Category: buddhism

I didn’t know it back then but I had been a structuralist in high school.

It was during my mid-teens that I had stumbled upon a truth: that good meant nothing except when seen against evil. Put another way good can only exist if evil existed. By being brought up in a Catholic school meant I had to think about these things. Sad but true.

So if we look at the Christian God his whole existence really depends on the existence of the devil. Even though this doesn’t make sense because God is suppose be the first, even preceeding time. But really God and the devil could be said to have come into existence simultaneously. This of course is looking at God and the devil as logos, symbols or words which represent an idea and not really at God from the Christian believer point of view (I do not believe in God or gods). And that these logos have only meaning in relation to each other without internally stable meanings.

So the view I had back then was really a Saussurean structuralist outlook but did not know until much much later (like until a couple of days ago). Saussure saw words or signifiers as a system of difference. Signifiers as one half of the sign (the other half being the signified) were in Saussure’s words arbitrary. This means any combination of letters chosen to be put together in a way to represent something only had significance when it was contrasted to (every) other combinations of letters within the system. So ‘bat’ and ‘bet’ by its difference of one letter represents two entities. But it needn’t be a difference of one letter. ‘Bat’ and ‘esophagus’ are different not only in the number of letters they have but also by the distance of how completely different these two signifiers are.

Later Jacques Derrida, the French theorist, chose to use the word differance instead of difference to further develop on Saussure’s discovery. While Saussure had already stated that signifiers are both arbitrary and without meaning (or “meaning” is only made through differences to all other signifiers) he failed to see the radicalness of it and follow through on its implications. By choosing to use a different signifier ‘differance’ instead of the normal ‘difference’ Derrida wanted first to highlight a nuance. Differance served as the ground for play of pronunication (difference and differance do not differ in their pronunciation, thus highlighting their sameness) as well as serving as the ground for play of similarity between ‘differ’ (as in difference) and ‘defer’ (that meaning is always delayed, never fully being there because signifiers are always empty in meaning).

Critics have accused Derrida of being clever without real substance. Yet there is nothing wrong with being clever while still having something significant to say. Some thinkers miss the point and attempt to play in the Derridean manner but lack his substance, and therefore give Postmodernism a bad name. While others forego the cleverness all together and get to the point but perhaps boring their readers somewhat.

In the best tradition of the sutras of the Buddha I will give you the four possible combinations, from worst to best. You can lack cleverness and have no substance. You can be clever but have no substance. You can lack cleverness but have substance, or you can be clever and also have substance.

Derrida was definitely the last. Most good theorist are probably second from last. Bad postmodernists who hide behind their cleverness fit in the second category. And we won’t even bother to mention who goes into the first category.

The term “theory” today is often used to mean Postmodernism theory or just Postmodernism. And because of this Postmodernism is often accused of high jacking the term. But that is just plain wrong.

In acts of elitism this may have occurred a century ago and can be said to still be practiced today. The term “philosophy” could be seen as one such word. Today it represents only the Western tradition (Russell, Kant, etc) and quietly excludes Eastern thought (Confucius, Vasubandhu, etc) all together. But theory is somehow different.

Theory as a term to be used as a stand-alone term represents a set of values, those of Postmodern thought, and it was not used in this manner until Postmodernism came along. Through an act of defamiliarity it has gained momentum through usage. And there is nothing wrong with this. As Postmodernism labours to point out words only have meaning insofar as a series of differences.

A word can be said to be relative to all usage within a language or even against all languages. I do not see there is snobbery or elitist tendency in Postmodernism’s appropriation of the term, but rather it has been seen as misappropriation and that it is a misunderstanding of Postmodern thought and its non-hidden agenda. It is a case of theory of relativity as well as being the relativity of (the term) “theory”.

It seems nowadays we all know that we live in Postmodernism. But most are at a loss as to what exactly it is. And therein lies the problem. Perhaps it is better not to state what it is, but rather say what it does. While what Postmodernism “does” is not new, simply before the term Postmodernism came along we did not have a name for the combination of things it does. Here are just some of the things Postmodernism does.

Postmodernism is highly reflexive in the (grammar) sense of “reflection” rather than reflex. Before Postmodernism much of Western intellectualism tended to criticize the Other – other ways of thought, etc. It ignored its own failings by shutting out any possibility of internal critique. To borrow a term from late twentieth-century Russian political development Postmodernism ushered in an era of openness.

Actually much of that development in the former Soviet was due to Postmodern thought. Breaking down discourses is something Postmodernism does particularly well. No opinion is free from bias (including Postmodernism) as it is a condition of existence to which we are condemned to. Some discourses intentionally hide their bias. While others subconsciously do so. But either way they must be exposed, they must be open to scrutiny.

Postmodernism also exposes the reality of all claims as artificial constructs, that they are all a matter of choice. What becomes popular or dominant is only a matter of circumstance, sometimes through favourable conditions, and more often through accident. Chance plays more a role than choice. In other words, things are more out of our control than we really want to admit. Often Postmodernism is described as arbitrariness and relativity.

I have thus far avoided any link to Modernism because critics of Postmodernism misunderstand the latter’s intention believing it is no different to the Modernism that came before. But through a commitment to the belief and practice of relativity, arbitrariness, discourse analysis, openness and scrutiny Postmodernism has changed the way think. The intellectual mood is different to our recent past and it is different in a better way. But that does not mean we are living in a better world. This is another feature of Postmodernism – we longer believe in a unidirectional, universal, linear progression of history and development. Because all this talk of Modernism and Postmodernism really only has meaning only as difference to each other, in a form of relativism. There is nothing intrinsic in their definitions. And to think any different is to not understand what Postmodernism is all about. And that being wrong is a possibly that one must keep in mind at all times.

Sometimes you have be careful… be very careful.

This site is an example of how the internet can be misused for whatever purpose.

A blogger I know had confidently given this site as authoritative. Albeit he might have been a victim. The sutra references were completely fabricated. And the books he referenced in his post on Buddhism came directly from the site’s page, which also gave PDF files of extended passages from the books. I seem to vaguely recall this breaks certain copyright laws in most countries around the world (plus they have probably altered the text to suit their purpose).

While I do not know the exact reason why the creators of this site wanted to deceive, all I need to know is that it is there, and to be always weary of the possibility of deception. The Buddha said:

“Don’t go by reports, by legends, by traditions, by scripture, by logical conjecture, by inference, by analogies, by agreement through pondering views, by probability, or by the thought, ‘This contemplative is our teacher.’ When you know for yourselves that, ‘These qualities are skillful; these qualities are blameless; these qualities are praised by the wise; these qualities, when adopted and carried out, lead to welfare and to happiness’ – then you should enter and remain in them.” Kalama Sutta, Anguttara Nikaya III.65

I can assure you this quote is there. But do not take my word for it. Look it up. Recall these words and remember scrutiny and rigour are of utmost importance in an information-rich world. Because in this age of the information superhighway ease in obtaining information also means ease in distributing disinformation.