[Buddha-l] ?????
James A Stroble
stroble at hawaii.edu
Fri Oct 10 13:24:18 MDT 2008
On Friday 10 October 2008 09:22, jkirk wrote:
> The only Buddhist reference I can think of right now is that in
> his time kings only conquered territories, they didn't use armies
> to put their own people under the yoke (as we are now threatened
> with here).
I am not so sure of this! The Arthasastra of Kautilya paints a different
picture! But the Buddhist ideal of government was the chakravartin, the
king who spun the wheel of Dharma, not the king who just spun. In the
progression down from ideal government we find the balachakravartin, the
armed dharma king, but the necessity of resort to force is already a failure.
By the time we get to only relying on force, well, welcome to Mappo?
--
James Andy Stroble
University of Hawai'i, Leeward Community College
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