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

[Richard Hayes]

On Tue, May 19, 2009 at 11:00 AM, jkirk <jkirk at spro.net> wrote:

>
>
> This isn't the way the Quakers (Friends) do it---------it's
> consensus, or it's dropped--so one of your stated affiliations
> can't claim to be democratic; and maybe they don't.


It's not entirely accurate to say that Quakers reach decisions by consensus.
They reach decisions by what they call achieving clarity and coming to
unity, which is subtly different in important ways. Achieving clarity means
discussing an issue until the spirit of the meeting is clear to everyone
present. Reaching unity means that the love that binds the community
together is not ruptured, even if there is disagreement with the spirit of
the meeting. Friends who disagree with a decision may do one of three
things. They may stand aside, in which case they do not block the decision
with which they disagree. They may asked that their dissent be recorded in
the minutes, which is like standing aside but having the fact be minuted. Or
they may stand in the way, in which case no decision is reached. I can't
think of anything more radically non-authoritarian than that. It is
diametrically opposite a process in which one person, deemed enlightened,
sets all the terms for how a society is formed, who is considered a member
in good standing of the society, who a member of the society's duties are,
and all matters of protocol within the society.


>
> So why belabor the point whether the old Buddhist sangha voted or
> not?
> What's the point, anyway?


I'm not belaboring anything. I simply said that Buddhism in Asia offers no
models of non-authoritarian decision making, so it is not surprising to see
authoritarian governments in countries with a strong Buddhist culture. I was
content to state the obvious and move on. Others have challenged that claim.
I have responded by trying to clarify what I meant. In the academic world we
call this process discussion.

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