A Critique of Western Buddhism

Ruins of the Buddhist Real, Glenn Wallis (2019). Bloomsbury Academic

Preface

A ruin is a fusion of culture and nature, representing past glory, decay, and the passage of time.
The author contrasts this with Western Buddhism, which is presented as a well-preserved edifice that stands fortified against the very impermanence it teaches.
This creates an illusion that Western Buddhism is separate from nature’s inevitable ruin, offering an escape from it rather than an integration with it.
The author argues that Western Buddhism must be “ruined” to bring it closer to “the Real” (nature), allowing its core ideas to be more impactful, much like a physical ruin reveals its original plan more clearly.
This belief is informed by the author’s forty years of studying and practicing Buddhism, as well as by the concept of ruin as a catalyst for love and insight, as seen in the works of the poet Rūmī and the songwriter Leonard Cohen.
The author’s personal history, including forming a punk rock band named “Ruin,” has also shaped this perspective.

Part One - Recognition

Introduction: Raise the Curtain on the Theater of Western Buddhism!

Western Buddhism can be viewed in three ways: as an unchanging ancient teaching, a contemporary ideology, or a practice for social critique.
The author contends it functions as all three: a critique within an ideology within a faith.
A Freudian analogy is used: faith is the superego (morality), critique is the id (instinctual drive for freedom), and ideology is the ego (mediating reality).
The book’s purpose is to voice the “critical unconscious” of Western Buddhism.
Critique is defined as a practice that separates vital human potential from the subjugating forms and norms of a system.
The author questions whether Western Buddhism aids or hinders the human struggle for liberation from delusion and violence.

Why Western Buddhism?

“Western Buddhism” is a form of “Buddhist modernism” that originated in 19th-century Asia (specifically Sri Lanka) as a response to Western colonial influence.
It reformed traditional Buddhism by adopting values from the Enlightenment (reason, science), Romanticism (emotion, the individual), and Protestantism (laicization, individual effort).
This modernized form is now international, not just confined to the West.
A defining feature is the “Easy-Easy Principle,” which holds that if a practice is simple, its theory must also be simple, often leading to anti-intellectualism.
The author argues this critique of Western Buddhism applies to all forms of Buddhism because they share a common underlying factor.

Theaters comforting, theaters cruel

Buddhism has a reputation as a profound system of thought, but a direct analysis of its doctrines is unproductive due to its vast diversity and the tendency of followers to deflect criticism with minute details.
The author compares the primal, challenging origins of Buddhism to Antonin Artaud’s “Theater of Cruelty,” which aimed to expose audiences to harsh realities rather than comfort them.
The book’s premise is that Buddhism has failed to unleash its own radical potential, instead becoming a conservative institution that protects the status quo.
A second premise is that critical procedures are needed to salvage Buddhist materials from the self-help industry.
The critique will use concepts from the thinker François Laruelle, favor immanence over transcendence, and function as both theory and performance.
The focus is not on specific doctrines or texts, but on the underlying “problematic” or “environment” that produces all Buddhist phenomena.

1 The Snares of Wisdom

The author questions what Western Buddhism offers beyond its conventional focus on “Wisdom.”
“Wisdom” is popularly conceived as a pure, simple truth, free from ideology, which aligns with the idea of a philosophia perennis (perennial philosophy).
This notion is challenged by the Buddhist concept of dependent origination, which posits that nothing exists independently but arises from entangling causes and conditions.
The author proposes engaging with Buddhism through the concept of “the Real”—that which is beyond symbolic representation and conceptual delusion, as hinted at by terms like emptiness (śūnyatā), impermanence (anicca), and no-self (anātman).
The absence of “the Real” in Western Buddhist discourse allows it to correspond with New Age self-help and the pursuit of wellbeing.

Wisdom

The author adopts Slavoj Žižek’s definition of “Wisdom” as tautological, proverb-like statements that are often contradictory yet presented as profound.
Examples from Western Buddhism show conflicting teachings on “the present moment”—it is both hyper-real and an unreal fiction.
“Wisdom” resolves such contradictions by claiming that ultimate reality is beyond conventional language and logic, accessible only to a “Master” with an “inward way of seeing.”
This position makes the Master’s statements unchallengeable, as they are excluded from the normal rules of symbolic exchange and logical debate.

