[Buddha-l] Aung San Suu Kyi and the latest Burmese prosecutions

[Richard Hayes]

On Sun, May 17, 2009 at 7:09 PM, Zelders.YH <zelders.yh at wxs.nl> wrote:

>
>
> Of course the Buddha of the legend was a figure of great authority,
> but was an authoritarian figure ?


He seems so to me. I don't recall reading anything in the Vinaya about monks
voting to see which rules they found acceptable. The Buddha just dictated
the terms for being a monk (or nun) in good standing. He did listen to
Ānanda's reasoning on the occasion of the petition of women to join the
monastic order, and he changed his mind from his original refusal to allow
women into the order, but in the final analysis it was he who made the
decision. When decisions are made solely by one figure, even with
consultation, then that figure strikes me as authoritarian.


> When at a certain moment dissent arose among the bhikkhus the Buddha
> just went away to the jungle and lived there for a while, certainly
> not the average authoritarian way to solve a dispute.


The decision, however, was finally made by the Buddha and by him alone. That
he ran off into the forest when things got hectic does not make him any less
an authoritarian. It just makes him an irresponsible authoritarian.

-- 
Richard Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico
http://www.unm.edu/~rhayes