[Buddha-l] Re: Will new the pope verify Buddhist doctrine?

[Richard P. Hayes]

On Fri, 2005-04-22 at 10:20 -0400, curt wrote:

> If we just wanted to be part of a movement dedicated to helping
> the poor, etc, then we should just all become Socialists.

One of my colleagues when I was at McGill was Gregory Baum, who had a
lot of influence on my thinking (mostly because he said so many things
that I already believed). He often described himself as someone
dedicated to presenting a leftist dimension to theology and to
presenting a theological dimension to the left. He has just published a
new book entitled "Amazing Church" in which he chronicles some of the
positive changes made in and by the Catholic Church in the 20th century.

Let me not put words into anyone else's mouth. It seems to me that when
Socialist thinking forgets its moorings in religion, it becomes a
caricature of true socialism, and when religious leaders forget their
moorings in the teachings of founders who incessantly advocated for the
poor and oppressed, then any religion becomes a caricature of its
original intent.

> Don't get me wrong - I happen to be a Socialist myself.

How did that happen? In my own case, it didn't just happen. It was the
only thing that made any sense to me, and I was hopelessly addicted to
things that made sense to both my intellect and my heart. Nothing that I
have seen or heard during the past forty years has convinced me that
socialism does not provide the best blueprint for the amelioration of
the human condition.  

Incidentally, my grandfather was a Socialist, once upon a time, back in
the days when Socialists actually ran for president in the USA. A couple
of weeks ago I happened to see a book with a title something like Who's
Who in New Mexico, published in 1960 or so. New Mexico has such a small
population that the book was able to list everyone living in the state,
so I looked to see what the book had to say about my relatives. I
discovered a lengthy entry on my grandfather. It listed his various
charitable works, all of which would now surely get him designated as a
Massachusetts liberal (for he was indeed born in Boston). And then, to
my great astonishment, it listed his political party. REPUBLICAN! Good
Gotama! I nearly fainted dead away. But then I remembered that pretty
much ALL my relatives were Republican in those days, because that's the
party that people with liberal leanings often worked for. Things have
changed since then. (Oh, in case you're wondering, yes, I did
accidentally drop the book into a shredder. Imagine what acute
embarrassment I would face if anyone on buddha-l were to learn that I
had Republican genes!)

> Religious charity work very often involves attempts to indoctrinate poor
> people and other "disempowered" groups to see their situation
> as either "God's will" or the result of "past karma" or whatever.

Socialist charity work often involves attempts to indoctrinate poor
people to see their situation as the result of other people's greed and
oppression. I'm not sure that is a net gain. Indoctrination is
indoctrination, and it's almost invariably simplistic and ridiculous.
What might be a pleasant turn of events would be for people just to help
those who are hurting without indoctrinating them in any way at all.
That, I think, is happening more and more these days. It is also
happening less and less. It depends a lot of which crowd you hang out
with.

> I do think that Buddhism has something essential to offer to the
> cause of changing society, though. Most (if not all) previous
> attempts to change society for the better have failed - or even
> made things worse. The atrocities committed in the name of
> Socialism in the past come to mind. 

Don't forget all the atrocities committed in the name of Sad-dharma.
Buddhists do not get off the human condition hook, I'm afraid. Buddhist
history is just not the place to look for instances of inspiring models
to follow in the present and the future. Of course, if Buddhist THEORY
were followed, the world would no doubt be a better place. But the same
could be said of Islamic, Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Sikh and Wiccan
theory. The world is completely awash in theory, almost all of it good.
Alas, it is also completely awash in practice, almost all of it bad. 

These days just about the only perfect marriage of awful theory with a
good practice of it is found in the White House. If only the folks there
could fail to live up to their awful ideals as well as the rest of us
fail to live up to our good ideals, the world would be a happier place.

-- 
Richard Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico