NON + X MATTHIAS STEINGASS HOW TO XPLODE X-BUDDHISM

NON + X
HOW TO XPLODE X-BUDDHISM
MATTHIAS STEINGASS
HOW TO XPLODE X-BUDDHISM
MATTHIAS STEINGASS
Introduction
This essay is the first part of a three-piece mini-series about Where to! It is a
short assessment of recent developments around non-buddhism. The second part
will be primarily a sketch of the Critique and Performance of non-buddhism as
it is laid out by Glenn Wallis in “Speculative Non-Buddhism: X-buddhist
Hallucination and its Decimation” (henceforth: XHD; part of Cruel Theory |
Sublime Practice) – a primer which is necessary because critical and sympathetic
onlookers alike mostly display ignorance about non-buddhist motives, intentions,
terms, theories and practices. The third part will be about possible forms of future
action by the non-buddhist – i.e. the non-buddhist subject.
The formatting of this text is intended to give the reader access to non-buddhist
terminology and thereby to steer the discussion from the objection about nonbuddhist punk to non-buddhist thinking. Bold printed terms are to be found in XHD
(provided the reader has it at hand) and give immediate input to what nonbuddhism is about. The links provided also give additional information and the
interested reader is kindly asked to follow these trails to establish a differentiated
picture about the topics discussed.
Although the intention here is to lead the discussion into more productive and
creative regions there can be no doubt that these regions can only be reached by
a certain form of destruction. This destruction is about certain kinds of ideology
and in particular about decision. The reader is asked to abstract himself for a
moment from his affiliations when he tries to digest the non-buddhist diet and to
un-confuse that what is shaping personality and individual preference from that
what the human as a minimally representational thought is.
These texts are written with two kinds of individual in mind. First so to speak, the
spell bound x-buddhist. What I mean here will become clearer in what follows. But
let me say that I mean spellbound in a positive sense. I am referring to the one
ready for the experience of ancoric loss. Second I have in mind the “nonbuddhist posse” – as we have been recently named. For us the question arises as
to how we can go on and I hope to contribute a little here.
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Critique of ideology, cynicism and kynicism
In May 2011 Glenn Wallis founded the blog Speculative Non-Buddhism. In the
about page, in the last paragraph, he writes:
In spiritu ludi
Please, don’t take it all too goddamn seriously. A title such as
“Speculative Non-Buddhism” should tip you off that I am playing,
jamming, cavorting, experimenting, standing on my head, showing off,
having a go, letting loose, puffing my pipe, falling on my face, making
a fool of myself, and, most of all, downright just wondering about it
all. Maybe you are, too?
But what in the beginning was intended as a thought experiment in the spirit of
playfulness developed, over two years, into an often fierce polemic exchange over
differing positions. An onlooker may indeed have wondered about it all. As a result
of the fighting Glenn Wallis shut down the discussion at his blog in May 2013.
In the beginning, in 2011, probably no one had the intention of having this
disagreement. On the contrary, there was a lot of enthusiasm. But the dynamics of
the evolving discussion lead to a breaking point and the non-buddhist posse
parted ways. X-buddhist onlookers must have rubbed their hands in glee when
they saw how we fought over so many topics and finally vacated the arena of word
blood altogether. “These non-buddhist guys just can’t get it right. Just another
intellectual fad.” Maybe…
Tutte & Mother
Around the same time, just as the non-buddhist blog was shut down, the spiritual
entrepreneur Tutteji Wachtmeister entered the limelight. When I first came upon
one of Tutte’s pages I thought that he was just another deluded guy selling
esoteric jelly beans. But after skimming a few paragraphs and finally coming to
the page where he sits under the picture of Guru Margaret I realized that this was
parody – and a good parody indeed. At first Tutteji wasn’t recognized by a lot of
people for what he was. Even the skeptics at the non-buddhist blog didn’t
recognize the ruse at once.
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Over time, Tutteji developed good momentum. In addition to his blog he founded
the Transintegral Scholars on Facebook. A very successful use of mimicry with lots
of integral people – Ken Wilber clones, for example – flocking to the page without
recognizing the hoax, often remaining unaware of the fact that they were being
mocked. Then, in late August, a discussion erupted at Tutte’s main outlet: The
Tutteji Wachtmeister blog. There Tutteji opened a thread called The triple edged
sword of irony or: All You Can Do I Can Do Meta. The opener of this thread was
about the effect of parody and especially about the way it made those who were
being parodied indistinguishable from the parody. The effect was that the
relationship of the parody and its target was inverted. The parody becomes an
essential and sincere means of unveiling the insubstantiality, fraud, imperfection,
and outright ridiculousness of the situation in which the defective was being sold
as perfection. In the beginning it was about Kenneth Folk and Daniel Ingram.
