Freedom: A Buddhist Critique

"In the Middle Ages, religion enjoyed ascendancy vis-s-vis rationality. Since the Renaissance, however, tables began to turn, and rationality became progressively assertive. In current times, as a result of the assault upon rationality by Nietzsche, there appears to be a resurgence of religiosity. Thus, people are again seeking assistance from revelation. Islam appears to be among the beneficiaries of this revival. The appeal of religion in Europe began to wane from the time of the Renaissance. This was partly a result of abuses by ecclesiastical authorities, such as the sales of indulgences, as argued by the supporters of the Reformation. Religion was viewed as repressive and backward. The philosophers, among others, wanted to free reason from the shackles of religion. However, this freeing did not remain confined to reason, but grew to encompass the passions. The Romantic experience under the influence of Rousseau accelerated this process, which erupted in the French Revolution. Almost all teachings that took the place of revelation reflect efforts to free the passions from restraint by revelation and eventually reason, too. The very faculty that helped to free the human spirit from the shackles of institutionalised religion was attacked by Nietzsche. The rationalists (Spinoza, Descartes) advocated the freedom of thought. Hobbes and Nietzsche explored power. Smith emancipated greed. Rousseau wanted freedom. Hegel explained existence as the clash between the rulers and the ruled. Marx emphasised equality and explained existence as a war between the wealthy and the poor. Freud explained existence as the pursuit of pleasure. As it is awareness of God that restrains desires, renewal requires a re-engagement with revelation. (18 pages)

Antonianum, 2016

Lynch here criticizes modern individualistic and rationalistic tendencies to dismiss collective passions and traditions. This approach misses inevitable aspects of social life and so 'fails to understand the true nature of collective. .. morality' (2). Further, it is dangerous, tempting us to glibly ignore collective passions and their violent potential. Central to Lynch's critique is the phenomena of 'the sacred', and he aims to illuminate its social role by distinguishing it from traditional religions. Lynch follows Durkheim's functionalism in defining the sacred as a sphere of experience and behavior-namely, that which is 'set apart or forbidden' (23). So anything may be sacred; indeed 'flags, war memorials, bills of rights and child protection procedures' all function as sacred in modern society (24). The sacred is experienced as 'non-contingent' and (note) 'unquestionable' (26). It is discovered not by our disposition to call an object sacred, but in the powerful responses the object elicits, especially when confronted with the profane, a kind of 'evil' which threatens to 'pollute' the sacred (26-27). The sacred, then, creates emotionally powerful social dynamics by reinforcing collective identities in ritual and symbol. Because of the sacred's binding role, 'as a matter of theoretical principle. .. society without the sacred is impossible' (35). This argument is a priori, which perhaps explains the lack of cross-cultural illustrations. Lynch shows the transience of sacred forms with a whirlwind survey from prehistory until the present. Pre-modernity's hierarchical sacred forms collapsed under the Reformation's deinstitutionalization, which separated religion from social life. Modern societies needed other unifying symbols and forms and predominantly settled on nation and humanity as sacred. These should not be understood as secular 'quasireligions,' though (102). Unlike traditional religions, they shape society not as distinct phenomena but in a complex interplay. Moreover, these sacred forms both affect and are affected by traditional religions. Despite the word's connotations, the sacred is not unambiguously positive. It demarcates out-groups and produces powerful collective sentiments. It tends to create 'moral blind spot[s]' and can motivate violence against the profane (120). This unveiling of the sacred's dark side is the heart of the book. Lynch suggests that theology can provide even the nonreligious with resources to correct these violent tendencies. The theme of transcendence reminds us that our sacred forms are not equivalent to moral reality, and the theme of universal sinfulness protects against self-righteousness. These help us see others as human beings rather than sacred/profane symbols. Repeatedly, however, a number of related problems appear which threaten Lynch's main definitions and distract from his normative argument. Recall Lynch's insistence that the sacred is 'unquestionable'. It follows by definition that critical reflection on the sacred, including Lynch's, undermines sacred commitments, thus threatening 'relativism' (14). But why think that the sacred is unquestionable? Lynch thinks we must 'defend ourselves from the unsettling recognition' (41) that 'what we take to be unchanging, universal sacred realities are in fact continually undergoing gradual change' (40). But this conflates ontology with epistemology. Torture can be universally wrong, notwithstanding medieval mores, just as water was H 2 0 before modern chemistry discovered the fact. Lynch himself grants this (14, 152) but nevertheless suggests that 'we can never fully allow ourselves to experience' our understanding of the sacred as evolving 'if those sacred meanings are to have any purchase on our lives' (41). This claim's plausibility rests on the vital-seemingly constitutive-role emotion plays in the sacred as Lynch defines it. Reflection often seems to dispel emotional zeal. But we can apprehend the same object (say, humanity) as valuable with or without certain emotions (though not without any). One can find pedophilia absolutely impermissible without feeling murderous rage. Indeed, Lynch wants this sort of result (146). But Lynch's criterion for identifying the sacred relies on strong reactions (25-30). Does this imply that without gut reactions we can hold something only as 'valuable', not as 'sacred'? This would confine the sacred mostly to negative phenomena, especially since shared values can plausibly bind communities together (another supposed mark of the sacred). Without conceptually clarifying the relations of emotions and values to the sacred, its explanatory and normative value will be unclear. Despite these reservations, Lynch provides an engaging introduction to Durkheim's thought and its recent appropriations (especially by Yale's

