Politics and Buddhism

views updated

POLITICS AND BUDDHISM

Siddhārtha Gautama was himself a prince, who nonetheless rejected political power, abandoning his royal inheritance along with his family and material comforts. In the biographies of the Buddha there is thus a strong sense of dichotomous contrast: The "world" (of family, wealth, and politics) must be renounced in the pursuit of enlightenment. Monks and nuns were instructed to refuse or minimize involvement with the political leadership. Nonetheless, ordination was a political statement with political consequences, since the ordinand claimed to be opting out of the power structures of the (lay) world. Indeed one measure of the holiness of a Buddhist saint has been a distance from the centers of political power. Even monks who were intimately involved in political lobbying and who lived lives of urban comfort nonetheless retained some of the symbolism of the poor mountain or forest renunciant.

There are scriptural cases of the Buddha's dealings with rulers, generally in the contexts of teaching them the dharma and receiving donations. Bimbisāra, king of Magadha during the Buddha's lifetime, is remembered as a pious disciple and generous donor who gave land for the saṄgha and sponsored the creation of the first Buddha image.

More influential was the example of King AŚoka (third century b.c.e.), ruler of the Mauryan dynasty, who converted to Buddhism and promoted its spread throughout much of India. His conversion came after a famously bloody war campaign, and the violence of his earlier military career is often thought to lie behind his religious fervor. His policy of conquest by force (digvijaya) was replaced by an idea of conquest by righteousness (dharmavijaya). Much of the image of Aśoka as personally pious dates from later sources, which blend into hagiographic idealization. Aśoka's official pronouncements are known from the extant edicts carved in rocks and distributed throughout his empire, often on display in Buddhist monasteries. He also sponsored religious sects other than Buddhism, and the dharma teachings that the edicts emphasize are fairly nonspecific exhortations to law-abiding social conduct. Aśoka did recommend sūtras to read, and he

seems to have intervened in a schism, forcing schismatic monks to wear white robes and be removed from the orthodox saṅgha. According to traditional Sinhalese accounts, he took a role in the Council of Pāṭaliputra (250 b.c.e.), which formalized a schism between the Sthaviras (elders) and the MahĀsĀṂghikas (Great Assembly). Aśoka became a model of the righteous Buddhist king, and temples to King Aśoka were founded throughout East Asia.

Some kings have chosen to be ordained as monks. Some of the Japanese emperors lived as monk-recluses (in their palaces). As another example, King Mongkut of Siam (1804–1868) was hurriedly ordained a monk a week before his father's death, and was thereby sheltered from succession struggles. Instead, Mongkut's half-brother reigned for twenty-seven years, and upon his death, Mongkut disrobed and ascended the throne for a further seventeen-year reign. During his time as a monk, Mongkut founded a reform sect of Thai Buddhism, which has continued to enjoy royal favor.

The ideal ruler

The ideal ruler was described as cakravartin (wheelturning king or universal ruler) and dharmarāja, or as a bodhisattva. Cakravartins have the thirty-two marksof a great man, rule in accordance with dharma, and preside over an age of peace. Buddhist rulers have claimed the right to purify the religion and to judge the teachings. In China, the emperor presided over debates between representatives of Buddhism, Daoism, and Confucianism, pronouncing the winner at the end of the day. Various state laws provided some legal backing, such as tax exemptions, to monastic institutions. Conceding that the ruler has a legitimate role to play in reducing the bad karma of crime, the saṅgha has performed rituals to protect the ruler and the state.

Many rulers in Asia, even pro-Buddhist rulers, have sought to control aspects of the saṅgha. Taking on the role of the cakravartin, rulers have at times "purged" the saṅgha of its "impurities" by enforcing stricter controls on entry (quotas on ordinations, or added stipulations), by extending secular law into the jurisdiction of the vinaya (monastic code), and by expelling certain monks and nuns. In some cases, then, attacks on clerical institutions have been phrased in pro-Buddhist terms. In other cases, there was no such rationalization and the goal was simply the extermination of the saṅgha. Such violent anticlerical persecutions have occurred sporadically throughout history, but perhaps the best known include the persecution during the Huichang period in China (ca. 842–845), the Communist-inspired iconoclasm of the Chinese Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), and the violence in Tibet since the 1950s. In Japan, the slaughter of monks during the civil warfare of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the anti-Buddhist movements of the early Meiji (1868–1870s), come to mind.

