Transcendent: Art and Dhama in a Time of Collapse

In TRANSCENDENT, celebrated cultural critic Curtis White, asks what Buddhism will look like in the future. Do we want a secular Buddhism that looks like corporations and neuroscience? Or do we want a Buddhism that still provides refuge from the debased world of money and things? Transcendence is not about magic realms where spirits fly about; the world is, as Shunryu Suzuki put it, its own magic. We only need to reclaim it and reclaim our humanity while we’re at it. The problem White suggests is a culture that recognizes only ‘things’, capitalist things and science things, and aggressively denies the idea that the world of things has a beyond. We’re told by science ideologues like the New Atheists that we live in a secular age and that philosophy is dead, and art is only an amusement, and transcendence is not wanted because science can provide all the wonder and beauty we need. TRANSCENDENT is a call for the re-enchantment not only of Buddhism but also of our Western art traditions.