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Sutras of Flesh and Blood

2012

Sutras of Flesh and Blood

non + x

Issue 7

Glenn Wallis

This is not the manifesto of a movement, but rather the expression, among other things, of someone determined to expose a faade, signing the expiration warrant of a doctrine composed in the language of dreams, preferring a speech disheveled by the wind and pitted with holes, but with the kind of authority that a ruin cannot help but have and that no mere movement can ever possess.* _____

Sutra 0 The Perfection of Immanental Wisdom Sutra Except through illusion, delusion, emotional distress or psychological need, xbuddhism, (Mindfulness, Zen, Vipassana, Secular Buddhism, ad nauseum) cannot substitute itself for the human. Without the force of illusion, delusion, emotional distress or psychological need, nothing is capable of displacing generic human identity. The human cannot, except through illusion, delusion, emotional distress or psychological need, substitute his/her identity for the xbuddhist subject. The person of flesh and blood is an inalienable reality. Reversibility between the person of flesh and blood and the x-buddhist subject is impossible. Sutra 02 The Irrevocable Axiom Sutra The previous sutra is an irrevocable axiom on the basis of which this sutra and all those that follow are founded. Sutra 03 The Fear or Contempt Sutra X-buddhism (its doctrines, its teachers), in the twenty-first century West, is a species of contempt disguised as a species of compassion. Contemptuous of what?of flesh and blood potentialities. Either that or it is fearfulfearing the exuberant creativity and coruscating intelligence of the uninstructed hoi polloi. Whether out of fear or contempt, x-buddhism arms itselfin the name of flesh and blood potentialitieswith a self-serving hermeneutics of

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Sutras of Flesh and Blood

exemplification, called The Dharma. This supra-signifier constitutes a battery of abstract, obscure principles disguised as concrete, human ones. Sutra 04 The Bourgeoisie Sutra X-buddhism (its doctrines, its teachers) functions like the nineteenth century bourgeoisie. Namely: it divides a generic, classless humanity into hierarchized subjects of its own invention; it fabricates false divisions in order to fulfill its desire for spiritualized power and domination; it reigns over the human via a confusion of transcendent declarations cloaked as natural laws (dharma as market); it founds its principles and practices in transcendental illusions of its own making; and therein it establishes its sufficiency in the last instance. Xbuddhism (its doctrines, its teachers) prospers by alienating humans of flesh and blood from their unique productive forces. It then usurps those forces, distorts them, and employs them toward its own productive ends. Sutra 05 The Statute of Decision Sutra To romanticized Indian asceticism, glamorized East Asian metaphysics, and Christo-Judaic law (the still forceful code of western x-buddhists) is added decisionthe statute that calls for the rending of the flesh and blood person in order to deliver him, as mere remainder, over to the differential transcendent magistrate, The Dharma. Sutra 06 The Lustful Imperium Sutra The statute is the engine of x-buddhist desire. The statutes force is directed at the humans sense of deficiency, born of illusion, delusion, emotional distress or psychological need. The statute, by fiat, decrees the annexation of flesh and blood by the Imperiums lustful pontiff, The Dharma. Sutra 07 The Sutra of Hallucinated Destruction Since transference of identity is impossible, destruction of identity is impossible. The x-buddhist subject-practitioner is thus disabused of its exalted claim to destructionof the taints, of desire, of delusion, lust, and anger, of ignorance and of the ignorant, of sorrow and lamentation, for instance. The x-buddhist subject-practitioner dreams its purity in bloodless reverie. The subjectpractitioner is a fleshless phantasmagoria, fashioned from rootless language, thought, and desire. Regarding the person of flesh and blood, the x-buddhist subject-practitioner is the destroyer of nothing.

www.nonplusx.com Sutra 08 The Identity of the Assassin Sutra

Sutras of Flesh and Blood

X-buddhism is the master assassin. It targets the person of flesh and blood. But, x-buddhism is a specular pasha, reigning from on high. So, in order to fulfill the second tenet of the assassins creedhide in plain sight; be one with the crowdit employs its teacher-acolytes to carry out the deed. Sutra 09 The Suicide of X-buddhism Sutra In the assassins hit, there is no death of the human, no murder of flesh, no spilling of blood. There is only the suicide of x-buddhism. The assassin strikes with a body bomb and thus leaves only scraps of dharmic bone in the aftermath. Sutra 010 The Impotence Sutra To the extent that the person of flesh and blood lives subjugated by the lustful imperious statute of x-buddhistic decision, he lives diminished by an impotence of thought, speech, and action and, thus, as flesh and blood person, with an indefensible culpability. Sutra 011 The Termination of the Statute Sutra The termination of the statute of x-buddhistic decision constitutes an instantaneous return to the life lived through the inalienable body of flesh and blood. Termination of the statute spells the abrupt disempowerment of xbuddhisms violent gesture of abstraction known as The Dharma. Sutra 012 The Reclamation of Radical Identity Sutra Liberated from the perpetual force of the anti-human dharmic differential, termination of the statute of decision spontaneously exposes the raw, radical identity of the person of flesh and blood.

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Sutras of Flesh and Blood

____________________________ NOTES * Georges Bataille, Molloys Silence, in S. E. Gontarski (ed.), On Beckett: Essays and Criticism (New York: Grove Press, 1986), p. 131 (slightly reworded). Sutras of Flesh and Blood takes its inspirationin form and in the occasional wordfrom Franois Laruelles Thormes de la Bonne Nouvelle, in La Dcision philosophique, 1 (May 1987): 8385. I thank Alexander R. Galloway for making available to me a copy of this difficult to obtain text. I also consulted Galloways excellent translation, Theorems on the Good News, available at his website. THE AUTHOR Glenn Wallis holds a Ph.D. in Buddhist studies from Harvard University. He is the author of Mediating the Power of Buddhas and several other books and articles on Buddhism. Wallis blogs at Speculative Non-Buddhism and Ovenbird. For more information, visit: glennwallis.com. COMMENTS AND DISCUSSION: If you would like to read and/or contribute to the discussion on this article, please visit Speculative Non-Buddhism.