Reading Identity and Violence on Burma (2)

Amartya Sen’s original work from Identity and violence: The illusion of destiny. Penguin Books India, 2007; pp. 74-77:

 

As was discussed in the first chapter, this book is especially concerned with the conceptual framework within which these confrontations are seen and understood, and how the demands of public action are interpreted. A confusing role is played here by the reliance on a single categorization of the people of the world. The confusion adds to the flammability of the world in which we live. The problem I am referring to is much more subtle than the crude and abusive views that have been expressed about other cultures by people in the West, like the irrepressible Lieutenant General William Boykin of the U.S. Army (whose claim that the Christian God was “bigger than” the Islamic God was discussed in the first chapter). It is easy to see the obtuseness and inanity of views of this kind.

What, however, can be seen as a bigger and more general problem (despite the absence of the grossness of vilification) are the possibly terrible consequences of classifying people in terms of singular affiliations woven around exclusively religious identities. This is especially critical for understanding the nature and dynamics of global violence and terrorism in the contemporary world. The religious partitioning of the world produces a deeply misleading understanding of the people across the world and the diverse relations between them, and it also has the effect of magnifying one particular distinction between one person and another to the exclusion of all other important concerns.

In dealing with what is called “Islamic terrorism,” there have been debates on whether being a Muslim demands some kind of strongly confrontational militancy, or whether, as many world leaders have argued in a warm— and even inspiring— way, a “true Muslim” must be a tolerant individual. The denial of the necessity of a confrontational reading of Islam is certainly appropriate and extremely important today, and Tony Blair in particular deserves much applause for what he has done in this respect. But in the context of Blair’s frequent invoking of “the moderate and true voice of Islam,” we have to ask whether it is at all possible— or necessary— to define a “true Muslim” in terms of political and social beliefs about confrontation and tolerance, on which different Muslims have historically taken, as was discussed earlier, very different positions. The effect of this religion-centered political approach, and of the institutional policies it has generated (with frequent announcements of the kind, to cite one example, “the government is meeting Muslim leaders in the next vital stage designed to cement a united front”), has been to bolster and strengthen the voice of religious authorities while downgrading the importance of nonreligious institutions and movements.

The difficulty with acting on the presumption of a singular identity— that of religion— is not, of course, a special problem applying only to Muslims. It would also apply to any attempt to understand the political views and social judgments of people who happen to be Christian, or Jewish, or Hindu, or Sikh, by relying mainly— or only— on what their alleged religious leaders declare as spokesmen for their “flocks.” The singular classification gives a commanding voice to the “establishment” figures in the respective religious hierarchy while other perspectives are relatively downgraded and eclipsed.

There is concern— and some astonishment— today that despite attempts to bring in the religious establishment of Muslims and other non-Christian groups into dialogues about global peace and local calm, religious fundamentalism and militant recruitment have continued to flourish even in Western countries. And yet this should not have come as a surprise. Trying to recruit religious leaders and clerics in support of political causes, along with trying to redefine the religions involved in terms of political and social attitudes, downplays the significance of nonreligious values people can and do have in their appropriate domain, whether or not they are religious.

The efforts to recruit the mullahs and the clergy to play a role outside the immediate province of religion could, of course, make some difference in what is preached in mosques or temples. But it also downgrades the civic initiatives people who happen to be Muslim by religion can and do undertake (along with others) to deal with what are essentially political and social problems. Further, it also heightens the sense of distance between members of different religious communities by playing up their religious differences in particular, often at the cost of other identities (including that of being a citizen of the country in question), which could have had a more uniting role. Should a British citizen who happens to be Muslim have to rely on clerics or other leaders of the religious community to communicate with the prime minister of his country, who has been particularly keen to speak through the religious leaders?

