Human Rights and Responsibilities

Human Rights and Responsibilities: Buddhist Views on Individualism and Altruism
Robert A. F. Thurman
1980s

In addressing these questions today, one first thinks inevitably of the context of such concerns and one feels the need to establish the relevance of Buddhist views in particular. On the surface, there are few Buddhists left in the world, our own lifetimes having seen its rolls as a majority world religion diminished drastically under a tidal wave of Asian Marxism and other forms of "modernity." Nevertheless, as His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama is fond of saying, "from Siberia up to the Thai border, more than a quarter of humanity . . . "lives in cultural milieu entirely permeated with Buddhist patterns of thought, language, and interaction. As we shall see, there are vast differences in the ways of cultures and individuals incorporate these patterns, so much so the umbrella concept "Buddhism" tends to dissolve under analysis. But we may find certain basic views, habits, and values entrenched in the mentality of this mass of people which must be reckoned with in any practical attempt to evolve a globally viable concept, conception, and practice of human rights. Further, since, regrettably, something's disappearance does not necessarily signify its lack of importance or benefit, we may find Buddhist theoretical contributions to human rights thinking extremely helpful to our own intellectual concerns. Particularly, the various Buddhism's' experience as basically non-theistic ideologies in the midst of various theistic cultures may be instructive to us today, since one of the major problems in modern ethical thought on human rights has to do with the conflict between traditional theistic systems and contemporary non-theistic (liberal humanist) or a-theistic (Marxist) systems, in my opinion.

From the above, it can be seen immediately that there is little profit in mounting either a critique or an apology for a supposed "Buddhist view," as most previous work in this area has done. Non-Buddhists in the past have usually confused Buddhism and either Hinduism or Confucianism/Taoism, hence considered it a type of "traditional" worldview, and have then come up with the idea that Buddhism lacks individualism, hence true compassion, is apathetic about the world and society. And Buddhists in the past have usually employed the highly sophisticated arguments developed in confrontation with the religions or ideologies of the host cultures in Asia, and have argued that the Buddhist view of whatever is the only sensible one for all possible situations. While depending on my mood and the subject at hand, I can get into either of these two modes, here my approach will be somewhat different, trying in the spirit of the Buddhist liberative tradition to be self-critical as well as critical of certain dogmas of the contemporary tradition. The task is to explore the plurality of Buddhist views, each within its own social and historical context, and then is extrapolate what might be of value in the various contexts we find today.

In this enterprise, it is helpful first to acknowledge my own bias and outline the conclusions I think I will reach. I consider the Buddhist philosophical approach immensely valuable, for its uncompromising adherence to critical reason conceived as essential to, not preclusive of, spiritual, or enlightening experience, as well as for its vast philosophical literature, the legacy of millennia of some of the finest minds in the history of thought. I do not think, however, that Buddhist thought has ever developed all the answers for all time, as its ideals have only been imperfectly realized during the historical experiences of its thinkers in various social settings--and I include even Shakyamuni Buddha in this category. I therefore think it a most valuable exercise for modern thinkers to study and reflect upon the Buddhist philosophies, even to experiment with their various worldviews, empathetically as it were. Indeed, I consider it an indispensable part of a modern person's education, which should r ound out schooling in the thought of Plato, Aristotle, etc., with Shakyamuni, Nagarjuna, Chandrakirti, Fa Tsang, Kukai, Tson Khapa, etc. But I also think that all of the existing forms of Buddhist ethics, always closely appropriate to their cultural settings (including those that consider themselves "trans-cultural," such as Zen or Vahrayana), have flaws, are inherently open to modification and require evolutionary effort based on their own rational and pragmatic principles. In sum, I think Buddhist thought has a real contribution to make to what we might call the "emergent global ethic," both in reflection and perhaps eventually in legislation. But I also think that both contemporary thought, especially the scientific humanist tradition, and contemporary global reality have a real contribution to make to Buddhist thought and institutions.

