Welcome to free thoughts. I'm Aaron Powell and I'm Trevor Burrus joining us. Today is Matthew J Moore?
He's an associate professor of political science at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo
An author of Buddhism and political theory. Welcome to free thoughts
Thanks so much for having me. We'll start with
Who was the Buddha that's a good question. So the Buddha was?
an axial age
religious reformer born sometime between 400 and 600 BC
different scholars argue about the exact dates and
honestly, I think of him a little bit as being kind of like the the Luther of Hinduism so at that period we have the
Religion which scholars called the Vedic religion, but which eventually turns into what we now call Hinduism, right?
And it's polytheistic it believes in
What diversión?
Reincarnation that today we would call metempsychosis
But that there's a soul that hops from body to body to body over the course of different lifetimes
and that has a fairly conventional view of
Their being kind of good after lives and bad after lives
would you reach through accumulating Karma through various kinds of intentional or willful acts and
the Buddha comes along and by tradition
He comes from the warrior caste so he's not himself a priest, but he's well educated in this
yeah in this tradition and
Says well, that's pretty much right but not quite and he makes a series of kind of important innovations
one of them being that in the Buddhist tradition
the soul is
More like a kind of energy and so the metaphor we often see is lighting one candle from another
so there is some spark that moves on and that is
Relevantly in that next light but not a soul that hops
you know from one body to the next to the next to the next to the next and
Also the idea that at the end of it all would we if we can reach nirvana which technically means extinguishment
That we we'll simply cease to be in some way and the Buddha's unfortunately extremely vague about that
As opposed to the hint division that we're going to kind of join up with with Brahman the kind of Godhead and become
part of this universal consciousness
So this gives you some sense, you know, he's a reformer
He's someone who turns down a life of privilege and potential power
to pursue a religious vocation and
lives to be in about roughly 80
and has the kind of long and interesting and well documented vice is Buddha thought of as a as a
Divine person as a spiritual being like Jesus or maybe more like one of the Hebrew prophets or is he a philosopher?
and not divine
Yeah, good. That's a great question. It depends a little bit on which tradition you're in so, you know saying
Buddhism is a little bit like saying Christianity, you know, there's a lot of different versions of it in most versions. The Buddha is not
Thought to be divine in the sense of being either any kind of creator or in the sense of being immortal
The way that the Hindu system
that he comes out of works is there there's
human a human incarnation is roughly the best incarnation mostly because it gives you a chance to
Choose it gives you a chance to to do the right thing and try to live the right way
below that there are animal incarnations, then there's like insects and vegetable and
Then you get down to the kind of various hell realms where you can become a ghost and all those kinds of things
above human if you are
And this is a distinction
I really have a hard time explaining to my students that are always puzzled by it
The goal and into ism is not to have only good karma. It's to have no Karma
And so if you have really great karma because you've been a good person
But the actions are done from desire. They're done from the desire to be good
Then you're going to end up with that kind of super human incarnation and you're going to be some kind of deity as all kinds
Then in that system what the Buddha does with that system is says yeah
It's true
If you have a lot of good karma at the time of your death, it is possible to have this kind of divine incarnation
But all that really means is that you're gonna live so long you're gonna forget that you're mortal
But at the end of the day you are mortal
So in the in those kind of traditional Buddhist teaching there are gods
But they're all mortal and they're all and none of them created the universe the universe
according to the Buddha has no beginning and no end and
They will all eventually die
And the and be reincarnated
and the thing about being a god is it's actually not that great because you get there because you had a wonderful life as a
person and you've chosen to do good things which is so long as a god and you have all these kind of you know,
Fun magic powers that you kind of forget that that was the point in the first place and so it's actually likely to lead you
astray
So yes, so most people see the Buddha as a philosopher. There are some traditions
I'm thinking particularly of the Pure Land tradition that does seem to see him as more of God
More like a traditional God but in general no, he's mostly zena's just a guy who figured it out
And so the core, I mean most people who have heard of Buddhism or know anything about it. It's this it's this notion of
escape from suffering right like that this that this rebirth is caught up the cycles of this rebirth are part of
The fact that we are suffering and so it's by ending suffering or stress that we we end the cycles of rebirth
So what does?