The Heythrop Journal, 2017

Lynch here criticizes modern individualistic and rationalistic tendencies to dismiss collective passions and traditions. This approach misses inevitable aspects of social life and so 'fails to understand the true nature of collective. .. morality' (2). Further, it is dangerous, tempting us to glibly ignore collective passions and their violent potential. Central to Lynch's critique is the phenomena of 'the sacred', and he aims to illuminate its social role by distinguishing it from traditional religions. Lynch follows Durkheim's functionalism in defining the sacred as a sphere of experience and behavior-namely, that which is 'set apart or forbidden' (23). So anything may be sacred; indeed 'flags, war memorials, bills of rights and child protection procedures' all function as sacred in modern society (24). The sacred is experienced as 'non-contingent' and (note) 'unquestionable' (26). It is discovered not by our disposition to call an object sacred, but in the powerful responses the object elicits, especially when confronted with the profane, a kind of 'evil' which threatens to 'pollute' the sacred (26-27). The sacred, then, creates emotionally powerful social dynamics by reinforcing collective identities in ritual and symbol. Because of the sacred's binding role, 'as a matter of theoretical principle. .. society without the sacred is impossible' (35). This argument is a priori, which perhaps explains the lack of cross-cultural illustrations. Lynch shows the transience of sacred forms with a whirlwind survey from prehistory until the present. Pre-modernity's hierarchical sacred forms collapsed under the Reformation's deinstitutionalization, which separated religion from social life. Modern societies needed other unifying symbols and forms and predominantly settled on nation and humanity as sacred. These should not be understood as secular 'quasireligions,' though (102). Unlike traditional religions, they shape society not as distinct phenomena but in a complex interplay. Moreover, these sacred forms both affect and are affected by traditional religions. Despite the word's connotations, the sacred is not unambiguously positive. It demarcates out-groups and produces powerful collective sentiments. It tends to create 'moral blind spot[s]' and can motivate violence against the profane (120). This unveiling of the sacred's dark side is the heart of the book. Lynch suggests that theology can provide even the nonreligious with resources to correct these violent tendencies. The theme of transcendence reminds us that our sacred forms are not equivalent to moral reality, and the theme of universal sinfulness protects against self-righteousness. These help us see others as human beings rather than sacred/profane symbols. Repeatedly, however, a number of related problems appear which threaten Lynch's main definitions and distract from his normative argument. Recall Lynch's insistence that the sacred is 'unquestionable'. It follows by definition that critical reflection on the sacred, including Lynch's, undermines sacred commitments, thus threatening 'relativism' (14). But why think that the sacred is unquestionable? Lynch thinks we must 'defend ourselves from the unsettling recognition' (41) that 'what we take to be unchanging, universal sacred realities are in fact continually undergoing gradual change' (40). But this conflates ontology with epistemology. Torture can be universally wrong, notwithstanding medieval mores, just as water was H 2 0 before modern chemistry discovered the fact. Lynch himself grants this (14, 152) but nevertheless suggests that 'we can never fully allow ourselves to experience' our understanding of the sacred as evolving 'if those sacred meanings are to have any purchase on our lives' (41). This claim's plausibility rests on the vital-seemingly constitutive-role emotion plays in the sacred as Lynch defines it. Reflection often seems to dispel emotional zeal. But we can apprehend the same object (say, humanity) as valuable with or without certain emotions (though not without any). One can find pedophilia absolutely impermissible without feeling murderous rage. Indeed, Lynch wants this sort of result (146). But Lynch's criterion for identifying the sacred relies on strong reactions (25-30). Does this imply that without gut reactions we can hold something only as 'valuable', not as 'sacred'? This would confine the sacred mostly to negative phenomena, especially since shared values can plausibly bind communities together (another supposed mark of the sacred). Without conceptually clarifying the relations of emotions and values to the sacred, its explanatory and normative value will be unclear. Despite these reservations, Lynch provides an engaging introduction to Durkheim's thought and its recent appropriations (especially by Yale's

