>I knew you would have trouble seeing
>that an attempt to preserve mystery could be anything more than an
>authoritarian attempt to control the masses.

“Preserve mystery”  ?  Maybe you have to explain how you interpret the
phrase.  I think the phrase is an oxymoron.  If God is a mystery, how could
the experience of communing with God be "preserved"?  Can you  preserve
God’s mystery like putting jam in a jar?  That seems to me what Latin
intoning priests are trying to do.  They believe they are replicating a
"mystery" which is nothing but a formalized crystalization of what WAS a
genuine experience of the Divine.

You need to explain how “preserving the mystery” could be anything else but
a attempt to “control the masses”.  Insofar as these attempts to “preserve
the mystery” are part of the social organization of religion, why are they
not part of an attempt to control the masses?  It was POUND, not me, who
uses the phrase “control the masses:

> >
> >   Historically the organization of religions has usually
> >   been for some ulterior purpose, exploitation, control
> >   of the masses, etc.
> >     (S.P., 50).
> >

How do you explain this?  You appear to avoid my claim that genuine
religious experience probably has nothing to do with priests incantations.
In light of the above quote, doesn’t the burden of proof remain with you?
Can you explain how “preserving the mystery” is anything but “controlling
the masses.”

>
>Pound rejects religions which have an eschatological focus or which
>undermine individual and collective enduring human achievement.  Their
>amenability to representative democracy has, I believe, very little to do
>with it.  Buddhism is also amenable to oppressive dictatorships.  The
>essence of Buddhism is Amenability.
>

Late in life Pound does seem to be interested in eschatology.  By 1960 Pound
had rejected Confucianism, in part because it did NOT have any clear
eschatological focus.  Notice that the later Cantos do not contain any
reference to Confucius.

Pound's loss of interest in Confucius seems, at least in part, to have been
prompted by a desire to find a
new creed which could supply him with a hope for religious salvation.  When
he came out of a clinic in the
autumn of 1960,

  There were more self-reproaches, more regrets.
  He now felt that Confucianism was an inadequate
  creed, telling Stock that it could scarcely provide
  'a "Refuge for Sinners" to whom one may appeal.'
      (Carpenter, 871).

>Pound rejects religions which . . . .
>undermine individual and collective enduring human achievement.


Can you offer some evidence to sustain this . . .   ?  Confucianism
undermines individual attainment as much as any ideological system on earth.
  I think you and most people on this list are aware that ALL great Chinese
artists, painters, and poets (with virtually no exception) WERE BUDDHISTS
AND TAOISTS.  Can anyone name any great individual artistic acheivement in
Chinese or Japanese culture which was produced by a Confucianist?  I doubt
it.

>Buddhism is also amenable to oppressive >dictatorships.  The
>essence of Buddhism is Amenability.
>

I am not sure what this means.  Can you give me an example of a Buddhist
dictatorship?  I cannot think of one.  Of course any ideology can be
corrupted and perverted.  But scholars of Chinese history agree that under
the Tang dynasty -- a Buddhist dynasty -- there was less oppression and more
toleration of religious diversity than in any other period.   The essense of
Buddhism is tolerance and compassion, and allowance for varying
interpretations.  I mentioned Sri Lanka and Japan as two countries where the
main religion is Buddhism, and where tolerance and democracy have thrived.
Can you address this with a counter example?

>
>What Pound is saying is that the Gods smile upon dynamic men who by their
>actions attempt to shape the world.

Shouldn’t it matter HOW such men attempt to shape the world?  Any man who is
dynamic, who attempts to shape the world, is ipso facto “favored by the
Gods”?

Pound’s view seems to be rendered problematic by his conception of the
“martyr.”  You say Pound is not fond of eschatology.  But he is interested
in the meaning of a hero's death, and in the deification or apotheosis of
specific heros (That is what the "Thrones" is about).

The notion of a martyr is an eschatalotical one, is it not? Hitler is called
a martyr, comparable to Joan of Arc (strange comparison---- a mass murderer
who tries to oppress the world, and committs suicide to escape punishment
----with a soldier-maiden who tries to liberate her country from foreign
oppression and dies in the flames praising God).  Mussolini is grouped with
Manes and Dionysus as a divine figure in the Cantos, another martyr hardly
deserving the appelation.

>In effect, you're criticizing Pound
>because his view is not that the gods are all-compassionate and
>all-accepting.

Yes, I am.  Do you think that the Deity (God, or the gods) are NOT
compassionate?


>The gods, according to Pound, are not all
>forgiving.

If Pound thinks that the gods “smiled upon” men like Hitler and Mussolini
(and Genghis Khan), then the gods must be pretty horrific, worse than
unforgiving.  If Pound is correct then “who could deny the savagery of God”
(to use Sophocles' phrase)?

It is strange that many followers of Judaism ask, how could God have allowed
Hitler to do what he did (?); while for Pound the tragedy is that the gods
could not allow Hitler, Mussolini, and Hirohito to succeed.

>This is
>why he does not champion Hinduism.
>

It is perhaps because Hinduism cannot fit into his “totalitarian synthesis”
[Pound’s phrase].  Many on this list (myself included) have applied the word
syncretistic to Pound’s relgious approach.  But there are different types of
syncretisim.  Pound wants a syncretism which is consistent with
totalitarianism (Roman imperial paganism, Confucianism, and Catholicism ARE;
liberal protestantism, Taoism, Buddhism, and Hinduism are NOT).
________________________________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com