My procedure in this paper will thus follow these stages: 1) I will begin by clarifying certain methodological questions that, as Donnelly's essay so clearly shows, prevent the dialogue from getting beyond the dismissive critique and the rigid apologetic; 2) I will then present the main thrust of Buddhist ethics, referring to some earlier papers (herewith enclosed as appendices), here focusing in more analytic detail on the crucial individualism- altruism tension; 3) I will sketch out an inventory of some of the main forms of Buddhism, showing how they stand in regard to fundamental principles and tracing the influence of their respective socio-cultural settings; 4) I will then turn to where Buddhist thought can contribute constructive criticism of certain central dilemmas in current ethical thought and practice; 5) and I will conclude by showing a positive Buddhist ethical perspective, marshalling some of the philosophical and psychological resources of the traditions to present a hypothetical "Budd hist world" (I've always found it revealing of someone's views to find out how he would have things if he had his druthers, as it were).

1. Methodology in "Human Rights" Dialogue
Professor Donnelly, in his "Analytic Critique of Non-Western Conceptions of Human Rights," argues that no non-western culture has the basic conception of "human rights," defined by him as "rights one has because one is a human being," which "derive from the inherent dignity of the human person," or which are "naturally inherent in the human person." He finds that this concept of "natural human rights" goes back only as far as Locke, with his famous guarantees of life, liberty, and property, to which Paine added education and social security. Donnelly finds the claims of non-western writers that their own "social contracts" provided for such basic rights spurious, in that they confuse talk of "rights" with talk of duty and obligation and privilege. He further fails to find even the language of "rights" in the ancient texts adduced by his protagonists. In short, he makes the classic "western," or sometimes "modern," case for the lack of real individualism in either "non-western," or "pre-modern" cultures. Having courageously staked the claim for origin of the true "human rights" in the modern west, he then decries the attempt on the part of some in the third world to denounce that concept as excessively individualistic, and he concludes a bit vaguely by saying that the "human dignity," which he allows was a concern of the traditional societies, can be better protected by the modern "human rights" concept than without it. By clarifying the difference between them, he feels he has preserved the "distinctive option . . . of the human rights approach ." And he warns that "if we lose the concept, we stand in greater danger of losing the practice as well." In a basic way, Professor Donnelly's points are well taken, and he should be congratulated for having the courage and clarity not simply to accept the claims of the cited "Third World" writers on the basis, that, yes, they too, having been human beings all along, must have had some concept of human rights.

There does seem to be a definite watershed in the l7th century in the history of human societies, ushered in by the collapse of the traditional, theocentric, geocentric world-view, the monarchical, hierarchical ancient regime, and the pre-industrial economy. Toynbee refers to this time as the time of the birth of the religions of modernity, of belief in reason, in materialistic mechanism, in progress. It is well known that Locke himself was attempting to formulate laws of society based on atomic individuals in imitation of Newton's formulations of the laws of matter and mechanistic forces. It would be foolish to claim that such a form of individualism ever existed on a mass scale previous to that time.

But Professor Donnelly, and the many other writers who perceive the uniqueness of modernity, may have missed the point of this newness, especially as regards the issue of human rights, not only its concept and conceptions, but also its practice. The revolutionary positing of the "rights of man," however hallowed it may seem to us as members of our culture, in which it is dogma, may not at all be a new discovery of something indispensable for human dignity, which not one ever stumbled on before. It may rather be a somewhat desperate, perhaps ultimately ineffective band-aid that homo rationalists tried to plaster over the mortal wound to human dignity inflicted by metaphysical materialism, psychological reductionism, and ethical nihilistic relativism. It is highly questionable as to whether the European industrial culture with its rights of man on its lips, guaranteeing all humans the right to life, liberty, and property, actually respected those guarantees during its world-conquering expansion, its wo rld-exploiting colonialism, or even now, now that the "rights" have been enshrined in the U.A. Charter, as it holds the dooms of nuclear holocaust, pollution, resource exhaustion, etc. over the heads of the peoples of the planet. We tend to think of ourselves as champions of liberty against the communists, especially the Russians, and so we may be jolted by say the Swedish view, or by the non-white view, which sees us and the Russians as partners in coercion and exploitation and terrorization of everyone else, like two giants locked together in a life or death struggle, heedless of the countless tiny creatures they trample as they thrash about. Or, even more close to home, we deplore the Gulag Archipelago and feel thankful for our liberties, and proud of our respect for human rights, but we avoid reading Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, and our federal and state agencies are still right now pursuing genocidal policies against the red human beings of this land. Ask any Amerindian. Then there is the whole priso n system and slum system full of blacks, and the widespread revival of the KKK. Professor Donnelly speaks as a white intellectual when he thinks the concept of human rights is necessarily concomitant with the practice of respect for human beings. The issue is much more complicated.