They were being targeted by Tutteji as two outstanding exemplars of a species of
fraud aptly described as “putting nothing in boxes and selling it.” That is, selling
the perfect product: Awakening – a product which is entirely intangible, yet
infinitely reproducible, constituted as it is by the customer (cf. Richard K. Payne;
Putting Nothing in Boxes and Selling it).
Folk and Ingram are exponents of American x-buddhism who both do big business
with esoteric cotton candy. Lured to bite the bait laid out by Grandmaster Tutteji
they readily provided blurbs for the book Mastering the Core Teachings of
Pharmacological Meditation by Kenneth R. Lingam. They provided these blurbs
using exactly the same language Tutteji was using to mock them, and, amazingly,
found it unproblematic to do so. What happened here was a three-step process: 1)
The attempt to sell sugarcoated hot air in a certain language by Folk and Ingram;
2) the parody of 1) by Tutteji using their language; and 3) the recognition by Folk
and Ingram that 1) and 2) were alike. The third step was a kind of realization by
Folk and Ingram. The realization that they really were indeed selling nothing in
boxes and that, actually, all they were doing was talking and acting in a way that
amounted to saying that there is something where there is, in fact, nothing – plus
that, in principle, this could be replicated by anyone.
What were the likely consequences for them? One would be to close shop. A bold
step which would earn them lots of respect on one side and angry astonishment
on the other. The second possibility, to go on as if nothing had happened, was,
perhaps, made necessary because the symbolic capital they traded in and which
they would otherwise lose, was coupled with the wealth they lived off. But, in that
case, how could they go on without ridiculing themselves?
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The resolution was to accept that their symbolic trade was indistinguishable from
the mockery. Although this seems counter-intuitive, it is the postmodern tactic par
excellence; the use of cynical dissociation vis-à-vis one’s own position. Or to put it
another way: One uses truth as the most effective form of lie. Or in yet another
way: The x-buddhist already knows what the truth is. Slavoj Zizek puts it as
follows:
The cynical subject is quite aware of the distance between the
ideological mask and the social reality, but he none the less still insists
upon the mask.
Folk and Ingram are not, now, oblivious of their ideology. The problem is not the
gaining of knowledge about one’s ideology, or convincing somebody else that he,
in fact, inhabits a particular ideology, but how to break the spell of cynical
dissociation from a given ideology which is already understood as detrimental, and
while knowing this, insisting that one should go on using it.
In the passage from which the Zizek citation is taken we find another important
differentiation: Cynicism and Kynicism.
The classical kynical procedure is to confront the pathetic phrases of
the ruling official ideology — its solemn, grave tonality — with
everyday banality and to hold them up to ridicule, thus exposing
behind the sublime noblesse of the ideological phrases the egotistical
interests, the violence, the brutal claims to power.
Tutteji Wachtmeister uses this classical procedure. The problem which arises in
this situation – cynicism reacts against kynicism in simply using the truth to go on
lying – is that when one is “confronted with such cynical reason, the traditional
critique of ideology no longer works” (as Zizek concludes). Every kind of critique of
ideology at once can be discarded as another cynical dissociation. It is therefore
easy for the x-buddhist to dismiss the (not understood) non-buddhist critique and
eventually folks like Folk and Ingram just dive away and go on with their business.
A close reading of the text passage the Zizek citations are taken from will make
the whole problem clearer. It will make clear that ultimately we can no longer
subject the ideological text to ‘symptomatic reading’, confronting it with its blank
spots, with what it must repress to organize itself, to preserve its consistency —
cynical reason takes this distance into account in advance. (cf. Slavoj
Zizek: Cynicism as a Form of Ideology)
Tutteji nonetheless took a new step in the non-buddhist campaign. While we were,
as I see it, mostly engaged in good old critique of ideology – although the
Laruellean impetus should have led us somewhere totally different – Tutteji, for
the first time, managed to bring the x-buddhist to the point where s/he admitted
the sheer selling of nothing. And here two vectors come into interaction: Tutteji’s
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kynical campaign forced the x-buddhist to testify. Additionally the theoretical
underpinnings which are provided by Speculative Non-Buddhism came into play.
Kynicism is one way to pull out the x-buddhist from his hole, non-buddhist
performance is one means to decimate him to the point where aporetic
dissonance sets in. That is the point where kynicism and non-buddhist
performance could synergize – wreaking havoc to the x-buddhist vallation.