What's the core of that? I guess like maybe tell us a bit about that his central insight that you know, the Four Noble Truths
sure, so and I guess I would say that there's the
Philosophical version of that and then I think there's also a kind of practical version
so we'll start with the philosophical and then we'll do the practical so and the philosophical side the Buddhist says
And this is the first of the Four Noble Truths
look any human life is going to involve suffering no matter how happy or wonderful your life is
Eventually you're going to die
and everyone you love is going to
I and they're gonna get sick before they die or they're gonna get run over by a bus or whatever other things gonna happen
And even if what you love is cats or cats gonna die or if we love as nature
Well, it turns out nature isn't just one thing
Right eventually, the beautiful Rocky Mountains will crumble into dust and become and it will have planes there instead of bounds, you know
and so whatever it is that you love is is eventually
Going to change and that's gonna make you unhappy and so there really isn't a way to avoid suffering
Sorry, so odds in double truth
Number two weird a suffering come from you know, what's the cause of sufferings as well?
the cause of suffering ultimately is a kind of some kind of clinging right that
We need say well. I I loved the Rockies no one's and to be exactly the way they are today forever
That's always trying to hold on to certainty
and sameness in the face of inevitable change and then he says well what might secure be
This is the third noble truth
Well, if you could figure out how not to cling then you could conceivably not suffer
This is re well on to the fourth noble truth. And this is the deceptive one, right?
Because within the Four Noble Truths is the Noble Eightfold Path and so my my friend always argues that it's actually, you know, eleven truths
If you could figure out how not to cling you might not suffer. Well, how aren't you gonna cling?
And so Buddhism is really thought of as kind of a practice a system of teaching yourself how not to cling to stuff
the most common
Method of course is meditation
And for everyone who's tried to meditate part of the point of it really is
To let go of expectations even about what the meditation is going to do
So that instead of sitting there thinking I must be terrible in meditation because it's not working
I'm still thinking that itself is something also to be let go of so that you can accept what's happening around you
Briefly the practical version of all of that is I and I tell this to my students but also to my children at home
The Buddha says look
Life inevitably contains some suffering when you're suffering you have three choices
You can keep suffering you can change the world or you can change your mind. That's it
Keep suffering always seems like a bad idea
so it's either changing the world for changing your mind and
Sometimes changing the world is the right thing to do, right if you're tired. You should go to sleep if you're hungry
You should eat but those are changing the world kinds of things
but often and the Buddha says really
Most of the time the conflicts that we suffer from are mental
There are things that are self-imposed if there's a famous story about the two the two darts or the two arrows
One arrow hits and then you think oh why me
Why am I always the one who gets hurt, right and that just adds on to your your unhappiness?
Then the Buddha says you could like almost all of that and suffer a lot now in the beginning of the book you discuss
Getting into the political aspect of this that we have this rich
Buddhist religion and philosophy with hundreds of millions of adherence
But for people in the West most the time they aren't thinking about
Buddhist political theory or political philosophy in the West and I did a
philosophy degree for undergrad
We didn't touch on Eastern philosophy and there seems to be a hole there that you're trying to
Fill but why would boot ism have something to say about political theory?
And I guess maybe more specifically did Buddha and his immediate followers have things to say about politics
Yet such a good question. I bet this project started out
Honestly a little bit on a whim where one day I was thinking
what I'm gonna work on next and
I started thinking well who ever wrote anything about?
politics or government or Kings or whatever and
And if he did what is it? And where is that? Exactly and how does one find it?
And so that started a because I at that point was already a Buddhist practitioner
But I hadn't really done much scholarship around it
and so I started trying to understand you know, what are the earliest texts that we have are
those available in translation what kind of translations are out there and
A lot of that kind of just you know the stuff that keeps professors entertained
But it was very fun for me trying to dig all that out and understand what was there and then starting to ask?
Okay
Well, where in these texts anywhere does he say anything interesting?
Of course there were kings in that period and he talks about Kings alive
But most of the stuff he says is really not interesting at all
you know, I went to see king pasenadi yesterday and he said this or you know, we taught the King this
But there are a handful of places where he discusses
fairly directly what appears to be
Government or theories of government and I give you a couple quick examples
so in these early texts
There is one
where he lays out the kind of origin of the universe and he says look universe known creates universe universe just
Springs into existence it goes on its merry way eventually
It all collapses back down into a tiny little point and it all springs back out again
So it's kind of like a Big Bang Big Crunch theory
And this happens over and over and over again?
