This teaching may appear to us as being addressed to an abstract
humanity, but, at the time it was professed, there are strong grounds
for thinking that it didn't appear that way. The simple fact that,
originally, women were not allowed to have access to Buddhist
teachings should get us thinking, especially in this demo-
gynaecocratic day and age we live in.
There must be something which we didn't point out clearly enough, for
you to see now in the attitude of Buddhism towards castes a "social
pragmatism". Besides, early Buddhism didn't have any 'social message'
to deliver. If, by proclaiming "Not by caste is one a pariah, not by
caste is one a brâhmana; by actions is once a pariah, by actions is
one a brâhmana", Buddhism meant to draw our attention to the fact
that, in the kali-yuga, men are not necessarily born in the caste
which corresponds to their nature and their qualification, then, far
from constituting "an admission on pragmatic grounds of the
legitimacy of the present reign of demoplutocracy and its alibi
of "upward class mobility", this teaching invites us not to yield to
the temptation of equating, within the context of 'castes mixing' and
the class-struggle which follows on from it, social status with
spiritual dignity.
Are you sure that "Evola's whole dispute with Guénon was over whether
the archetypal leadership in a society should creatively embody both
the functions of the priest AND the warrior"? And that this was the
case in the military religious orders of the Middle Ages? Certainly,
the "analogies between the qualities of an ascetic and the virtues of
a warrior and of a hero" which "recur frequently in the canonical
texts" (p.16) wouldn't have left Bernard of Clairveaux, who
contributed to the decimation of the flower of Nordic nobility by
preaching the necessity of the second Crusade, indifferent. Both
Evola and Guénon approved of his 'holy war', yet.
--- In
evola_as_he_is@yahoogroups.com, "brightimperator"
<brightimperator@y...> wrote:
>
> Thank you for the elucidations. Assuming the Buddhist theory of
> karmic formations (shankaras) provides coherence to the Traditional
> understanding of ethnic-spiritual heredity, this is left
> unexplicated in the Canon. In fact, what we encounter in the actual
> body of writings is the teaching of the inherent spiritual
> fungibility of an abstract humanity.
>
> As you clearly point out, it is possible to view the
> Buddhist 'reform' of Brahmanism as a form of social pragmatism,
> owing to the special chaotic conditions of the present epoch - one
> wonders how far this reasoning can be safely extended. For
instance,
> considering that, in our age of confusion and entropy, race, caste,
> soul, and spirit are discordant in a significant portion of modern
> humankind, could this line of thought constitute an admission on
> pragmatic grounds of the legitimacy of the present reign of
> demoplutocracy and its alibi of "upward class mobility"?
>
> Regarding subversion: The skills and actions of a warrior,
according
> to the Pali Canon, can only lead to endless rebirth and purgatory,
> not to the "triumphal death" expounded by Evola in "Revolt".
Doesn't
> Buddhism and its `ethical hemiplegia', its refusal to incorporate
> knightly self-affirmation into its ideal, mark it as a "lunar"
> religion according to Evola's own standards? In the Viniyapitaka
> (the Book of Discipline) monks are restricted from even attending
> local military displays. I am aware that the condemnations of the
> military appear in a transcendental context. Yet Evola's whole
> dispute with Guenon was over whether the archetypal leadership in a
> society should creatively embody both the functions of the priest
> AND the warrior, as in the military religious orders of the Middle
> Ages and specifically the Cistercian-based original Knights Templar.
>