No Final Victory for Society

http://www.vishvapani.org/

I was quite moved last night reading an article by Vishvapani (here) – an account of the problems of the Croydon Buddhist Centre in the eighties.

The article made me reflect on a couple of things.

I’ve noticed I can become fairly strident and emphatic when talking or thinking of the “New Society”- I find myself commenting that we are “making history” and “changing the world”e world. I don’t think this energy is always based on positive emotion, but often a negative reaction to some of the pain and revulsion I’ve experienced in the world. It is useful to reflect on episodes where the attempt to manifest ideal values into the real world have gone sour. We have examples of this in our own movement- such as Croydon in the 80s, but surely this is an archetypal story, a myth that  follows a certain pattern, which has been played out and will be played out. I think it is important to tell these stoires and be aware of the myth we are entering into when we are part of a spiritual community, embarking on an enterprise such as the New Society.

Bhante talks about this subject here, from a seminar on the Tiratana Vandana (here), :

“So this brings in this question of cycles, that a Buddha’s work is never done for once and for all, a Buddha arises, an individual arises, a true individual, a perfect individual, he gathers around him a number of other individuals, they create, they set-up a spiritual community, a sangha, and this eventually has an influence on the whole of society. Under favourable conditions the whole of society may become virtually a sangha, but then the process of corruption sets in. Success leads to degeneration, the quality of people joining, as it were, deteriorates, so your spiritual community becomes less a community of individuals. To the extent that they’re not individuals the community becomes more of a group, then group pulls begin operating, then the whole society sinks. So eventually you end up just like another group, and again, within that group, another individual has to arise, and that is the next Buddha, and thus the process goes on. Buddhism sees no final victory in this way, final victory for the individual, yes; but not final victory for society.”