'BUDDHISM, HAPPINESS, AND SACRIFICE': A MASTERCLASS WITH SLAVOJ ZIZEK - PART 1
Added 2023-07-24 10:53:16 +0000 UTCRecorded lecture at Birkbeck University
18 April 2023 - BUDDHISM, HAPPINESS, AND SACRIFICE
In the last decades, critiques of my reading of Buddhism abound – even those who are otherwise sympathetic to my general approach claim that I miss the point when I target Buddhism. So I'll try to clarify what I see as the radical difference between Lacanian position and Buddhism. Buddhism accepts the common view that the purpose of life is happiness (to quote Dalai Lama, “the purpose of our lives is to be happy“), it just defines this term differently – here are a couple of statements by Dalai Lama which make this difference clear: “Happiness is not something readymade. It comes from your own actions.” / “When we feel love and kindness toward others, it not only makes others feel loved and cared for, but it helps us also to develop inner happiness and peace.” / “Human happiness and human satisfaction most ultimately come from within oneself.” Following Freud, Lacan, on the contrary, asserts death drive as the basic component of our libidinal lives which operate beyond the pleasure-principle: what Lacan calls enjoyment (jouissance) emerges out of a self-sabotage of pleasure, it is an enjoyment in displeasure itself.
