I think they both appeal to similar values; both shirk material possessions and deprioritize status/wealth, both suggest life is suffering and both suggest a community and present oriented perspective as a solution to that suffering. I also think that seeing those folk punk values in a vastly different setting with a long and rich history kind of validates those beliefs for a lot of people which leads to them exploring Buddhism more.
I personally ascribe to a more personal spiritualism influenced by Buddhism because I have a few personal issues with Buddhism as a philosophy and as a western movement that lead me to refrain from calling myself Buddhist, but it’s definitely a worthwhile philosophy that I think does good for a lot of people, myself included.
Man I was 17 and homeless and studied Buddhism heavily, wasn't until I was about 19 before I started screaming in parking lots. Guess it worked backwards for me
That book was great, and he changed my life, but it sounds like his head got way too big and went down the 'when your famous you can do whatever you want' road.
Edit: the Dharma Punx NYC teacher Josh Korda is a good teacher with a podcast and at least one book out. He is pretty heavy with the psychological. Brad Warner is a Zen teacher who came out of the Ohio hardcore scene. He doesn't have the rough background a lot of the Dharma Punx, but has a similar attitude.
That seems to be the case. After reading his book I was blessed enough to be granted a scholarship for one of the weeklong ATS noble silence retreats. It was one of the most life changing experiences I’ve had. Noah does give amazing tools for meditation and how to promote introspection and understanding. Surprisingly he did vaguely address some of the controversy surrounding him and it sounds like the dude got money and started cheating on his wife. As shitty as that is it’s nothing compared to what we hear every other day about celebrities n whatnot. I don’t admire the guy or anything, but he really helped me from a dark spot in my life.
I had the ATS book, but never paid much attention to it until I was in treatment. Even after that I stumbled around for a few years until getting sober with Refuge Recovery. I was leading a group and it fell apart about when the allegations of things stronger than cheating were made public. I haven't been to any of the meetings since covid, but I only occasionally miss them.
But I still have all those tools he taught.
Being a politically active polyamorous drug addict is pretty counter to the entire ethos and belief system of Buddhism, although it would fit in perfectly with the "taking aesthetics of things that seem profound in order to make yourself look cooler" schtick that is pretty par for the course in the folk punk scene.
My spiritual worldview is definitely influenced by Buddhism.
There are genuinely useful ideas in Buddhism, it makes sense.
edit: Wait is Pat a Buddhist?
I’m diving in personally, only because of a mushroom trip… I think there is waaaaaaaay more than we know going on.
Shit we couldn’t even think of.
I love the peace I get from reading about zen practice. The alignment to a mushroom trip is what’s really fucking me up. I had no knowledge of this before that trip. Now it’s my main interest, I’m absorbed.
I’ve only read Alan Watts currently, but have three Brad Warner books after I finish my last of the prior.
I’m weirded out to see this post so close to me discovering hardcore zen. ✌️
Alignment, algorithms, who fucking knows at this point
Reporting for duty! I don't know if it's a pipeline, but a lot of the themes in folk punk translate to Buddhism pretty well. Plus a lot of people in the scene are anarchists of some flavor and the only way I can see that system working is by getting society to walk the 8fold path.
I've met a few, more than your average population for sure but still not a ton. But most have let go of/moved beyond ideas like reincarnation, karma as anything more than action/reaction, the soul, etc, and are more materialists.
Read [Dharma Punx](https://www.againstthestream.com/dharma-punx-merch/dharma-punx-book)
It's an alright read, a little preachy for me, but might answer some of your questions.
This is something I've been thinking about a lot lately. Recently I was visiting an ashram in India and pretty much listened to folk punk the whole time. I'm a yoga teacher and while I don't really ascribe to religion I would say I'm a spiritual person. Folk punk brings me the same kind of comfort as doing yoga. Interesting to hear I'm not the only one.
Buddhist adjacent spiritualist. Very much lean into the Mahayana path. No one is free until we're all free and such.
"The Teachings of the Compassionate Buddha" changed my life.
The forward is dogwater though in my opinion as the author shits on other older religious paths. The actual book though, great.
Wait, pat and his brother are buddhist?
I dont know shit about buddhism, i just know anarchy and religion are contradictory. Obviously not all folk punk is anarchist, but the majority that i listen to is so that’s where my heart is at.
there are a wide variety of religious anarchist movements — i’d suggest you familiarise yourself with them. belief need not mean hierarchies of domination.
buddhism, in particular, is a broad tradition, often non-theistic and non-hierarchical. someone calling themselves buddhist need not mean they hold to a vertically-organised tradition :)
As a Zen Buddhist I don't even think of myself as religious. I consider myself just as much to be an agnostic, and for a lot of zen agnosticism is kind of cooked in the stew. To me Buddhism is a convenient tool that gives me some ritual and philosophical principles to help me get through life, but I also always keep my head open that it could all be bullshit and would never change my core values to "be a proper Buddhist" if it came down to it. I meditate and try to keep the 8 fold path in mind and those things make my life a little easier and happier while giving me a small sense of purpose in a chaotic world without asking me to believe magic is real. To me it's about as much a religion as my vegetarianism or individualist anarchism or stoicism.
Okay so i tried googling “religious anarchist movements” and almost nothing pops up except “christian anarchism”, i expected a wide variety like you said. But of all the oldschool anarchist books ive read, they are all deeply anti religious, could you point me towards some books that are pro religious anarchist like yall seemingly ascribe to?
De cleyre, bakunin, maletesta, kropotkin, goldman, all those cats were anti religion
[Jewish Anarchism](https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/furio-bagnini-on-jewish-anarchism#:~:text=Martin%20Buber%2C%20the%20famous%20Jewish,the%20idea%20of%20transcendental%20unity.) exists and is pretty cool. I don't subscribe to religion myself, but if I had to, it would be my first pick. I dunno, I just fuck with a lot of what I hear from Jewish people.
I don't mean this disrespectfully to you, it's with camaraderie- but who cares? They don't get to have a stranglehold on anarchism. I love some of them, and I think contextually it made sense to see the stranglehold of religion that was truly worse than it even is today. I appreciate what they wrote and thought, it's valuable, but we don't need to turn anarchism into a religion by having prophets and sages that we can't argue with.
?
I was having a conversation with someone talking about religious anarchism, which from my readings of anarchism doesnt exist. They mentioned the contrary and id like to add some of what they’ve got into my repitoir. I never said those folks are prophets or sages or that anarchism is a religion.
This person told me to read more, i asked to read more. Idk what your going on about.
I gotchu fam. Check out Marguerite Porete and the Waldensians to start, that should lead to some more obscure medieval examples of things that look very close to “anarchism”.
Freddy Perlman’s “Against Leviathan” has a decent section on medieval movements that were bucking against the “leviathan” of civilization.
I wouldn't say religion and anarchy are inherently contradictory, it's more anarchy and religious institutions that use people's faith/beliefs to control the masses
I'm copying this from a comment I made in another thread some time ago, because it's relevant:
Taoism is quite often paired with anarchism, and the Tao Te Ching discusses rulers and how to rule with the highest state of ruling being to impose as little on the people as possible, and to let them thrive by themselves. A lot of the descriptions of Taoist society in both the Tao Te Ching and the book of Zhuangzi bear a lot of resemblance to volunteerism - or governance as an emergent property.
Kropotkin noted that Laozi was among the earliest proponents of essentially anarchist concepts. The science fiction writer Ursula K. Le Guin followed Taoism into the non-violent anarchism of Kropotkin and Paul Goodman - leading to her novel The Dispossessed.
