It was not impossible that we might be the luckiest to inherit Theravadism to discern the nature of truth than any other religion could bestow it. However, the great is the enemy of the good and the good is the enemy of the great. We need to remind ourselves relentlessly that we should not be spoiled religious aristocrats; and neither deform noble universal Dharma of Buddha into a state of tribal Buddhism nor corrupt ourselves into a system of moral tyranny.
When the founding fathers of America came to Philadelphia in 1787 for writing the Constitution of the United States, most of them were from the upper wealthy aristocrat class. Most of them evidently had bias to make the fundamental and supreme laws that favored the interest of the class of aristocrats. John Jay, who was one of the brilliant writer- philosophers of the Constitution, wrote to George Washington since he was acquainted to the sensitivity of the circle of the affluent merchants of New York," the better kind of people will be led, by the insecurity of property, the loss of confidence in their rulers, and the want of public faith and rectitude, to consider the charms of liberty as imaginary and delusive." Washington who had already been in frustration about mob's behavior of Shay's rebellion made his comment, "we are apt to run from one extreme to another".
However, the Constitution of the United States had not become a device for tyrants or a superior rule of aristocrats even if the federated government is granted very strong executive power to quell either rebellion or separation of a state from the union. What made America not descend into a huge tyrant country of the West lied in the conscience of founding fathers, who were fully alert of the fallibility of human behavior. Gouverneur Morris, who was close to holding the extreme aristocracy, said to Congress, perhaps for giving self-lecture to control his prejudices, "Wealth tends to corrupt the mind and to nourish its love of power, and to stimulate it to oppression. History proves this to be the spirit of the opulent." It is not uncommon that possession of a wealth of Buddhist literature raises our violent spirit to be opulent and exerting oppression over other disenfranchised religious concepts in our dogmatic society. It was personal conscience, self-control, or self-awareness that rendered the difference to make the US laws of Constitution possible one of the most prominent movements in civilization of Western democracy and the opportunity for freedom of thought in the spirit of mutual interest and coexistent progress of the parties. When there is strong propensity of uprising of mobs if liberty is fully exercised, there is also strong tendency of oppressing of the haves over the have-nots if democracy or monarchy is fully exercised. The middle way, a device to control human corruptibility, was observed by founding fathers of the United States that was to exercise checks and balances of state parties over one another. The parties of the US require mutual frustration as well as harmony to arrive at some degree of agreeable truth in their practice of democracy. In politics, the tool is rigorous checks and balances; in scientific study, the tool is nit-picking validation to prove that a proposal or theory is, perhaps with some or many exceptions, might be true.
Our deadlock of the progress of knowledge of Burmese and Burmese Buddhism as well has entrenched its roots when we started to ground truth with Buddhism without any check and balance or any validation method. Then the two extremes have been popularized in our society, diametrically opposite situations of the extreme of liberty vis-à-vis extreme of tyranny. Very few people may have noticed the middle way of checks and balances since the majority accepted these two polarized ends that Buddha was sure to reject: one extreme end was irrational religious dogmatism and another extreme end was irrational moral relativism. Both extreme ends were extremely dangerous to humanity since the former was legitimizing the reign of tyranny and another end was legitimizing chaos of anarchy. Whenever a revolution was done, either one or another of these two extreme mind-sets displayed their utmost character to oppress another counterpart without getting a middle-ground compromise. When we tried to throw away tyranny, we always came to end as Hobbes' the state of nature where an individual or a smaller group could be terminated at arbitrary will by another group of bigger force so that people need to submit to any form of government, therefore, tyranny is to be accepted by men in the state of nature as their fate of the minimal worst. In fact, the real outcome is the maximal worst for "power tends to corrupt and ultimately corrupt into complete dominion of the ruling class to utter destruction of other classes". Both the acceptance of irrational tyranny and the exercise of irrational liberty are matched with our two extreme views of irrational religious dogmatism and irrational moral relativism. In politics, we never have reached the middle ground between tyranny and liberty. Similarly, in Buddhism, it is very likely that we are still missing the middle way as we have no awareness of using the tool of reason for checks and balances of our moral ego-centrism and moral relativism. It is the simplest understanding that almost every Burmese Buddhist is missing. Every Burmese Buddhist is taught that mindfulness is a priori for wisdom. Notwithstanding, few observe self-control as mindfulness; and reason as the road to wisdom or identical end with wisdom. Every Burmese can intuitively understand that wisdom is the way to truth. Notwithstanding, few could notice a very strong Buddha's teaching of Upanisa Suttra that expressed wisdom comes out of ignorance.If ignorance is always the start, it is only the tool of reason that we could resort to progress to another step of wisdom or in fact, another lesser ignorance. The dead and dangerous end is not unusual prevalence in our society of Burmese Buddhists who assume the start or little start as the ultimate and supreme end as they have never been in the tradition of using the tool of reason to criticize their fallibility of knowledge.
(To be updated)
