But I suspect that for me, collapse was always, first and foremost, a psychological symptom. That is, I think my primordial relation to it was a kind of objectivation of a deep psychic wound.
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The text's elaborate theoretical architecture functioned as a kind of metaphysical anesthesia: reframing political collapse as mystical awakening, societal failure as spiritual letting go, and powerlessness as enlightened renunciation.
I think now that I was trying to create a cognitive space between myself, my despair, and genuinely terrifying realities—and none of this is intended to downplay the real catastrophies that we are witnessing and continue to anticipate
I misused the Zen framework to serve the function of transforming my learned helplessness in the face of cascading crises into a form of wisdom, making inaction feel like an enlightened choice rather than a symptom of paralysis.
Even worse, I leaned heavily on edgy material like Nick Land—not to endorse his reactionary views, but I guess to be seen as engaging with transgressive theory (my undergrad was in continental philosophy) and to position an advocacy of withdrawal not as hopelessness but radical critique.
For all that, I was still groping towards genuine Chan/Zhuangzian insights: the futility of forcing solutions, the wisdom of non-attachment to outcomes, the recognition that our very attempts to fix things often perpetuate the problems.
I think I got closest to it when discussing Dōgen's "purposeless, goalless" zazen as a form of active non-action. I saw that Dōgen's approach dissolves the need for "solutions" through complete acceptance of what's arising...an intimacy with total dynamic function of the universe
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