[Buddha-l] Buddhism and the "status quo"

[Dan Lusthaus]

> Marxist horses? So George Orwell didn't invent Animal Farm after all?

Joy, whether or not the horses were Marxist or not they never said. But we
humans were getting back to the land, and eating lots of brown rice, and
having constant, endless meetings, and all the other "meaningful" things
"real revolutionaries" did back then. I was probably one of the only
revolutionaries back then who knew that the Black Panthers lifted one of
their most popular phrases -- "those who say don't know, those who know
don't say" -- from the Laozi, so being more Buddhist than Che Guevera-ish, I
never quite fit in.

One piece of literature that was floating around then was a classified CIA
report on the Cultural Revolution (it was classified, but we had our ways).
We sat around laughing derisively at all the propoganda distortions we
detected in virtually every sentence. In retrospect, now that we all know a
lot more about what was happening during the Cultural Revolution (see Yang
Zhimou's "To Live" for a profound depiction), it turns out the CIA had a
much clearer, more accurate understanding of what was happening in China
than we, with our Mao badges and English editions of the little red book had
fabricated in our imaginations. I've been wary of political blindness ever
since, especially the ideologically giddy kind. Dispelling parikalpa, as the
Yogacaras say.

>
> Born slightly too late, I have always had lots of admiration for hippies.
That's what they call those who look for freedom without responsibility,
right?

I'm not sure if everyone back then was looking for the same thing, or if we
even knew what we were looking for. We wouldn't have been comfortable being
characterized as irresponsible (our parents, the police, and politicians
called us that all the time). We felt responsible for ending the War,
promoting civil rights, the environment, etc. We were responsible, just not
to the things and values the "adults" wanted us to be. We wanted to liberate
everything.

Buddha formed a sangha that was, in some senses, socially irresponsible -- a
haven for dropouts. But he was responsible to the sangha (and sentient
beings who suffer), and shouldered some of that responsibility simply by
forming and organizing a sangha that inculled discipline (no simple feat)
rather than telling everyone else to get lost and leave him to his
contemplative solitude.

Dan