Is path revolutionary?

Is path revolutionary?

I had to stop meditation this morning. I had started with the practical importance of the path, and my compassion was making me frustrated and angry. I felt an anger yesterday after bhavana (on faith?) so there is something there.

I love Greta Thunberg and the wonder COP kids, the Parkland kids, and the kids who are sticking it to schools because of the climate. But any compassionate person has to be angry, how much have we adults been bought off that only kids can fight our battles? It always angered me when SWP used to use schoolkids to play their intellectual politics but now it is the whole of society. Of course 1%-kids won’t have their education affected by this movement so it can happen.

Much of my work at the moment revolves around what I call pathtivism, and fundamental to pathtivism has to be the recognition that there is a need for change in the grassroots movement because we have failed. My generation has failed. My generation and subsequent generations till now have failed. Notice I did not say my generation did not try. I was a tailend hippy, and the hippies tried. Then many sold out. Have you listened to the music? Barry Mcguire and Country Joe and the Fish (Come on Wall Street don’t be slow … there’s plenty of money to be made supplying arms … good for the trade). I could go on … Jane Fonda, Robert Redford amongst the celebrities. Amongst the comrades the Black Panthers, Greenham women, Weather Underground and many more – numerous comrades who carried out the struggle on a daily basis in trade unions, Peace movement and more. There was no Green party when I was born. The great thing about Occupy was that it was multi-generational, and a new democracy that was not leadership-oriented.

And we forget the ongoing struggles of the frontline communities, many of us ignore the struggles of these peoples for whom genocide has been a permanent fact of their own lives and a fact of 200 plus years for their culture. These struggles have been practical climate struggles.

My point is not to belittle the emerging struggles of the wonder-kids, it is not to attack the comrades of my own generation and later who have fought, it is to recognise that the evil that we are fighting – the 1%-satrapy – is so strong. Our tactics have been wrong. Of course we are the 99% but we can never be a united 99% - look how divided we have been since Occupy. It is so easy to buy people off because people have to survive. Do you feed the kids or do you go on a march? Kids, you have the egos of the young growing-up, your anger looks at what happens around you and reacts - understandable. The hippies did that, as a young man I failed to see the struggles that previous generations had participated in – Spain, Tolpuddle Martyrs, and so many more.

The struggle is my life, is my path, and it needs to be yours, but if you don’t know your enemy, if you don’t know the power of your enemy, maybe you will give up with frustration when youthful anger does not drive your energy.

Young people, you are recently educated. So where will your anger take you? You have been taught theories so you will immediately be attracted to the intellectual political theories such as Marxism and socialism. People screaming for socialism have failed. All my life I have seen compassion turn to anger, then turn to a socialist allegiance. This has failed. Nothing wrong with compassion, it is understandable that any compassion turns to anger, so why has socialism failed? And the answer is that the roots of socialism – compassion – gets lost, we forget our compassion. The revolution forgets its compassion.

Look at the revolutions – Cuba, China, Soviet Union, Nicaragua, they have all failed. Why? They lost their compassion, they lost the understanding that their people were fighting for freedom. I love the movie Dr Zhivago, maybe Julie Christie clouds my judgement

. Maybe Pasternak is using creativity to demonstrate a bias. But how can creativity be wrong? It is our fundamental path – the path of compassion, insight and creativity. How can the compassion and caring that wanted to free people from the slavery of the Tsars turn into the straitjackets and apathy of Stalinism and other communist impositions. I am not minimising the ongoing imperialist blockades but if you are not compassionate, insightful and creative then what is the struggle for?

I have a Cuban ex-colleague who can’t see past my socialism, I suspect because of the restrictions he has felt in Cuba – he now lives in the US. All his life he has felt the intellectual restrictions of Cuba’s PC-authoritarianism – Marxist intellectuals. Compassion fought off the US-playground, compassion freed the Cuban people, and then the people were bound up again in the rules and regulations of socialism, a socialism that had lost its compassion. Of course Cuba always had the imperialist blockade and it is easier to regulate against a blockade than it is to bring compassion into daily life, even compassion for those who don’t support your ism. But if your life is not run in harmony with the path, in harmony with compassion, insight and creativity, there is no peace – only intellectual rigour. Look at the millions in China who died in the 20th century, yet for a significant portion of time those in charge came from a supposed compassionate system.