And that he goes through one of these cycles of what happens and in essence what happens is that at some point?
you know consciousness emerges and there are kind of ethereal conscious beings and
One of them thinks what would it be like to have a sensual experience and in particular in this case?
what would be like to eat and
Sort of finds something in this ethereal world to eat and becomes greedy and
Then there's this long
Process by which, you know things get worse and worse worse and worse and worse and we end up at a system
That looks pretty familiar right where people are growing rice and small
individually owned plots and living in small villages and some of them are stealing from one another or
Using violence to prevent some from stealing from each other
And he says this is really where government starts and what's interesting about this, right?
this is roughly 400 BC there really isn't in this culture a tradition of
contract or the idea of a social contract and yet what he lays out is in essence a social contract theory where
You know, he says that people get together and say well, let's pick the person who's the smartest and the bravest
and interestingly the best-looking I will make them the King will give them the power and will give them a share of the rice every
Year so that they can survive
while they enforce the rule and so that's his conception at the beginning of of
Politics and it was fun to find that you know and see that that was there and then there are a few more pieces throughout
The texts that they give a little bit more of his idea about what politics should be
Does he so we've gotten now too?
there ought to be a king to enforce the laws, but are there what's the scope of that King's power is this just
Totalitarianism anything goes or does just Buddhism can limit the state in any way?
Yes, so and this is part what I'm trying to us out
So, of course, you know most people who are Buddhists today
Especially in the West who are Buddhists by conversion are sympathetic to some kind of small our Republican politics
Right, they're interested in something that's representative
It's in the interest of the people that's in some way going to be going to be getting that
the interests of the people represented and
So there's a tendency to say well Buddhism has always been Republican or it's always in a kind of you know
Small D democratic system and I think that that's wrong, you know, really up until about 1850 virtually every Buddhist
controlled
Region that we know of a Buddhist country or you know Buddhist kingdoms going a little bit further back are all
more or less absolute monarchies now, it's true that
Within within the system. There are a number of places where the Buddha teaches and where some of these countries have tried
to practice a kind of benevolent
Dictatorship or a benevolent monarch ISM where we have one king
but the king is supposed to be inspired by the
the
Teachings of the Buddha and is supposed to be ruling in the interest of everyone and there are several places in the early texts
where the Buddha talks about you know, here's a really great King and
What does this great king do he goes to the nobles come to this?
Great King and say hey, we really would have build you this big beautiful palace and he says, you know
It would actually be better if you spend some of that money
helping people who were poor and so let's build a place that the poor can come and bathe and let's build pavilions and if they
Need some gold they can come and get some coals or if it eat some land we can get them some land
And so it's redistributed but it's voluntarily redistributed, which I think is very interesting
And again, it's supposed to be ultimately in interest to the people. That doesn't work very well at you can practice for most Buddhists
polities until you get to this period around 1850 where there's this enormous sea change and we get to a kind of
modern Buddhists democratic or republican systems
In your view in trying to would you say you're trying to suss out?
Buddhist political theory as much because it's it's there's not only anything there. Is that an accurate description or
because of what we have we might think
There has been historically right, you know
prior to colonialism there were Buddhist monarchies that existed and they they had a conception of the politics they were doing and thought
That those were rooted in Buddhism. So there's a way in which the answer is. Yeah
There is a Buddhist political theory and it's absolute monarchy some goodbye, you know, okay the end of the story
But I think that that turns out to be too simple an answer that the Buddhist so let me give you one of the argument
That a lot of people who see or a smaller Republican
Origin for Buddhism of what their argument is?
They say look the Buddha himself never ruled any country the only community he ever created was the community of monks and nuns
Which is called the Sangha
The Sangha is ruled democratically, right? It's perfectly clear. It's
Actually in essence it's a consensus democracy. You got to get to a point where everyone agrees
You know, there are he actually lays out extensive. I mean really like tediously extensive
Rules about how trials are to be held?
Conditions under which someone might be found innocent even though they've committed the crime for example
That's the first time the issue has come up or if they were ignorant or if they were mentally ill and so on
He lays out this really very
Democratic system for the monks and one of the arguments people make as well. Okay, but that's the only system he ever laid out
So why shouldn't we think that that's what he wanted for everyone and I think there's some pretty good reasons to think that he didn't
Think that was likely for lazy society. I mean in particular, right? The monks are celibate and they own nothing
So two of the most common sources of political conflict that might actually lead to us
Something a little bit different are removed in a kind of artificial way for that little communities
and when he talks about
politics
In another of the early sutras he lays out this vision of kind of where politics is going into the future
It's all based on verb tenses. This is what's happened in the past. This is what's happening now
Where it's gonna go to the future, it's always monitored now. It might be a better monarchy in the future
We're gonna have a more enlightened monarch and one who's going to rule in the interests of the people, but it's never democracy
So we in the Western philosophical?