Wellbeing

The primary motivation for seeking “Wisdom” in contemporary Western Buddhism is “wellbeing.”
This is not social wellbeing (e.g., universal healthcare) but an individual, internal state of happiness and peace achieved by transforming negative emotions.
Western Buddhism has become part of “the happiness industry,” with figures like Matthieu Ricard teaching mindfulness to global elites at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
Corporations use these practices to increase worker productivity by framing unhappiness as an internal, individual problem, thereby deflecting attention from systemic issues like inequality and stressful work environments.
Slavoj Žižek argues that Western Buddhism functions as a “perfect ideological supplement” to capitalism, as it helps people cope with its stressful dynamics without challenging the system itself.

Neoliberal subjects are us, wise, and well

Ancient Buddhist teachings, originally developed in retreat from commerce, are now framed in ways that appeal to corporate interests.
This transformation is attributed to the influence of neoliberal ideology on contemporary subjectivity.
For example, the classical concept of “dependent origination” as an imprisoning web has been repurposed into a joyous “celebration of this interwoven world.”
Neoliberalism shapes a subject who feels powerless and must adapt to an unknowable world, a view reinforced by Western Buddhist teachings that advocate for accepting suffering and letting go of control.
Both Western Buddhism and neoliberalism emphasize “technologies of the self,” shifting the focus of change from external social and economic conditions to the individual’s inner life, which helps preserve the status quo.

2 Specters of the Real

The rhetorical unconscious

Establishing a concept of “the Real” in Western Buddhism allows it to be treated as a viable form of thought, beyond its popular self-help character.
While Buddhism has no explicit term for “the Real,” it is haunted by it through concepts like no-self, suffering, and especially śūnyatā (emptiness).
Śūnyatā functions as a “master signifier” that also points to the Buddhist system’s own incompleteness—a conceptual “black hole.”
Western Buddhism actively represses the devastating implications of emptiness (i.e., nullity), instead reframing it as fullness and abundance to avoid nihilism.
This repression is traced back to the Buddha’s historical anxiety about being accused of “annihilationism” (the view that a being is nullified at death).
The disavowal of emptiness-as-nullity constitutes a “rhetorical unconscious,” an act of repression whose symptoms include anxious denials of nihilism and labyrinthine philosophical maneuvers.

The principle of sufficient Buddhism

Western Buddhism presents an endless inventory of knowledge, implying it can sufficiently address any aspect of human existence.
This stems from the historical Buddhist concept of “capacity omniscience,” where the Buddha (and by extension, “the dharma”) is capable of knowing anything it directs its attention to.
The author argues Western Buddhism operates under a “principle of sufficient Buddhism,” which posits its own premises and values as primary and universally applicable, making “everything virtually buddhistizable.”
This principle allows Buddhism to claim superior insight into other disciplines, such as psychology, by converting their problems into Buddhist terms.
The cost of this sufficiency is that Western Buddhism cannot form a rigorous, non-circular theory of itself; it remains a self-reflecting system that mistakes its own thought for the Real.
This self-positing nature results in a “transcendental hallucination of the Real,” preventing a genuine theoretical engagement with its own core concepts.

3 First Names of the Buddhist Real

This chapter presents examples of a style that defines the identity of Western Buddhism.
The term “Western Buddhism” is a synecdoche for a particular inflection of Buddhist teachings by various people.
The author argues that since these teachings are voiced by mortals, they are not inevitable or universal, which allows for innovation but also creates contestation.

First names

Key Western Buddhist concepts like no-self (anātman), suffering-desire (dukkha-taṇhā), and emptiness (śūnyatā) are identified as “first names” of the Real.
Following François Laruelle, “first names” are fundamental terms that symbolize the Real’s radical immanence.
The central critique is that Western Buddhism uses these terms not just to symbolize the Real, but to determine its constitution, a move Laruelle considers a “violent” and “hallucinated” form of knowledge.
This approach prioritizes a “buddhistic” system of thought over a direct understanding of human interest.