The spell bound x-buddhist subject
The discussion at Tutteji’s blog attracted a whole class of people from within the xbuddhist vallation. As Tutte went on to throw out parody after parody, those who
were the targets of his mockery gathered and looked on in awe. But underneath
the cynical fascination with the kynical onslaught there was an undercurrent which
seemed to attract people who were more than your average naïve x-buddhist
ventriloquist. During the debate several high(er) profile x-buddhists appeared
and obviously felt the need to comment on Tutteji’s kynicism and the nonbuddhism project. We have already mentioned Kenneth Folk and Daniel Ingram
who contributed lots of text in defending a position (Ingram) or who tried to beat
‘us’ at our own game (Folk); but there too was Vincent Horn, who felt the need to
come in into the discussion about the above mentioned book Pharmacological
Meditation. Horn admits to Tutteji,
to your point about “dopehead narcissim” vs. “Buddhist geekery” I
think this is a fine damn line, and we all know it. (Source, emphasis
added)
Here the motor of the Buddhist Geeks was forced to admit the blunt cynical grant
just discussed. Justin Whitaker arrived too, providing on his blog American
Buddhist Perspective a hastily summarized overview about the triple-sword-ofirony discussion. While the non-buddhist posse was banned by Whitaker from
taking part in this discussion, x-buddhists were free to express themselves: Enter
stage, for example, Seth Zuiho Segall, The Existential Buddhist or Robert M. Ellis
with his Middle Way Philosophy. What all these x-buddhists more or less openly
admitted, mesmerized as they were by Tutteji’s kynic blessings, was their
attraction to the Speculative Non-Buddhist (SNB) project.
Perhaps it was Kenneth Folk who admitted in the most open manner what the
propellant was.
I find the NSB [sic] critique valuable. I have been influenced by some
of the ideas. (Source)
Or take Seth Zuiho Segall who admitted to “read[ing] [the Speculative NonBuddhism] website out of sheer curiosity,” while at the same time saying “I don’t
find any of it enlightening.”
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The question arises as to the sources of so much x-buddhist interest. What are
they interested in? Influential ideas? Which ones exactly? Curiosity? But about
what? There was interest, as Folk says, about ideas that are there and which are
valuable and influential. But we never get to know anything specific. Also, these
people are not the only ones attracted by that quality that seemed, somehow, to
evade definition. During the many discussion, over the two years at the
Speculative Non-Buddhist blog, many people became involved, and many of these
could in no way be dismissed as uninformed; for example: Stephan Batchelor,
Jayarava, Linda Blanchard, Stephen Schettini, Bhikkhu Brahmali, David Chapman,
Ted Meissner, Ajahn Sujato. These are just a random few who either engaged in
discussion at the blog, or were involved elsewhere in discussion with and about
the non-buddhists.
What is most astonishing in all these discussions, and this doesn’t apply only to
the skeptics mentioned here, is the fact that none of these people, in either the
recent discussion at Tutteji’s, or in earlier discussions, is able to name just one
specific non-buddhist term. There is a lot of complaint, apart from the obvious
interest in non-buddhism, about rude language and being bullied all the time by
“the non-buddhist punks;” but nowhere is it obvious that the idea of nonbuddhism is understood, or that they have at least a suspicion of what the nonbuddhist critique is about. This is all the more remarkable as there have been
quite a number of texts introducing or discussing non-buddhism. One reason
might be that the spellbound x-buddhist, although not really getting what the nonbuddhist wants, senses some future potential. A new commodity, for example,
which could be exploited to generate new symbolic capital. This, of course, is
exactly what they will not get from non-buddhism. Or is it something else entirely?
Something perhaps similar to that what many x-buddhists might have wanted
from Buddhism originally – only to be disappointed in the end?
That I may understand whatever
Binds the world’s innermost core together,
See all its workings, and its seeds,
Deal no more in words’ empty reeds.
Three Points
I want to summarize, briefly at this stage, what has happened until now in the
non-buddhist/x-buddhist discourse. It seems to me that it has certain
characteristics which might yield certain actions and consequences (to be
discussed in the following parts of this series).
First we have the iceberg. I refer here to the so called “90–9–1 principle” which
states that in a collaborative website 90% of the participants of a community view
only content, 9% of the participants take part in discussions, edit and/or think
actively about the content, and only 1% of the participants actively create new
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content. 90% of readers, then, are lurkers who are, nonetheless, attracted and/or
fascinated. The above 9% are those, I guess, who, being interested in the topic,
take action in some form (even if it is only superficial criticism) – that’s the tip of
the iceberg (remember, these are only some of the skeptics (who function
as nodal points in the network). Not mentioned are people sympathetic to the
project, nodal or not; in other words the tip of the iceberg is much larger than
shown here).