Tradition we have
arguments for
monarchy we have arguments for
Republicanism so when we're looking at political theory as a whole what?
Specifically does this Buddhist political theory bring to the table? That's either?
Unique or at least sets it apart from the bulk of Western political theorizing
Yeah, so as I bother reading the book
So I think there are a couple different things that it contributes one
Is that the Buddhist teaches that there is no self and he doesn't just mean that
The idea that the conception that we're sort of separate from one. Another is an illusion, right? That's off
We're all ultimately part of one big
Universe and he also doesn't merely mean that there is no immortal soul
You know could see those arguments and other thinkers seem something more radical than that. He says
The person who you were 10 minutes ago is not the same as the person you are now
And that there's really no value in seeing continuity other than for obvious ordinary kind of day-to-day reasons
Right, like it's helpful to have names to refer to people and you know
We're gonna call someone who appears to be the same person by the same name and things like that
But he says beyond that the idea that somehow
Your self is an ongoing project
That needs a certain kind of direction or care it is just wrong. I had in fact according to him
It's the source of all of our social conflict on all of our social problems
again students often have a hard time really grasping this
Idea, and the thing the metaphor that I've used to talk to them about it is a hurricane
so if you think about it arcane is nothing but a combination of warm air and moisture and yet they're so
Distinctive and so powerful that we give them names, right?
So we called them by human names
But at some point a hurricane will simply blow itself out and that'll be the end of it and in the same way
according to the Buddha people are
Merely a collection of energy and matter that have spun up
through the
biological process and
created your consciousness and eventually it will spin out and your consciousness and the bits and pieces of
Matter that make you up will go back to nature and back to the universe and that'll be the end of you
so if there's no self
Who's I'd the quote it sounds 81. It sounds like Hume a little bit. Yes to my my
Philosophy undergrad training has me thinking if there's no self than who is being enlightened
And what's the how can someone walk the Eightfold Path?
for example without a concept of a person in the future who will who will
Be rewarded for doing that that that is me and then I guess the third question is does this make it anti?
Individualistic. Well, yeah so good. So yeah, it does sound a lot like you although Hugh, I think basically always ends up saying
Forgotten the exact wording of this quote represents
No, I can convince myself from all kinds of things as I said in my chair by the fire
But when I get up to answer the door, I don't actually believe any of them. Right? So Hume is never quite willing to say
This really is the case but rather says well
It really looks like the case right the the the idea there being a separate individual really does seem to be false or there being
This kind of ongoing soul really does seem to be false, but he can never quite talk himself out of it
same thing with Nietzsche
I mean Nietzsche and the Buddha had very very similar ideas about personality in a way even more so than Hume
because they agree that the self the experience of the self has made of
Small or kind of subunits which Nietzsche calls undersells that together
You know, give us the experience of being yourself, but in fact really ultimately aren't and yet Nietzsche, too
At least I argue in the book. I think at the end of the day says you can't give up on that idea
Because if you do that's giving up on
The idea of having some kind of plan for the future right some kind of commitment about how you're gonna live
So I think the person who comes the closest actually I think is Derek Parfit in reasons in persons
Who that's what the the only person the only theory in in the Western tradition that I think is as far as the Buddha does
So a second piece
about that is
if there is no self as you asked right who who becomes enlightened and I think the answer is
You know sort where to put it
It's clear according to the Buddha the nature can
Like a like it can spin up a hurricane and spin up a consciousness and that consciousness
Can inform beliefs and those beliefs can be false? Right? And so one of the beliefs that we
Hold as a consciousness
That's just a kind of phenomenon of nature. Is that somehow we're permanent. You know that there were not merely a temporary
Accumulation of stuff and energy, but that somehow that fat accumulation of stuff and energy really matters
I mean and again that the metaphor is you consider of imagine a hurricane getting
what I would say some self-righteous FIFO and thinking like I really matter like it matters and it's gonna be a
Tragedy when I get blown out
And the Buddha says that's basically what people do and so the conscious consciousness is possible. Obviously
But what it isn't is permanent and it isn't its own separate entity
it's merely
The way that this that the matter and energy have gotten blown together and then and then eventually though it'll blow itself out
So that's the kind of who who gets enlightened
the third question about is there an individual I think actually is the most interesting one because that's
Where you get to the question of for example, are there human rights?
And I think the Buddha's answer is no there aren't because there are people in the in that kind of relevant sense
um, and this is where
You know, I'll give you a short answer and then since we'll probably be unsatisfying we can talk about it more when
Nietzsche says you have to hold on to this
Conception of the self because otherwise you give up on any ideal about you know
Who you want to be like what kind of human being you want to be?
