The Buddha’s explanation as to ‘why’ suffering and dissatisfaction exist within the human mind and the material environment is as good an explanation as any other theory found in Social Science, Psychology or Psychiatry. Past and present lives, when viewed genetically and collectively then take on a new scientific meaning when detached from the dogma of religiously motivated individualism – a mistaken mind-set which perfectly mirrors the Bourgeois ideal state of unbridled ‘individualism’ defined as being the ‘perfect’ (and preferred) mode of predatory capitalism! Of course, from a dialectical position, what we experience today will inevitably dictate how material life will unfold in the future. This intprets the past, present and future existences as taught by the Buddha as coinciding with the past from which the present as emerged – and the ‘future’ into which the present will ‘develop’. Indeed, outside of the superstitious meaning often encouraged amongst the Buddhist laity – it is an established fact that the Theravada Sangha of ordained monks and nuns discuss past, present and future lives in exactly this manner (Abhidhamma) – clarify this issue further by specify the ‘past’ life equals the past moment, the ‘present’ life equals the present moment, and the ‘future’ life equals the life yet to come. Around two to three-thousand years ago, when very few people could read and write, the ordained Buddhist monastic seemed a world apart from the average lay-person. There was good reason for this separation which probably does apply to contemporary life in all but the materially poorest of places. Whatever the situation, the agency of theistic ‘faith’ should NOT replace materially-derived ‘wisdom’. Of course, where literacy is unknown, then faith tends to be the strongest. Ancient India was both poor and illiterate and so the Buddha’s Enlightenment offered a strand of awareness which required the open rejection of ordinary existence. This was, in effect, the rejection of religious-based ‘faith’ – and yet amongst the ignorant masses – ‘faith’ continued to function as a very powerful force and still does. This misinterpretation is encouraged in the West as the theistic religions that have historically dominated these countries have been ‘faith’ based. This is why Buddhism in the West is falsely presented as just another version of the Judeo-Christian religion – when it is clearly (dialectically) far superior to these theistic paths. The philosophy of ancient India, particularly that found within Buddhist ideology, intersects perfectly with the thinking that undermines modern science. India, even before ancient Greece, is well-known to have developed a system of material interpretation of reality. The Buddha seems to have developed his system of interpreting reality from within this system of understanding and explaining existence. The Buddha, whilst experiencing material reality, purified his perceptual understanding so that he realised the ‘essence’ of the human conscious ability – which is used to ‘sense’ the world through the six-senses that comprise the inner and outer body and the physical environment within which it exists. Worshipping the Buddha as a ‘God’ – or continuing to worship the ‘polytheism’ of India – was to miss the dialectical point that the Buddha was making. Perceiving the ‘essence’ of perception is an interesting challenge.
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Although the Buddha expresses a logic and reason very similar to that exhibited by the Greeks, he is emerging from a very different socio-economic base. Marx saw this and referred to Buddhist philosophy as being a ‘rational Brahmanism’. As with everything Marxian, this description is comprised of a far greater depth of meaning than the surface words appear to denote and the length of sentence suggests! ‘Rational’ in that like the Greeks, the Buddha is attempting to distinguish his method from the historical religiosity of India, and create a method that appears thoroughly ‘modern’ in its assessment of matter and psychological and physical processes. The term ‘Brahmanism’ denotes the vast and ancient religiosity within which the Buddha was born, out of which his mind and body eventually ‘grew’. The Greeks, of course, possessed a pantheon of gods just as the Brahmans were polytheistic. In this respect, the two systems were similar. The Greeks expected to find numerous gods being worshipped by the various (non-Greek) peoples of the world and made allowances for encountering these unknown entities. (This is why the Greeks possessed a ‘god with no-name' as a matter of accommodation). The Brahmins – like the Jews, however – viewed their system as already complete and essentially intolerant of any other religious system of religious organisation. The Jews would eventually develop the notion of monotheism whereas the Greeks would not. The Buddha would emerge out of Brahmanism and declare it ‘incorrect’ - just as the Jew known as Jesus Christ would emerge out of Judaism and declare his religion incomplete and ready for transformation! The Greeks would make a clean break with religiosity by developing ‘philosophy’ - which like the Buddha’s ideology is always moving away from religious thought. It would be the later Christian who would seize Greek philosophy and distort its underpinnings and interpretation so that it could be superimposed upon a new form of Judaism and referred to as ‘Christian theology’! This is why Greek terms are found all the way through Christian theology but used in a thoroughly incorrect manner. Even amongst modern philosophers there is the habit of using the pagan Germanic term ‘soul’ in place of the Greek ‘psyche’ - which was co-opted by the Christians as they tried to convert these tribal people. Soul originally referred to the spirituality of water (an idea common in pre-Christian Europe), but the Christians took this term and transposed it with the term ‘psyche’ (‘breathe of life’) which the Greeks used to describe the ‘spark’ of existence that explodes into physical and conscious life at the point of conception in the womb! For the Christian missionary, the German ‘soul’ became that spiritual entity which existed separate and distinct to the physical body and mind, and which entered the mind and body at conception and left the mind and body at death! As the Christian first borrowed the Greek ‘psyche’ to describe this entity, they soon became dissatisfied with its close approximation to Greek thought and decided to obscure reality further by co-opting yet another alien concept in a drive designed to demonstrate both ‘uniqueness’ and ‘difference’ from Judaism! The Buddha, of course, understood that all religious thinking depended upon an imagined spiritual entity existing somewhere out-there – which was intimately linked to each individual human through an ‘atma’ (atman) or ‘soul’. Through this ‘connection’, the Brahmins stated that the supreme God Brahma controlled a) each individual life, and b) ensured the functioning of Indian society through the caste system. Any obvious or deliberate attempt to contradict this ‘will of god’ would be met with a terrible re-birth and a hellish karma. Conform to the injustices of Brahma’s will – or face a terrible re-birth! The Buddha decided to see if any of this was true and embarked upon a number of well-known spiritual paths all linked to the religion of Brahma. He followed at least six distinct meditative and ascetic paths to their full completion and realised they did not go where their teachers claimed they went, and did not bestow the knowledge the teachers claimed they did. Through submitting his mind and body to the severe discipline required of these paths – an undertaking many others could not do – the Buddha empirically ‘proved’ that the Brahmanical religion was incorrect!
