Todayand#8217;s FBA Dharmabyte and#8220;Transforming the World,and#8221; has us reflecting on the question: Is it possible to create a society in which all social, economic, and political arrangements will support the development of true individuality? From the talk, and#8220;A Blueprint for a New Worldand#8221; by Sangharakshita given in 1976 as part of the series and#8220;Buddhism for Today and Tomorrow.and#8221;
Dharmabytes from free buddhist audio
Transforming the World
[music] Dharma Bites is brought to you by Free Buddhist Audio, the Dharma for your life. Our work is funded entirely by donations from our generous listeners. If you would like to help us keep this free, make a contribution at freebuddhistaudio.com/donate. Thank you, and happy listening. [music] This brings us back to our original question. How is one to transform the world into a spiritual community? How is one even to begin? Usually, people who want to change the world do two things. First of all, they draw up a detailed, comprehensive plan that provides for everything down to the last detail. And second, they try to get everybody else to adopt it, if necessary, by force. Some people, of course, do, or try to do just one of these two things. They either think it's enough to draw up the plan and leave it to others to accept or reject it as they wish, or they try to seize power, political power, in the conviction that once power has been attained, one will know what to do anyway. Now, from the Buddhist point of view, neither of these two courses is very satisfactory. Buddhist have to begin with a distrust of abstract theory. Theory, which is not directly related to the needs of the concrete human situation. Buddhism, the Dharma, lays down broad general principles, yes. But it leaves, to the individual judgment, the actual specific application of those principles. We find this, for instance, in the field of ethics. Buddhism lays down certain general ethical principles, for instance, that we should do no harm to other living beings, the principle of non-violence, principle, if you like, of love. Again, it lays down the principle that one should not take what is not given in positive form, the principle of generosity. It indicates some of the more obvious applications of these principles, but it leaves us to do the rest of the work within the context of our own lives ourselves. So it's just the same in connection with the new world, the ideal world in Buddhist texts. In some of the scriptures, there are descriptions of such a world, but the descriptions are very general. They're inspirational, rather than informative. And again, we are left to work out the details for ourselves. Again, from the Buddhist point of view, there's no question of seizing power, whether on a large scale or a small scale, and then implementing our plan. The spiritual community, and this cannot be emphasized too much, the spiritual community is not a power structure. The spiritual community is not based upon power, that it is based upon power in the sense of the coercive power or authority of one person over another. And the spiritual community cannot be extended by means of such power. The new world cannot be brought into existence by the exercise of such power. The spiritual community can be brought into existence only by persuasion, whether that persuasion be exercised through words or through personal example. So the new world too can be brought into existence only by means of persuasion. Otherwise, we have only a variant of the old world with all the old problems. So what are we to do? Well, the answer is really quite simple. What we have to do is to go back to what I was talking about in the last lecture, the lecture which was a talk, back to the nucleus of the new society. In other words, back to the FWBO, the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order, and the WBO, the Western Buddhist Order, themselves. If we want to bring the new world into existence, we have to do it by expanding that nucleus, multiplying that nucleus and pushing out extensions of it of them into the world. We hope you enjoyed today's Dharma Bite. Please help us keep this free. Make a contribution at freebuddhistaudio.com/donny and thank you. Thank you. [BLANK_AUDIO]