Second, although the mentioned x-buddhists are compelled to pay attention, all
they can say is that they are repelled by the nasty appearance of the non-buddhist
posse…while, third, there is a complete – 100% – lack of any knowledge about
what the speculative non-buddhist work is. In no comment, in no contribution, in
no assertion about Speculative Non-Buddhism in the recent discussions, even in
the sympathetic ones (which are there too, indeed), is there to be found even one
term from the Critique and Performance provided by Glenn Wallis for this
project (I refer to the new formulation from Wallis’s text in Cruel Theory/Sublime
Practice mentioned at the beginning.) The non-buddhist terminology has been
there all along, though, since the publication of “Nascent Speculative NonBuddhism” in November 2011).
These three points pulled together sketch one stark picture about our x-buddhist
interlocutors and lurkers:


There are many who are interested, even fascinated I would say. Fascinated
to the point where they admit that the critique is right (see above: cynic vs.
kynic). Whatever the reason, these people cannot ignore the non-buddhist
critique. The fact is: they pay attention! Conclusion: There is something they
are hooked on.
The constant objection about being bullied – why can’t they simply
ignore the non-buddhist? – is another sign that the hook is on, that the
fascination is actually taking place. But the admittance that this is so isn’t
possible right now, therefore the lament of resistance. Probably it is felt that
the non-buddhist leads to anchoric loss and incidental exile. The
fascination has to do with the intuition that non-buddhist critique and
performance would lead to an actual shift of consciousness, to a real insight
into what mind really is.
This constellation makes for a powerful mixture which could explode right
into the face of x-buddhism.

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What is lacking to ignite the fuse is the knowledge of the tools Wallis
provided and what they could achieve. The emptiness of zero non-buddhist
knowledge has to be filled with the thought tool of the non-buddhist. That’s
the one point: people should no longer have the excuse to evade the nonbuddhist heuristic. The non-buddhist mind altering non-meditation must be
pushed into the market place.

But, on the other side, from the short discussion above – truth as the most
effective form of lie –, it is clear that this non-meditation can no longer have
the form of simple propositional argumentation or old school critique
of ideology. I will try to tackle how it could otherwise looking the third part
of this mini-series. But it is clear that the question about how something
could be pushed into the market place, which would, in turn, change that
very place – and at last it is about just that! – is one of the most difficult
questions we can face. This series though is concerned with more obvious
problems. These are mainly about how to force the x-buddhist into
conversation – at the Great Feast of Knowledge.
The lurkers (90%) and the active participants, skeptic, anti or not (10%), need to
be provided with the tools which already exist, and are there ready to use. What
will happen if they are provided with the input needed to use the non-buddhist
critique? Sure, folks like Folk, Horn, Ingram etc., won’t give up their candy stores.
But what will happen when more people from the invisible part of the iceberg
come to use the non-buddhist heuristic, or when they see what happens when xbuddhist postulates are decimated, remains to be seen. But I am sure there are
many who would show the dupers selling their emptiness-juleps (ask Rinzler for
this one) the exit if, for once, they could finally have a serious conversation.
Whatever the consequences the intention here is to risk them.
Fact is, the non-buddhist fascinates. Fact is, the kynic parody and the nonbuddhist theory together have recently developed quite a momentum. X-buddhists
are being forced from their thaumaturgical refuge and forced to look at their
contradictions. That’s the result of
“Critique” [that] is that form of discourse which seeks to inhabit the
experience of the subject from inside, in order to elicit those “valid”
features of that experience which point beyond the subject’s present
condition. (Wallis citing Terry Eagleton)
However it unfolded, we have to look now at how it can go on. The wheel has been
set in motion. Let’s see where it leads. The x-buddhist suddenly isn’t sure any
more about his thaumaturgical refuge. Aporetic dissonance is setting in as an
effect of the two vectors of kynic mocking and theoretical piercing. The x-buddhist
experiences from inside the irrefutable reality of utter irritation. A force
relentlessly moving forward impels him/her to realize that the supposed place
where, finally, they felt like they had arrived home – the refuge – is but one more
arbitrary representation of empty reality.
And please don’t take it all too goddamn seriously
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THE AUTHOR
Matthias Steingass is the founder of the German-English language blogs Der
Unbuddhist and Kritikos & Bodhi, and co-founder, with Patrick Jennings, of the
English-language blog The Non-Buddhist. Matthias studied math and economics.
He has worked in the financial markets for the past seventeen years. He has also
worked as a musician (bass and sampling). In addition to his career, Matthias is
currently pursuing his interests in philosophy while at the same time pursing music
again, this time as a songwriter. Matthias can be reached at:
matthias.steingass@web.de
Originally published at The Non-Buddhist.
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non + x
issue nine
2014