HomeBuddhism and President’s Day
READING
Buddha was born a prince, the son of King Suddhodana and Queen Maya. He was groomed to lead his people. He was also protected from seeing the sorrows of the world, illness, physical fragility and death. Later in life, having married and had children, he traveled outside his protected environment and saw all of the sorrows. Realizing that life was suffering, and that escape from the cycle of birth, death and rebirth was the path to salvation, he sought a way to achieve that escape within this life. He therefore set himself free from his attachments to his office and to his family; he cut his hair, donned the raiment of a mendicant and set out to find release.
Then the devil led him up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And the devil said to him, ‘To you I will give their glory and all this authority; for it has been given over to me, and I give it to anyone I please. If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.’ Jesus answered him, ‘It is written, “Worship the Lord your God,
and serve only him.” ’
"No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon." {Matt 6:19-24 RSV}
SERMON
Good morning.
I am a bit of a political junkie and I have been following the presidential race with much interest, watching the debates within both parties and following the primary outcomes. I find the whole thing fascinating.
I began wondering about the relationship of religion and politics, and have chosen this President’s Day weekend to talk about it..
I want to begin this morning by sharing with you a bias that I have, one that underlies both liberal religion and liberalism in general. That bias is that religion and state ought to be separated from one another, though in conversation with one another. I believe that religion does best when it stands aside from government offering a different, a transcendent viewpoint. Whether that is the viewpoint of a transcendent God, of transcendent human rights or of a transcendent existence beyond this life matters less to me than that religion stand as a counterbalance to government and to our tendency to think solely in terms of both self interest and of “here and now”. And government does best when it is separate from religion and acts as a counterbalance to excesses of religion. When religion sanctifies the state or when government enforces religion, human rights suffer. That does not deny the possibility of religion and state influencing one another, or of religious people being active in leading a state. But it does insist upon a formal separation of religious and state institutions.
Having said that I must point out that historically that has not been human practice. Nearly every major religious movement has an ambivalent attitude towards government: on the one hand they call us to a higher, transcendent value; on the other hand they assume that religion and state are unitary, a single entity, and their many of their religious texts include law books, books not just of behavior but of punishment to be inflicted for infractions of law.
Judaism formed in the context of a single people who from the time of their entry into Canaan from Egypt existed as a state. The book of Leviticus is full of examples of law and punishment, with regulations even over some of the most intimate moments in life.
Islam developed very quickly into a state religion. Once Mohammed left Mecca and traveled to Medina he became the ruler of a state, and the revelations of the Qur’an changed accordingly.
Both Confucius and Lao Tsu, the founders of Confucianism and Taoism, took a systemic approach and their teachings were guidelines for rulers. Their precepts were not for the common people, though they have come to be used that way. They were for prince, not peasant.
Hinduism evolved in India and gave its sanction to the social structures of that region, including collections of law such as The Laws of Manu.
Buddhism developed in India, and while it assumed many Hindu categories of thought and belief, it rejected the rule and the pathways of Hinduism. This was not a negative, angry rejection; Buddhism simply considered much of Hinduism to be irrelevant. For the first three hundred years of its existence, Buddhism stood outside of government and political leadership and therefore early Buddhism had no need or desire to create a set of social laws. It did have collections of rules for its followers, such as the Vinaya, but these were rules for monastic orders rather than for broader societies, and the only punishment that could be imposed was expulsion form the order for those who violated the rules. There was no listing of fines, incarcerations or corporal punishments. If you look up Buddhism and law, you will find listings for the Law of Karma or the Law of Dependent Origination, but you will find few if any references to legal structures.
There is another point to make, an important one. The example that Buddha gave was not of leadership within the political realm but of abandonment of that role. He was a prince, destined to be a king. He walked away from that position. Unlike Hinduism which sanctified the religious rule of the Brahamins and the political and military rule of the Kshatriya caste, the action of Buddha appears to reject politics and societal leadership.
Only after three hundred years was there a Buddhist king, and this was someone who converted to Buddhism when already in office. Ashoka of the Maurya Empire, came to the throne in about 270 BCE and reigned until about 230 BCE.
