Buddhism, as a religion, is scoped about the subject of happiness and "enlightenment." It also has always existed in a context of monarchy, aristocracy, and as a minority religion within societies prone to hostility towards both minorities and outsiders. As such, my observation is that it's scope has never been about directly proposing combattive ideas to transform society so much as using existing thought and ideas, by way of critical thinking, to tranform those ideas into sensible and humanistic or "enlightened" ideas. This is the concept behind zuiho bini.
The issue is how does one apply principle (not necessarily "Buddhist" principle -- but universal principle) to modern subjects, in a language that can shed a little light on current issues and help to tranform societies? Buddhist thinking can help us with this. Applying Buddhist principles of rationality can help us make "distinctions" between interpretations of principles that make sense and those that don't, and to make sense out of the seemingly conflictive moral choices around us.
Let us take Confucian principles as an example, on the surface, for instance, seem to have nothing to do with ideas such as "liberty, equality, property!" They'd be more "Appreciation and loyalty to Father, Teacher, Sovereign." Rather than being an opening for democratic principles they'd seem to be an opening for authoritarianism. Confucianism makes its principles:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confucianism
cultivate themselves morally;
participate in the correct performance of ritual;
show filial piety and loyalty where these are due;
cultivate humanity, or benevolence.
But the battle is really the same.
Authoritarianism is the (arrogant) notion that there exists "authority" because it is "written down." The authors (or the possessorship of rights granted by the authors) are the authorities, and the rest of us must obey them because they "know" what is "written." In a world where literacy is the property of oligarchs, this was the source of oligarchic and aristocratic control of society. To this day literacy is necessary to liberty partly because it frees people from being bound to authoritarian ideas. The notion of democracy is based on the idea that authority derives from and requires the consent of the people. The threshold for democracy is majority rule, but the goal is universal consensus.
Confucianism was created in an authoritarian context, but where the sages sought to transform the concept of the authorities. If the principles of humanism and benevolence are practiced by rulers than agreement or consensus is a practical possibility. Conversely, unjust and authoritarian rulers usually do not in reality practice either humanity or benevolence, but instead twist and bend principle and laws purportedly based on principle for their own arbitrary and unjust ends.
Confucian principles apply to democracy because democracy historically fails when the people don't practice "virtue" or "cultivation of morality." Authoritarian regimes fail for the same reason.
Buddhism arrived in China certain of its superiority. And it is said that initially Buddhist monks set the Confucian scholars on the run. There is a story told of how the Confucians had rites in which they'd demonstrate the superiority of Confucian thought by doing things that ordinarily would destroy the texts, only to have them survive. When the Buddhists came on the scene the sutras would survive but the Confucian texts would perish. Nichiren tells this story in one of his Gosho.
But the rest of the story is that Buddhism in China, became corrupt. People became monks who had no idea of what they were doing and whose main idea seemed to be avoiding work. This led to a resurgence of Confucian thinking and a persecution in which an effort was made to eliminate Buddhism in China around the time of Jikaku Daishi's visit. The sages became even more adept at their arguments. Nichiren said in his Gosho that the sages became even more devious, borrowing Buddhist ideas and calling them their own, but the truth is that Nichiren's own thinking reflected Confucian morality, and so Buddhism in China, Korea, and Japan adopted Confucian ideas of morality not just to survive but because those ideas were genuinely useful and valid principles. Essentially Confucianism was a different realm of religion being about ritual and political behavior, while Buddhism is about clear thinking and meditative mind-self-control-practice. Most medieval Chinese, Koreans, and Japanese believed elements of both. And that applies to Zen/Chan monks as well as to Nichiren himself.
Buddhism and Buddhist principles can illuminate what is useful and universal in Confucian thinking because they insist on ideas standing on their own merit and not based on the borrowed authority of "sages," "Gods", or "God-Men." Confucianism and Taoism seemed opposed to Buddhist ideas, but were able to benefit from this approach. Ultimately Buddhist, Taoist, Confucian, Christian, Judaism, Islamic, and other ideas all have core elements that can stand up to critical thinking, and other ideas that can't. Subjecting religion and political ideology to such treatment is called "making distinctions."
Chris
I've been doing a lot of reading on rights, and on various political philosophies. And when it comes to arguing with the extreme right, one sees that most of their ideologues have some self contradictory ideas. For example they will deny that any "groups" have rights -- and yet insist that corporations and partnerships should be exempt from that concept.
Now I can see the value of corporations. A group is always stronger than an individual. And I can also see why they are inconsistent on the subject. Most of these ideologues have bought the idea that there is no legitimate purpose for government and that Government is the source of all tyranny. But those who castigate "Gubbornment" while tauting the beauties of corporativism are comparing Frankenstein with Frankenstein's monster, and calling the monster beautiful. Corporations exist to allow individuals to get together to reduce their risk -- which means sometimes giving some individuals license to defraud, despoil, disenfranchise, and dispossess others, in the name of a collective "company" -- while avoiding personal responsibility for the consequences.
