[Buddha-l] Dharmapala

[Richard Hayes]

On Jul 20, 2010, at 4:06 AM, Artur Karp wrote:

> In all seriousness, a question: can one be a Buddhist and a Communist?

In all seriousness, there was a period of time when I thought I was both. At first I saw no incompatibility, but when it became clear to me that Marxist-Leninists and Maoists were willing to do harm to people who disagreed with them, it seemed to me that Marxism was incompatible with the pacifism that I saw as non-negotiably essential to Buddhist practice. A book that fascinated me in those days was an English translation of Ernst Benz's <title>Buddhas Wiederkehr und zie Zukunft Asiens</title>, which in English was known as <title>Buddhism or Communism: which holds the future of Asia?</title> After reading that book and thinking about its message, I was convinced that Marxism was much more likely to prevail in Asia than Buddhism. About that outcome, I was truly ambivalent. Since I was not especially enthusiastic about the way that much of Asian Buddhism had become freighted with the burdens of medieval social, economic and political institutions, I was not bothered by the prospect of a radically reformed kind of Buddhism. In those days I believed more than I do now that religions could improve human beings rather than human beings destroying everything good in religion. Reality does not do much to encourage optimism.

Richard