The Lama and the brutal peasants

[Henry C.K. Liu]

D.L. who calls himself boddisatva is a klepto Buddhist totally without humility,
the equivalence of an intellectual without intelligence.
A boddhisattva is worshiped as a deity in Mahayana Buddhism.
It is the name given to an enlightened being who compassionately refrains from
entering nirvana in order to save others.
D.L., who has the audacity to say "Tibetan Buddhism seems to me to be filled
with far too much hocus-pocus" while blatantly parading his own proud ignorance
of the religion, exposes only his own shallowness.
The schismatic struggle between the Yellow Hat order for ascendancy over the
original Red Hat order of Lamaism was a profound theological event that only the
uneducated would dismiss trivially.
Anyone who uses the term "red mandarins" is unworthy of serious attention on
matters concerning Chinese politics.
D.L. certainly has a lot to say about subjects on which he knows little.

Henry C.K. Liu

"D.L." wrote:


>         To whom...,
>
>     I'm continually amazed at the extent to which socialism, the most
> intellectually developed of world views, attracts people who want to divide
> the world (whose nuances socialism so subtly interprets) into black hats
> and white hats (or maybe yellow hats and red hats, in the case of Comrade
> Liu).  Suggest to leftists that some victimized group of peasants or indios
> are a little behind the dialectical curve and you are labeled a
> war-mongering, capitalist-abetting racist.  Suggest that the Dalai Lama, a
> man overtly and openly mired in the middle ages, should be forgiven for not
> fitting in to the 20th century and you are an elitist counter-revolutionary
> and a dupe of neo-feudal fascism.   Leftists seem alternately to be
> furiously building illusions like antic bees or brooding with nihilistic
> fury at their
> disillusionment.
>
>     What's more, socialists, like bees whose nest has been
> destroyed, seem to hover around broken dreams, vainly hoping they will
> reassemble themselves.   The Soviet Union dies and still some socialists
> battle on defending its viability.  The red mandarins of China embrace
> capitalist two-fistedly and run people over with tanks for the world to see
> and still socialists knee-jerk to defend them.  Castro will simply never be
> anything but an angel to many socialists despite the many warts that the
> most flattering portrait reveals.  When Mobutu was in the process of leaving
> power, I was castigated for suggesting that Kabila might be something less
> than the great hope of the Congo.
>
>     This search for villains and heroes is understandable enough but it gets
> in the way of answers. I think socialists, as completely marginalized as we
> are, need no longer spend time defending icons.  The sad truth is that we
> not only cannot win thie icon game, we have already lost it.  The capitalist
> world is simply better at picking and promoting heroes and villains.  They
> have cast our heroes as their villains and most people have bought the
> storyline.   Their advantage is that they cannot be disillusioned.
> Capitalism is a world of illusion and a world that demands people accept
> shifting illusions.
>
>     peace