We can see by
that makes some sense right that Nietzsche says you're all of the whole point of the existence is to kind of make a project of
being the kind of person you want to be and if you keep pushing hard for that and
Dedicate yourself to you can become that and then maybe you can overcome it right and become someone new
And in that sense, the self is never really permanent, but you kind of can't let go of it
You have to hold on to the illusion that it's permanent because otherwise then you just give up the struggle all together
And I think what the Buddha says in response is
No
actually
You could give both of those up
because by the time you get to that point by the time you get to the point where you're actually
Choosing am I going to hold on to this conception of the self or not? You've already cultivated a certain kind of?
life in a certain way of approaching the world in a certain way of perching other people and problems and
it's not as if right I guess the product that that
the problem is that we're always thinking about tarzan, right or like the children raised by wolves and
Well, you know if they thought they'd learn to solve then they would never actually become human the buddha says yeah, but that never happens
That's not the issue feral children are not the problem
the problem is someone who's 30 or 40 years old who's really had a life to think things through and is now
through spiritual practice decided that they probably aren't a self and so that
That moment that we then are making that choice am I gonna hold on to this?
Fragmentary sense of like i'm still thinking that i'm a thing
In the Buddhist sense at that point, it doesn't matter because you've already throw it in your life
You already made your ethical choices. You already have a kind of personality inside of habits and the fact that you then say
Okay, it's all an illusion
In a way isn't gonna make any difference because you've already you're already already got momentum
Towards a certain way of living
what then repercussions does this idea of no self have
for first
ethics
And then second for for politics
Yeah, so I in the book I argue and you
Know Buddhist scholars go to different directions on this
So this is definitely a tendentious claim not something that's that's universally accepted in the book
I argue that the Buddhist is what I call a moral a realist. So he says
Look at the end of the day there is not
More absolute moral truth that there's nothing that's right capital R and wrong capital W
and one of my
Arguments behind that is the Buddha says repeatedly that everything is temporary
Everything is impermanent, and it would be really odd if what he meant by that was everything is impermanent except moral truth
He never says never comes out and says that but the people who read him as being a moral realist
I think ultimately have to assume that and I think it just isn't consistent with the rest of what he teaches
So the Buddha's claim pretty typically is look some stuff is going to help you
Have a less conflictual life and some stuff is going to help you have a more conflictual life you have
No duty to choose the less conflictual
But you're a fool if you choose the more conflictual and so he offers what I think is roughly like a Content
Hypothetical imperative there is no duty to live this way
But if you want to live in a way that's gonna work out for you. Well, then this is how to do it
So it's sort of a how-to rather than a thou shalt
So I think on the ethical side you can construct a coherent ethics around that kind of approach on the political side
I think he gets harder, right?
I think if you want to say well this is why government shouldn't violate this
You know fundamental right or this is why we should conceive of people as having these kind of basic rights. I
think I think that that's trickier and I think that's why we have
What I try to say in the book is we have these ancient texts
We have some more modern texts and texts come in the intervening periods where we're trying
We're different Buddhists are trying to work out pieces of this but what we really have at the moment is kind of an opportunity to
Try to see what good is what Buddhist politics could look like in practice
there are relatively few countries today that are
explicitly Buddhist
Cambodia being one
Thailand Bhutan, right and then there are others of course that have large Buddhist populations or bruising is obviously important like Sri Lanka
But I don't think we know yet
what a 21st century Buddhist politics is gonna look like this question of so we might not have
On kind of baseline Buddhism something that looks like rights, but but Buddhism certainly sets out
prohibitions on behavior
And I wanted I wanted to ask about that and the state and specifically this question of so
the core, you know the kind of the core prohibitions of
Buddhism places on behavior are these five precepts that you know, anyone wants to participate
Who considers themselves a Buddhist who wants gonna enter into this has to agree to the five?
Precepts and and the second and they're kind of they're kind of the baseline rules that we all would be used
used to so don't kill
Don't lie. Don't become intoxicated don't engage in
Illicit sexual behavior or you know take sensual pleasures to too much of an extreme
But the second one it gets really interesting raises interesting questions about the role the state which is the second one
Is you have to abstain from quote taking what is not given?
Yeah
and then you you mentioned there's a Thai text that you a Thai Buddhist text that you talk about in the book that
Sets out rules for kings and and one of the one of them
The line runs another kind of evil deed concerns the wealth and property of others that is not given by the owner
Such things rule must never take so when I read those things about basically two things saying don't take what is not given to you
When I read that from my libertarian perspective, I think well then
How do we have a state that's dependent on?