Christianity had a similar history. For the first three hundred years of its existence it stood outside of the realm of government, becoming a state religion only in the time of Constantine, Emperor of Rome about 325 CE. But Christianity had not disconnected itself from the law books of Judaism. On the contrary, the mainstream of Christianity adopted these books as its own, using them because it read them as prophetic books that pointed forward towards Jesus as the Christ, the Messiah, the Anointed of God. That meant that when Christianity did become a state religion, it had laws—the old Jewish laws--to impose.
Some—especially those on the radical, pacifist wing of the Protestant movement—refer to this as the “Constantinian Error”. Up until this time Christianity functioned outside the state as a kind of counter cultural and mostly pacifist movement. The combination of governmental concerns is seen, in this view, as a distraction from the spiritual. After Constantine, Christian Emperors fought wars of expansion and conquest, and the church leadership focused on diplomacy and worldly concerns. But also, now orthodoxy was guaranteed by the state, whereas prior to this Christianity was a very pluralistic religion, with many different theological views. Now if one were a heretic then one could be subject to arrest, prison, exile even execution. Again, this was eased by the fact hat Christianity had assumed for itself the old Jewish law books.
Buddhism, having separated itself from Hinduism had no such “luxury”, if you will, and Ashoka, rather than simply accepting the laws as laid out in Hinduism, set out on an experiment to bring Buddhist principles to the governance of the state.
The Venerable S. Dammika describes the reign of Ashoka as follows:
The contents of Asoka's edicts make it clear that all the legends about his wise and humane rule are more than justified and qualify him to be ranked as one of the greatest rulers. In his edicts, he spoke of what might be called state morality, and private or individual morality. The first was what he based his administration upon and what he hoped would lead to a more just, more spiritually inclined society, while the second was what he recommended and encouraged individuals to practice. Both these types of morality were imbued with the Buddhist values of compassion, moderation, tolerance and respect for all life. The Asokan state gave up the predatory foreign policy that had characterized the Mauryan empire up till then and replaced it with a policy of peaceful co-existence. The judicial system was reformed in order to make it more fair, less harsh and less open to abuse, while those sentenced to death were given a stay of execution to prepare appeals and regular amnesties were given to prisoners. State resources were used for useful public works like the importation and cultivation of medical herbs, the building of rest houses, the digging of wells at regular intervals along main roads and the planting of fruit and shade trees.…The state had a responsibility not just to protect and promote the welfare of its people but also its wildlife. Hunting certain species of wild animals was banned, forest and wildlife reserves were established and cruelty to domestic and wild animals was prohibited. The protection of all religions, their promotion and the fostering of harmony between them, was also seen as one of the duties of the state.
Ashoka, then, brought something new into the world, a Buddhist state that both internally and externally displayed the quality of compassion. But note that he brought Buddhist principles and values into government, not Buddhist laws.
Rules become oppressive.
On an individual level, Buddhism teaches us that life is suffering, that the proper attitude towards other beings is to recognize their suffering and respond with compassion and to do so even in those circumstances where they are actively seeking to do us harm. The natural tendency to respond with anger and pushing away is countered by the Buddhist call to respond with compassion and reaching out towards. That Buddhist principle applied to government and national policy would call upon us no to respond to attacks with counter attacks, but to respond with compassion and seeking to understand what is causing the rage that has led to the attack. That is not a call to appeasement; it is a call to understanding and to seeking genuine peace. What a different world that would create.
Can we combine both religion and government and avoid the Great Temptation, the temptation to worldly power. Can we bring the principles of religion into government and not lose these to the petty interests of group or nation.
Both Buddha and Jesus seemed to think that we cannot.
Perhaps we cannot. Perhaps thinking in those terms is unrealistic. Perhaps one must make a choice for true spirituality or for government.
I leave that question hanging in the air for you to answer.
Buddha and Jesus, your journey was not ours, and yet it is. We, too, seek to find the meaning of life; we, too, seek escape from the suffering of mind, body and spirit; we, too, seek the goal of serenity and peace within our hearts. We do not always hear or comprehend your call for universal compassion; in some moments that seems far beyond us, in other moments it seems too far beneath us. In our wisdom you seem too naďve; in our naiveté you seem too wise.
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