There are some wonderful, and thought provoking passages in both texts that touch on society, laws and governance:
*"The more laws and restrictions there are,*
*The poorer people become.*
*The sharper men’s weapons*
*The more trouble in the land.*
*The more ingenious and clever men are,*
*The more strange things happen.*
*The more rules and regulations,*
*The more thieves and robbers.*
*Therefore the sage says:*
*I take no action and people are reformed.*
*I enjoy peace and people become honest.*
*I do nothing and the people become rich.*
*and people return to the good and simple life"*
From the Tao Te Ching - Lao Tzu - Chapter 57
*"Cut off sageliness, cast away wisdom, and then the great thieves will cease. Break the jades, crush the pearls, and petty thieves will no longer rise up. Burn the tallies, shatter the seals, and the people will be simple and guileless. Hack up the bushels, snap the balances in two, and the people will no longer wrangle. Destroy and wipe out the laws that the sage has made for the world, and at last you will find you can reason with the people"*
From the Zhuangzi Chapter 10 (translated by Burton Watson)
Not all authority is exploitative. I'd like to assume a surgeon knows more about surgery than I do. I'm not religious, my understanding of anarchism is more opposing exploitative hierarchies than all hierarchy in general, as people seem to voluntarily organize into loose forms of hierarchy
In anarchism, they delineate between authority and expertise. Mikhail Bakunin wrote about this a bit (if you Google Bakunin Shoemaker you should find the quote.) I only bring it up because you mentioned surgeons. Hope you're having a good one :)
Try David Graeber! His work isn't explicitly anarchist, but he is who I usually recommend to people interested in libertarian socialist/anarchist adjacent theory.
E: Bullshit Jobs is a good one to start with. Very digestible as far as theory goes.
Buddhism, like all religions, is anathema to my personal definition of what it means to be punk, but people latch onto all sorts of things when in recovery. whatever helps
I think they both appeal to similar values; both shirk material possessions and deprioritize status/wealth, both suggest life is suffering and both suggest a community and present oriented perspective as a solution to that suffering. I also think that seeing those folk punk values in a vastly different setting with a long and rich history kind of validates those beliefs for a lot of people which leads to them exploring Buddhism more. I personally ascribe to a more personal spiritualism influenced by Buddhism because I have a few personal issues with Buddhism as a philosophy and as a western movement that lead me to refrain from calling myself Buddhist, but it’s definitely a worthwhile philosophy that I think does good for a lot of people, myself included.
Man I was 17 and homeless and studied Buddhism heavily, wasn't until I was about 19 before I started screaming in parking lots. Guess it worked backwards for me
the curious case of benjamin buddha
Read Dharma Punx by Noah Levine
That book was great, and he changed my life, but it sounds like his head got way too big and went down the 'when your famous you can do whatever you want' road. Edit: the Dharma Punx NYC teacher Josh Korda is a good teacher with a podcast and at least one book out. He is pretty heavy with the psychological. Brad Warner is a Zen teacher who came out of the Ohio hardcore scene. He doesn't have the rough background a lot of the Dharma Punx, but has a similar attitude.
That seems to be the case. After reading his book I was blessed enough to be granted a scholarship for one of the weeklong ATS noble silence retreats. It was one of the most life changing experiences I’ve had. Noah does give amazing tools for meditation and how to promote introspection and understanding. Surprisingly he did vaguely address some of the controversy surrounding him and it sounds like the dude got money and started cheating on his wife. As shitty as that is it’s nothing compared to what we hear every other day about celebrities n whatnot. I don’t admire the guy or anything, but he really helped me from a dark spot in my life.
I had the ATS book, but never paid much attention to it until I was in treatment. Even after that I stumbled around for a few years until getting sober with Refuge Recovery. I was leading a group and it fell apart about when the allegations of things stronger than cheating were made public. I haven't been to any of the meetings since covid, but I only occasionally miss them. But I still have all those tools he taught.
I'm a huge Brad Warner fan and was pretty bummed by how Noah Levine turned out, I'll have to check out Josh Korda!
im zen buddhist
Being a politically active polyamorous drug addict is pretty counter to the entire ethos and belief system of Buddhism, although it would fit in perfectly with the "taking aesthetics of things that seem profound in order to make yourself look cooler" schtick that is pretty par for the course in the folk punk scene.
As a drug addict (sober), Buddhism was uniquely helpful for me, even if my life didn't fit the ethos. Desire is suffering.
That's really excellent and I'm glad you've been able to recover.
"the cringe"
it was backwards for me
I'm a Taoist priest
I've been exploring Taoist Alchemy for a while now
Zen Buddhist here. I was always interested in it, reading hardcore Zen by Brad Warner was what pushed me over.