Journal for Continental Philosophy of Religion, 2019

Art, of any variety, cannot hope to escape the religious. Transcendence, reconciliation, conversion, sin, guilt, sacrifice and everything else that makes life comprehensible (everything that makes life interesting) will always carry the pungent odor of incense. The surplus beyond the reach of our reason, where artistic creation is justified and exists, needs a serious house on serious earthit needs a place where we might know what escapes what is known: a holy place, a temple, a church. Away from faith, the artist confronts the sterility of secular society; a more insalubrious environment for creation can hardly be imagined. A materialist, mechanistic universe is not even compelling enough to invite refutation, let alone encourage art of any merit. Reason alone, pure or otherwise, is incommensurate with artistic making (and, apparently, not only that variety of making). A volume entitled Religion in Contemporary European Cinema, then, piques interest from the jump, as the current (or at least modern) auteurs of the continent seem to operate in a difficult spot, or what Costica Bradatan and Camil Ungureanu dub "The Postsecular Constellation." Artists located within the constellation are so identified "by virtue of their rejection of secularism and the search for an open, positive and interactive relation between reason and religion in modern societies" (203). Bradatan and Ungureanu have compiled an engrossing study, not merely because of the variety of artists examined and the interlocutors welcomed in-Kierkegaard, Nancy, and Kristeva, to name a few-but because the essays, in the collective, delineate a particularly inconvenient problem at the center of this Postsecular Constellation.

Luther's Last Laugh: Journey to IndulGermania, 2019

‘Indulgermania’ is a homonym that represents both a pathological pandemic and a geopolitical entity, as well as being a serendipitous reminder that the indulgence and fascist forms of capitalism have a common totalitarian public relations and marketing root, for Germania was the proposed redesign of Berlin as the envisaged capital of a Nazi superstate..... In 1517, a thoroughly obscure academic theologian at the second rank newbie university of Wittenberg in Southern Germany, by the name of Martin Luther, broke with the medieval mother church over the issue of Papal indulgences. Contrary to all expectations, including his own, he blithely triggered off a long simmering politico-religious chain reaction that broke up the medieval world through a movement known as The Reformation, which, along with the emergence of capitalism, became the twin political crucibles of what is now known as ‘Modern Times’. The thesis to be argued here is that the vices of indulgence are very likely to to provide the trigger to a similar ideological, social and economic convulsion in possibly the first half of the twenty-first century, that will analogously chain react the modern period into a post-modern interregnum and civilizationally ‘cleansing’ meltdown, characterized by the same kinds of wars of toleration and ongoing economic restructuring that brought our present period into being. The 9/11 attacks on the New York World Trade Centres were the first substantial taste of the likely coming collisions between traditional faiths (and their secular anti regime ‘protest-ant’ allies), and the ‘Indulgentsia’; i.e., the humanist ‘church’ and corporatist secular ‘crown’ twin regime ascendancies of Indulgence Capitalism, where an economy and culture of needs and wants is replaced by one of indulgent fantasies of desire and satiating them immediately, at a price that may well make the depredations of twentieth century totalitarianisms seem like a warm up act. This coming period of chronic upheaval will be emblematic of the politics of institutional power, productive endeavour, legitimacy, consent and war in the coming millennium, that will at least initially, primarily represent a fundamental struggle over the culture, politics and economics of indulgence.

