The Concept Of Democracy Is At The Very Root Of Buddhism

(MENAFN- NewsIn Asia) By K/Saunday Observer-Feautres

Colombo, Decembr 1: Buddhism and democracy are two sides of the same coin, if they are seen in the correct way, says the father of India's Democratic constitution and the modern-day apostle of Buddhism in India, Dr. B. R. Ambedkar.
He saw Buddhism as a democratic religion and he converted to it with lakhs of his socially oppressed followers called Dalits, in 1956.

In a radio broadcast on October3, 1954, Dr. Ambedkar said that his social and Political philosophy was enshrined in three concepts: Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. These were the foundational principles not just of the 18 th French revolution but also Buddhism, founded by Gautama Buddha centuries earlier, Dr said.

“Let no one say that I have borrowed my philosophy from the French Revolution. I have not. My philosophy has roots in religion and not in political science. I have derived them from the teachings of my Master, the Buddha. In his philosophy, liberty, equality and fraternity had a place. Fraternity is the only real safeguard against the denial of liberty or equality,” he said and added that brotherhood based on fraternity, was only another name for religion.

Sangha

Ambedkar recalled the democratic practices in the Buddhist brotherhood called the Sangha.“The Bhikkhu Sangha had the most democratic constitution. The Buddha was only one of the Bhikkus. At the most, he was like a prime minister among members of the Cabinet. He was never a dictator. Twice before his death he was asked to appoint someone as the head of the Sangha to control it. But each time he refused, saying that the Dhamma is the Supreme Commander of the Sangha. He refused to be a dictator and refused to appoint a dictator”, the Indian legal luminary noted.

14th Dalai Lama of Tibet, Tenzin Gyatso also believes that Buddhism and democracy are compatible as both are rooted in the belief
that all, whether social or economically high or low, have the same potential to grow and excel.

The Sakya kingdom to which the Buddha belonged, was ruled by a
Council, or Gaṇasangha, rather than a monarch. It was made up of an elite class of warriors and ministers. The leader of the Council was elected by its members and was called the Raja. The Raja had considerable authority but he could not rule autocratically. Questions of importance were debated in the Ganasangha and decisions were taken by consensus.

In his essay, Buddhism in a Democratic World, in The Golden Lotus, August, 1960, the German-American scholar, Kurt F. Leidecker, says that though the Buddha was the founder of Buddhism, he put his own person in the background and put the insight he had got in the shape of the Dhamma in the foreground.

“He was a teacher, but such a one that will not make the acceptance of the thing he taught dependent on the fact that it was he who taught it. He never asked anyone to follow him, personally. He asked people to think with him and, having thought, prove their findings reasonable to themselves. He left the personality of the pupil intact,” Leidecker says.

The Buddha did not believe in indoctrination. He gave his followers the freedom to think on their own. Teaching and expounding of the Dhamma was carried on in an ideal way, with no trace of indoctrination, without coercion. The pupil gave his free assent, if he so decided, with his own mind, left to think on its own.

According to Prof Leidecker, this is the ideal form of education.“Just as the garden needs a gardener, so the pupil needs a teacher. The gardener can do no more than to hoe, weed and water. That there shall be flowers and fruits is dependent on the inherent qualities of the plants themselves,” he explained.

For the Buddha, Dhamma was like a road-sign which may be heeded or ignored. No wayfarer is compelled to read it and benefit from it. Likewise, the Buddha's Four Noble Truths or the Eight fold Path are there to accept or reject by men.

“So thoroughly did the Buddha eschew the personality cult, that the first centuries of Buddhist history allude to him only in symbols-in the wheel, the column, the tree, the empty throne. These symbols came to stand for the Buddha as well as the idea he preached,” Prof points out. It was only during Greek-influenced Gandhara period in North Western India that the image of the Buddha as we know today came into existence. Until then, the Buddha was largely a concept, a philosophy, a way of life.

Even the great Emperor Asoka, whose son and daughter brought Buddhism to Sri Lanka in 247 BC, shunned the personality cult. Asoka
preferred to be known not by his given name or kingly titles, but as“Devanampiya Priyadarshi” (the beloved of the Gods who regards others with kindness”.

A number of Sri Lankan kings from Uttiya to Yasalalakatissa from the 2nd century BC to the 1st century CE, also adopted that name. Uttiya ruled Anuradhapura from 267 BC to 257 BC. And
Yassalalaka Tissa was King of Anuradhapura from 52 to 60 CE.

Placing knowledge above power and pelf, the Buddha shed all the trappings of power and pelf as a Sakya Prince and left his palace and kingdom to seek knowledge through acetic practices, dialogues and meditation. It is in emulation of the Buddha that in Thailand and Myanmar boys spend at least three months out of their lives in Buddhist institutions renouncing pleasures, wealth and all attachments, wearing the yellow robe. The belief is that it is in humbleness that wisdom grows and that insight comes with detachment.

Prof. Leidecker point out that the Buddha did not scorn or shun Kingship and worldly pomp but stressed inner worth, the nobility of thought and character. He even recognised caste in the sense that it represented a classification of society according to occupation. He recognised recognized the Brahmin. But for him, the real worth of a Brahmin or a Prince was in his character his nobility.
A person is noble or not is not determined by birth but by his character. The Buddha did not recommend a false equalisation of society.

According to Prof, the Buddha was not a reformer or a
revolutionary. He did not seek to upset the existing order but only wanted it to be value-based as per his Dhamma.“That Buddha set out to reform society is a gross misstatement of the facts. His aim was enlightenment and the elimination of sorrow and suffering, both among the high and the low.”

Buddha's approach to social ills was not based on class struggle either. His method was peaceful, did not require conversion by force of those who thought differently. All he sought was setting one's own thinking in order.“Salvation, or Vimukti, was not to be attained by outward means but through an inner reformation of the spirit,” Dr points out.

As in a good Buddhist society, in truly democratic societies too, individuality is guaranteed. In the Milindapanha it is stated that as trees differ depending on the nature of the seed, so the character and destiny of man varies with the different deeds whose consequences are earned. This is the doctrine of Kamma, action.A man becomes good by good action, and bad by bad action. The Western democracies call it the doctrine of individual responsibility which also goes with the concept of individual freedom, the freedom to choose one's path to either sublimity or degradation.

Fixing individual responsibility based on individual freedom is essential to make laws work, Leidecker says. Society would disintegrate, just as nature would, if the laws of causality (Kamma)
are not universal, he argues .

Freedom, in fact, is the very life-blood of Buddhism. A society which believes in strict determinism will eventually ensnare man in a world of thought and action in which he can no longer move about freely. Vimukti then becomes impossible through individual effort, the writer says.

It was Ralph Waldo Emerson, the American philosopher who said,“civilization depends on morality” and that the“purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honourable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference.”

With this, every Buddhist would agree, for Sīla is basic to human life, Leidecker points out. Perfect speech (Samma Vaca), perfect comportment (Samma Kammanta), and a perfect occupation or livelihood, and (Samma Ajiva) are three important points in Buddha's Eightfold Path.

“If truth and sincerity are not in the word, which is the very cement of human relationships, for without language man cannot be man, society breaks down and with it civilization goes by the board. The same holds true if we behave anti-socially by harming our fellowmen bodily or taking from them what does not belong to us, or engage in activity which does not make them happy and content,” Leidecker explained.

The scholar points out that in any truly democratic society, there is room for the virtues mentioned by the Buddha. As in Western democracies in Buddhism, both Bhikkhu and laymen are encouraged to move and have their being guided by Metta (goodwill), Karuṇa (compassion), Mudita (sympathy).

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