The fact is that the question of "human rights" is never merely an ethical question, but is equally a metaphysical question. It is inextricably tied in with a culture's fundamental view of what sort of a thing is a "human being." And that rests on the determination of what is matter, what is mind, what is reality. For example, in a strong theistic system, according to which a human being is a creation of an all-powerful God, who also therefore logically controls the being's destiny utterly, that being's ultimate concerns all have to do with his relationship to that God. Though there may be talk of "freewill," on a relative level, and there may be certain "rights" and "obligations" within the social or natural sphere, there cannot be finally any question of "inalienable rights" because that being has no "rights" vis a vis his creator. All power is in the hands of the God; the individual is ultimately powerless. The God may or may not decree that beings should have certain rights over other beings or o ther things, and He or She may also decree that the beings have certain duties toward one another and toward Himself or Herself. (In a sense, it is in this type of traditional theistic system--Eastern and Western--that Professor Donnelly finds a fundamental lack of the modern concept of human rights.) In metaphysical terms, God is the only ultimate reality, the world and humans have only contingent reality, entirely dependent on their creator.

On the other extreme, there are various forms of materialistic systems, ultimately nihilistic spiritually; e.g. the Charvaka or Lokayata system of ancient India, the Epicurean system, the modern mechanistic world view of physical science after Newton. In these systems, sense phenomena are the only realities, beings are temporary accidents adventitiously enjoying sense experience, spiritual subjectivity is illusory, automatically becoming nothingness at death; hence temporary sense pleasure is the supreme value. In a sense, the modern concept of human rights is closely linked to this latter metaphysical picture, from which also emerges its lack of compellingness. That is, in this world-view, all beings are equal in that all have a right to maximal pleasure, or happiness. For this they need their lives, their liberty, and their property. All are equally sensitive, in principle, during their accidental lives, and all are equally nothing after death. They have a relative responsibility to one another, not to infringe on each other's happiness, on the relative, accidental, social plane, but all have no ultimate responsibility to one another, because the worst that can happen to anyone is the anesthesia of annihilation by death. Thus while it can be argued that each has inalienable rights, the immediate natural independent power to enjoy his adventitious existence, natural rights that cannot be suspended by any fundamental outside power, such as a creator, these rights are ultimately weak in that the possessor of these rights is ultimately nothing, the violator of these rights suffer no worse than ultimate anesthesia. Thus, while during times of peace and plenty, the modern societies have seemed to base on their human rights concept a remarkable concern for human rights and human potential, in times of war and scarcity they have shown an equally remarkable ability to engage in mass slaughter, oppression, and deprivation, in spite of a ringing concept of h uman rights.

It is useful to set up these extreme positions, in that the resultant parameters can anchor a set of coordinates that help us located any particular world-view--life ethos--position. I will use a diagram here to attempt a preliminary schematization of the extreme positions.

Figure 1 spiritualism materialism (theistic or non-theistic) (theistic or atheistic) individualism submerged in ultimate hedonistic, relative (rights) salvation/liberation one-life, self- realization collectivism hierarchical web of ultimate nothing (responsibilities) duties - ordained for unifying all mundane relative in anesthetic state duties temporary, pragmatic ("traditionality") ("modernity") As we can see from this scheme, Donnelly's "human rights concept" relates to the upper right box, and his perception of the "traditional" to the lower left, which categories he tends to relate to "western" and "eastern" types of societies. He overlooks, being a product of an upper right society, the lower right, the final destiny of all "moderns," wherein all is appeased in the anesthesia of materialistic death, and he overlooks the upper left, wherein the individualists of the traditional societies find a final release in either bliss or anesthesia of salvation or liberation.

Either of the two can be theistic. The spiritualistic theism is usually an all-pervasive form, spilling down into the social realm in the form of commandments and revelations. The materialistic form is usually a remote form, a demythologized version where the creator is acknowledged as a primal engineer, but divorced from any effective role in the immediate reality. Salvation here may be posited, but its cognitive credibility and hence motive power is almost completely eroded by the dominant, "rational," scientific materialism of secular culture, which reduces the spirit to electrical energies in the brain.