Taxation which is like by definition taking what was not freely given to you. Yeah. Yeah
That's right. And so
the
the
More common, you know gloss on that
Prohibition is don't steal. But I I agree with the one that you've emphasized that I think a better way to understand
that is don't take what's not given freely and
In the early texts where we lay out this kind of social contract
In fact, it is given freely right that people say we need some kind of king
We need someone to be in charge of making it and forcing the rules and we give them the their share of the right thing
It's a tent where we give them the tenth of the rice freely, right?
This is a voluntary choice. You know, it's sort of Allah John Locke
We're creating a system and we recognize the system's gonna need some kind of resources to function
I think you get then to the question of okay
Well, what about the second generation or the third generation or the one hundred and fiftieth generation, you know, is it still?
voluntary and
Although the Buddha himself never says this I do think that there's a kind of anarchic
piece to it that that really if we were all enlightened and
There's one tax or he almost says this if we were all enlightened, we wouldn't need government. You know, the government is in a sense
from a Christian perspective the symbol of our fallenness
but from a Buddhist perspective a symbol of our kind of only partial awareness or partial enlightenment and
that if we could get to my where everyone was enlightened all we would have would be the kind of
Coordination issues that you have within the Sangha where you have to have some kind of rules about you know
Who's gonna walk who's going to go first or who's gonna go second and that kind of thing
Now I have to say personally. I'm not
ultimately
Super sympathetic to that view. I don't think I I don't think that it's possible, you know sort of like the Marxist division of
after the Revolution where it's all just matters of
core nation rather than fundamental policy choice
but I don't think the Buddha gives us a lot of
ideas about where to go with that and one way to think about that is, you know,
He says in those early texts
We need the King to enforce the rules which seems to imply that the king is going to have to use violence
Right because as I say to my students so often I'm it
It's only Authority
If you don't want to do it, you know, if you're if the state asks you to do something and you say yeah
That seems like a pretty good idea or yeah, I was gonna do that. Anyway, then there's there's no need for Authority
there's only a need for Authority when the state says to do this and you say
No don't want to do that. I think it's a bad idea. You haven't convinced me
And so the Buddha does seem to suggest that there is a need for
the exercise of authority in the need for the use of violence
Even though of course the good is otherwise a pacifist and appears to be a little cagey about Authority. So I think we don't
there are places where I think the Buddha suggests, you know, you need some kind of
structure some kind of government that's gonna that is
limiting the freedom of individuals
But in the name of a broader protection of the freedom of the community
But I don't think he ever lays that out fully and so I don't think he answers some of those really important questions
one of the
one of the things that you point out that is unique about Buddhist political thought when compared to especially Western political thought when you have
people like John Locke who does
epistemology
but also does political philosophy of humor does they say all these people think that
Political philosophy and involvement in politics is incredibly important in some sense
But you write that Buddhism is radically deflationary about the importance of politics to human life coming about as close as possible to being overtly
anti political without actually embracing anarchism
and that it seems that Buddhists think that
Politics is mostly a trick quote tremendous waste of time and effort as well as being a prime
Temptation to allow ego to run rampant and I wrote a big star next to it
and
Yeah, it's something we think here at the Cato but but it does seem to be something that you point out is is much almost
clear about the relevance of
Buddhism to political thought or how Buddhism can illuminate political thought that they just don't think politics is a very meaningful
endeavor or he did not
Yeah, and you know, I in the book I argue that there is a Western tradition that that relates to
you know going back to the Epicureans and
the Stoics
and
What
It was two different pieces to say about that
So one is I do think the Buddha ultimately is arguing for a kind of deflation or review of politics and saying look
Politics is ultimately kind of a waste of time
But the thing I guess I want to emphasize this would be the second piece he also
says that
He's not just talking about government, right? So it isn't merely the government is a waste of time
It's the aspiration to achieve whatever it is. That one wants through political means
so that for example
you know one might want to have
a democratic socialism and he says that's a nice wand but the
You're ultimately gonna be wasting your time and you're going to be tempted to create a system through which you're gonna try to control things
That's gonna be really damaging
But at the same time if we're one were to say well what I really want is a libertarian paradise
Right without those kinds of state interventions. He's gonna say the exact same thing
He's gonna say, you know, the issue isn't the government the issue is the desire
The issue is the underlying thought that through some sort of collective human action. You could achieve that kind of outcome
and
For him those would be equally
mistaken and
strategies for you clearly mistaken desires
now when we think about the
the three I would have layup we didn't lay these out as clear as I wanted to be in there are three things that we've
touched on all of them that you write about that are
important for informing Buddhist political theory the view of the self the view of politics in the you have ethics
How do those all work together in the end four lessons that brought her?