To me the purpose of Just government is to reconcile the needs of the "commons" us commoners, with the needs of "ownership."
We need to own our liberty, ourselves, our lands, our "personal effects" and we need to be free to do, to succeed, and yes to fail. At the same time we need to band together in communities so that "united we stand -- divided we fall" and the division of property needs to be "fair", "agreeable", and neither oppressive from the many to the few, nor oppressive to the many.
We don't live in an aristocracy. The term aristocracy is usually a lie anyway. The "capable few" may exist in each generation, but their progeny don't inherit their capability with any degree of reliability. Democracy is about Freedom first, equal access to the "playing field", and setting a world where maximal freedom and agreement is sought for all "common" activities.
We own the nation in common -- that is why this is a democracy and not an aristocracy. And we need balance between the "commons" and the "anticommons" or else the country will devolve into tyranny. Indeed any of the systems that bind us together, cities and towns, roads, communications, etceteras... are commons because even if they are owned by individuals, they require participation by many people to function and no one person can effectively "control them" except with the cooperation of others.
I asked myself what distinguishes "Aristocracy" from Democracy? And the answer was that in an Aristocracy there is the "Anticommons" -- someone or some group owns everything. When that happens availability of things people need becomes unavailable. In a Monarchy or Aristocracy someone, or a small group, owns the country itself. Where there is no commons there tends to be oppression of those who would otherwise be able to depend on the commons for some part of their income. Where the commons (such as rivers, streams, roads, networked communication, and the legal system) are owned by groups of people and not accessable to everyone then some are defined as "outlaws" by their very existence. The poor are the result of the "anticommons" -- the exclusion of people from opportunity, trade, work, participation in the economy.
We should have the opportunity to own our private land, our private possessions. To actually have that should is always at the price of asserting our individual power by banding together and agreeing with others that "I'll respect your property if you respect mine." The reality is that most property is contingent. Corporations such as Banks, Lending companies, etcetera exist because of this. If you don't believe me (as Patrick notes in the previous post) don't pay your mortgage and see how much "absolute" respect the Mortgage company has for "your property."
We have to protect and respect the commons, because ultimately we are all commoners until someone owns all the commons and then we are all slaves.
Chris
In much of this world "commoners" don't have access to titles. When I read about the History of the US and the history of Argentina, the difference, is that no matter how much Argentina politicians promised land reform and land to, say the Gauchos, Blacks, and indiginous people of Argentina; at the end of the day those people were effectively dispossessed from the opportunity to get ahead. In the US, to the contrary, common land was made available to commoners. Sure we had land speculators, but those speculators, mostly, were involved in selling land to ordinary people.
The opportunity to own private property, for common people, is our common heritage and is what distinguishes our country from countries that are conflictive and economic failures.
That being said, understanding the commons is important for preserving that heritage, because the fact is that the enemy of private property for commoners is not idealistic "collectivism" (though that is an enemy too -- especially in other countries where the importance of private property is denied and misunderstood) -- but the idea that the "commons" should not belong to, be controlled by, and be regulated for and on behalf of us commoners. In my last post I talked about the commons and its definition. (001411.html)
If you listen to the average right wing ideologue, the idea of "commons" is somehow conflated with the idea of "collective." But this is a false idea. The commons is any set of resources whose shared ownership is necessary to the survival, liberty, and "pursuit of happiness" of commoners. That is why the development of monopoly, monopolistic organizations, and oligopoly is destructive.
If you look at the words "power," "ownership", "rule" and "control" they are almost synonymous. If the liberty of the individual is his own "self-rule" or "self-ownership." The liberty of people in groups is the "shared rule" and the "agreed sharing of common goods" involves agreeable power sharing. We own our individual dollars, but the vehicles, belong to the Feds. When we pay a person for something we want, we exchange ownership. We do this with the property of equality -- we are equally satisfied by the transaction or we won't go about it.
A rape, a murder, a theft is an exchange of property also, but the exchange is anything but agreeabe, and that is what defines whether it is lawful or not. When dealing with groups, when a group takes property from another group and there is no agreement, the transaction may be lawful but it is not agreeable, and if it genuinely infringes on the rights and liberty of the person who's property is taken -- then that is tyranny. So tyranny is the infringement on individual liberty by the group.
The commons exist because some properties cannot be fairly adjudicated, divided up, without preserving access by "common folks" on a basis of relative agreeability -- equal satisfaction with access. Stores are commons where folks are granted permission to enter on condition that they behave themselves and maybe buy something. Computers and the internet are a commons where each individual participant agrees to abide by certain rules in return for access. Our country may be divided into private property, but the source of the titles is "We the people." The country as a whole is a commons, and as a result it grants each citizen the right to travel, to use highways and rivers, and to certain common rights, that cannot be infringed.
Other countries don't have this premise. The land belongs to a King, or to powerful individuals, and there is no point in arguing with them.
Chris