The ideal ruler is a lavish patron, funding monastery construction and large publication projects. Many rulers in Asia have indeed donated land and other wealth for the establishment of monasteries, with a variety of motives. Undoubtedly the popular perception of the ruler as pious, the complicity of the monastic institutions in state propaganda, and the conspicuous displays of wealth all helped to legitimate the reign. The doctrine of merit (Sanskrit, puṇya; Chinese, gongde) made economic wealth religiously significant, as donations became the very substance of the saṅgha. The construction of large Buddha images, such as the colossal Buddha at Tōdaiji in Nara, dedicated in 752 c.e., was also a powerful means of asserting political jurisdiction. The Tōdaiji image was built from donations gathered throughout the imperial domain, and in both its material contributions and its iconographic symbolism, consolidated the sense of a unified imperial nation.

The imperial states of Asia were often intimately involved in the process of importing the dharma. Even when the state ideology was non-Buddhist or anti-Buddhist in orientation, rulers made donations out of political expediency, and many officials of the state were committed to Buddhism in a "private" capacity. Imperial women in particular were often sponsors of Buddhism.

Monks were sometimes desirable subjects for rulers. The great translator of Sanskrit texts, KumĀrajĪva (350–ca. 409/413), was one of the spoils of war in conflicts between Chinese and Central Asian states. Well-traveled monks lent prestige and foreign intelligence to a regime; they also embodied a certain magical auspiciousness. According to the account by Xuanzang (ca. 600–664) of his travels to India, rulers of the kingdoms he passed through often wanted him to stay. King Harsha (r. 606–647) paid his respects to Xuanzang, convened a debating tournament and declared him the winner, and released him only after much delay. When Xuanzang returned to China, he was welcomed by Emperor Gaozong (r. 649–683), who attempted to press the monk into political service. Failing that, he urged Xuanzang to record his travels.

Buddhism as a political problem

Buddhism has at times been perceived as a political danger. Various versions of millennial Buddhism have been seen as challenges to the state, and in some cases truly were. The idea of the decline of the dharma (also known by the Japanese term mappō) described the declining, or degenerating, capacity of human beings to achieve enlightenment as they grew increasingly remote from śakyamuni Buddha. Various time frames were projected, with most orthodox estimates placing the decisive "end of the dharma" in the distant future. However, some popular millennial movements have posited the arrival or imminence of the end. In some cases Buddhists concluded that faith in AmitĀbha Buddha was the only viable option in such a degenerate age, but in other cases it was believed that the messianic figure Maitreya was present or soon would be present.

Mappō assumed political importance both as a critique of government, since corrupt government was one indication of the decline, and also as an element of movements actively opposing the state. Though orthodoxtraditions posit the arrival of the next buddha, Maitreya, in the remote future, the notion of a messiah who incarnates in a corrupt world to wash away the existing order has been taken more immediately at a popular level. In the fourteenth century, the White Lotus society developed expectations of the imminent arrival of Maitreya that required a cleansing of the evil political regime. The White Lotus Rebellion, which occurred in China from 1796 to 1805, was just such an attempt. Many states have been suspicious of religious secret societies, including those with Buddhist roots. In some cases Buddhist institutions openly maintained large standing armies; in Japan, powerful monasteries accumulated land holdings so large that they effectively became feudal domains, complete with taxation and militias. When Japan was unified by force in the sixteenth century, it was inevitable that warlords such as Oda Nobunaga (1534–1582) came to face Buddhist institutions in battle, especially the Jōdo shinshū. During the Tokugawa period (1600–1868), local monasteries and temples came to function as organs of the state, so that anti-Buddhism overlapped with nativism and new versions of Shintō. The strong association of Buddhism and the Tokugawa regime led to a persecution and widespread destruction of Buddhism in the years after the Meiji restoration of 1868.

The relations of monk and ruler

Although the saṅgha has had much to gain from good relations with political rulers, in an ideal sense monks are supposed to be uninterested in material wealth. The legendary story of Bodhidharma meeting Emperor Wu of the Liang (r. 502–550) has the great patriarch of the Chan school bluntly dismissing the salvific potency of all the emperor's wealth: All the donations to build temples and copy scriptures produced no merit at all. Furthermore, the ideal monk was supposed to be unaffected by the threat of violence represented by the ruler. Lore has developed in which the heroic monk casually brushes aside any hint of fear. The monk Sengzhao (374–414), for example, faced with the threat of execution, recited a verse to the ruler:

The four elements originally have no master;
The five skandhas are basically empty.
When my head meets the white blade,
It will merely be like beheading the spring wind.

Placed in a situation of conflict with the civil authorities, threatened with the possibility of physical punishment and death, Sengzhao used his words to convey a simple message: The body is empty, so killing me would be useless and cannot even frighten me; you ultimately cannot kill me, because there is no "me" to kill. The basic trope then, is the use of the idea of ŚŪnyatĀ, (emptiness) during a display of virtuous bravado in the face of an overbearing ruler.

