A Buddha Land in This World

Front matter

Lajos Brons

O > a

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PART I — Groundwork

Secularity + Secularity as Naturalism + The Sociopolitical Dimension: Secularity as Privatization + Locating Radical Buddhism + Naturalism + A Plethora of -isms * A Guide to This Book e What This Book Is Not About •

Protectors, Monks, and Jeweled Trees Early Buddhism +» Asoka e Mahayana + From Nagarjuna to Zhiyi + From Saicho to Nichiren * A Buddha Land in This World

Secular Buddhism * Sri Lanka — Dharmapala and Ariyaratne » Realism

and Reform in Japan — Inoue Enryo + Uchiyama Gudo and Early Buddhist Socialism * Seno’o Gird and the Youth Leagu + China/Taiwan — A Pure Land in the Human World + Activist Alternatives and Lin Qiuwu + Korea — Han Yongun’s Buddhist Socialism + Vietnam — Thich Nhat Hanh’s Engaged Buddhism + Thailand — Buddhadasa’s Dhammic Socialism * Burma — Buddhist Marxism and U Nu « Tibet — Gendun Chopel and the 14th Dalai Lama + Ambedkar and the “New Vehicle” in India

Materialism, Ideology, and the Specter of Marxism The Problem(s) with Materialism(s) + Physicalism + Moralistic versus Systemic Critique + Economic Materialism + Ideology + Materialism, Superstition, and

Other Themes

5. What Makes Something Buddhist? 137 The Idea of an “Original Buddhism” + The Four Noble Truths + Suffering + Karma, Rebirth, (No-)self, and Nirvana • The Middle Way + Metaphysics, Rationality, and Free Inquiry + Meditation, Pacifism, and Dependent Origination + Defining “Buddhism” and “Buddhist” + What Is a Buddhist? -

Postscript

6. Radicalizing Radical Buddhism 171 Sources and Schools + A Very Sketchy Overview of Parts II and III + Between

Science and Religion

PART II — We Sat Introduction 187

7. Conceptual Matters 193 Realism (1) — Universals and (Anti-)Essentialism * Realism (2) — External Reality + Idealism + The “Noumenal” + Apophasis, Kataphasis, Skepticism, and

Mysticism * Relativism, Pluralism, and Perspectivism + An Analogy

8. Realism and Reality in Yogacara and Tiantai 21I A Bit of Historical Context + Yogācāra Realism + Tiantai/Tendai Nondualism + Relativism and Perspectivism in Yogacara and Tiantai + Apoha and Its

Implications + Triangulation, Kalpana, and Kataphasis

9. Epistemic Justification, Science, and Austere Realism 247 Avisamvada + Objections to the Coherence Principle + Perspectives and Science + Essences, Freedom, Paradise, and Other Incoherences * Posits and Phenomenal

Reality e Summary of Chapters 8 and 9

10. Perspectives on Perspectival Realism 279 The Baseline — Post-Yogacara Realism e New Pragmatism — Davidson, Putnam, and Quine + Classical Perspectives — Zhuangzi, Heraclitus, and Epicurus « Religious Perspectives — Ibn Rushd, Dooyeweerd, and Anekantavada +

Perspectives in Modern Western Thought + Some Concluding Remarks

PART III — 3 Dao Introduction 309

11. Intersubjectivity and Moral Epistemology 313 Three Arguments for Convergence + Moral Theory — A Primer + Meta-ethical

Convergence £

12. Expected Consequences 327 The Metaphysics of (Expected) Consequences * Consequences in Consequentialism +» Problems for Subjective Consequentialism + Foreseeable and Intended Consequences + Consequences and Consequentialism in Mahayana +

Expectivism and Free Will 13. The Badness of Death and Suffering 351 Instrumental and Intrinsic Goods + Universal Intrinsic Evil + Suffering, Death, and Bodhisattva Ethics + Some Objections + Suffering, Shock, and Intoxication

14. The Metaphysics of Acts and Rules 371 Maps for and of Behavior + Public Maps and Rules + A Dao of Compassion

15. The Case against Capitalism 387 The Ideology of Supply and Demand « Free Trade Ideology + Playing with FIRE +

Misery for the Many + A Cautious Conclusion

16. The Other Side of Utopia 425 Ideal Theory, Utopia, and Ideology + Mappo + A Buddha Land in This World

PART IV — Conclusion

17. Radical Buddhism for the 21st Century 443 Lokamatra « Labels, Hesitations, and Rafts e Radical Buddhism in This World

Preface

Winter tends to be cloudy and rainy or snowy on Sado Island (Japan), but today the sun was shining, so I decided to go on a small excursion. A twenty-minute walk over country roads bordered by stubby rice fields led me to Konponji IRRF, the temple built at the location where Nichiren initially lived when he was banished to Sado in 1271. Although Nichiren wasn’t a radical Buddhist by the standards of this book,' for a number of reasons,” a visit to Konponji seemed to be an appropriate “ceremony” to mark the end of the process of writing it.