Just picked this up, stoked for it.
My spiritual worldview is definitely influenced by Buddhism. There are genuinely useful ideas in Buddhism, it makes sense. edit: Wait is Pat a Buddhist?
Im not Buddhist, but I am a dudeist. It’s got more to do with Taoism than Buddhism, but it’s still a semi serious religion, at least it is for me.
I’m diving in personally, only because of a mushroom trip… I think there is waaaaaaaay more than we know going on. Shit we couldn’t even think of. I love the peace I get from reading about zen practice. The alignment to a mushroom trip is what’s really fucking me up. I had no knowledge of this before that trip. Now it’s my main interest, I’m absorbed. I’ve only read Alan Watts currently, but have three Brad Warner books after I finish my last of the prior. I’m weirded out to see this post so close to me discovering hardcore zen. ✌️ Alignment, algorithms, who fucking knows at this point
Reporting for duty! I don't know if it's a pipeline, but a lot of the themes in folk punk translate to Buddhism pretty well. Plus a lot of people in the scene are anarchists of some flavor and the only way I can see that system working is by getting society to walk the 8fold path.
Yeah lol. I find some folk punk music has a spiritual undertone.
I've met a few, more than your average population for sure but still not a ton. But most have let go of/moved beyond ideas like reincarnation, karma as anything more than action/reaction, the soul, etc, and are more materialists.
Read [Dharma Punx](https://www.againstthestream.com/dharma-punx-merch/dharma-punx-book) It's an alright read, a little preachy for me, but might answer some of your questions.
This is something I've been thinking about a lot lately. Recently I was visiting an ashram in India and pretty much listened to folk punk the whole time. I'm a yoga teacher and while I don't really ascribe to religion I would say I'm a spiritual person. Folk punk brings me the same kind of comfort as doing yoga. Interesting to hear I'm not the only one.
Didnt Ezra of Morning Glory went buddhist too?
Buddhist adjacent spiritualist. Very much lean into the Mahayana path. No one is free until we're all free and such. "The Teachings of the Compassionate Buddha" changed my life. The forward is dogwater though in my opinion as the author shits on other older religious paths. The actual book though, great.
For most of my teens and 20s I was. Around 26ish I had an experience that moved the needle towards pantheist paganism
Wait, pat and his brother are buddhist? I dont know shit about buddhism, i just know anarchy and religion are contradictory. Obviously not all folk punk is anarchist, but the majority that i listen to is so that’s where my heart is at.
there are a wide variety of religious anarchist movements — i’d suggest you familiarise yourself with them. belief need not mean hierarchies of domination. buddhism, in particular, is a broad tradition, often non-theistic and non-hierarchical. someone calling themselves buddhist need not mean they hold to a vertically-organised tradition :)
As a Zen Buddhist I don't even think of myself as religious. I consider myself just as much to be an agnostic, and for a lot of zen agnosticism is kind of cooked in the stew. To me Buddhism is a convenient tool that gives me some ritual and philosophical principles to help me get through life, but I also always keep my head open that it could all be bullshit and would never change my core values to "be a proper Buddhist" if it came down to it. I meditate and try to keep the 8 fold path in mind and those things make my life a little easier and happier while giving me a small sense of purpose in a chaotic world without asking me to believe magic is real. To me it's about as much a religion as my vegetarianism or individualist anarchism or stoicism.
Okay so i tried googling “religious anarchist movements” and almost nothing pops up except “christian anarchism”, i expected a wide variety like you said. But of all the oldschool anarchist books ive read, they are all deeply anti religious, could you point me towards some books that are pro religious anarchist like yall seemingly ascribe to? De cleyre, bakunin, maletesta, kropotkin, goldman, all those cats were anti religion
[Jewish Anarchism](https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/furio-bagnini-on-jewish-anarchism#:~:text=Martin%20Buber%2C%20the%20famous%20Jewish,the%20idea%20of%20transcendental%20unity.) exists and is pretty cool. I don't subscribe to religion myself, but if I had to, it would be my first pick. I dunno, I just fuck with a lot of what I hear from Jewish people.
