Bruckner’s Skeptical Take on the Dalai Lama, Namaste Y’all
The Dalai Lama is "a pure product of marketing, a sort of a peddler specializing in wisdom and serenity..."
It was considered naughty a decade ago to criticize the Dalai Lama, but we must consider why it was such a taboo. Not because he is a holy man but because his endorsement had become a seal of approval for all sorts of dubious exploitative and pseudoscientific commercial enterprises, like positive psychology.
Positive psychologists turn cranky and negative if you don’t just listen intently and smile and nod.
The spell had already been broken for me when I could track down rumors as true. about Jon Kabat-Zinn’s involvement of monks in training drone pilots to kill without guilt.
Pascal Bruckner’s book Perpetual Euphoria: On the Duty to Be Happy
When I discovered Pascal Bruckner’s book, Perpetual Euphoria: On the Duty to Be Happy, I knew the Negateers should get a way of inducting new members, but we had not devised a decision-making process on which everyone would agree. We were a loud, contentious, rowdy group that might offend someone who did not understand the nuance and irony of our lunch conversations. Bruckner would need to be as fluent in English conversation to keep up as he is when he writes in French and then gets translated by someone else.
"Coming out of exile like an Asian Moses descending from the Himalayas to reveal the essential truths to us, the bearer of extraordinary history and culture and a marvelous tradition, in the course of time he has transformed himself into a worldly guru (like Rajneesh and Maharishi Mahesh Yogi before him, and like Deepak Chopra today, who has become a mentor to Hollywood stars), part marriage counselor, part dietitian, and part spiritual adviser, tolerantly and good-naturedly offering up on the answers, he has an answer to every question. It is as if he had become, probably without being aware of it, a pure product of marketing, a sort of a peddler specializing in wisdom and serenity, and punctuating each is remarked with the legendary laugh. "
Bruckner's criticism of the Dalai Lama drew me in. Still, the quote has to be understood within his broader critique of the cultural and societal pressures to achieve perpetual happiness and contentment.
The Dalai Lama is not mentioned much in the book, mainly in footnotes in discussions where Bruckner criticizes Catholic Popes for making a virtue of suffering.
The book is sometimes a bit heavygoing, especially considering it is intended for an intelligent lay audience, not philosophers.
You won’t finish the book in one or two sittings.
I pictured Pascal not drinking copious wine with our Negateer gang in the Meatpacking District of NYC, but in a sober panel discussion with Barbara Fredrickson. Of course, that would never happen.
Bruckner undermines Fredrickson's sense of happiness and Love2.0 as being about excitement forever, one long orgasm that would soon become exhausting and put anyone to sleep if they were not faking the moans and thrashing about.
I don’t know much about Bruckner’s sex life except that I know he is the author of the novel Bitter Moon, which was turned into a controversial sensual movie by Roman Polanski.
In a suspiciously passionate but casual one-nighter, I could imagine Brechner saying, “Could you please be quieter? I can’t concentrate on you.” He seems wicked enough to add, “How about picking up your nail file and doing your nails instead?”
The hilarious last chapter, Madame Verdurin’s Croissant, starts off with
Believe those who seek the truth, doubt those who find it.—Andre’ Gide
The second-to-last paragraph:
Finally, it is perhaps time to say that the “secret” of a good life is not to give a damn about happiness, never seek it as such, to accept it without asking whether it is deserved or contributes to the edification of the human race; not to forget its loss; to let it retain its fantastic character, which allows it to emerge in the middle of ordinary days or slip away in grandiose situations. In short, we have to consider always and everywhere secondary since it never occurs in relationship to something else.
Good Reads preferred the last paragraph of the chapter.
“To happiness in the strict sense, we may prefer pleasure, as a brief moment of ecstasy stolen in the course of things, gaiety, the lighthearted drunkenness that accompanies life's development, and especially joy, which presupposes surprise and elation. For nothing can compete with the irruption in our lives of an event or a being that ravages and ravishes us. There is always too much to desire, to discover, to love. And we leave the stage having hardly tasted the feast.”
And before that:
“How’s it going?” People have not always greeted each other in this way: they invoked divine protection for themselves, and they did not bow before a commoner the way they bowed before a nobleman. In order for the formula “How’s it going?” to appear, we had to leave the feudal world and enter the democratic era, which presupposes a minimal degree of equality between individuals, subject to oscillations in their moods. According to one legend, the French expression “ça va?” is of medical origin: how do you defecate? A vestige of a time when intestinal regularity was seen as a sign of good health
…You’re looking good today.” Flowing over us like honey, this compliment has the effect of a kind of consecration: in the confrontation between the radiant and the grouchy, I am on the right side. And now I am, through a bit of verbal magic, raised to the summit of a subtle and ever-changing hierarchy. But the following day another, ruthless verdict is handed down: “You look terrible today.” This observation executes me at point-blank range, deprives me of the splendid position where I thought I had taken up permanent residence. I have not proven worthy of the caste of the magnificent, I am a pariah and have to slink along walls, trying to conceal the fact that I look ill.”
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Haha, a great article. I remember being flamed years ago for daring to criticise the DL. And after hearing your explanation of the origin of “ca va”, saying it will never be the same :-)