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Siddhartha Gautama, known as the Buddha or enlightened one, left his castle because he could no longer bear to live a privileged life while the world was full of suffering. He went forth for the welfare of all sentient beings into a life of service and a mission to create a different kind of community based on wise compassion. He saw the root of the suffering in the world to lie in false consciousness – in prejudice, in acquisitiveness, in power seeking, in hatred and cruelty, in the mind of oppression that springs from fear and desire.
The Buddha established a community of followers who renounced the common delusions of the world and who based their lives in something more wholesome and reliable – in truth, compassion, sharing, and restraint. This gentle, disciplined community is still, twenty five centuries on, working for a better world. The need for it has never been greater. In the past, if humans devastated a part of the Earth, there was always somewhere else to move on to. No longer. In the past, if humans took to slaughtering each other, the technology with which they did it was at least a great deal less sophisticated than now. In the past, if nature was damaged, she would recover pretty quickly of her own accord. Now much of the damage is irreversible.
Unless humans can soon heed the Buddha’s message – or reinvent something very similar for themselves – the consequences will be dire. Some of those consequences are already bearing upon us. We have never been so much in need of a more enlightened consciousness as we are today. Liberation Buddhism is a training for those who wish to give themselves to the work of the Buddhas, to the creation of a new world.
The new world – or Pure Land – requires both personal and social change. A new society comes out of a new consciousness. The Buddha taught that you do not need to know exactly what the finished product will look like. You do not have to have a blueprint that you then try to impose on everybody else. The Buddha’s key teaching was called “dependent origination”. Everything arises from conditions. The method, in the Buddha’s revolution, therefore, is to set about tirelessly creating the conditions from which a new world can grow naturally. These conditions are both personal and social. We need to root out greed in ourselves and in our society. We need to root out hatred in ourselves and in our society. We need to root out prejudice and status delusions in ourselves and in our society. This Buddhism is, therefore, both a psychology and a sociology. It is concerned with the spirit in which people live their lives, both individually and collectively.
This Buddhism, therefore, is not about learning how to have less stress while continuing to live an over–privileged life working for an oppressive system. It is not about learning how to remain serene by ignoring the suffering, conflicts and confusion in the world. It is not about guru worship. It is about fraternity and friendship. A Buddhist teacher is simply an experienced spiritual friend. We are all walking together. The Buddha walked all over the world that he was born into. Liberation Buddhism is a movement for peace and community. We would like to make it possible for any person, no matter where they were born, to walk all over this planet, in the cause of peace. We want an end to barbed wire and landmines, immigration control and exploitation. We want to create communities where those who have been wounded by abuse, cruelty and oppression can heal and be transformed into bodhisattvas and amitaryas – those who can themselves go forth to heed the cries of this world. We want to create a world in which other living beings are safe from the human predator.
Liberation Buddhism begins with an examination of our roots – what is driving our life? what matters? what do we respect? to what do we aspire? what are the obstacles in us to doing what we deeply believe in? We need a change of heart. This Buddhism calls for renunciation, for training and consciousness raising, for community building, and for action to relieve the suffering in the world by putting in place the conditions from which a better world may grow.
Dh.D.J. Brazier
2001
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