Nichiren was by far the most radical of the Kamakura-era reformers of Japanese Buddhism. Buddhism had always served the state, but in Nichiren’s view this was the world upside down. The state itself should follow (Nichiren’s interpretation of) Buddhism to assure peace and harmony in the realm, and its failure to do so was what caused poverty, famines, attempted foreign invasions, and other disasters. That the Kamakura rulers were less pleased with such radical ideas (and decided to banish him) is hardly surprising. Furthermore, Nichiren was also a major influence on Seno’o Gird, the most radical of the early-twentieth-century radical Buddhists, and possibly the main inspiration for this book.‘

Nevertheless, this isn’t a book I was planning to write. Although I have been interested in Buddhism since the middle of the 1980s, I never thought Td write a book about a topic related to Buddhism. Instead, I've been pondering for years to write a book about perspectival realism (i.e., metaphysics and epistemology), or perhaps about moral theory, but I never managed to draft an outline that satisfied me. But then, a couple of years ago, I read some papers by James Mark Shields about “radical Buddhism,” and while contemplating that rather intriguing phenomenon, somehow various bits and pieces of the things I had been working on the past decade started to fit together. That, eventually, resulted in this book. The book about perspectival realism that I never wrote somehow evolved into part II of this book, and the book about moral theory became the core of part HI.

Like my previous book, The Hegemony of Psychopathy,’ I didn’t write this book just for an audience of academic philosophers (or Buddhologists), but for anyone who is interested in the topics addressed: Buddhist philosophy, ethics and social

2 — I cant deny that the fact that it was merely a twenty-minute walk anyway is among those reasons. See the section “From Saicho to Nichiren” in chapter 2.

See the section “Seno’o Gird and the Youth League” in chapter 3.

ae w

Lajos Brons, The Hegemony of Psychopathy (Earth: punctum books, 2017).

philosophy, radical thought and anti-capitalism, metaphysics and epistemology (i.c., the branches of philosophy dealing with questions about existence and knowledge), the relation between naturalism and religion, and so forth. For this reason, I tried to make the book as accessible as I could to different audiences by refraining as much as possible from jargon and by adding explanations (sometimes in footnotes) of things that might need no explanation to experts. (To what extent I succeeded in doing this is another matter.)

Most but not all of the content of this book is new. Parts of chapters 8 and 9 are based on earlier publications but have been completely rewritten. Earlier versions of most of the sections of chapter 16, of smaller parts of other chapters in part III, and of the sections on secular Buddhism and on Seno’o Giré in chapter 3, as well as much of the introduction to part I have been published before on my blog, F=ma,° which typically deals with topics that are quite similar to those addressed in this book. And parts of chapter 14 have been presented at a conference before but have not yet been published.

Aside from this preface, the parts mentioned in the previous paragraph, and chapter 17, this book was written in the first half of 2020, while the Covid-19 pandemic gradually started to envelop the planet. Except for this paragraph, Covid-19 is not mentioned in this book. I briefly considered discussing it in chapter 15, “The Case against Capitalism,” but while it is certainly true that countries with more draconian neoliberal capitalist regimes have been hit by the pandemic much harder, it is our abusive relation with nature more than capitalism per se that is to blame for the spread of zoonotic diseases.’

It is customary to end the preface of a book like this by acknowledging colleagues and others who helped shape the ideas presented in it, and I'll follow that custom. The person who more than anyone helped sharpen my arguments and clarify my ideas in the last decade is lida Takashi. For that — but also for making it possible for me to carve out a path on the academic fringe — I owe him gratitude.’ Aside from lida, the anonymous referees of various journals that published my papers related to topics addressed here, as well as my students, have also been instrumental in improving and clarifying my ideas. Most of all, however, I owe gratitude to Tomoko and Nagi, for being there and for keeping me sane in an insane world.

Sado, Japan December 9, 2020

6 F=ma, hetp://www.lajosbrons.net/blog/.

7 David Quammen, Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic (London: Bodley Head, 2012).

8 Much earlier, Piet Pellenbarg played a similar role, and I remain as grateful to him for that as | am to lida.

Abbreviations, Transliterations, and Other Technicalities

Throughout this book, abbreviations are used to refer to Buddhist canonical sources and to collections of writings by a few Western philosophers that are relatively frequently referred to. Occasionally other abbreviations are used in a single chapter or section — those are introduced there.

The abbreviations used for canonical sources are the following:

AN Anguttara Nikaya (The Numerical Discourses).

Hyeeg 2855

Followed by text number, page/section.'

Digha Nikaya (The Long Discourses).

Majjhima Nikaya (The Middle-Length Discourses) Samyutta Nikaya (The Connected Discourses).4 Sutta Nipata.>

Followed by volume number, text number, page.ć

See footnotes for editions and translations used. All page references and other references are to those editions. Translations, as well as the original Pāli, are also available at Sutta Central7 The source of all non-Buddhist (classical) Chinese texts referred to is The Chinese Text Project.’ Many Sanskrit philosophical texts are available at the on

The Numerical Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Anguttara Nikaya, trans. Bhikkhu Boddhi (Somerville: Wisdom, 2012).