The weakness of truly compelling rights in the spiritualist type and of truly compelling responsibilities in the materialist type probably account for their easily being overlooked, and provide much food for thought, to which we will return later. Figure 2 Transcendence Individualism Rights Materialism Immanence Holism Responsibilities Spiritualism This figure's octagonal shape allows us to involve more variables, four basic polarities, to express schematically more ideal types of metaphysical/ethical worlds. One can play with this scheme extensively, taking halves of the octagon to represent various social ideal types. Thus, the half 1-8-7-6 stands for traditional, monistic holism, or tribalism (type A); 2-1-8-7 for the type of traditional society Donnelly seems to have in mind (type B); 1-2-3-4 for the world/ethos of traditional monasticism, which managed to maintain a kernel of "modernity" within most traditional societies (type C); 2-3-4-5 for the world-ethos of industrial capitalism in its purest inner-worldly ascetic form, as described by Weber (type D); 3-4-5-6- for the type of modern society Donnelly credits with the "discovery" of the "human rights concept" (type E); 5-6-7-8 for the world-ethos of industrial socialism/communism (type F); and 8-1-2-3 and 4-5-6-7 stand in an uncanny way for two kinds of impossible forms which are yet presented as lies or dreams under the banners of, respectively, anarchism and totalitarianism. Undoubtedly there has never been any real society in real history that would no t be located in the open center of such a typological scheme, off-center each in its own particular way. I only introduce such a diagram to illustrate how very much more complex is the reality of the metaphysical-ethical mix of any society, western or eastern, traditional or modern, than it may seem to one who is trying to reduce that complexity to manageable categories fit to support sweeping generalizations. As for a sweeping generalization of my own, it would seem obvious that an ideal global world-view/ethic, the holy grail of contemporary human rights thought, should come as close as possible to the true center of a diagram such as this, at the precise balance-point of these four, and no doubt other, polarities. In the human rights context, it is clear that they need to be contemplated in juxtaposition with human responsibilities, as the two polar modes of relationship between self and other, other and self.

2. The Principles of Buddhist Ethics
In previous essays, I have addressed this subject in a variety of ways, and I do not intend to go over that material in detail again here (though I herewith provide for those who have time to read through it beforehand copies of the main essays).

I will summarize some of the conclusions reached as background for this exposition, oriented toward the exploration of the rights and responsibilities issue.

In the Buddhist Ethics essay, I refuted the misapprehension that Buddhist selflessness was either an ascetic self-abnegation or a mystic self-immersion in a formless absolute, and established quite a bit of evidence to establish that the central impact of the teaching of selflessness ( anatma) was, metaphysically, the emergence of a spiritual individualism, and, socially, an institutional facilitation of social individualism. A central thesis bears repeating; i.e. that selflessness is the logical and social seal of the "autonomy and unique value of the individual over and above his/her collectivity; because a metaphysically given fixed "self" would be incompatible with any living, changing individual, and a socially constructed, role-ascriptive "self" is inevitably a stereotypical, traditional, general pattern of personality imposed upon the unique, novel, particular person." A second major purpose of that essay was to show that there is a variety of ethical systems in Buddhist teachings, based on the differentiation of persons into various categories, based on their level of development away from egocentrism and egotism towards wisdom and altruism. For the least developed there is a basic deontological pattern of commandments, based on scriptural authority of the recorded pronouncements of the Buddha. For the more developed there is a complex set of teleological injunctions, based on pragmatic, developmental guidelines as appealing to the reason and inner motivation of the practitioners. And for the most developed there is a third pattern of teachings, which, following Niebuhr's term developed in the Christian ethical context, I call "dialogical," which encourages the internalized rational judgment, or wisdom, and expanded sensitivity, or compassion, of the individual practitioners.

In the Buddhist Politics essay, I examined Ashoka's edicts and isolated four main principles, which I call 1) transcendentalism/ individualism, 2) pacifism, 3) educational universalism, and 4) welfare socialism, and I traced the further elaboration of these principles in a work of approximately four centuries later, the Jewel Garland of Nagarjuna, in the Buddhist Social Activism essay. In a work in progress, the Vajra Hero, I am studying the final elaboration of the implementation of these principles in the lives and deeds of the Great Adepts (Mahasiddha) of late first millennium C.E. India, Saraha, Vajranagarjuna, Shantideva, Naropa, et al., to come to a better view of the fullest pervasion of Indian civilization by these adamant individualists, before India was blanketed by external invasions from the turn of the millennium until 1947.