Self-void (anātman)

Western Buddhism initially presents anātman (no-self) as a socially constructed self, a “void at the heart of the symbolic order.”
However, teachers like David Loy perform a “parapraxis” or “misturning” by invoking parāvṛtti (“turning around”).
This turn shifts the concept away from its radical social implications (a “social awakening”) and back toward a mystical, essentialized self, described as a “life-healing flow.”
Similarly, Ken Jones is critiqued for his “social fallacy,” which dismisses the primacy of social conditions in shaping consciousness in order to reassert the necessity of “inner work” and Dharma.
This reversal depotentializes the radical force of anātman and re-establishes the self-referential authority of Buddhism.

Suffering-desire (dukkha-taṇhā)

The concepts of suffering (dukkha) and desire (taṇhā) are treated as a single first name for the Real: “suffering-desire.”
Western Buddhist teachers like B. Alan Wallace present suffering as an empirical, pervasive feature of human experience, aligning with psychoanalytic ideas of drive and trauma.
The “parapraxis” occurs in the promise that one can be “free of it,” which turns an analysis of an intractable reality into a therapeutic solution.
This move is compared to a fetish that allows practitioners to sustain the “unbearable truth” of suffering by embracing a doctrinal “Lie” of transcendence.
The critique is that Western Buddhism identifies a Real aspect of human existence only to offer a strategy for disavowing its full implications.

Nihility (śūnyatā)

Emptiness (śūnyatā) is presented as a Buddhist “master signifier” with the potential to function as a first name for the Real.
The “misturning” happens when teachers pivot from emptiness as a radical lack or void to emptiness as a comforting plenitude or fullness.
Thich Nhat Hanh is cited for reassuring followers that emptiness is “full of everything else,” while Timothy Morton is critiqued for ultimately positing a “Buddha nature” at the core of being.
In these interpretations, the concept of emptiness is repopulated with idealist objects and goals, abdicating its function as a tool for awakening.
The author asserts this “misturning” is endemic to all Buddhist discourse and challenges the reader to identify this pattern.

Part Two - Negation

Preface

While Buddhism is a magnificent creation, something is amiss within Western Buddhism, which the author terms a “perversion” or “reversal.”
This reversal happens at the level of core concepts, transforming Buddhism from a materialist theory of experience into an idealist “worldview.”
The author calls this a “conceptual parapraxis,” where Western Buddhism recoils from the full implications of its own concepts (like no-self and emptiness).
Unlike psychoanalysis, which follows evidence into its difficult conclusions, Western Buddhism replaces the Buddhist “Real” with more consoling ideas, leading to collusion with the status quo.
The author’s project is to analyze Western Buddhism as “raw human cultural material” using an “extra-Buddhist supplement,” namely the work of François Laruelle.

François Laruelle and non-philosophy

François Laruelle’s work is described as difficult and unclassifiable, offering tools to dismantle authoritative systems of thought rather than creating a new one.
The author will combine Western Buddhism with Laruelle’s “non-philosophy” to create a new syntax called “non-buddhism.”
Laruelle’s often violent vocabulary (e.g., “collision,” “insurrection,” “victims”) is justified because Buddhism presents itself as a singular, preeminent form of knowledge that ideologically captures and subjugates its subjects.
Despite this, Laruelle’s project, like Buddhism’s, is ultimately aimed at human liberation.

A science of Buddhism

Western Buddhism presents itself as an organon (an instrument for knowledge), often citing the Kālāma Sutta (“know for yourselves”) to align itself with science.
The author argues this is a misreading, as the Sutta ultimately directs one to accept the Buddha’s teachings, making it an ideology founded on faith.
A “science of Buddhism” is proposed, using Laruelle’s concept of “science” as a specific attitude of thought that is minimal and thinks from the Real, not about it.
In contrast, Buddhist-thought is self-referential, looking into the Real and seeing its own postulates reflected back.
By suspending the “principle of sufficient Buddhism,” one can treat it as “Buddhism-without-sufficiency,” or “non-buddhism,” freeing its materials for new uses.
While some Buddhist traditions like Zen hint at this, they ultimately fail to give up their own sufficiency.