Although the Buddha’s assessment of physical reality seems very ‘modern’ in its use of logic and reason, is his notion of enlightenment relevant to a modern world that is dominated by science? What relevance does a Buddhist viewpoint have in a world that no longer accepts religious dogma in a blind and one-sided manner? Even if the Buddhist philosophy is placed to one-side and Buddhist enlightenment is reduced to perceiving the empty essence of the thinking mind, so what? How does this ability assist humanity in a world of measuring matter, observing processes and continuously striving to understand more about material existence? How does the Buddha’s idea of leaving the world help a person living in the modern world understand that world better? Of course, the honest answer is that it does not. Seeing into the empty fabric of the mind does not build houses, feed people or cure diseases. As an ability, it does not generate an income and cannot pay the bills. Leaving the world does not offer any contribution to making the world a better place. For the Buddha, an individual removes themselves from the most obvious causes of physical and psychological suffering. This suffering he associates with the conventional life of a lay-person participating in marriage, child-rearing and working for a living. This includes the activities of commerce, politics and warfare, etc. Interestingly, the Buddha advocates a moving further into abject poverty as all work is abandoned as a manifestation of desire. Once a regular income is denied, then it becomes a matter of sustaining the life of the individual through the indifferent eating of waste-food acquired by the monastic through the act of begging. Even so, as begging does not guarantee a daily meal, a semi-state of starvation becomes the norm. What is the point of this lifestyle? The Buddha states that all of humanity’s suffering stems from the traits of greed, hatred and delusion continuously operating in the mind, which manifest without end through a corresponding set of physical behaviours in the outside world. Cutting-off and uproot these three traits in the mind and the corresponding behavioural patterns will cease to function in the outside world. When the root of humanity’s suffering is permanently uprooted in the mind and purged from the body, then there exist no more suffering-inducing conditions to plague the individual. However, as life in a capitalist society relies entirely upon ‘greed’ and ‘selfishness’, the Buddhist path is obviously ‘anti-capitalist’ and renders the individual impotent and unable to effectively participate in a greed-orientated society. Of course, things are different within a Socialist society, as a ‘selfless’ individual who profoundly cares for the ‘welfare’ of others is exactly this type of ‘altruistic’ society requires for each of its citizens. An enlightenment achieved within a capitalist society proves to the experiencer that all greed is thoroughly incorrect and counter-productive toward the achieving of human happiness. In other words, a genuine Buddhistic experience grants the insight that the world of predatory capitalism is immoral, backward and the source of all human suffering! Capitalism is clearly perceived as existing entirely due to an unquestioning of human ignorance! Once the mind is cleared of its capitalist corruption, then the individual acquires the ability to comprehend not only the higher teachings of the Buddha but also the dialectical meaning contained within the work of Marx, Engels and Lenin! This would suggest that the Buddhist ideology, if pursued within its proper Asian context, leads the practitioner to an innate understanding and comprehension of the ideology of Scientific Socialism as formulated by Marx and Engels, and developed by thousands of other Revolutionary leaders ever since! Of course, bourgeois Buddhism – or that teaching which is mixed with the Judeo-Christian tradition to exclusively serve the socio-economic system of predatory capitalism – is nothing but a ‘bogus’ Buddhism used by privileged ‘White’ people as a leisure activity and simple play-thing. As this is the most common Buddhism functioning in the West, Buddhism in this guise has no relevance for freeing humanity or in the appreciation of Communist ideology. This is the fake Buddhism of ‘feeling good’ and of temporarily ‘escaping’ from the woes of everyday life for short periods of time. No one practicing this ogre of misrepresentation can ever clear their minds of greed, hatred and delusion, as all this ‘playing’ does is strengthen the functioning of greed, hatred and delusion! This shadow of Buddhism ‘strengthens’ capitalism and gives it’s a greater stability in the minds of the practitioners. This is why bourgeois Buddhism is nothing other than a collaboration with capitalism and the exploitation of the working-class! Anyone can read the Pali and Sanskrit Buddhist teachings, and apply the teachings themselves as part of their study of Marxist-Leninist ideology. Indeed, meditating and calming the mind allows for a preparation of the intellect so that it can more readily ‘absorb’ the profound lessons inherent within the teachings of Scientific Socialism and the work of Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Che Guevara and Thomas Sankara, etc. Ethnic Buddhist communities in China, Laos and Vietnam use this method to integrate their communities into the Socialist System! It is exactly the same method used by the three or four Buddhist Republics that were part of the Soviet Union! Although Buddhism is certainly not required for the successful learning of Marxist-Leninism, nevertheless, if it already exists it can be useful as a method of working-class empowerment!
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AuthorAdrian Chan-Wyles PhD - Political Commissar and BMA (UK) Historian & Researcher. Archives
April 2024
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