This ability to speak truth to power was in part derived from Buddhist anthropology and the cultivation of nonattachment, but also from the position of the monk as "outside" or "beyond" the world. Indeed, at times the foreignness of Buddhism was embraced and displayed: Monks—even native-born monks—described themselves as fangwai zhi bin (guests from outside the boundaries) who come from outside the imperial domain. The analogy of exteriority is evident also in the term chujia (left the household), although this was also quite literally true—clerics were indeed absent from the home. As Stephen Teiser remarks: "The power of monks—their ability to enrich substantially the welfare of the family—depends upon their social placement outside of the family" (p. 205). The same could be said of their placement outside of the political realm.

There were moments when the ritual practices of clerics were in direct physical contact with other, incompatible, systems of behavior. For example, in China, Confucian imperial guest ritual conflicted with the vinaya—as when a monk refused to bow to the ruler. Yet at these moments of obvious physical presence, we find the otherness of the monk admitted, indeed emphasized. The claim of belonging to some authority "outside the boundaries" was at the same time the claim to a site within the realm, from which to speak of the ruler as if from outside his realm.

The strength of this assertion relied on the tradition of legal privileges accorded to foreign visitors (for example, visiting princes). Hereditary kinship with the ruler of a foreign state brought a number of privileges, such as partial noncompliance with imperial ritual, and partial extraterritoriality. Buddhist discourses often analogized monks to high-ranking representatives of a "ruler," the Buddha. Monks are the Buddha's "sons," his "crown princes," and so should, by analogy, have diplomatic immunity or extraterritoriality. Buddha is an emperor (of the dharma), and monks (his heirs) are princes, and thus the authoritative ambassadors of his words. In China, even as heaven

mandates just rulership (tianming), the just ruler receives Buddha's charge or mandate for improving society and maintaining moral conduct: The model ruler is a "wheel-turner" who is responsible for law and order. There was a division of labor between the Buddha and the cakravartin, with the Buddha delivering beings from the world to a salvation "outside the world" (fangwai), and the cakravartin working "in the world" to reduce bad karma.

Law and party politics

Imperial domain requires territory and more or less demarcated spatial boundaries (physical or imagined), within which there is jurisdiction; applicable laws were those determined by the emperor and his ministers, scholars, and magistrates, and the military and police power needed to enforce those laws. At times the monastic institutions and the state contested areas of jurisdiction. For example, if a monk commits murder, the saṅgha is entitled to disrobe him, but not to send him to prison; the state may wait until the monk is disrobed before arresting him, or may claim a right to reach directly into the monastery. Similarly, state law codes have recognized the status of the cleric in a variety of ways, sometimes affording the ordained a dispensation not to perform military service, or acknowledging the Buddhist educational qualification as equivalent to secular educational degrees. In Thailand, degrees from Buddhist universities have gained qualified recognition from the government; for example, these degrees are fully accredited for those who disrobe and serve as military chaplains. Thai law prescribes penalties on those who impersonate a monk.

There have also been explicitly Buddhist political parties. SŌka Gakkai, a Nichiren Shoshū-derived movement founded in 1930 in Japan, has been politically active, especially after World War II. In 1964 Sōka Gakkai leader Ikeda Daisaku established the political party Kōmeitō, formally unaffiliated but closely aligned with Sōka Gakkai. Officially dissolved in 1994 but reformed in 1998 as the New Kōmeitō, it has remained small but influential. In Sri Lanka as well, Buddhist nationalism has become a powerful political force. In India, the lawyer and politician B. R. Ambedkar (1891–1956) campaigned for the rights of untouchables, and shortly before his death led a mass conversion to Buddhism. There has also been a global mobilization of Tibetan Buddhist adherents against the Chinese occupation of Tibet. These and many other cases show that despite elements of other-worldly rhetoric, Buddhism is easily enlisted in political causes.

Bibliography

Orzech, Charles D. Politics and Transcendent Wisdom: The Scripture for Humane Kings in the Creation of Chinese Buddhism. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998.

Smith, Bardwell L., ed. Religion and the Legitimation of Power in South Asia. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 1978.

Smith, Bardwell L., ed. Religion and Legitimation of Power in Sri Lanka. Chambersburg, PA: ANIMA, 1978.

Smith, Bardwell L., ed. Religion and Legitimation of Power in Thailand, Laos, and Burma. Chambersburg, PA: ANIMA, 1978.

Tambiah, Stanley J. World Conqueror and World Renouncer: A Study of Buddhism and Polity in Thailand against a Historical Background. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1976.

Teiser, Stephen. The Ghost Festival in Medieval China. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988.

Zürcher, E. The Buddhist Conquest of China: The Spread and Adaptation of Buddhism in Early Medieval China. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 1959.

Eric Reinders

Encyclopedia of Buddhism