Streamlining Sen’s ideas:

Republicans in US, no matter how artificially indolent or artlessly clever are they, find themselves elegant to quote their deified President Ronald Regan’s words of his inaugural address in 1981, “In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem”. Congruent with Regan’s thoughts, the historical words of Buddha overtly declared to we followers, “monks (being infatuated with greed, arrogance and especially sumptuousness), are real problem-makers to besmirch my teachings (Buddha’s Sarsana)”, implicitly informing us if we know who definitely are stirring the gamut of these troubles against our peace and wisdom, we shall not be that gullible to impress these trouble-makers as our saviors from nasty medleys that these jaded bedlams are relentlessly creating for us.

Ironically, while Buddha disparaged monks as incorrigible disfigurers of his reputation, he never assumed his teachings (Sarsana) would ever have come under some threat of elimination in any quagmire situation. “Unperturbed and no-hold-barred, my Brahmin”, Siddhartha Gautama announced to Subhuti, who was his most erstwhile friend to be met after his enlightenment and his latest real-time streamliner to be taught before his death, “as long as there are individuals who love to follow the practices of my teachings, for sure, our loving earth will never be bereft of the Enlightened”. Buddha is the kind of person the philosopher of Open Society and its enemies will admire: “If you really like to live in a true republic, never love any the classified, love everybody in your surroundings”, Karl Popper expressed his abhorrence against Plato’s Republic by exposing hypocrisy of plutocracy and nativism that his great predecessor’s archetype was popularizing to deceive new coming generations of navies. Never ever attempted to exclusively endorse his own creed, nor having any proclivity to appraise even his closest disciples as the classified, Buddha can safely be described as one of the earliest individualistic liberal stars known to an open earth. Simpatico with the open society advocate Popper who intolerantly despised hegemony of pompous philosopher kings, Buddha did not see any necessity of tolerance for the role of “the Sanga-the collected, the classified, the blessed” as being beneficial for the propagation of his simple teachings, but the Lord envisioned “the Sanga-the individuals, the ordinary, the cursed” as the staunchest apologists who by themselves barring none are honing in on his Open Land.

Of course, this clear hermeneutic interpretation of Buddha’s words will barely be any fun to the colluded 969 monks of Burma. Nonetheless, these Burmese bourgeois will claim current problems of our society are too imminent so the Biblical principles of Buddha are at the least, temporarily inapplicable to the current myriad of out social situations and our people must be pragmatic and expedient in landing our inevitable duties of struggles and exercising our right of defense for sustaining our creed. Let us agree with them their proclaimed plethora of challenges are prevailing our more and more globalized society, terrorists’ threat; perilous social situations of Buddhist women; loss of natives’ rights in their own land, but as they said let us be duly pragmatic to ask ourselves and these hero monks, “are the duties for ameliorating our fundamental social problems belonging to the shoulders of the monks? If so what duties our laymen’s shoulders are for?”

Political and social problems are but the mundane affairs to be addressed by ordinary civilians and are not the obligations that bind supermen hermits to serve as enlightened jigsaw-solvers cum their noblest myth. If I am not prototyping spuriously, we clearly know mythical monks usually are not self-experiential with mishmashes of our societal life full of unpredictable and many incomprehensible clamor and turmoil. If they are not self-experiential, how can they say their understanding of our situation is pellucid? How they do are feeling the severity of pain and affliction as we laymen do? The literal knowledge of the complex non-religious civilian world, that the mythical classified might possess by hearing or reading, is by no means, a serious match to our civvies’ capabilities of developing individual insights to discriminate the depths and shallows of our problems, breeding our cleverness to winnow the chaff from the wheat, and bearing our learned tactfulness for manipulating our own affairs. For all those kinds of maturity, only we the unclassified, outsiders (in those mysterious persons’ blatant views) and crackpots are self-reliant partisans to combat unsteady blows of turmoil and tribulation that are too regular or not unexpected.

