Why Slavoj Zizek thinks that buddhists are capitalist compradors, pikers and pussies...

I'm currently reading some of Slavoj Zizek's work on religion (The Fragile Absolute, The Perverse Core of Christianity, and On Belief). He is an interesting mix of erudite+esoteric theory, comedian and psychopath.

Here's Zizek on the buddhism and the new age wave in Western capitalist societies:

Zizek: "... a wild donkey of a man"

"The ultimate postmodern irony is today’s strange exchange between the West and the East. At the very moment when, at the level of “economic infrastructure,” Western technology and capitalism are triumphing worldwide, at the level of “ideological superstructure,” the Judeo-Christian legacy is threatened in the West itself by the onslaught of New Age “Asiatic” thought. Such Eastern wisdom, from “Western Buddhism” to Taoism, is establishing itself as the hegemonic ideology of global capitalism. But while Western Buddhism presents itself as the remedy against the stress of capitalism’s dynamics—by allowing us to uncouple and retain some inner peace—it actually functions as the perfect ideological supplement.

The “Western Buddhist” meditative stance is arguably the most efficient way for us to fully participate in the capitalist economy while retaining the appearance of sanity. If Max Weber were alive today, he would definitely write a second, supplementary volume to his Protestant Ethic, titled The Taoist Ethic and the Spirit of Global Capitalism."

in The Revenge of Global Finance