Decision

Drawing on Nietzsche, the author argues that language systems can create a “true world” at the expense of the “apparent world.”
Laruelle calls the key operation behind this “buddhistic decision,” an unconscious, circular process where Buddhist postulates are substituted for the Real.
Decision is an internal, structural invariant of Western Buddhism that allows the system to produce its concepts, practices, and subjects.
“The Dharma” is identified as the pivot for this decision, functioning as both an empirical teaching and a transcendental cosmic law.
This creates a “Dyad + One” structure: the dyad of saṃsāra (the world) and pratītyasamutpāda (contingency) is synthesized and guaranteed by the “+One” of The Dharma.
This structure is circular and leads to “specularity,” where Western Buddhism looks at the world and sees only a reflection of its own theories.

5 Immanent Practice

The great feast of knowledge

A metaphor, “The Great Feast of Knowledge,” is used to describe a space where all disciplines (philosophy, science, religion) meet as equals, stripped of their institutional authority.
The concept of “incommensurability” between different “thought styles” (from Ludwik Fleck) is introduced to explain the bickering and lack of dialogue between different communities of thought.
A “thought collective” shapes a “thought style” through a shared mood and institutional reinforcement, which constrains how an individual can think.
The “feast” allows for the circulation and transformation of ideas between these disparate thought collectives, even at the risk of conceptual anarchy.

Thinking from the Real-One

This section introduces François Laruelle’s concept of “the Real” or “the One,” which is foreclosed to direct access but is the cause of effects, analogous to the law in Kafka’s parable.
It argues that Western Buddhism (x-buddhism) resists the “unrepresentability” of the Real by attempting to define and encompass it with its own transcendent concepts like “The Dharma” or “emptiness.”
The proposed solution is to remove Buddhism’s postulate of “sufficiency,” similar to how non-Euclidean geometry removed one of Euclid’s postulates.
This changes the relationship from one where Buddhism attempts to access the Real (Buddhism --> the Real) to one where the Real is the cause of Buddhism, but remains foreclosed to it (the Real --> Buddhism).

Interlude: The immanence of an actual suffering

The Buddhist concept of dukkha (suffering) is examined as a case study, noting its characterization as a fundamental structure of life, or an “existentiale.”
The critique questions whether a “fundamental structure” can truly be “solved” by a cognitive “reorientation,” as Buddhism claims.
It is argued that Western Buddhism creates a conceptual confusion (an amphiboly) by mistaking its own concept, dukkha, for the Real of actual human pain.
This Buddhist approach is contrasted with Emily Dickinson’s poem on “an actual suffering,” which represents thinking from the Real of pain rather than applying a system to it.

Radical immanence

“Immanence” is defined as a position rejecting any separation between the ultimate structure of reality and its actual content.
It is argued that while Buddhism claims to be a practice of immanence, it often establishes a transcendent principle (like “The Dharma”) to guarantee its own sufficiency, thereby undermining immanence.
The Buddhist parable of the poisoned arrow is used as an example of how Buddhism itself prioritizes immediate, immanent practice over metaphysical speculation.
The critique contends that Western Buddhism ultimately fails to preserve this principle of immanence, instead transforming it into a transcendent and illusory system.

Axiomatic Real

This section proposes treating the Real as an axiom, a starting point for thought that is assumed rather than proven or interpreted.
Using the Zen kōan “Dried shitstick,” it shows how even radical attempts to point to the Real are quickly reabsorbed into the system through interpretation.
The Real is “infinitely effable,” leading to endless interpretations that only reinforce a system’s view of itself.
An axiomatic approach, like the concept of “the emptiness of emptiness” (śūnyatā-śūnyatā), prevents the Real from being turned into an object of knowledge.
This allows Buddhist material to be used freely without requiring a person to conform to the Buddhist system’s ideological demands.