 Turning back to my hermeneutics, Teacher Buddha himself did not see monks’ wisdom as much useful for sympathizing with myriad-minded individual experiences. That thought rendered Buddha to hypothesize that even in their subject of so-called mastery of metaphysics, his monks can barely find skillful means that fit rightly to soothe diversely difficult individual situations. Buddhist hermeneutics interpretations which publicly undermine the role of monks even for the major impacts on one unknowable other’s spiritual enlightenment, will willingly agree with the viewpoint from our current Apollonian pragmatic analysis that  suggests the role of these earnest and callow monks in taking the challenges of scrambled social affairs of various undergirds is trivial at large.

             To that end, a policy that dramatizes sorcerer monks should participate in social affairs for acting as bellwethers for directing their herds is an absolutely malign misconception. On top of that, such anachronistic placement of peddling religious power in front of our general social affairs eclipses the need for development of open society in Burma, which will open its doors to welcome numerous diverse social characters to be all-too inclusive, barring none. Having no will to hide for condemning such obtuse and inane nepotism towards the religion’s guys flamboyantly meddling with social affairs, the writer of the Declaration of Independence of America, Thomas Jefferson, famously wrote his comments for Spanish nations in one of his sincerely polite, humble letters,  "History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes".

Nothing in the universe to everything in the universe VII

https://www.simonsfoundation.org/quanta/20130917-a-jewel-at-the-heart-of-quantum-physics/

In a relatively less-known Sutra, that I might call Vaidehi Sutra, Ajatasatru, the wicked prince, locked his mother Vadehi up in the prison in order to stop her from secretly carrying food to King Bimbisara. Vadehi prayed to Buddha saying that she wanted to be born anew and no longer wanted to live in this current world dominated by utter moral depravities. Indeed her own son was nearly killing her with full despise: she just escaped death by condemning her son that as far wicked as before, there were sons who killed their own fathers and thus had she never heard before a son should have ever killed his own mother. These words ashamed Ajatasatru so he abandoned his conceit of another homicide and just put her in confinement.

Buddha appeared in front of Vadehi in her confinement, saying that the Buddha Land (real world to be reborn and seen with the purest mind) in fact is not that far. From the highest non-other realm of the Buddha Land to the other lowest realms (31 relative stages of existence/ illusion ), Buddha expounded the practices that led to those different relative existences of beings.

The highest non-other realm, as Buddha described first for your practice to see the real nature of things is seeing the water. Water if you can see in pure mind is not water. It indeed is ice, the ice indeed is Lapis Lazuli (the Crystal Stone) that is the ground to support all existences (illusions). The Crystal Stone has eight corners, each corner carrying a hundred jewels, each jewel carrying a thousand rays, and each ray has 84,000 colors (this is a pretty scientific point of meticulous articulation to describe there is such a huge number of different color wavelengths) and from each ray there arises a billion of suns and so on... billions billions of universes.

Pretty surprised indeed, our universe, the space and time is just this cozy system of A Crystal Stone, a jewel, or indeed a ray reflecting a billion suns to form our illusions (our existences)? If it is not, how can giant stars be swallowed by an infintely small point called the Black Hole?

Reading Identity and Violence on Burma (1)

Reading Identity and violence on Burma (1)

Identity and Violence was one of many books of Amartya Sen, a professor at Harvard University and the 1998 Nobel Prize winner in Economics. Reading Sen’s sweeping philosophical work to challenge the reductionist division of people by race, religion, and class, I envision that Burma, my native country, can be made toward peace as firmly as it has been rapidly submerging in the recent hatred waves of the 969 pro-Buddhist campaigns. The expanding 969 hate movements led by racist Burmese Buddhist monks are believed to incite widespread anti-Muslim violence across Burma in recent months. In this series of articles, I would like to present how Sen’s thoughts can be formulated to develop a new understanding of reality for the situation of current religious conflicts in Burma. As the articles evolve along the process, I hope we are likely to be more convinced that realizing the mind-set of Burmese people is more important than appreciating our seeing of  ‘democratic’ institutional reforms which, of course, can also drive my nation into the endless spiral of brutality and war in the coming future.

