Buddhist political theory and policy

Buddhism and politics meet at two levels — theory and practice. Buddhism has no explicit body of social and political theory comparable to its psychology or metaphysics. Nevertheless, a Buddhist political theory can be deduced primarily from basic Buddhism, from Dharma. Secondly, it can be deduced from the general orientation of scriptures which refer explicitly to a bygone time. We have already argued, however, that this can be done only in a limited and qualified way.

Whatever form it may take, Buddhist political theory like other Buddhist "theory" is just another theory. As it stands in print, it stands in the world of the conditioned; it is of samsara. It is its potential, its spiritual implications, which make it different from "secular" theory. When skillfully practiced, it becomes a spiritual practice. As always, Buddhist "theory" is like a label on a bottle describing the contents which sometimes is mistaken for the contents by zealous label-readers. In that way we can end up with a lot of politics and very little Buddhism.

This is not to decry the value of a Buddhist social and political theory — only its misuse. We have only begun to apply Buddhism as a catalyst to the general body of Western social science and most of the work so far has been in psychology. Such work in allied fields could be extremely helpful to Buddhists and non-Buddhists alike.

The writings of some Buddhists from Sri Lanka, Burma and elsewhere offer interesting examples of attempts to relate Buddhism to nationalism and Marxism (not to be confused with communism). Earlier in the century Anagarika Dharmapala stressed the social teaching of the Buddha and its value in liberating people from materialistic preoccupations. U Nu, the eminent Burmese Buddhist statesman, argued that socialism follows naturally from the ethical and social teachings of the Buddha, and another Burmese leader, U Ba Swe, held that Marxism is relative truth, Buddhism absolute truth. This theme has been explored more recently in Trevor Ling's book "Buddha, Marx and God," (2nd ed., Macmillan, London 1979) and Michal Edwarde's "In the Blowing out of a Flame" (Allen & Unwin 1976). Both are stimulating and controversial books. E.F. Schumacher's celebrated book "Small is Beautiful" (Blond & Briggs, London 1973) has introduced what he terms "Buddhist economics" and its urgent relevance to the modern world to many thousand of non-Buddhists. Of this we shall say more in a later section on the Buddhist "good society."

Buddhist social and political theory and policy can only be mentioned in passing in this pamphlet, although we have earlier introduced the idea of "social karma" as of central importance. We are, instead, concerned here with problems and questions arising in the practice of social and political work by Buddhists and the nature of that work.

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