[Buddha-l] Marx and Buddhism

[jkirk]

http://people.lulu.com/users/index.php?fHomepage=132055
A google search turned up this bit from a theologian, Roy Catchpole:

Dialectical Materialism: (summary).

Human history is a continuation of evolution on the conscious level, the 
course of both being determined by natural law; for matter by its very 
nature moves from lower to higher forms. It has within itself the 
potentiality of life, consciousness, thoughts and ideals. It is not static 
or mechanical, but dynamic and alive. The first and most important of the 
inherent qualities of matter is `motion', not only mechanical and 
mathematical movement, but still more, impulse, vital life spirit, tension, 
or to use Jacob Boheme's expression, the throes (Qual) of matter. The 
primary forces of matter are the forces of being within it. (The German, 
`Qual' is best translated not `throes', but `torment'). This more accurately 
indicates the Marxist `essential unease' of all transient things.

In this fundamental sense Marxism has everything in common with the Buddhist 
perception that the world in which we live - the world of matter - is in a 
state of permanent flux. It was not for nothing that Engels identified the 
Buddha as being one of the intellectual precursors of dialectical 
materialism: - take the Buddhist idea of `impermanence', everything both is 
and is not; it is constantly changing and in flux, coming into being and 
passing away (Engels. Anti-Duhring. p.27). Or, the Buddhist concept of 
`insubstantiality', or `the void of self' (Pali). Here, too Engels is in 
full agreement. `Every organic being is at each moment the same and not the 
same; at each moment it is assimilating matter drawn from without, and 
excreting other matter; at each moment the cells of its body are dying and 
new ones being re-formed...etc.' Ibid.pp38-9. Third, `unease', `disquiet'. 
The Pali word, `Dukkha' exactly corresponds to the `Tension’ the `throes' 
(torment) of matter. Thus the `materialist' premisses from which Buddhism 
starts can be seen to be identical with the Marxist interpretation of 
existence.

But the agreement ends here. Whereas the Buddhist declares that a state of 
being exists which transcends and `negates' the world of matter, making 
liberation possible, making mind and what we call `soul', the goal of human 
existence, Marx accepts the world of matter as the only existent reality and 
sees `salvation, liberation, fulfilment etc' in terms of an eschatological 
fulfilment which will appear in the last days. The reason for this is not 
hard to see. Buddha comes from an Indian culture. He was an Indian, for whom 
time is cyclical. Marx was a Jew and the son of a rabbi whose father was a 
rabbi before him. The Jews (and Christians) have always regarded time as a 
straight line. The purpose of the human race is, as it has always been for 
Judeo-Christians, focussed to the end time; bringing matter under control 
and governing it, living in accordance with the laws by which nature itself 
is governed. Individual (Buddhist) Nirvana is not an option for Marx the 
Jew. Salvation has to be for the whole human race, or as he puts it in "The 
Communist Manifesto", `The free development of each is the condition for the 
free development of all.'
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joanna