The stranger subject

The “stranger subject” is introduced as an alternative to the subject constructed by Western Buddhism.
It argues that Western Buddhism often dilutes radical concepts like anātman (no-self) by reintroducing an essential self under a different name.
The idealized Buddhist subject (the “instructed noble disciple”) is contrasted with the “uninstructed worldling” and deemed a fantastical and undesirable goal.
The stranger subject resists all ideological determinations. It is determined by the Real but does not attempt to determine, define, or access the Real.
This subject uses Buddhist materials without being captured by the system, exercising a “force (of) thought” that remains faithful to the Real by refusing to turn it into a representation.

Part Three - Redescription

6 Buddhofiction

The deliverance of fiction

Buddhism views the world as a fiction, a “magical illusion” or a dream fabricated by perception (samskāra). The story of the Buddha awakening from this is also a fabrication.
The term “Buddhism” is itself a fiction, a singular identity that requires plural modifications (e.g., “Zen Buddhism”), which are also ambiguous and create further fictions.
The most consequential fictions are the invisible ones that give a particular tradition (x-buddhism) its air of legitimacy.
Since Buddhism is already a genre of fabulation, the author proposes a “buddhofiction”—a new form of fiction that openly declares itself as such.
This approach critiques the “principle of sufficient Buddhism,” where concepts like emptiness are used to maintain the authority and completeness of a specific Buddhist system.
A “buddhofiction” or “non-buddhism” treats all Buddhist knowledge as equal but partial models of the Real, using Buddhist materials without being bound by the system’s claims to sufficiency.
Buddhist materials have been used for both harmful (justifying violence) and beneficial (resisting bigotry, offering comfort) ends, because “hallucinations are inexhaustible.”
The author desires a buddhofiction that uses core concepts like emptiness and compassion as a “force of insurrection” against worldly suffering.

A Buddhism without a past

A buddhofiction is a usage of Buddhist materials, not a rendering of Buddhism. It is a rigorous practice because it yields to the Real rather than to the mastery of a Buddhist system.
To create a buddhofiction, one must presuppose that the authority of x-buddhism no longer exists and that its concepts are divested of power.
The author chooses meditation as the central practice for this exercise, as it is the primary identity marker of Western Buddhism.
Contemporary Western meditation is critiqued for several reasons:
- It is presented as a scientific or psychological method, detached from tradition.
- It assumes an integral self (atman), contradicting the core Buddhist principle of anātman (non-self).
- It is detachable from the ethical and philosophical framework of Buddhism.
- It is detachable from societal structures, allowing practitioners to participate in capitalism while retaining a sense of mental sanity.
- It opportunistically uses Buddhist concepts for legitimacy while simultaneously distancing itself from the tradition.

1

A man regains consciousness on the forest floor, brought to his senses by observing an ant struggling to carry a leaf.
He recalls a painful physical collapse involving a severe headache, his hair falling out, and vomiting.
Overcome by loneliness and a sense of failure, he weeps, but this sadness is quickly followed by anger, which he views as a tonic.
He reflects that sadness and anger are an “elixir” that flushes out self-pity and spurs him to action, a lesson learned from a childhood experience where trying to fight nature resulted in the ruin of his garden.

2

The text aligns with Peter Sloterdijk’s idea of “practice” as an exercise in “deautomatization,” where one moves from being passively formed to actively forming oneself.
This practice, termed “anthropotechnics,” confronts two fallacies: that “religion” exists (there are only practices of human formation) and that an inner “self” exists (there is only a psychophysical work in progress).
It acknowledges the vastness of external causes (“non-own”) compared to the minuscule sphere of personal agency (“own”).
The text aims to explore the conditions for a “buddha subject” who is allergic to representation and practices without idealist illusions.

3

The author states that this text, which once aspired to be a helpful exercise, is now filled with doubt, disenchantment, and shame.
It has abandoned persuasive arguments because it is “too late for arguments.”
Despite its despair, the text still longs for meaning and beauty, but it only knows “the blackness of a faded dream.”

4

The text’s goal is framed as a “dialectic of excremental inversion.”
This process involves an abstraction being negated by real-world experience, corroding until only a “concrete x” remains.
This is likened to abstract ideals like love or wisdom being reduced to the “fetid stench of the unadorned Real,” concluding that “All things turn to shit” as a necessary reminder of our humanity.

5

The text introduces an “organon” (a tool or system) that leads to “analytic ruin.”
One can either retreat from this ruin, engage it superficially, or confront the central, inexorable fact of “dissolution.”
Crossing the threshold to ruin means not flinching from this fact, which is presented as a great menace to humanity.

6

“Dissolution” is defined as a self-evident, instantaneous, and continuous process occurring in every moment of perception, conception, and sensation.
It is distinguished from “extinction,” which is the final cessation of things over vast timescales; dissolution happens in the midst of things as they rise and fall.
The concept of dissolution makes the fact of it thinkable and brings thought into the “surging sea of immanence.”

7

Thought naturally seeks the comfort of familiar certainties and avoids lingering with the “infinite negativity” that constitutes the subject.
This lingering, or “tarrying,” is experienced as a kind of death but is essential for a “life of wakefulness.”
The process of dissolution and analysis is described as the “absolute power” of the understanding.

8

An “organon of dissolution” exists, which entails a “relentless deflation” of imaginary ideas and is rooted in our shared physical embodiment.
This organon lays bare phenomenal reality and its underlying ideology.
It is compared to skin: an organic interface that is exposed to and coalesces with the environment.

9

The organon consists of two modes: the “anthropotechnic” and the “conceptual calculus.”
“Calculus” is used in three senses: a model for the change called dissolution, an accounting of this feature of existence, and a hard, jarring concretion of knowledge like a kidney stone.

10

The “anthropotechnic” of the organon involves applying the calculus to shatter comforting beliefs, inducing “incurable disenchantment.”
Since human formation (ideology, habit) is inevitable, one must engage in continuous “self-forming” behavior.
This is an “anthropotechnic of verticality”—an impossible, monstrous, and terrifying striving for a sublime self-mastery suspended in a void.

11

The organon’s calculus reveals that everything is perpetually dissolving, which undermines cherished human beliefs.
The will to know is driven by the trauma of dissolution itself.
The organon binds with dissolution, making the practitioner’s knowledge equal to the trauma it traces; it is the “instrument, the knowledge, of ruin.”

12

The knowledge gained is not empty infinity but an acceptance of existence “without meaning or aim, yet recurring inevitably without any finale, into nothingness.”
This view rejects “Affirmationism”—the cultural tendency to reframe all dark realities as positive.
It sides with the “ruined” who see the universe as a void containing only “vanishing things.”

13

To “come to terms” means accepting several facts:
- The human subject is an “empty nothing.”
- Our ideologies are at odds with reality.
- Reality is fragmentary and contingent, not a unified whole.
- We must move forward in the dark with “gnostic exhaustion.”

14

The calculus is composed of “ruins of the buddhist Real,” which are recast as “decimated first names” (e.g., disenchantment, vanishing, contingency).
A list of these concepts is provided in English and their Pali “x-buddhist” progenitors (nibbida, anicca, paticcasamuppāda).
The process for using this genealogy involves three steps: approbation, annihilation, and appropriation.

15

The three-step process is explained:
- Approbation: Acknowledging the value in the original concepts.
- Annihilation: Invalidating the power of the “big Other” attached to these concepts.
- Appropriation: Annexing the remaining material for the “in-human” subject.

16

The resulting concepts are “first names” that symbolize “the Real”—the “sheer lived” experience that is a condition for thought but cannot be adequately represented.
The goal is to achieve a proper (non)relation to this Real.

17

The text provides an example with “Disenchantment.”
The original Buddhist term, nibbida (revulsion), is part of an ascetic religious regimen that is critiqued as a potentially harmful quest for purity.
The “non-buddhist first name” of disenchantment is instead a fundamental disposition for viewing life’s realities ruthlessly, born from the discovery that there is no ultimate refuge.
This is illustrated by the Wizard of Oz revealing his ordinary self, an act of demystification (Entzauberung). Disenchantment is a passage.