About about politics and maybe what we can learn about our political systems from a Buddhist standpoint
Yeah
so I think a
Couple different pieces about that. So what is I think that there I
Let's start with the deflationary politics again
You know, that's the piece that I've gotten the most pushback on
from other scholars who have
Asked in various ways both
Polite and a little more pointed, you know
Is that a kind of a responsible thing to say and is it a responsible thing to advocate?
You know, are you basically saying to people well, don't worry so much about it, you know
Just just let things happen and and don't get involved
And one of the things I try to point out in the books that the Buddha says in many places
If you owe taxes, you should pay them. You know, if you're if you're dude for
Service in the military you should go and that Buddhists shouldn't be
grabbing, there's a whole series of places where people in the Army try to defect and become monks and they try to say well you
Know now that I'm a monk. I can't be in the military anymore because I'm a pacifist
and so all of my obligations to the state are gone or
Prisoners or slaves people like that and the Buddha says, you know, I'm against the war
I'm against the people being imprisoned up against slavery, but you can't escape your
obligations, you can't escape the judgments that have been put on you merely by running and becoming a monk and forbids the song are from
accepting people who are essentially trying to do that and there are a couple of other places where he says things that
get it this kind of broader point which is
do the things that are sort of conventional within your society, so
If your society meets together to make decisions go to the meeting and make the decisions if your society pays taxes pay the taxes
Whatever that is, you know if if their notice comes up for jury to go to do your jury duty
But don't put a lot of Hope into it don't think okay
This is what's gonna make me free and at the same time, they'll put a lot of frustration into it
Don't say you know that this is a terrible imposition upon my freedom, but rather simply say, okay, you know
This is this is the thing I'm going to do and that and that I'm gonna get back to something more important
Which is understanding my my spiritual life
so I really wanted to kind of
Get a little bit in people's face about that piece of Buddhism because it's so contrary to what we think
You know come in so contrary to most modern thoughts and in fact, you know
It's so contrary to the message of virtually all of Western political philosophy. Which going all the way back to Plato, right?
Which is you can't really be a full self unless you're engaged in politics
You're not gonna be your best self unless somehow you're also Zoo on Politico, right?
Unless you're you're you're a political self and I the Buddha's just a nice foil for kind of saying
Really? Like are we sure that's true, but let's think about that again
so that's one piece a second piece would be it is related to that that
Where he lays out this kind of a realist moral vision, you know, we're familiar
With that from a lot of different contemporary sources, right? That's at the postmodern view you seen a lot of different different sources
And it's not it was clear that it makes sense. It's not it was clear that it's well defended
It's certainly been very
controversial and I wanted to point out that at least on the reading that I think he is the right reading and of course you
Know I wasn't there 2500 years ago
But the reason it seems like the best reading to be the Buddha appears to be arguing for that position
And that suggests that he thinks that you know a but it's true
But also be that it might actually be practical might be possible to live that way
and that it's not merely
An idea that Foucault dreamed up one day in the in a faculty lounge
and
Then in terms of the the South you know, whether there really is one
Again, I think trying to take that that he Mian or Nietzschean or or Buddhist idea that there isn't and where we gonna go with
that I think
Those are all
It's not quite
one thing that I am unsatisfied with about the book myself, you know that and the hopefully future work will let me
Pursue is there isn't really a program here
You know what?
There is is a sort of series of observations that allow us to problematize a bunch of stuff that happens in our politics
but doesn't necessarily give us a path forward on the question of the
View the view of ethics which compared to post-modernism from a political normative standpoint. It would seem to imply that
The Buddhists shouldn't think the state should try to impose one view of the good life or one way of
living according to moral precepts but maybe
Facilitate people being able to fulfill their own hypothetical imperatives and live their lives as they wish
Would that be accurate possibly? I think it's right to say that
The Buddha is interested in allowing people to pursue. What seems right to them
But the question is does that rise to the level of kind of political opposition and there? I think the answer is no
so
certainly, you know if you join the song in a in a way, that's
Acceptable to the Buddha right? You're not running away from an obligation or trying to escape prison sentence or something like that
then the Buddha says
Come
Learn what I teach if it makes sense to you stay if it doesn't make sense to you, you know
go feel free to go somewhere else and
If it makes sense to you, you know
Then then practice it it is a you know famous example where there's a town in this hail
Keep having all these religious teachers come including you and you ever tell us something different
How do we know who's right and the Buddha says in essence? Well for God's sakes don't take my word for it, right?
