Universal Liberation
Taixu ε€ͺθ was one of the most influential thinkers of modern East-Asian Buddhism. In 1904, at the age of 14, he became a monk at XiΗo JiΗhuΓ‘ temple ε°δΉθ―ε―Ί in Suzhou, China. Soon after, he developed an interest in modern science, left-wing politics, and Buddhist reform. A decade later (partially due to changing political circumstances) he had himself sealed in a cell in a monastery to study Buddhist scripture and philosophy. After he left his cell in 1917, he revived a Maitreya Pure Land cult, but also continued working for the modernization and revival of Buddhism in China under the...
Buddhism and the State: RΔjadhamma after the Sattelzeit (New Paper)
Published today in the Journal of Buddhist Ethics. abstract β RΔjadhamma is a list of ten royal virtues or duties that occurs in the jΔtaka tales and that has been influential in Southeast Asian Buddhist political thought. Like pre-modern political thought in Europe β that is, thought before the Sattelzeit β Buddhist political thought lacks a concept of the βstateβ and is concerned with kings and similar rulers. Here I propose a modernized interpretation of rΔjadhamma as virtues/duties of the state. The full text (in pdf format) can be downloaded here.