Sen’s original work:

For example, the “creeping Shariah-ization of Indonesia” which the Indonesian Muslim scholar Syafi’i Anwar has described with much alarm, not only is a development of religious practice, but involves the spread of a particularly pugnacious social and political perspective in a traditionally tolerant ― and richly multicultural ― country⁹. A similar thing can be said about a number of other countries, including Malaysia, which have experienced a rapid promotion of a confrontational culture in the name of Islam, despite their history of cultural diversity and political breadth. To resist political polarization, this foundational distinction has to be pressed, since the exploitation of a religious (in this case, Islamic) identity is such a big part of organized conflicts of this kind¹⁰.

My thoughts on Burma’s contemporary situation:

Similarly, the aims of 969 campaigns are not purely religious. What we need to see is this similar particular aim of 969 to develop an aggressive cultural perspective out of our long history of multicultural and richly tolerant Burma.

The Burmese Man of 20^th century is widely acknowledged as Aung San Su Kyi, the Lady. However, the late prominent Burmese historian, Dr Than Tun, would not agree to this acknowledgement and he instead nominated Ven. Janaka Biwonta of Mahagandhayone Monastery as the Greatest Burmese Guy of the past century. While the abbot who passed away in 1977 was little-known to the international media, native Burmese will hardly deny that his thoughts and writings on religion, society and politics have had more profound impacts on modern Burmese society than our Lady could have brought to Burmese people during her imprisoned years. His perspective on Burmese religious knowledge can demonstrate whether these 969 movements which emphasize the supremeness of the symbol, “969” can be determined as a religious way or not. One of the notes in his autobiography reads

“We Burmese are blind religious people. Buddha is present but the statues destroy his presence. Dharma (Buddha’s teaching) is present but scriptures and books destroy its presence. Sangha (Buddha’s disciples) are present but monks destroy their presence”.

For Ven. Janaka Biwonta, appreciating symbols is the false religious way for spiritual progress. Buddhist devout philosophers will also unanimously say no symbol can be claimed to authentically represent the Supreme merits of Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, which are purely abstract ‘states’ ungraspable by any human being. Ironically, the leader monk of 969 movements, Wairathu, who claims himself to be the devout follower Janaka Biwonta encourages every Burmese Buddhist to worship the Buddhist Great Symbol “969” that his great admirer will certainly not approve. Of course, the Muslim hater monk’s great admirer would protest that Buddhist symbol fetish promoted by modern Buddhist monks obscures “the power of reasoning and curiosity”, that is one of six great attributes (tasks) of Dharma. All over and above, the symbol fetish has a definitely ill conceived idea of developing anti-Muslim hostility in Buddhist culture, which generally is regarded as a great religious tradition of peace.

                 

We will also need to observe a big black hand behind Wairathu’s speaking on justification of his hate movements in response to what Indonesia and Malaysia have done for their Islamic religion’s progress. In fact, these movements are not done in response to these nations’ national actions but are mimicking the disgusting actions of some political organizations of these nations to exploit the religion for playing for opportunism in their political game of chess. The next point is how this recently released prisoner who is extremely deficient in formal modern education knows in-depth political phenomenon of these small countries. Even well educated Burmese, who master the English language, have to exert their great efforts for understanding such literary knowledge on political phenomenon of relatively unknown countries when even superficial political happenings of these nations are not so popularly presented on international media each and every day.

                 

In summary, the 969 movement of Burma is a well-plotted act of a certain financially strong political organization to imitate the political chess games of Indonesia and Malaysia. Of course, the original strategic intention of people of this conceit behind is certainly not the same as that of this sectarian hatred development leader, Wairathu who claims to act in response to the Islamic threat. 