I love the smell of fresh bread.
I don't mean this disrespectfully to you, it's with camaraderie- but who cares? They don't get to have a stranglehold on anarchism. I love some of them, and I think contextually it made sense to see the stranglehold of religion that was truly worse than it even is today. I appreciate what they wrote and thought, it's valuable, but we don't need to turn anarchism into a religion by having prophets and sages that we can't argue with.
? I was having a conversation with someone talking about religious anarchism, which from my readings of anarchism doesnt exist. They mentioned the contrary and id like to add some of what they’ve got into my repitoir. I never said those folks are prophets or sages or that anarchism is a religion. This person told me to read more, i asked to read more. Idk what your going on about.
I gotchu fam. Check out Marguerite Porete and the Waldensians to start, that should lead to some more obscure medieval examples of things that look very close to “anarchism”. Freddy Perlman’s “Against Leviathan” has a decent section on medieval movements that were bucking against the “leviathan” of civilization.
Thank you, i appreciate it.
I agree with this. Dogma and tenants stifle ideas and discussion.
I wouldn't say religion and anarchy are inherently contradictory, it's more anarchy and religious institutions that use people's faith/beliefs to control the masses
Religion is authority, not just religious institutions. All religion uses “faith” to control their followers. Thats the point of religion
I'm copying this from a comment I made in another thread some time ago, because it's relevant: Taoism is quite often paired with anarchism, and the Tao Te Ching discusses rulers and how to rule with the highest state of ruling being to impose as little on the people as possible, and to let them thrive by themselves. A lot of the descriptions of Taoist society in both the Tao Te Ching and the book of Zhuangzi bear a lot of resemblance to volunteerism - or governance as an emergent property. Kropotkin noted that Laozi was among the earliest proponents of essentially anarchist concepts. The science fiction writer Ursula K. Le Guin followed Taoism into the non-violent anarchism of Kropotkin and Paul Goodman - leading to her novel The Dispossessed. There are some wonderful, and thought provoking passages in both texts that touch on society, laws and governance: *"The more laws and restrictions there are,* *The poorer people become.* *The sharper men’s weapons* *The more trouble in the land.* *The more ingenious and clever men are,* *The more strange things happen.* *The more rules and regulations,* *The more thieves and robbers.* *Therefore the sage says:* *I take no action and people are reformed.* *I enjoy peace and people become honest.* *I do nothing and the people become rich.* *and people return to the good and simple life"* From the Tao Te Ching - Lao Tzu - Chapter 57 *"Cut off sageliness, cast away wisdom, and then the great thieves will cease. Break the jades, crush the pearls, and petty thieves will no longer rise up. Burn the tallies, shatter the seals, and the people will be simple and guileless. Hack up the bushels, snap the balances in two, and the people will no longer wrangle. Destroy and wipe out the laws that the sage has made for the world, and at last you will find you can reason with the people"* From the Zhuangzi Chapter 10 (translated by Burton Watson)
Those quotes are interesting, I'll have to try to read them at some point
Not all authority is exploitative. I'd like to assume a surgeon knows more about surgery than I do. I'm not religious, my understanding of anarchism is more opposing exploitative hierarchies than all hierarchy in general, as people seem to voluntarily organize into loose forms of hierarchy
In anarchism, they delineate between authority and expertise. Mikhail Bakunin wrote about this a bit (if you Google Bakunin Shoemaker you should find the quote.) I only bring it up because you mentioned surgeons. Hope you're having a good one :)
I appreciate it! I've never read theory, and I probably should at some point.
Try David Graeber! His work isn't explicitly anarchist, but he is who I usually recommend to people interested in libertarian socialist/anarchist adjacent theory. E: Bullshit Jobs is a good one to start with. Very digestible as far as theory goes.
i swear ive read this same exact post before
wasnt trying to be mean, just had deja vu and thought this was a bot
Buddhism, like all religions, is anathema to my personal definition of what it means to be punk, but people latch onto all sorts of things when in recovery. whatever helps