I've been reading about buddhism recently and an interesting question popped up: if all (or most) people were buddhists, what kind of political system would we have?
I have a feeling that we'd most likely live in a socialist, if not communist society, given the multiple references to compassion, kindness, helping others, loving even the people you would normally despise, etc.
What do you think, Holla Forums ?
that's not how history works
This is your brain on idealism.
That's not how it would work.
Ideology would be almost exactly what it is today, just with new labels to conform more to Buddhist ethos.
Perhaps an oppressive feudal regime run by monks like in Tibet.
Tibetan Feudalism != Buddhism
It's almost like you haven't spent any time studying Buddhism.
It's like you don't understand your own question and its implications.
Literally all of this is also in the three Abrahamic religions, religious compassion isn't unique to Buddhism. Modern capitalism works in all religious environments because it presents itself as a system that can work anywhere with any culture, and as it takes told it gradually replaces religious worship with the worship of capital, the market, etc.. It pacifies them.
I'm an idealist and even I think you're being a tad excessive in thinking that Buddhism alone could put a stopper on capitalism because this hasn't happened in any countries with a sizable/majority Buddhist population.
...
Probably the least revolutionary religion aside from Hinduism.
I think they fit together pretty well. Both involve seeing the world as one big dialectical process (samsara/class struggle) which eventually reaches an inevitable resting point (nirvana/communism) as all that is compounded (conditioned entities/class divisions) fall apart.
However theravada and mahayana are retty different. If we're talking theravada then we'd probably go full Stirner and not give a rat's ass what's happening in the world politically, only worrying about personal development. If mahayana, everyone would be full socialist.
I'm reading Debt: the first 5000 years by David Graeber (very good book highly recommend) and he illustrated how Medieval Buddhist societies, advocating for renouncing material goods and the self made it easier for the Buddhist Temple itself to gather donations from all over. Buddhism and Capitalism had a weird similarity in the Buddhists believed that it wasn't enough for you to be enlightened, everyone had to be, the Dharma had to constantly expand.
Just why? Graeber is a shit communist and a shit anthropologist.
Adding to this that a half-assed understanding of Dharma doesn't guarantee class consciousness, as Yuiposter put it, but after studying it for a couple of years I'm convinced it can be seem as a form of proto-anarchism. Ever heard of the Ikko-Ikki?
He is definitely a bad communist, but how is he a bad anthropologist?
Relegion can be used as anything, cause it's ideology.
You can use christianity for fascism (we all obey god), communism (we are all equal in front of god), or Anarchism (the kindom of heavens is not of this world. Jesus opposed authority).
It's less easy for more state-structured relegions, like Islam or Jewdaism, but generaly you can form it as you wish.
PURE IDEOLOGY!
I don't know why, but I giggled hysterically at the thought of all the edgy tankies here becoming buddhist and meditating in the lotus position.
I think buddhism is fucking gr8 but I'm not sure it has extremely much to say on what the structure of society should look like.
en.m.wikipedia.org
Could we get a flag for this?
That's an interesting article, and I think they're right, but I don't see how that makes him a bad anthropologist.
I'm for it.
also what's the weird wikipedia?
Also please.
I am retarded.
would definitely like a buddhist socialism flag
Sorry
I read a little about agrarianism, and it seems to have some similarities with socialist thinking. I don't know much on the subject though.
"Look at the birds: we will see that they eat only as much food as their stomachs can hold. They cannot take more than that; they don’t have granaries. Look down at the ants and insects: that is all they can do. Look at the trees: trees imbibe only as much nourishment and water as the trunk can hold, and cannot take in any more than that. Therefore a system in which people cannot encroach on each other’s rights or plunder their possessions is in accordance with nature and occurs naturally, and that is how it has become a society continued to be one, until trees became abundant, animals became abundant, and eventually human beings became abundant in the world. The freedom to hoard was tightly controlled by nature in the form of natural socialism."
