Buddha’s Social Teaching For The Age Of Aquarius

[shankara]

“Seven of these raised two fingers each, and gave a double interpretation, saying, "If a man possessing such marks and characteristics continue in the household life, he becomes a Universal Monarch; if he retire from the world, he becomes a Buddha." And then they set forth all the glory of a Universal Monarch.”

In the FOUR GOSPELS of CHRIST we see that Jesus is a Spiritual Leader. He refuses to be made a king: “When Jesus therefore perceived that they would come and take him by force, to make him a king, he departed again into a mountain himself alone”. He clearly states “my Kingdom is not of this world”. There is a clear distinction between Spiritual and Political Power, a distinction which was valid at the time but has now ceased to be so. The Gospels represent the teaching for the AGE OF PISCES and we are now beginning the AGE OF AQUARIUS.

Some will immediately object that during the AGE OF PISCES there was a great deal of mixing of spiritual and temporal power, the Catholic “Holy Roman Empire” for example. This, however, was the inverse of the kind of spiritual-political power that is coming in the AGE OF AQUARIUS, it was corrupt so-called religion corrupting itself even further in order to gain the benefits of political power, whereas in the coming age political power will become pure, be spiritualized. The PISCEAN theocracies were dogmas and inquisitions, while the New Age of AQUARIUS is about freedom and freedom of thinking.

This whole situation is explained in the Gospel when it speaks of Christ’s temptations, the Devil offering to make him king of the world and him refusing. Some would interpret this as meaning that Christ was non-political, that no political teaching can be derived from the Gospel, yet this is not the case. Rather it is to say that gaining power in exchange for one’s soul can never be wise. This temptation therefore describes what happened with the Catholic church, who traded true spirituality for hollow dogma and built an empire upon it, upon fear and repression.

It is clear in a number of ways that the FOUR GOSPELS represent the teaching for the astrological AGE OF PISCES, which follows the AGE OF ARIES - for one they take place just as the astrological ages are changing. Jesus calls fishermen as his disciples and they become “fishers of men”. He feeds the 5,000 with bread and fish. The PISCES fish is a well-known symbol of Christianity. In regards to the end of the AGE OF ARIES, we have the crucifixion, recalling Abraham’s sacrifice of the ram (Abraham sacrifices the ram instead of his son, God sacrifices His son instead of humanity).

Yet there is another Gospel apart from the FOUR GOSPELS (and the writings of Paul, the Acts of the Apostles etc). This is the BOOK OF REVELATION which deals with the coming of the next age, of the AGE OF AQUARIUS which is now beginning. In REVELATION the Christ returns to purify the Earth of evil. He therefore becomes: KING OF KINGS, LORD OF LORDS, ROOT OF DAVID, no longer simply a spiritual leader, “King of the Jews” (who had no nation and were not nations). This also reminds us that the Gospels state that Christ is descended from KING DAVID, that he is of a kingly line.

It is clear that the BOOK OF REVELATION is of great importance in understanding the way in which spirituality will manifest in the AGE OF AQUARIUS which is now arriving. It is a book which must not be understood literally, like in all of the Bible the wisdom is hidden in symbolism.

Let’s look at the life of another great prophet, Gautama Buddha, Shakyamuni. Shortly after his birth it was predicted he would either become a great king or a fully enlightened Buddha. The Buddha turned the Dharmachakra, the wheel of Dharma, but if he had become a king he would have been known as Chakravarti, a name which means “wheel turning king”. So both are turning a wheel, one the spiritual and one the political.

Buddha was born into a royal family, into the Shakya clan, a member of the warrior caste. Therefore he was by birth destined to be a ruler, not an ascetic. Many of us will already have heard the story of how Buddha left the palace, where his father kept hi surrounded by luxuries in an attempt to prevent him from seeing the suffering of the world and therefore renouncing the kingdom he was born to govern. Gautama however saw outside the palace walls, old age in the form of an old man, sickness in the form of a diseased person, and death in the form of a corpse. Finally he saw an ascetic and realised that he too could strive, like the ascetic, to gain freedom from the sufferings of continual death and rebirth, the sufferings of life in Samsara.

Hence, the story goes, Buddha became a Buddha and not a Chakravarti, renouncing his Kingdom and going off to seek Enlightenment. The two possibilities seem to be mutually exclusive, which was correct in the time that the Buddha was born, 500 years before the Christ. In those times there were no political Revolutionaries, though the Buddha was clearly a spiritual Revolutionary. Brahma, who believes himself to be creator of the Universe, comes to Buddha telling him to submit, that there is nothing higher than him, Buddha refuses. The daughters of Mara come to tempt him, “sell out, sell out, we’re waiting for you”, Buddha triumphs. He refuses to accept anything less than complete enlightenment, just as the true revolutionary won’t accept some meaningless reform in place of a total social transformation. He declared a state of total revolution against Dukkha, suffering.

