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 Posted: Wed Sep 26, 2007 9:32 pm
there is substantial connection between the concepts and the procactive thinkers of buddhism and anarchy. i was wondering, as i have noticed there is a bit of anarchistic thread sewn into the buddhist cloth. many of the buddhist books that i read from (especialy the westernised incarnations) seem to have a very loose sense of structure built between humanity; dharma, karma, and duhkha. these are the lose, not nessicarily divine or heavenly organized natural laws of life. possibly no more an organization than physics, chemistry, biology, and dynamic human interaction.
buddha himself denied the structure of the brahmic caste system. how dose this translate to western social structure, political structure? in the spiritual understanding of buddhism should there be such structure?
how dose anarchy answer this? should there even be the concept of structure, or should it be veiwed with an empty sense as many other structures and concepts are to a buddhis?
sorry.. you will notice i have alot of questions.
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Posted: Thu Sep 27, 2007 5:37 am
I feel that while there is attachment, aversion and ignorance that societal structure will be necessary to ensure not only the survival, but the evolution of humanity.
Should the three poisonous attitudes be subdued or even extinguished, then I am certain that an anarchist system would function quite well, but until that time comes we will always be in danger of having such systems obliterated by one or two ego-centric personalities.
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Posted: Thu Sep 27, 2007 6:18 am
Historically, anarchists in China (at least) tended to be devout Buddhists, with Bajin (he derived his name from a famous 19th-century anarchist and public rival of Marx, Mikhail Bakunin). Anarchism in the Chinese Revolution by Arif Dirlik (University of California Press) has great info. Sadly, the nationalist and secular materialist ideas of the Maoists won out, and the nation then suffered the rabid anti-spiritualism of the Party.
Both Buddhism and Taoism (aside from Neo-Confucian ideas like the Celestial Bureaucracy and its parallels with the imperial state) are highly-compatible with anarchist concepts and ideals. Recognition that nothing in this world persists forever, that government officials are just as imperfect as any other human being, and valuing non-attachment to impure and impermanent phenomena causes practitioners to be very wary of loyalty to the State over that of the Dharma or Way. The spiritual community and/or communities composed of individuals helping one another with egoistic and negativistic views tempered by wisdom is the general ideal for society; excessive materialism and consumerism is to be countered by (for instance) teachings/understanding on how the attached mind necessarily suffers more when the desired stimuli is lacking.
I'm an anarchist myself and was before I became Buddhist. I see anarchism (true socialist type; not "libertarianism") as being the highest form of political system possible, being a compassionate form of direct-democracy where neighboring territories no longer rule one another (e.g. as compared to federalism). Unfortunately, I now have come to see that anarchism is only likely to thrive when society as a whole has a "paradigm" shift in the direction of Eastern thinking while retaining the Classic Liberalism ideas of the West. Anarchist societies will have to spread in a confederal fashion over large regions of land before they can hope to survive aggression from the outside, as has befallen all anarchist experiments up to this point (e.g. in Barcelona Spain and the Ukraine during the first half of the 20th century).
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Posted: Wed Oct 03, 2007 7:31 pm
I started studying about Buddhism and left-wing socio-political philosophies at roughly the same time. And, indeed, I've noticed many parallels in the way some Eastern philosophies view the universe, and the way Western anarchists argue their position on societies. I'm particularly attached to Mikael Bakunin's writings -- quite a passionate fellow. I often describe myself as a "libertarian socialist" just because it turns heads -- "anarchy" and "socialism" both have a bad reputation in the popular understanding of the concepts. Especially in the US.
On the structure, though, I think science in the last decade is providing a better answer. But we're not there yet, exactly. It's not embedded into popular paradigms. The short answer is "networks". That you can have all these individual beings, events, etc. linking up to each other simply by existing, and then having that become interconnected with others on an increasingly grander scale. It's a surprisingly hard concept to really appreciate deeply -- it's the same sort of thinking needed to really appreciate biological evolution. And it seems counterintuitive to many people, perhaps because the range of time is too fast or too slow, depending. But now I'm rambling.... xd
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Posted: Sat Mar 22, 2008 7:57 pm
I am a fundamental anarchist and a Buddhist
and I've always seen a great deal of similarities and synergy between the two ideas.
3nodding
ElectricLoki's post seems to hit the nail right on the head.
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