In those works, my concerns are to counter the mistaken notion of the "otherworldliness" of the Buddhist tradition and its conflation with the mystical traditions that abound in India, and to elucidate the workings of the underlying liberative thrust of the Buddhist Dharma. Here, I want to get away from the normative, textual, ideal principles to look at their impact on social reality more closely, to find the compromises and the failures to implement the ideals fully on any mass scale.

A good beginning is to look at the biography of Shakyamuni Buddha himself.

The Buddha has been ranked by historians as the outstanding "axial age" figure, a charismatic, philosophically rationalistic ethical reformer who elucidated sensible principles for the newly emerging urbanizing societies of the mid-first millennium Eurasian oikumena. He discovered and taught the principles I mentioned above, answering the crises of the age, listed in one textbook as tribalism, militarism, elitism, materialism, etc., with rational individualism, pacifism, universalism, and altruism. The famous four seals ( uddana) of his teaching, impermanent (anitya), agony (duhka), selflessness (anatma), and liberation (nirvana) are still a very realistic description of the facts of personal existence, if we consider that a sociologist such as Peter Berger has described the syndrome of the modern personality structure as afflicted by, hence having to come to grips with a "peculiar openness" of identity, anxious reflectiveness from uncertainty about the self, differentiatedness of identity (i.e. no s table self), and individuatedness (i.e. ultimate isolation of the individual). His insight into the predicament of human beings in emerging mass society was remarkably successful. Further, his success as a teacher was also comparatively great. He was not persecuted or martyred, and he founded the unique and revolutionary institution of monasticism.

This institution sheltered and nurtured individuals who sought to develop within themselves qualities and abilities and liberties that the larger society was not at all ready to accept en masse. And the powers and principalities of the day not only accepted this institution, so radically threatening to their own mundane concerns of control, exploitation, and mobilization, they even supported it handsomely.

He was born in the royal or warrior class, and had a solid experience of materialistic power and pleasure in his early life, which undoubtedly gave him a clear view of the power structure of his society, its deep entrenchment in the psyches of the people and its limitations. He then spent six years in the various extreme disciplines of spiritual asceticism, seeking the heights of individualistic, other-worldly freedom, and he tasted its transit ecstasies and also discovered its limitations. He then moved to a central spot between materialism and spiritualism and attained his unexcelled enlightenment by transcending the egocentric predicament altogether and gaining a realistic insight into the nature of life and death, self and society. He then spent the rest of his life in altruistic activity as a teacher, trying as best he could to assist his contemporaries and successors to unfold their own enlightenments, according to their own abilities and opportunities. In walking out on his father and his duty as a husband, father, and king, he announced in radical terms his right to liberty as a human individual. In abandoning his ascetic trances,, including the death-like transic state of suspended animation in the formless realms of nothingness an neither-conscious-nor-unconscious, he announced to the world-escapists his right to life. In braving total psychic disintegration by opening up his self to incorporate the vast terrors of the subconscious instincts, as symbolized by the battle with Mara under the tree of life, he affirmed his right to enlightenment. He is even asked by Mara in a final challenge, "By what right to you pretend to Buddhahood?" And his famous earth touching gesture is the symbol of his calling the goddess of earth to witness his long evolutionary struggle to become a human being through lifetimes of self-discipline, self-sacrifice, self-transcendence, and service of others, and, among human being to realize his full human potential in supreme enlightenment. Finally, by institutionalizing the monastic Sangha community, as a world of liberation within the world of obligation, he asserted the right to property. The silent act of holding out the mendicant's bowl to receive from the householder the daily meal with no offer of payment or even a word of thanks is a clear expression of a human being's right to have that necessary to sustain life, just because he or she is a human being, without being expected to fulfill any obligation or make any compensation. This is more starkly realized when we remember that, because of his shattering of all caste or class identities upon entering themonastic order, a Brahmin monk could receive from an untouchable, an untouchable from a Brahmin, and so forth. During his teaching ministry, he naturally asserted his right to free speech and freedom of religion, in a time of strong elite monopoly of learning and Brahmin orthodoxy of religion. Finally, by not using his attested yogic power to prolong his life beyond comfort for the benefit of his disciples, he asser ted the right to die, choosing his time and attaining his well-earned rest in Parinirvana.

In terms of responsibility, he exemplified the responsibility not to harm others and to prevent them harming each other and to heal those harmed. He manifested the responsibility to help others materially, intellectually, and spiritually. Most importantly, in a holistic society where the individual tended to be submerged in the social need, where dharma had previously meant mainly "duty," he exemplified and taught that the highest responsibility of the individual was to attain his or her own enlightenment, to attain that realization of selflessness which is the fountainhead of a genuine ability to be responsive to others. But I will return to this.

