It is well known that Buddhist traditions have preserved some of the earliest forms of egalitarianism and even proto-types of democracy similar to its ancient Greek counterparts. And yet, to this day, few scholars have investigated deeper into questions such as what philosophies underpinned these non-hierarchical complex social arrangements, what makes these social philosophies “Buddhist,” and what marks their differences from other ancient visions of egalitarianism or isonomia.
The core contention of this paper is that, to better appreciate Buddhist sociopolitical philosophy in early texts, scholars must intentionally sidestep the mainstream individual-autonomy-based and rights-and-contract-based sociopolitical analysis. Further, scholars must chose to read these early texts based on a processual understanding of both relation-centered socio-moral reasoning and a care-based analysis of the existential interdependence and socio-economic interconditioning. Briefly put, in contrast to the substance paradigm (that is a philosophy of being), the processual paradigm is a philosophy of living that explains the perceptible phenomena in terms of open-ended events and intertwining processes and understand the formations of seemingly static entities such as objects, individuals, and substances as ontologically secondary, i.e. dependently arising from recurring patterns of actions, reactions, and coactions. Meta-methodologically, in contrast to abstraction and reduction (that is the methods designed to seek for substantial universals or objective truth), in the processual paradigm, the primary analytic tool should be diffraction, which employs dependent arising (paticca-samuppada) to diffract perceptible phenomena into recurring patterns of relationships, and the conditions they depend on to come about. In fact, such diffractive analysis has long been practiced in social sciences and in sociological terms, these recurring patterns of relations or processes are known as “anchoring schemas.”
More concretely, this paper sheds light on the socio-political dimensions of a cluster of well-known concepts: karma (action), karuṇā (care), and dukkha (precariousness and precarity). I adopt the most basic sense of karma as action, to foreground the action-oriented moral reasoning in Buddhist philosophy. I translate karuṇā as “care” because, in mainstream Theravāda formulations, it entails an intensive cultivation of care about another’s dukkha, engenders a desire to work for the removing of all dukkha (Heim, 162–5). Further, this term is not exclusively used in meditative contexts and, like anukampā, can stand for compassion/care in action (Anālayo, 13). I translate dukkha as both existential precariousness and systemic/social precarity. In contrast to the mainstream translation of dukkha as suffering or unsatisfactoriness, I follow Jonathan Gold’s recent interpretation of early texts in light of Pyrrho’s rending of dukkha as astahmēta (unreliableness/precariousness). In addition to its traditional sense that highlights the unavoidable existential reality of interdependence and impermanence, as has been convincingly argued by Gold, in early texts, dukkha is often metaphorically linked to the sense of being trapped or insecure as being in debt, being a woman, or being in poverty (Gold, 667–8; 677–8). This sense of insecurity caused by social arrangements that disproportionally increase the risk and danger for certain groups of people, following Kittay’s insight, should be distinguished from the unavoidable existential precariousness because sociopolitical arrangements are men-made and are changeable. Kittay terms the unavoidable existential condition “precariousness” and the sort of systemic insecurity “precarity” (Kittay, 20).
Equipped with these new processual understanding of karma, karuṇā, and dukkha, this paper analyzes selected passages from Dīgha Nikāya (Long Discourses), Jātaka (Birth Stories), and Itivuttaka (a collection of discourses attributed to a lay woman named Khujjuttarā, who is named as such because she has a physical disability, a hunched back—khujja). As the evidence reveals, processual sociopolitical philosophy in Buddhism consistently deconstructs dukkha, both in terms of its existential precariousness and its systemic precarity, into anchoring schemas of ignorance, greed, and hatred, the canonical three bondages that tie sentient beings in saṃsāra. The three anchoring schemas are further linked with the physio-mental processes that give rise to the composition of the personhood as patterned karmic processes of pañca-khandhas (five aggregates), to the patterned interpersonal conflicts such as differentiation of beauty and ugliness, stealing, and robbery, to the collective arising of and later institutionalized patterns of private property, rulership, and war.
More importantly, freedom from or a gradual elimination of these anchoring schemas of ignorance, greed, and hatred also gives rise to the coming of Metteyya’s governance, the future Buddha’s realm, whose name Metteyya embodies the ethics of mettā or friendliness (often used in tandem with karuṇā) that implies a social arrangement where everyone is treated as equals. It is in this sense, I name Metteyya’s governance an isonomia that offers equal support to life and liberation. In contrast to the Western metaphor of governance as to steer or to direct that necessitates a ruler or a ruling class, this philosophy of isonomia likens governance as a path of moral liberation, relinquishing the harmful patterns of ignorance, greed, and hatred and cultivating life-giving patterns of karuṇā and mettā, a path that must be treaded together by all those interested in bringing forth the realm of Metteyya.
It is urgent to recover this philosophy of isonomia that take seriously both existential precariousness and systemic precarity. Any political theory that presumes an able-bodied independent individual as the starting point of consideration is doomed to fail to address the unavoidable existential precariousness and is thereby rooted in willful ignorance. Any political theory that overlooks our interconditioned life is also ill-fitted to guide the founding of new social patterns that could reduce the uneven distributions of burden and risk.
Work cited
Anālayo. Compassion and Emptiness in Early Buddhist Meditation. Windhorse Publication, 2015.
Gold, Jonathan C. “Pyrrho’s Buddha on Duhkha and the Liberation from Views.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 91, no. 3 (2023): 655–79.
Heim, Maria. Words for the Heart: A Treasury of Emotions from Classical India. Princeton University Press, 2022.
Karatani, Kōjin. Isonomia and the Origins of Philosophy. Translated by Joseph A. Murphy. Duke University Press, 2017.
Kittay, Eva Feder. “Precarity, Precariousness, and Disability.” In Care Ethics in the Age of Precarity, 19–47. Edited by Maurice Hamington and Michael Flower. University of Minnesota Press, 2021.
This study recovers a care (karuṇā)-based philosophy for building an isonomic, complex society preserved in Pāli texts. The Greek term isonomia (lit. equality), in Karatani Kōjin’s sense of no-rule, means a categorical rejection of ruler-ruled hierarchy. I extend this use of isonomia to include spiritual cultivations that relinquish habitual bondages of ruler-ruled mentality such as domination and submission. To better appreciate this kind of care-based philosophy of isonomia, I point out that it is necessary to adopt a processual paradigm, relinquish the unwarranted assumption that ancient political thought necessarily serves a ruler or a ruling class, and sidestep the Western sociopolitical imagination of governance (lit., to steer, to direct). The study further argues that, by reconceiving governance in the processual terms of establishing care-based, recurrent patterns of actions and interactions (paticca-samuppada), an isonomic complex society promises equal support for life and liberation.