical act is that you reach enlightenment, but out of compassion for all those who are, as they call it in the greatest work of American literature, I making joke, did you read it the cycle of novels from how they called- Tim LaHaye and that Left behind. The lowest of the lowest, okay. What I want to say is I mean it’s like then Brown, it’s Shakespeare compared to then. But what I want to say is that so again it should be the great ethical act. You are there- eternal bliss blah blah. But out of compassion you go back into valley of suffering and so on like you know you give priority to others. You say no I don’t have a right to enjoy it myself, I go back help others- this delaying, stepping back. But some, I was told, maybe I am wrong, many of you may know it better, there are other Buddhists made accountable- okay in traditional Buddhism there is a kind of a graduation here no? the lowest the King Bodhisattva- I do it fuck, you follow me or not you know. Then the separate like stupid communist you know, and the highest one- I was up there but ooh I think infinite goodness I came down to help you all, but some Theravada guys, then immediately on their side. They make a nice argument. If the core of authentic Buddhism is not, has nothing to do with this ridiculous European spirituality “ooh I move up there into a higher domain” No. I stay here. I’m fully here. I eat the same apples like you whatever, it’s just my attitude totally changes. I am still socially active. I even, it even doesn’t mean to attain Nirvana that you meditate, that you’re in some kind of a solo orgasmic spiritual trust. If this is true, and authentic Buddhists always emphasize this you know this reason that Buddhists saying as someone hidden in a cave and just trembling blah blah blah. That’s false. So if this is true, why then the necessity to step back? You can act like Buddha and so on. You can attain Nirvana, and at the same time be active here. The idea is here, and I think this is the origin of catastrophe. You know the moment somebody who wants to redeem you, here we as Nietzscheans should agree, both of how good he was, how he sacrificed himself, don’t trust the guy you know.

Okay, so what do I mean by this? Now I come to another- please I am here openly exposing myself, I am not kidding, this is not rhetorics. Do your criticism if you know more. I noticed another problem here. On the one hand some radical Buddhists, radical means I like them, describe in a wonderful way how authentic Buddhism deals with suffering. You first isolate the cause of suffering and blame the others, for example, Oh I was deprived of the pleasures of the world and so on. Why me? This is the eternal why me question. You know like children are starving in Somalia, okay I will give them five dollars a month to make me feel good but why me? Or why my child? The idea is that of course the first thing to do is to precisely stop blaming the circumstances, blame your desire and then extinguish, although I don’t like this term extinguish, because it’s too violent in a wrong way. Here’s a quote. “What was extinguished (when you step out of Samsara, circle of suffering) is only the false view of the self. What had always been illusory was understood as such. Nothing was changed but the perspective of the observer”.

So I noticed, and again correct me if I am wrong. I noticed here the following tension, which from my reading on books and history of Buddhism, is all present there. And it mirrors precisely this stressed tension in the notion of Boddhisattva. Should I simply go there and in this way, it’s the best thing for others or should I claim this sacrificial game, no no I love you so much, I step back and so on. The problem is that on the one hand we have this radical description of Nirvana which is everything is different, but nothing changes. You know it’s the same world out there and so on, just I am aware of its illusory nature, and I assume this illusory nature existentially. Why? and this I call the minimalist attitude.

But then you nonetheless have especially attached to that notion of Bodhisattva, as the one who sacrifices himself, the opposite, I call it maximalist attitude. “I don’t want reach Nirvana, prior to all other sentient beings reaching it.” So there, it’s not just my subjective attitude. You are aiming effectively at some kind of a global, as it were, cosmic change. The next ambiguity I see is, and again I already debated this in my class, some of you reproached me so I did as much of homework as I was able to do, and I still stick to my opinion, that there are still debates within Buddhism. I think this is the third level of the same tension.

Mainly, you remember how I described it. First you do morality. Not too much sex, proper eating, don’t curse, don’t be violent, as preparing the way for Enlightenment. But the obvious point here is, is there any link between the two? This is a great problem in Buddhism. I read many texts on this, where they claim if we are really honest, we have to agree that once you are in Enlightenment, nothing immanently prevents you, for example, from torturing people. You can just say, my act leaves no traces, because I’m already at the Nirvana level, no Karma and so on. Now I know what you will say. That nonetheless, where is here compassion for others blah blah blah. I’m just making a typical western logical extrapolation, totally out of touch with existential reality of Buddhism. No, I will give you immediately proof.

Just before I go to this, the first debate I encountered is the one, where even Dalai Lama has some wonderful statement like if drinking, by drinking he means real alcohol, helps you why not? You know, like. The problem is that many, if not all, of the stage described as Nirvana can be, if not totally, it gets pretty close to it you know. Like they say, man is not all, but it comes pretty close to it.

That what if you can induce the experience which immanently, inherently fits Nirvana in a biochemical way with some drugs or whatever. How to distinguish, should we then distinguish the bad Nirvana? I take a pill, fuck you I’m there and the good Nirvana- I was torturing myself, meditating for years, whatever. Some guys, but here I don’t agree with them, try to introduce here an ethical distinction. Quote from Owen Flanagan, “Cases where happiness is gained by magic pills, or is due to false belief, do not count, because the allegedly happy person must be involved in cultivating her own virtue. Happy states born of delusion, are undeserved.” But I think this is totally non-immanent. Once you are in, you are in. Who cares how you got there?

Okay. Back to that problem of suffering, compassion and so on. Let me give you a little bit to shock you, some of my old stuff, a little bit of Buddhism and war, because you know Buddhism did deal with this problem especially interesting is here the relationship between Japanese Zen Buddhism and war. And it’s interesting to note what treats the Zen Buddhism employed to justify taking part in war. First, there are two main strategies in Zen Buddhism. The first one to justify participating in war, that is to say, killing people or whatever to be clear, is the standard teleological narrative, which is even well known in our western societies. I quote “even though the Buddha forbade the taking of life, he also thought that until all sentient beings are united together through the exercise of infinite compassion, there will never be peace. Therefore, as a means of bringing into harmony those things which are incompatible, killing and war are necessary”. You know the usual trick you know like so to tell you, Hitler could have argued like this. He could have said I’m totally against suffering. I want peace, but fuck it. There is really no peace as long as Jews manipulate in our midst. So the only way to really fight for peace is to give the Jews to be cynical, one way first last, you get to Auschwitz.

Slavoj Zizek

Transcript of the Lecture delivered at the European Graduate School 2012