This essay proposes that Buddhism and Christianity can be brought into a complementary, mutually enriching relationship through exploring the theme of "desire." Both traditions in different ways depict a human condition distorted by ego-logical selfenclosure and suggest that the path to liberation involves a reorientation of consciousness that has direct moral implications. In such a reorientation, desire-as a basic mode of orientation toward others-becomes fundamentally transformed and opened outward into a state of dynamic attunement, reconfigured as a posture of self-releasing love and compassion. Unpacking this in more detail will help shed light on important areas where Buddhism and Christianity have much to say to one another.

Religious Studies Review, 2015

The Heythrop Journal, 2017

Lynch here criticizes modern individualistic and rationalistic tendencies to dismiss collective passions and traditions. This approach misses inevitable aspects of social life and so 'fails to understand the true nature of collective. .. morality' (2). Further, it is dangerous, tempting us to glibly ignore collective passions and their violent potential. Central to Lynch's critique is the phenomena of 'the sacred', and he aims to illuminate its social role by distinguishing it from traditional religions. Lynch follows Durkheim's functionalism in defining the sacred as a sphere of experience and behavior-namely, that which is 'set apart or forbidden' (23). So anything may be sacred; indeed 'flags, war memorials, bills of rights and child protection procedures' all function as sacred in modern society (24). The sacred is experienced as 'non-contingent' and (note) 'unquestionable' (26). It is discovered not by our disposition to call an object sacred, but in the powerful responses the object elicits, especially when confronted with the profane, a kind of 'evil' which threatens to 'pollute' the sacred (26-27). The sacred, then, creates emotionally powerful social dynamics by reinforcing collective identities in ritual and symbol. Because of the sacred's binding role, 'as a matter of theoretical principle. .. society without the sacred is impossible' (35). This argument is a priori, which perhaps explains the lack of cross-cultural illustrations. Lynch shows the transience of sacred forms with a whirlwind survey from prehistory until the present. Pre-modernity's hierarchical sacred forms collapsed under the Reformation's deinstitutionalization, which separated religion from social life. Modern societies needed other unifying symbols and forms and predominantly settled on nation and humanity as sacred. These should not be understood as secular 'quasireligions,' though (102). Unlike traditional religions, they shape society not as distinct phenomena but in a complex interplay. Moreover, these sacred forms both affect and are affected by traditional religions. Despite the word's connotations, the sacred is not unambiguously positive. It demarcates out-groups and produces powerful collective sentiments. It tends to create 'moral blind spot[s]' and can motivate violence against the profane (120). This unveiling of the sacred's dark side is the heart of the book. Lynch suggests that theology can provide even the nonreligious with resources to correct these violent tendencies. The theme of transcendence reminds us that our sacred forms are not equivalent to moral reality, and the theme of universal sinfulness protects against self-righteousness. These help us see others as human beings rather than sacred/profane symbols. Repeatedly, however, a number of related problems appear which threaten Lynch's main definitions and distract from his normative argument. Recall Lynch's insistence that the sacred is 'unquestionable'. It follows by definition that critical reflection on the sacred, including Lynch's, undermines sacred commitments, thus threatening 'relativism' (14). But why think that the sacred is unquestionable? Lynch thinks we must 'defend ourselves from the unsettling recognition' (41) that 'what we take to be unchanging, universal sacred realities are in fact continually undergoing gradual change' (40). But this conflates ontology with epistemology. Torture can be universally wrong, notwithstanding medieval mores, just as water was H 2 0 before modern chemistry discovered the fact. Lynch himself grants this (14, 152) but nevertheless suggests that 'we can never fully allow ourselves to experience' our understanding of the sacred as evolving 'if those sacred meanings are to have any purchase on our lives' (41). This claim's plausibility rests on the vital-seemingly constitutive-role emotion plays in the sacred as Lynch defines it. Reflection often seems to dispel emotional zeal. But we can apprehend the same object (say, humanity) as valuable with or without certain emotions (though not without any). One can find pedophilia absolutely impermissible without feeling murderous rage. Indeed, Lynch wants this sort of result (146). But Lynch's criterion for identifying the sacred relies on strong reactions (25-30). Does this imply that without gut reactions we can hold something only as 'valuable', not as 'sacred'? This would confine the sacred mostly to negative phenomena, especially since shared values can plausibly bind communities together (another supposed mark of the sacred). Without conceptually clarifying the relations of emotions and values to the sacred, its explanatory and normative value will be unclear. Despite these reservations, Lynch provides an engaging introduction to Durkheim's thought and its recent appropriations (especially by Yale's