Why your country has two names? V

No time in history of our nation has furnished with our popular interest in politics than today. Nevertheless, it reminds me of excellent writings of Winston Churchill, who characterized the descent of his British during the time of Adolf Hitler’s ascension, as “fecklessness and fatuity” of both his government and opposition. When our national leader, Aung San, met with the elder British Cabinet members in his negotiation for our independence, he was awed at how limited his and his young compatriot Burmese politicians’ scope of vision, political and moral knowledge was compared with the broad experience of these senior and wise people of England. Unbelievably, as the smart prime minister who survived his British from the disaster of the Second World War confessed, the whole British cabinet and parliament had been lacking of intellectuals, fathomed with sentiments, and flinched with platitudes mostly busy for enchanting the popular opinion during that fatal period of world history. As in a famous Confucian sad warning to our irreparably proud human beings, “people think they are smart and wise. When they really get into a trap, nobody knows how to get out of it”.

Great Britain, full of her greatest vigor in leading her Scottish enlightenment into modern democratic history, had been crowned with her another name United Kingdom as early as the 9^th century. Just sixty five years ago, we Burmese first came to know the concept of “union” when the British asked Aung San “what do you mean by that you want the independence of ‘Burma’? “. Perhaps, this Great War had coached reprehensible lessons to those leading British (so-called) intellectual liberals in real understanding of how they were too inapt at digesting abstract ideas to be understood themselves. To our people of neonatal democracy which scarcely has passed its physiologic jaundice state, when we think we master all those abstract ideas of “nation, race, unity and rationality “to ultimate truth and will like to bring all the real best things on earth to our imagined utopia, we must learn from the eternal acknowledgement these old men Confucius and Churchill that the smartest of all don’t know about these words much. In fact, there is only one problem badly in need to be solved by we Burmans, that is we think to believe we know too much of the Truth (with Big T). Democracy is a lot more sexy and promiscuous than authoritarianism. To be straight to the point, the risk of fatal HIV infection for these dancing peacocks with our exposed butts is far greater.

To me, we don’t have any important particular national character to be retained but we have to eliminate our specifically pathetic national characters which are badly in need for not to be repeated any more. As John Stuart Mill confessed in his erudite On Liberty, I have no new discovery for my dear fellows and I will repeat the same message what all ancient sages have discovered again and again, “ human knowledge is so limited that we must always convince first we are so poor in our sentiments and knowledge“. Not so many of our Buddhist monks get to know into what Buddha wanted to say by Dukkha (suffering) is. We suffer from our restless seek for sentiments. We are ALWAYS unsatisfactory and apprehensive in fixing to gain some “better” sense. There is no rational being in Siddhartha Gautama’s eyes, only the futurists and slaves of their passion. There is no sane person free from his sentiments as this great sage admonished. If we really like to take initiative in solving our prevailing problems in this Buddhist country today, it is nothing less than first convincing our arrogant minds on repeatedly reminding how limited is our knowledge and how careless are our sentiments as Buddha warned us.

I saw from these sentiments the big shadow of social Darwinism and Nazism is now wrapping up Burma. Unless some moral force can intervene, the fate of the nation will be in jeopardy than any can be imagined. If we come to understand that all those problems of Germany in the last century that raised Hitler’s Chancellorship and why Nazism had triumphed in Germany to endanger all humanity, it was not because Hitler was mad and Nazis were inborn sociopathic but simply because they did not aware that they were being mad. Nazis and Hitler were just normal people as the majority of Burmese civilians are today. Many were educated, intellectuals and nationalistic politicians who were enthusiastic to save their nation that on their presumption was being robbed by foreign migrants. We have the similar foundation of Nazism here since moral relativism, which is the psychological Darwinian root to justify Nazism, is already a chronic pestilence in our nation.  The difference is that Germans’ moral relativism in the past was human normal physiological response to economic trauma and humiliation from defeat of war but ours is rooted on a false religious perception which gives rise to our falsely justified cultural world view aggravated by chronically sick economic conditions, and aided by our lack of real moral education.