The Long Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Digha Nikaya, trans. Maurice Walshe (Somerville: Wisdom, 1995).

The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha: A New Translation of the Majjhima Nikaya, trans. Bhikkhu Nanamoli, rev. Bhikkhu Bodhi (Somerville: Wisdom, 1995).

The Connected Discourses of the Buddha: A New Translation of the Samyutta Nikaya, trans. Bhikkhu Boddhi (Somerville: Wisdom, 2000).

The Suttanipata: An Ancient Collection of the Buddha’s Discourses together with Its Commentaries, trans. Bhikkhu Boddhi (Somerville: Wisdom, 2017).

Source for volumes 1-55: CBETA, hetp://tripitaka.cbeta.org/. For other volumes: The SAT Daizokyo Text Database, hetp://21dzk.1.u-tokyo.ac.jp/SAT/index_en.html.

Sutta Central, https://suttacentral.net/.

The Chinese Text Project, heeps://ctext.org/.

Digital Sanskrit Buddhist Canon.? For translations, see the list of references at the end of this volume.

The following abbreviations are used in references to collections of papers and other writings by Western philosophers:

EAE Donald Davidson, Essays on Actions and Events."° FLPV WMO. Quine, From a Logical Point of View."

ITI Davidson, Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation.” MEW Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels, Werke (i.e., their collected works in German). The number following the abbreviation and preceding the colon refers to the volume number.

OROE Quine, Ontological Relativity & Other Essays."

PoR Davidson, Problems of Rationality.”

SIO Davidson, Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective.

TLH Davidson, Truth, Language, and History.”

WPOE Quine, The Ways of Paradox and Other Essays.

Transliterations and Translations

The transliteration used for Pali and Sanskrit is the International Alphabet of Sanskrit Translation (IAsT). In most cases, Sanskrit terms are preferred to their Pali equivalents, unless the Pali term is better known (e.g., Pali dukkha rather than Sanskrit duhkha). Consequently, titles of stitras in the Pali canon are given in Pali — hence, as ... Sutta — but these texts are referred to as siitras.

The romanization used for Chinese is pinyin without tone marks, except in case someone or something is better known under another romanization (as in case of the Taiwanese monk Chengyen wa lex and the organization Tzu Chi 24W she founded — pinyin: Zhengyan, Ci Ji). Revised Hepburn transliteration is used for Japanese. Names in other languages are transliterated according to what appears to be the most common transliteration system for those languages.

Foreign (i.e., non-English) words are italicized, with two kinds of exceptions. The first concerns foreign words that have no English equivalents, that are relatively well known, and that occur frequently throughout the text. Examples included “sūtra,” “dukkha,” “karma,” “nirvana,” “bodhisattva,” “dao” QÉ; the only Chinese term on this list), and “the Dharma” (with a capital “D,” referring to Buddhist teachings; dharmas

9 Digital Sanskrit Buddhist Canon, heep://www.dsbeproject.org/.

to Donald Davidson, Essays on Actions and Events, 1st edn. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1980); 2nd edn. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). The second edition has some additions at the end but does not otherwise differ from the first.

tm WMO. Quine, From a Logical Point of View (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1964).

12 Donald Davidson, Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation, 1st edn. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1984); 2nd edn. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). The second edition has some additions at the end but does not otherwise differ from the first.

13 arl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Werke (Berlin: Dietz, 1962-68).

14 WN.O. Quine, Ontological Relativity and Other Essays (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969). 15 Donald Davidson, Problems of Rationality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).

16 Donald Davidson, Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).

17 Donald Davidson, Truth, Language, and History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). 18 WVO. Quine, The Ways of Paradox and Other Essays, 1st edn. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966); rev. and enl. edn. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976).

ABBREVIATIONS, TRANSLITERATIONS, AND OTHER TECHNICALITIES in italics and without a capital refers to the partless elements that ultimate reality consists of; to avoid confusion between the two terms dharmas is always italicized). Secondly, if a foreign word is used a lot in a relatively short passage (such as a section) it is only italicized when it is first introduced. If a foreign word is mentioned rather than used, it is always italicized and no additional quote marks are used.

If the only reference given for a quote is in another language than English and thus, no translator is mentioned, then the translation is my own. In most cases I will give the same quote in the original language in a footnote. (While this is standard practice in case of non-European languages, it is uncommon for European languages. Since I could not come up with a good non-Eurocentric argument to support that distinction, I decided to give the original in case of European language quotes as well.)

All Western names are given in the order given name - family name; all East- Asian names in the order family name - given name, except in case someone’s name is better known in a different order. (The latter is often the case for Japanese or Chinese authors working in Western countries.)