‘These four offenses are the most serious which can be committed by the monks. They include (1) sexual intercourse, (2) theft, (3) deprivation of life (of a human), and (4) false proclamation of superhuman faculties.’
A Survey of Vinaya Literature, Charles S Prebish, Jade Sceptre, (1994), 1. Prarajika-dharmas (Page 3)
The Buddha had to operate within the socio-economic conditions of his time. His culture was steeped within the theology and philosophy of Brahmanism – and a fully developed materialism. From the Hindu perspective, God can be just as active in the physical world – as he is throughout the inner world. Indian thinkers, however, had developed the idea that “consciousness” was divine – and that an external god had nothing to do with it. A type of atheistic idealism. Furthermore, the Buddha was not the only thinker to establish a “new” path. In fact, most new paths were a re-development and re-focusing of what had come before. Even within the Buddha’s thinking – the old Brahmanic thinking can be clearly seen – even though he denies is core aspects and directs his followers in a new direction. There is also one more aspect that distinguishes the Buddha in that at the highest level of his system – the past is completely denied as being valid – and is “given-up” so that an almost “modern” view of the world is established.
Although ancient and classical Greek thinkers were developing various paths of progression – the Buddha may well have been the first purely “modern” thinker. This would definitely be the case if he lived nearer 1000 BCE rather than 600 BCE. This means that Buddhist ideology has to engage the past, transform it in the present, and transform (or abandon) it in the future. Enlightenment is NOT a summation of a path of divinity that ends in the denial of the material world and the finding of an all-powerful god. Buddhist enlightenment is the exact opposite to this. It is not the denial of religion – it is the seeing through of all phenomena – including the religious. The religious and irreligious both have the empty mind ground is their base. Religious stops being the answer to any single thing within the human domain. Religion, in the dualistic sense, becomes simply just another attachment which hinders an all-round (and developed) perception.
Producing thoughts in the head (mind) is one thing – but being “detached” from the consequences of each produced thought is quite another – and yet this is all Buddhism is about when stripped of its religiosity. The early Western encountering of Buddhism was something akin to Protestant Christianity without the hang-up of a Catholic past. Buddhism for the British Victorians was an empowered Protestantism without the moral recriminations of the Vatican. Furthermore, 19th century Buddhism was interpreted very much like a form of theism without the inconvenience of its Jewish moral underpinnings. Buddhism in the West has been imported as a purely intellectual endeavour that stops and starts at the front-door and has very little to do with the reality of Western culture. The irony is that all this is completely incorrect. The Buddha was a Revolutionary who “left” the society (and its conventions) he had been brought-up within and highly privileged by. He had no axe to grind regarding exploitation or oppression as his family existed at te very top of its social strata.
If this was the case, why did the Buddha reject Brahmanism? Why did the Buddha bite the hand that fed him? Well, he practiced all the available meditative paths, mastered them all, and realised none of them expressed the ultimate truth. He carried-on training in meditation as the Upanishads advised – and saw through all the conditioning of his mind, body, and environment. He gave up caste privilege and all work for money. He knew that this would lead to starvation, homelessness, and nakedness. He resolved these issues by dressing himself in rags found in the charnel grounds (the clothing of dead who were to poor to be cremated), he acquired the skull-cap of a dead person and used it as a begging bowl as he walked from village to village quietly requesting waste-food on a daily basis, and he sat under the foot of a tree when he meditated. The Buddha left society and lived on the forested outskirts of Hindu society. Of course, the Buddha still physically lived in India, and interfaced with Hindu society, but he did this under a completely new contract of understanding.
He rejected Hinduism – and all human society – but also rejected violence and any form of competition. He was quite happy to leave a society that built its structure on greed, hatred, and delusion. This is ALL human society premised upon greed, hatred, and delusion. Buddhism rejects capitalism and interfaces with Socialism. Buddha did not want to take control of society – not even a reformed society – as these things are entirely worldly. It is the rest of us – as individuals – who must somehow accommodate ourselves to all the different manifestations that human society can produce. A perverse Buddhism involves the fake idea that the Buddha supported greed, hatred, and delusion. In other words, the auspices of ordinary and deluded society. Yes – a Buddhist may exist in a hellish reality when his or her karma pushes them in the direction of self-cultivation – but the general idea is that this set of circumstances will eventually be transformed into a more Dharma-compliant manifestation. The Buddha, out of compassion, taught all kinds of people to rectify their hellish karma and produce a new reality for themselves. Theistic religion and the capitalist system are both viewed as “hellish” from the Dharmic perspective. This is NOT the good and evil dichotomy found within Christianity. Everything can be transformed through self-effort.
SANGHA KOMMUNE (SSR) 