Let us be clearly speaking: in this human world, there is no moral education that gives liberty so that somebody can think it apart from one’s humaneness. If you ever think nation, people, race, unity, spirit, courage, persistence, rationality and prophylaxis of terrorism, and such endless etc. are the foundations of moral education, the Burmese Hitler in near future can plug all kinds of his arbitrary wishes in these illusive variables. Some the brilliant of our unborn shaggy children will blame us how their ancestors were such unwise salvages to leave them in brutalized society. To treat human being is to stand up yourself to treat as a fellow human being, not to imagine enthroning yourself as the Buddha or nation. There is no nation that precedes human existence. There is no single national law that can rule above the Universal Laws of Humanity.

We can consider why we should not prevent ourselves at least for self-defense against the growing power of those invading people.  I can understand being angry with who have done wrong with some of your compatriots and maybe these contentious strangers trying to walk in your life to crush your whole race and your noble religion, but what is about the sense of being against a man  just simply because of his birth? Could you be able to decide before which womb you are to be conceived? Which DNA molecules should be assembled in your genome to determine yourself to be born as a Burmese or to be born in the dust and worms of Maungtaw as an unhealthy starving Rohingya child to a deprived Rohingya family? Both Northern and Southern Abidharma Buddhist theories of death and transmigration warn us that no sentient being is free from this unthinkable  random nature of reincarnation. John Rawls, who was greatly influenced by Immanuel Kant, who in turn had unbelievably similar affinity for his moral theories to Buddhism, developed his greatly influential “Theory of Justice” based on this concept of random reincarnation of human beings. When people in original position gather for determining what rules were to be predefined for living up together a society, nobody knows what will happen to him and his fellows in numerous random futures. Therefore, every rational human being in the original position has to promise each other when somebody comes to be in the underprivileged position, the ones who obtained the advantageous position must not ignore them and will voluntarily offer help to them. This theory called the veil of ignorance greatly influential on modern liberalism and international order lucidly re-speaks what Buddha had simply acknowledged to the young man Suba as Karma in ancient time. The central thesis of both the Buddhist Cannon and Rawls’ theory is nobody knows he will be (unavoidably) disadvantageous (Dukkha) at some time in countlessly numerous random incidences. If you sometimes think we are such incomparably valuable polite and rational Buddhists in this life, keep in mind that for your one noble Buddhist life, you have not less than a million helpless disadvantageous lives in your infinite series of suffering and coming million lives to be suffered in misery.

Let us be humble. As described by Buddha, our incurious minds of Burmese are like a cattle watcher who just knows counting the cows in the herd and who never progresses to become the owners of the herd. As clearly observed in Rawls’ theory, the great cattle owners who get insight into Dharma have been in many parts of the world and Dharma has been all together in the West remarkably since the British enlightenment even though people who developed Dharma in the West don’t think themselves as Buddhists (knowers). Either to Buddha or Socrates, a knower is the one who knows he doesn’t know anything except that he does doesn’t know. Socrates' words to Athenians for his final departure and the great Buddha's Lotus Sutra revealed this unbelievably identical message to humanity.While Socrates admired knowledge and virtue, Buddha was more cautious and even looking anti-meritocratic.  In Dharmapada, Buddha described about lusty monks compared to the potentially enlightened fools in this way:

A fool who knows himself that he is ignorant gradually learns to improve to be clever. On contrary, the monk desires “let both laymen and monks think that it was done by me. In every work, great and small, let them follow me" — such is the ambition of the foolish monk ; thus his desire and pride increase.

An earlier research work, that was even done before Ne Win subjugated Burmese society into military dictatorship, reported a very interesting point.

