Wei wrote:
>
> Fact:  Confucian governments very often persecuted religious expression.
> Fact:  Pound valued his own personal religious experience and Confucianism
> Fact: Pound narrates the destruction of Buddhist temples as positive acts
in
> the China Cantos, numerous times.
> Conclusion:  Those who practiced religions or followed faiths which were
> unimportant to Pound could go to blazes.
>

I would only attempt to qualify your word "unimportant". Pound throughout
his mid-life believed that those religions which teach renunciation and are
eschatological in orientation undermine individual and collective human
achievement in this world. One may disagree with him. But I believe that to
be a fair and accurate condensation of the essence of his views on
renuciation and asceticism.  Pound's reaction to these religions is not
unlike that of the pagan norsemen in europe's the early middle ages when
missionaries brought them news of the Christ. They wanted nothing of this
religion for weaklings and quitters.  The image of Christ was reshaped into
that of the Conquerer Christ. Christ the Harrower. When Beowulf decides to
take some good men to help out in Denmark, which is being ravaged by the
monster Grendel, the poet says:

From his decision to go
sensible men

did little to dissuade him
though he was loved by all

such spirit they viewed
as auspicious and hailed it.


Tim Romano




> If Pound objected to Communism on any religious basis, would it not be
> because communism was opposed to HIS RELIGION, and NOT because it was
> opposed to religion in general?
>
> Pound said he lost interest in Mao as soon as he started "harassing
> Confucians."  Mao's "harrassment" of Chinese Christians was of no concern
> whatsover to Pound; in fact Pound thought for a  while that Mao could be
> good for China (in spite of his being a communist), and believed that Mao
> might bring "Ling" ---the great Confucian "sensibility"--- back to China.
> There was no objection to Mao (or to Lenin for that matter) simply because
> they were communists.  They were only objected to when they went against
> Confucianism or against fascism.  Pound has a great deal favorable to say
> about Lenin prior to World War II.   Lenin and Mao, after all, were
"dynamic
> individuals".
>
> >
> >Pound's rejection of Buddhism and Taoism has little or nothing to do with
> >Chinese politics.
>
> This is an assertion which needs substantiation.  When Confucians take
> social action against Buddhists and Taoists, it is hard to deny there is a
> substantial political element.  And when Pound narrates these events in
the
> context of POLITICAL history, it is hard to believe that Pound is
> unconcerned with the political implications of Taoism and Buddhism.
>
>
> >He's thinking of these religions in much more idealized,
> >abstract terms.
>
> Would Pound say so?   He was opposed to thinking of such issues in
abstract
> terms, separated from life, and action in life.  Also, Pound did not
> "idealize" Taoism or Buddhism.  He simply smeared them.  If he idealized
any
> religious outlook, he idealized Confucianism.
>
> >The essence of these religions, as Pound viewed them, is
> >that they encourage men to think in terms of the afterlife and to
renounce
> >worldly things. The encourage men to be as manageable as sheep.
>
> Does your statement imply that Confucianism does NOT encourage men to be
as
> manageable as sheep?  Confucianism contains the following injuctions:  The
> son must give absolute obedience to the father;  The wife must give
absolute
> obedience to the husband; The younger brother must give absolute obedience
> to the older brother; and The subject must give absolute obedience to the
> ruler.
>
> Confucianism encourages "sheepish" behavior, unquestioned adherence to
> authority, and rigidity of thought, far more than Buddhism and Taoism.
> Compare the core texts of Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism, and you will
> see that the Confucian classics were designed and selected and edited with
> the subjugation of the masses as one of its prime goals.  The Taoist and
> Buddhist classics, on the other hand, are far less orthodox, far less
rigid
> in their codification, and hardly at all authoritarian in tenor.
>
>
> >They do not
> >produce men like Odysseus.
>
> Who is the Confucian Odysseus I would like to know?
>
> There is a  "Buddhist" Odysseus, a number of them in fact.  We could cite
> Sun Wukong, the hero of China's greatest epic, "Travels to the West," a
> Buddhist literary opus.  That work contains many heros of Odyssean
stature.
> The same could be said of the "Investiture of the Gods," an anti-Confucian
> epic with a Taoist underpinning.
>
> As far as Hinduism is concerned, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana are
> arguably the greatest epics ever written, and they contain so many
Odyssean
> type heroes that they could not even be listed in several posts.  We can
> cite Rama, Yudhishtira, and Arjuna for starters.  There is nothing
> anti-worldly about these works (though they do contain the insight that
> material reality is not the sum total of existence, and that one's purview
> is narrow if one focus's solely on this life apart from a recogntion of
the
> Divine which is BOTH immanent and transcendent).
>
> Regards,
>
> Wei
>
>
>
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