At the time of Buddha, the prescribed means of gaining self-realisation was to leave society, to become a renunciate. Becoming a renunciate is one of, or some kind of synthesis of, the first three ways of self-realization taught to humanity; that of the Yogi, the Monk, and the Fakir. The other way, the way prescribed for the AGE OF AQUARIUS, is THE FOURTH WAY, to live in society, indeed to live in community, not to separate oneself from the world but to engage with it, to seek awakening within social life. Therefore the Buddha in his time would be an ascetic living in a forest, but in the present time not so.

The Christ in the AGE OF PISCES, his kingdom was not of this world. The Buddha was the same, a purely spiritual leader. Why? In the Age of PISCES the MASCULINE and FEMININE were separated, as is shown in the PISCEAN symbol of the two fishes each swimming in opposite directions. That is to say that the spiritual and political were separated. This was necessary in order to bring humanity beyond the primitive theocratic social structures of the previous AGE OF ARIES. “Solve et Coagula” as the Alchemical maxim goes.

Whatever the intent of the process, this doesn’t discount the fact that the AGE OF PISCES was a kind of dark age, an age of separation and division, sect against sect, nation against nation. This is now manifesting itself in APOCALYPTIC fashion as we await the cataclysm which will bring the AGE OF AQUARIUS fully into existence. The AGE OF AQUARIUS will be an age of synthesis in which there will no longer be separate sects with their various dogmas or nations with different systems.

Every prophet gives some perennial teaching and some temporary “place and time” teaching, there are also esoteric elements in their teachings and their histories. In the case of Buddha we can say that the whole notion of him being potentially Chakravarti is an esoteric teaching referring to what Buddha becomes come the AGE OF AQUARIUS, the Jungian “shadow” which remained unmanifest, in a latent state, until these times.

Because now we have reached the AGE OF AQUARIUS, things are different, the night has passed and the morning arrived. Christ is no longer the sacrificed lamb, crucified by the power of the state, he has become KING OF KINGS and triumphed over the empire symbolically known as Babylon. It follows, therefore, that Buddha isn’t only the Buddha now, he’s also the Chakravarti. If the Christ has become a King, so do all prophets because all prophets are manifestations of the Christ, in the sense of the LOGOS (Ego-Death, Spiritual Resurrection).

The REVOLUTIONARY CHRIST has triumphed, and now takes power, the BUDDHA’s wholly spiritual revolution now becomes a political one. This is the descent of the celestial Jerusalem of the BOOK OF REVELATION, the “marriage supper of the Lamb” where the masculine and feminine principles (the spiritual and political), separated in the darkness of the AGE OF PISCES, are reunited again.

Now this becomes clear, we see a whole new way of Spiritual Practise opening up before us. The practise of revolution has become the support of spiritual practise, in the struggle for justice and freedom on Earth we can find the best raw material to awaken spiritually. BUDDHA and CHAKRAVARTI are now one thing, a Unity, CHRIST is now KING OF KINGS.

We can end by discussing how some of the concepts given by Buddha, the fundamentals of his doctrine, are entirely applicable to politics:

INTERCONNECTEDNESS
This is that we must realize that we are all connected as a human race, that the person working in an Indonesian sweatshop is a human being like us and not only that but we are in part responsible for their situation in so much as we do not resist (and often support) the corporations keeping them in poverty. Being Interconnected we are all One, whatever we do has an effect on the totality. We are all one family, all sentient beings are like our own mothers, and we should feel the same about the suffering of a person in a far away land as we do about the people around us.

CAUSALITY
Buddhist meditation is a means of realizing what is known as “Emptiness”. People sometimes regard this as some kind of metaphysical doctrine, a dogma, but this is not so, the great Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna said: "The Buddha proclaimed emptiness as a remedy for all doctrinal controversies, but those who in turn cling to emptiness are beyond treatment”. In fact it is more of a tool to understand things as they truly are and not as they seem, to understand Cause and Effect of which Nagarjuna said: “it is Dependent Origination that we call emptiness”. Some people who do not formally meditate are skilled in perceiving some aspects of Dependent Origination, Cause and Effect, whilst some people who meditate may fail to comprehend it. It all depends on whether a person is truly open, whether they allow themselves to see things as they actually are or whether they are confused and hide amongst theories.

Acting politically follows from seeing the world as it truly is, the real Causes from which things arise. It requires understanding of the real relations between things, rather than the stories told by the power to keep the population acquiescent. In order to triumph politically, in order to make the world a better place, we must first go beyond these stories and see the real story, understand the factors which are creating so much human suffering on this planet. We must therefore seek the secret causes of things, to meditate upon things until we discover the reality beyond their appearance. Then we can develop the wisdom to act in terms of Cause and Effect, creating Positive Causes, destroying Negative Causes.

Meditation in this sense becomes a revolutionary act.

COMPASSION
This is to not simply retreat into our small lives, ignoring the wider situation. Rather we develop the desire to take on suffering, to overcome not only our own but everyone’s suffering, to become what in Buddhism is known as the BODHISATTVA. This is a thought which is essentially REVOLUTIONARY, the thought known as BODHICITTA or “THE SPIRIT OF AWAKENING”. There are two types of Bodhicitta, Aspiring and Engaged, and struggling for political and economic justice is Engaged Bodhicitta.

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