“Even though democracy is astonishingly flourishing here,  this society will find it very difficult to have improvement in modern sciences. The problem of these Buddhist people is to identify themselves with the end. They think everything has been set up for them and think themselves they were with the ultimate supreme end (Loka Nibban)”

One of my friends, who has been greatly beneficial to me in my further improvement in Buddhist knowledge, was an admirer of Great Nagajuna, prestigious as the Second Buddha in Northern Buddhist history. In his profound love for this great sage, he introduced to us what seemed to be the most mind-boggling among all Buddhist teachings by saying “ Samsara and Nirvana are the same. Samsara is nirvana, and Nirvana is Samsara”. I urged him to stop with a clear reason in my mind that such message if understood wrongly would drill our society into anarchy since even before hearing such message, our people have already identified themselves with the end. As I came to learn from Dr David Loy, one of the leading Western Buddhist scholars, I realized what actually Nagajuna wanted to say was “ Nirvana and samsara are not different” meaning it all depends on your serene or hellish mind. Nirvana and samsara are not the real different places as intended by the ‘same’ message. Instead, they are the same illusive mind as intended by  the ‘ not different’ message.

I appreciate somebody is motivated to protect Buddhism and want it be sustainable in history. But let me ask you which Buddhism are you willing to protect ? Is Buddhism the Shwedagon pagoda? Is Buddhism the Buddhist fine arts? Is Buddhism, the Rakhine people or modern Burma or Mr President, U Thein Sein, who apparently wears to be a Burmese Buddhist ? Where is Buddhism apart from your mind (there is nothing in reality except for your consciousness to think there Buddhism is)? Is there any Buddhist Dharma that justifies you should be angry to others and compassionate to some? Can there any Buddhist Dharma be existent when you are despising Muslims to death and compassionate to Buddhists as the most  spiritually advantageous in the world? If you really want to protect Buddhism, there is but one and unbelievably simple way to do it.  DON’T treat others in the way as you DON’T want to be treated. This is the central theme of Buddhist Law of Karma that every candidate who wants to be a Buddhist must first believe in. This particular and the most important theme of Buddhism contrasts Gods’ religions which ascertains to annul one’s responsible behaviors in their collective great end. If somebody understands the responsibility of his moral conduct in inexistent terms of nation, people or Buddhism, what leads him would be not different from the despotic king of Great Britain, who identified himself as the Divine Representative, that Scottish enlightenment of liberals overthrew to found modern America.

The most influential liberal theorists of modern age , Karl Popper and Frederick Hayek, developed their understanding of liberalism from their deeply conscientious knowledge that they really didn’t understand anything. If some of our Burmese fellows think their rational minds will lead Burmese democracy to overcome all sorts of miseries in this nation and its people, let me remind us the classical description of Hayek, “ the limited authoritarian government is far better than an unlimited democratic government”. Popper’s denial of nationalism looks more straightforward, “nationalist feelings infiltrate liberal strongholds and sabotage liberalism. Also, and more importantly, being psychological, feelings are irrelevant unless group-cohesion is achieved through psychology alone. This idea of tribalism is a dangerous myth”. If somebody comes to believe that nationalism can be a special case for Burmese to be compatible with liberalism, it is the same irrational belief to think you can have your best lunch and dinner with a dagger put ready to cut over your throat. Nationalism is the manifest of fear from human group ego,  and is built upon greed for a particular group’s  interest. Liberalism based on the rule of Law is strictly egalitarian to be impartial and to be impassioned. Let us clarify: there is no space for the role of nationalism in an open society. There will be no open society without the inalienable full respect for egalitarianism.

We should ask that when people of different merits and different tastes can never be equal, how can such egalitarianism be practiced? In fact, the question itself has the answer: egalitarianism is not the aim, it is a way of practice. That practice is  not to treat any other as you don’t want to be treated. The egalitarian society is a free society not because people enjoy the equal merit but because people receive equal treatment that is not to be coerced by any special group or the majority. Let us keep in mind that the democratic enlightenment of the West has arisen from the need of every human to enjoy the freedom from  the abuse of the arbitrary power of an authoritarian government. That arbitrary power is not to be replaced with the arbitrary world view of the majority or the tempest of nationalism or Buddhist Nazism of the popular government.

