Zizek Lecture

Slavoj Zizek speaking at the University of Vermont on October 16th, 2012.

• Category

  Education

[Oliaun Lastds]

3:42

[Jonah Dempcy]

The scene from Annie Hall with Marshall McCluhan Zizek refers to is at youtube/watch?v=9wWUc8BZgWE

[Gregory Wonderwheel]

I wonder if Zizek could sit still in meditation without the obsessive compulsive ritualized gestures? Perhaps his rejection of Buddhism is his reaction formation due to his inability to meditate and to deal with his own inner psychological conflicts that are manifested in the compulsive gesturing.

[Gregory Wonderwheel]

LOL! Zizek thinks Mahayana is "evil". He doesn't really know much about Buddha Dharma AT ALL. He says he says the First Noble Truth of Suffering is somehow contradicted by the psychoanalytic observation that people love their suffering. But "people are attached (by love and hate) to their suffering" is exactly the combination of the First and Second Noble Truths. Zizek's Freudian Marxism is impotent to deal with the transcendence of subject-object.

[Andre Canivet]

Thanks!  Metta.

[Peter Knopfler]

Very difficult for ZiZek to sit still, long enough to meditate, without this experience,

of meditation and stillness, Nothing is known. That landscape behind your eyes is greater than the one in front, unless you experience this meditative process all understanding is LOST dry as the desert wind.

[Peter Knopfler]

YES! Well written, and the expressed opinions are closely akin to those I hold. Thanks, Be still, and know.

[pioughd87]

i really wish they'd start these things with a shot of the room the scholar is in. i don't know why, but every time i watch a lecture it bugs me that the lecturer is just in front of a nondescript wall at a nondescript table.

[Andre Canivet]

That said, Zizek is a genuinely interesting guy, and I really found this talk quite fascinating.

[Andre Canivet]

Of course, a big part of the problem is that Zizek is trying to analyze Buddhism from an intellectual standpoint, when it's really about doing the practice. Meditating and practicing basic ethics... it's only then that the experience unfolds. Also, I find it helps to balance it out with a little comparative spirituality... if you understand the redemptive psychology of New Testament Christianity, or the open-heartedness of Mevlevi Sufis, you get much closer to what Buddhist compassion means.

[Andre Canivet]

The doctrine of non-attachment simply means you're focused on the present moment and not clinging to out-dated perceptions... it does not mean having the mentality of a sociopath.

[Andre Canivet]

Zizek makes a fundamental mistake by equating Nirvana with a kind of rarefied emotional detachment (granted, many Buddhists make the same mistake). But that's not Nirvana. Nirvana is condition where compassion arises spontaneously, and you're fully engaged with life---you take the fall---you just recover quickly. The meditation, and the "basic ethics" is designed to create conditions where compassion can occur. So no, you can't be a torturer and be a real buddhist...