This is some rad shit, man. Buddhism is fucking awesome
This smells like .. *snif* … ANARCHOPRIMITIVISM!
made for bourgie edgy kids
Red flag with the yellow eightfold path wheel pls.
I think Buddhism isn't really much on its own but depends on the class/class consciousness of the one who reads it or supports it, like Christianity. Seems to me like regular old Buddhism is closer to "liberation theology" than most other religions. It seems like it's pretty shit as its practiced but I think just goes to show that national hatred trumps any religious sentiments of goodwill.
I'm not very well-read on Buddhism but I like entertaining the notion of the Party being like the raft that's used to reach the other shore (link this in with the whole capitalism = samsara/spectacular time and communism = nirvanna/moksha/human time). Once the other shore is reached, what good is the Party/the state?
I think Zen Buddhism has been good and mentally relieving for me, personally. And while there it (Zen and Buddhism generally) can be construed as stoic or passive thereby counterrevolutionary consider that the real content of it is a pointing beyond duality and beyond language. Bodhidharma said "when don't understand, you depend on reality. when you understand, reality depends on you" and I find that to be very empowering from a revolutionary socialist standpoint. When you understand class struggle, you can change things. When you don't you feel and are a slave to un-understandable forces.
Corollary: I think that language is deceptive and one-sided and cannot encompass reality. The contradictory nature of dialectics and buddhism is an attempt to fully apprehend reality. I think some other religions as well are trying to get at the same point as us socialists, but Marx was necessary by showing how fundamental material conditions are and how we can only propose to solve problems when the material conditions are in development or ripe. The hindus could only articulate their idea of liberated humanity as moksha, the buddhists of nirvanna, etc. these abstractions because the material conditions for their fulfillment were not present, and presented reality as the 'revolving wheel' because they were these peasant societies based on cyclical time.
Thesis 163 from Society of the Spectacle:
"The natural basis of time, the actual experience of the flow of time, becomes human and social by existing for man. The restricted condition of human practice, labor at various stages, is what has humanized and also dehumanized time as cyclical and as separate irreversible time of economic production. The revolutionary project of realizing a classless society, a generalized historical life, is the project of a withering away of the social measure of time, to the benefit of a playful model of irreversible time of individuals and groups, a model in which independent federated times are simultaneously present. It is the program of a total realization, within the context of time, of communism which suppresses “all that exists independently of individuals.”"
Hold it there buddy, it's just a fucking analogy.
Probably liberalism, since Buddhism is a fucking ideology and barely a religion fam.
t. Marxist and Catholic
How does it work?
Buddhism is the most reactionary religion of all, because it denounces materialism and material interest far more than any religion.
I fear it will be one of the biggest enemies of the revolution in asia, far worse a scourge than islam or christianity ever was.
go fuck yourself OP.
What if we were all centaurs?
You are right that buddhism is more an ideology than a religion, though I'd call it a philosophy. Excuse me if I don't consider that a bad thing.
You wanna know how to spot a pseudo-leftist?
YOU wanna know how to spot a pseudo-leftist?
Probably the least revolutionary religion aside from Hinduism.>>673382
somebody stop me if this doesnt sound like dialectical materialism to them.
Nice failed attempt at a samefag.
how abstract. In nature things change for a reason, because the material conditions for change are in place and things adapt to this. You could fit any number of vague religious quips into dialectic materialism, this does not mean it has any basis in dialectic materialism.
go back to cuckchan you fucking idealist.
wow
much deep
enlightened marxist wizardry
Calling out people for using inspect element something only they do now?
Also add "idealism" to your list of things you need to look up today.
maybe someone better versed on the matter can clear things up. I think when it comes to the basis of things, Marx is right, Buddha is wrong. No two ways about it. But does a materialist basis for Buddhism somehow negate the teachings and things like compassion for other sentient beings? I don't see why it must. It seems to me like Buddhism can be petrified and turned to shit or be something truly liberating.
No, because materialism is descriptive, while any justification for compassion is necessarily prescriptive.