Despite many permanently resettling in the cities, and abandoning their farm land, it is estimated that around 130 million migrant workers make the trip into the cities, whilst older and younger members of their families stay on the farm land and look after the home. This army of migrant workers spend 50 weeks of the year working in factories that provide living quarters and regular food to their workers. It is only during the two-week holiday of Chinese New Year that the factories shut-down and the employees are allowed home.
Tag: freedom
The Bourgeois State and Feminism
Bourgeois feminism is very different. This is the feminism of the middle class, and already socially privileged women. These women, as wives of the rich and famous, have had historically a remarkable amount of leisure time and relative freedom compared to their working class counter-parts. This apparent ‘freedom’ exists only within the framework of an unquestionable bourgeois patriarchy. It is freedom at a cost and the cost is humanity living free of oppression. Middle class women have had access to a greater array of educational facilities, be they teachers, books, or academic instruction. Middle class women fought for, and finally secured the vote because their privileged socio-economic conditions allowed them the insight to see partly beyond their own negative conditioning. Bourgeois feminism is nothing more than the exercise of political compromise as whatever concessions are granted to a middle class woman, they can not be allowed to directly challenge or alter the essential framework of the bourgeois exploitative state. Exploitation and class difference must be allowed to continue unopposed, in the old way.
Leave No Stone Unturned
The only reason we take suffering over inspirational thought is because we have been trained to do so by those who would capitalise on our self-imposed limitations.
Buddhism: Beyond Materialism & Idealism
For the Buddha, delusion generates itself in cycles of endless repetition. Causes lead to consequences, and this systems appears to transmit itself from one birth to the next. However, this should not be interpreted in a theistic or mystical fashion. Whatever the Buddha is referring to, it can not be obvious reincarnation favoured by certain religious theories, as the Buddha fundamentally rejects such notions in his teachings. Rebirth and karma, as used by the Buddha, appear to be a method of interpretation that avoids the trap of gross materialism, whilst using the rational mind.
Freedom In The Post-Modern Age
‘The nature of post-modern freedom, although equally applicable to all, does not necessarily mean that it is immediately perceivable to all those who exist within its condition. Its condition is the product, generally speaking, of advanced economic development, although on occasion such philosophies as Buddhism have been interpreted as being of a ‘post-modern’ nature. Obviously ancient India was not in the advanced economic state that western Europe is in today, but the Buddha’s philosophy marks a stark break with the traditions of his time, and represents a clear manifestation of one particular aspect of the post-modern condition, namely that of dismissing the long narratives of history that had previously dominated Indian philosophical and spiritual thought. West Europe, the United States of America and to a lesser extent the emerging central and eastern European states, are the product of hundred of years of economic development that has created nothing less than a revolution in the material structure of outward society that has seen the remarkable establishment of science and medicine over that of the theology of monotheistic religion. This state of industrialisation and technological development, regardless of its inherent inequalities has nevertheless created an extensive collective wealth that has raised the level of physical and psychological existence.’
The Buddha’s Enlightenment.
‘Through austerity and meditation, and after leaving the world of plenty, the Buddha roamed from place to place with only his begging bowl and robe as possessions. After practicing austerity, he rejected this method as not being able to reach the highest enlightenment. He trained in, and fully mastered the meditative methods of his day, and despite achieving the highest state, rejected these paths as not going far enough toward the ultimate enlightenment. Having abandoned the conventional spiritual teachings, he embarked upon his own meditative practice, a practice that would eventually lead to a full and profound inner metamorphosis, more commonly known in English as ‘enlightenment’.’
SANGHA KOMMUNE (SSR) 