There is no sub-human and no useless in liberal democratic society. It is no surprise that thinking of leading liberal theoreticians, Popper and Hayek have such close affinity with the simple ancient Buddhist metaphysics, which is completely different from Fascist interpretations of prevailing modern Burmese Buddhism, which are in part shaped by bad illusions dominated by the rise of Germany’s Nazism during the Second World War. There are important points we need to be aware that. Even though only few modern Burmese  know how Germans’ Nazism and Japanese Fascism had been threatening the whole world, their emormous influence has been extant in the consciousness of our people throughout these ages even though we are completely unaware of it. As I have described earlier about Burmese communists in one of my Why your country has two names, “even the most ardent Burmese communists don’t know for what purpose they are fighting in this egalitarian society ”, this ignorant Burmese history of sentiments has repeated again to our fellow people who appear that they really don’t know for what purpose they are fighting. If you like to think you are fighting for history, let us understand first that history you are fighting for is merely a low burglar history of power struggles. History, as known to us, is for recording accolades of most brutal minds of the triumphed, not for recording the fine arts, the suffering of the underprivileged, the miseries of people, and best moral intelligence of the modest, or perhaps most forgiving losers.

So before any of our fellows appears to claim that they have rational sentiments in fighting for history, please ask yourself for what kind of history you will be fighting for. Let us keep in mind repetitively that in fact there is only one single purpose for democratic enlightenment of modern societies: that is to let people able to overthrow any becoming tyrannical government by people’s power without bloodshed. That reserved purpose of people’s power is not for legitimizing a habit of discriminating against one’s own fellow human beings from his or her unleashed Darwinian instincts. Here I will regress a little as I think such relatively unknown knowledge can be useful. Those great psychological theories of the Darwinian instinct, the lust for power or sadomasochism as pointed out by Sigmund Freud are just rediscoveries of  our ancient Buddhist metaphysics by humble and great Western minds, especially described in Abidharmakosa, surprisingly a historical Theravada doctrine learned by Northern Buddhist scholars. Not only this wonderful doctrine described about human fundamental lust for sex and power as consistent with modern leading psychological theories, it dived into even unimaginable quantum principles and  a very clear description of Zeno’s paradox which ever has led mathematical history to modern calculus. No matter how deep are the abstracts of such comprehensive  metaphysical doctrine, all it conveys in brief is the same message all churches of Buddhism alert us , “all conditioned processes are illusions and dreams”.

If some of our fellows think, these abstracts are to be useful only for the metaphysical dimension and not applicable to complex political affairs, let me inform them that modern political sciences highlight to propose the progress of a nation depends on how the public administrators of the nation are well-understanding the abstract areas and synthesize them to the best of moral knowledge applicable to the people of their nation. If we carefully examine how can someone be eligible to be entitled as a competent public officer to manage  those endlessly complex public affairs, the first essential character is humaneness and the second essential character is his learning wisdom for infinite progress. That kind of unhindered wisdom enjoyed by the humane public officer on his infinite scientific progress of political, social and moral knowledge is inevitably built upon an ancient Buddhist metaphysical concept called Reductio ad absurdum, that means as much as you know, all that you know are meaningless things. The first developer of Reductio ad absurdum is that great monk Nagasena who debated with King Milanda of Parkinstan in 150 BCE followed by a cozy explanation of Nagajuna, and  comprehensive study of Candrakirti of the Madhyamika Buddhism, which is the most influential Buddhist philosophical method on many contemporary Western natural and social scientists. If we think our modernized political assumptions (that you just developed yourself in a few seconds out of your passion) for reforming our nation are more fundamentally true and systematic than those great human learning for thousands of years, we must first realize that it is nothing other than arrogant illusion of such rational fools. The Great Buddha, we want to protect in our haughty sentiments of rational nationalism, would be smiling at us.

(to be cont.)