I am not Jordan Peterson attacking communism, the imperialism that he represents continues with its global wars for profit – a far more heinous system, inherently evil. The system, he and his freedom-lovers applaud, does not have compassion at its basis – just greed for the 1%. Cuba, Soviet Union and China are places where compassion failed, where intellectualism appropriated that compassion, whereas the 1% and their puppet-leaders in the 1%-satrapy don’t even respect compassion – never even started to try. Our system isn’t underpinned by failed compassion, it is underpinned by the greed of the 1% and the rest of us wage-slaves taking crumbs off their plates. Because there is only 1% in control they do not have the numbers to curtail all our freedoms, and the rest of us can show some compassion in our communities. Paradoxically that is how the 1%-satrapy survives, the compassionate provide tolerable conditions for the 1%-satrapy to flourish.

What started out as revolutionary compassions have ended up as intellectual systems that have curtailed the very freedoms that were sought – I hate sounding like Jordan Peterson but we have to face the truth. And again let me be very clear. At least these systems attempted to be free and compassionate, the system Jordan supports is only greed for the 1% and the flunkies who support them. These revolutions have taught me that if the people aren’t revolutionary revolutions will fail. Marx said this in part when he said the movement should have moved from peasantry to industrial workers, criticisms that could be levelled against both the Chinese and Russian vanguard. I understand their impatience if we wait for the 99% to be united it will never happen. But not waiting has meant that many good people have died, and the 1%-satrapy is further advanced now than at any time in the last century – any time since Marx.

The failing of these revolutions lay in ego. It is the ego that was impatient, it was the intellectual ego that attached itself to an ideology eschewing compassion, insight and creativity, and the impatience of the egoic vanguard that put their own idealism first leading to much loss of life. These people were fighting a personal battle between their own compassion and their egos and lost. The 1% don’t fight any such battles. Their egos are totally addicted, and their insanity kills many in this world. Such addictive insanity is far worse yet so many people choose to blame the failed compassionate and the egoic PC-authoritarians.

Failed revolution lies in the compassion being thwarted by ego, genuine revolution comes when we are always acting through compassion. When we have genuine revolutionaries these people themselves are happy, they are not creating violence, and they do good because that is the nature of their revolution. Here is a man with such teachings:-

Ajaan Buddhadasa was known for his revolution. He never picked up a gun, no-one died from his involvement but he produced positive change. For some Thais offence might be caused because I have included Ajaan Buddhadasa as a revolutionary in the same blogpost as Cuba, Soviet Union and China. We must remember Buddhadasa spoke of dhammic socialism – not the same as Marxism; but he didn’t encourage guns, violence and especially not a violent revolution.

I suggest that Ajaan Buddhadasa could be described as the father of Engaged Buddhism in Thailand. I sincerely apologise if there is any misrepresentation as Buddhadasa died in 1993 but I view Engaged Buddhism as Buddhadasa’s interpretation of the path of the Buddha. Let me stress that Buddhadasa saw himself as a slave to the Buddha, he tried to teach the Buddha’s path as he saw it. Let me repeatedly stress that this path is peaceful and non-violent.

This path is compassionate insightful and creative. Buddhadasa taught insight (see refs in

on insight LINK), Suan Mokh dhamma hall in Chaiya is a testament to his creativity and there can be no denial of compassion. He taught of conditioning, of controlling the ego, and so much more. If the egos in Cuba, China, and the Soviet Union had embraced his teachings, there wouldn’t have been the death. But if the 1% and their satrapy had embraced his teachings, there would never have been a need for Marx, Lenin or Trotsky to consider a violent revolution in the first place. Who started the problem?

Let me give you references to connect Buddhadasa to Engaged Buddhism – 3 articles by Buddhadasa on this page. Here is a Thai scholars’ interpretation of Buddhadasa and Engaged Buddhism to give some verification of "founder of Engaged Buddhism in Thailand".

Engagement is not being political, trying to grab power is ego. Engagement is concerned with working with people helping them to live better lives. This comes from engaging people in following the path. In the pathtivism manual I came up with these pathtivists strategies:-

[Note - my use of the term shamocracy was developed in discussion of western politics. Although I am discussing Buddhadasa’s teachings I am making no comment on politics in Thailand.]

From the above discussion of Buddhadasa he encouraged engagement and the following of the path. I would like to think that he would support the following of the path as developed here:-

But that is only wishful thinking; Buddhadasa encouraged engagement and the following of the path, that is all I can take from him as support.

The revolutionary path is not necessarily taking up the gun, if we take up the gun then we have to know that the death and consequences are worth it (Mahabharata) – the 1%-satrapy has never ended and how many deaths can be measured as worthwhile? The revolutionary path is day-to-day, it is our daily practice, it is our compassion insight and creativity in every action. It is engaged.

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