figure it out for yourselves
You know what?
what seems right to you doesn't seem does this seem true or not true and kind of walks them through it and I think that
Really emphasizes the kind of free thinking aspect to the Buddha that that's very appealing
so clearly the Buddha wants people to be able to make their own choice about that and
to the extent that the social system of his day and political system of his day impose that on people he
Created a space in which it was possible to live differently
But I don't think that it ever rises to the point where he would say
Let's oppose this political power because it doesn't do that
Yeah, he just never gets there I think the only time he really opposes a political power is when there's a king right who's the
murderous son of of one of his friends
he
The son kills the father to take the throne and it turns out that the son had been tricked in in a previous
His mother was supposed to have been a noble from the Buddha's uncle Shakya clan
But in fact was really a slave girl
And that the clan had kind of tricked his father and the son
Discovers this in his youth and kind of swears to get revenge and and so goes to try to destroy the the shot
yeah, and twice the Buddha meets him on the road and
and just says
Where are you going? You know, like what's your plan and the King turns back? But the third time the Buddha says
okay, you know I
like basically the Shakya kind of brought this on themselves by by deceiving the father and I'm
Gonna keep gonna keep defending him, you know, I've done what I can do, but that's about it
I mean, that's really the only time we see the Buddha doing anything to resemble something like political opposition
So on the one hand clearly the Buddha wants people to have the freedom to live by their own values
But he doesn't seem to bring that to the point of kind of political principle
Maybe to provide to kind of
Make this somewhat concrete
we
live right now and interesting political times
People of have are fairly worked up no matter what side they're on in the u.s
Everyone seems to be really worked up about politics
Everybody has strong opinions about the direction the country's headed and how Ostrava core glorious. It might be
and and
Also Buddhism is kind of on the rise
Right, like especially in its mindfulness form is like the hottest thing there is and silicon is every other how many apps you can download
For your phone to help you meditate and so on
so for for people who are
You know facing the situation's that we're facing today
What what lessons do you think Buddhism as it applies to
politics
Has for them. Like what should they what should they take away from this or
Why should they potentially look to Buddhism as a as a way to think about and approach these problems?
Yeah, that's a good question. I think
What Buddhism says to us about you know day to day concrete act well politics is
The quality of your experience
matters and the quality of your intention matters and so
you know you can have really strong feelings about
Elected officials or elections coming up or decisions by the courts or whatever. It is one way or the other
But if that leads you to act in ways
that aren't consistent with your broader values if it leads you to take something that's not given freely if it leads you to
kill or to use violence if it leads you to
intoxication
That that that suggests that there's a problem with you, right? There's a problem with the way that you're dealing with that
And again, right you can either choose to keep suffering you can change the world or you can change your mind
those are those are really on the only available options and
We might think
You know, I I'd like to change the world
But I can I'm unable to do so as an individual but it says that's fine
But you're still gonna have to live through this experience, right?
You're still gonna have to live through the period in which you're upset or the period in which are elated
but are
Always in danger of thinking, you know, this is so amazing and it's going to be amazing forever
The Buddha caught you know councils are kind of caution around that kind of caution run either the upset or the or the elation and
instead saying
What could you do that would take it all in stride and similarly?
what can you do that will reduce social conflict of other people and increase
kind of a peaceful interaction just
Give you a really quick example. So here in the Cal Poly campus last fall. I
Invited the College Republicans in the campus Democrats to meet with me just to talk just as an opportunity to talk
you know a chance to
off-the-record
Just get together talk about their differences
talk about things that had happened the previous year that they might have saw had some feelings about and
See if there was some room for moving forward
You know collectively could be put together an event. Could we do something?
some way of
cooperating and the spirit of it just was
Civility, you know, we I called it the civility project, but that's you know a little little grandiose
But that the idea just was is there some way in which we could we could move forward together
And that was inspired for me by by the Buddhist
teaching and by the idea that I can find a way to
Maybe help these folks who are otherwise in conflict a little bit less in conflict. So that's
It's not very satisfying right it doesn't tell us who to vote for or who to be happy about winning or losing
but I think it does tell us about
how to approach that and the fact that we're gonna have to live through it one way or the other and
the quest and the interesting question is do do we have the kind of
emotional poise or balance necessary to do that
Thanks for listening
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