Buddhist socialism is apolitical ideology which advocatessocialism based on the principles ofBuddhism. Both Buddhism and socialism seek to provide an end to suffering by analyzing its conditions and removing its main causes throughpraxis. Both also seek to provide a transformation of personal consciousness (respectively, spiritual and political) to bring an end to human alienation and selfishness.[1]
People who have been described as Buddhist socialists includeBuddhadasa Bhikkhu,[2]B. R. Ambedkar,[3]Han Yong-un,[4]Girō Senoo,[5]Uchiyama Gudō,[6]Inoue Shūten,Norodom Sihanouk,[7][8]Takagi Kenmyo[9] andPeljidiin Genden.[10]
Buddhadāsa Bhikkhu coined the phraseDhammic socialism.[2] He believed that socialism is a natural state[11] meaning all things exist together in one system:[11]
Look at the birds: we will see that they eat only as much food as their stomachs can hold. They cannot take more than that; they don't have granaries. Look down at the ants and insects: that is all they can do. Look at the trees: trees imbibe only as much nourishment and water as the trunk can hold, and cannot take in any more than that. Therefore a system in which people cannot encroach on each other's rights or plunder their possessions is in accordance with nature and occurs naturally, and that is how it has become a society continued to be one, until trees became abundant, animals became abundant, and eventually human beings became abundant in the world. The freedom to hoard was tightly controlled by nature in the form of natural socialism.
Korean Buddhist reformerHan Yong-un felt that equality was one of the main principles of Buddhism.[4] In an interview published in 1931, Yong-un spoke of his desire to explore Buddhist Socialism:[4]
I am recently planning to write about Buddhist socialism. Just like there isChristian socialism as a system of ideas in Christianity, there must be also Buddhist socialism in Buddhism.
Tenzin Gyatso, the FourteenthDalai Lama of Tibet has said that:
Of all the modern economic theories, the economic system of Marxism is founded on moral principles, while capitalism is concerned only with gain and profitability. ... The failure of the regime in the former Soviet Union was, for me, not the failure of Marxism but the failure of totalitarianism. For this reason I still think of myself as half-Marxist, half-Buddhist.[12]
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