Now, where did he have to compromise his ideal vision, due to time and place and historical circumstance? The fundamental compromise is reflected in the public teaching and institution.

In a sense, in creating the separate world of the monastery, he left intact the social world of the times. He did not return to his throne to legislate a program of human rights, to dispense social justice, to implement universal education, to disband all armies, to abolish castes and classes, to engage in works of social welfare. In terms of teaching, his emphasis on the Individual Vehicle ( Hinayana) teaching of the four holy truths, stressing the path of individual liberation from the egocentrist life cycle, the achievement of wisdom and Nirvana, and muting the world-transforming impact of great compassion (mahakaruna)-- this choice of main teaching indicates his inability to proclaim publicly his complete idea for his society. He is said to have predicted that it would be at least four centuries before India would be ready for the widespread teaching of his Universal Vehicle ( Mahayana). In regard to women, he was unable to challenge the patriarchal customs of the times directly, and he is said t o have even refused to create a women's monastic order several times, giving in finally to pressure from his foster mother and his disciple Ananda.

This womens' order (bhikshunisamgha) eventually did become the first refuge for women to escape from the obligations of the tight family structure, and there are many accounts of the early nuns, singing the praises of the Buddha and expressing relief at getting away from endless chores, oppressive mothers-in-law, and dreary husbands.

In recruitment for the order, he was more aggressive at first in laying down the revolutionary principle of everyone's right to freedom from the social matrix, inviting members of all castes and even reforming criminals, conscientious objectors, and so forth. But as time went by, in interests of retaining the support of the kings, he compromised this wide-open stance and instituted rules that barred debtors, those in the armies, those accused of crimes, those whose parents refused them permission to renounce the world would create hostility against the order. Thus, while he never compromised his challenge against the caste system, the rules that began to accumulate naturally made entry to the order more difficult for those in the more lowly strata of society.

In sum, while his life exemplified all the basic human rights, and his teaching and institutional innovation created a social space for numerous persons to lay claim to their intrinsic right to "make meaningful" their "jewel-like evolutionary achievement of human embodiment endowed with freedom and opportunity" (ratnavatkarmavipaka- ksanasampatmanushyadeha), he was unable to impose these principles directly upon the whole society, so contrary was it to their traditional ideologies. In terms of the typologies we played with above, in a basically tribalistic society, of the type A (1-8-7-6, with a little bit of 2 and 5 beginning in the wildernesses and cities), he created an alternative world of type C (1-2-3-4) into which a person could enter if so inclined, but only at the price of renouncing, "dying to," the traditional world order. Thus, while it can be considered the planting of an important seed of a more liberty-oriented society, it was still very far from a full implementation of his own vision of a fully evolved human society; one devoted to nurturing each individual's full human potential, at peace, centered on education for all, and committed to full social and economic justice.

Finally, I should mention another powerful seed he planted in the popular imagination, wherein he communicated his vision for the world through stories set in a mythical past, the famous Former Life ( Jataka) stories. In this way, without directly demanding that the kings and elites of his day conform to his revolutionary principles, he could set them examples of what the ideal rulers of brighter past ages did by way of self-sacrifice, self-restraint, generosity, morality, tolerance and compassion.

Thus, his "de-mythologizing" critique of the Brahmin lore was complemented by a re-mythologizing through an exemplary popular literature that made his view of the purpose of human evolution available to the popular imagination. In this move, he reminds us of the strategy of his colleague Master Kung over in the Central Country of East Asia.

3. Inventory of Historical Buddhisms
Again, this section is a summary to provide an overview of the variety of traditions within Buddhism. Its development within India can be divided into three phases, with the understanding that each new phase did not supplant the previous one, but incorporated it within the new form, so that by the end, around the end of the first millennium all three co-existed in a loose integration. The first phase is that of the Individual Vehicle (Hinayana), which I have already described. The second is that of the Universal Vehicle (Mahayana), wherein the impact of compassion was openly and fully elaborated on all levels. And the third is the Vajra Vehicle ( Vajrayana), wherein the previously esoteric meditative tradition was more widely spread popularly and more technically refined academically. These phases can be very roughly dated as from 500 BCE to 0, from 0 to 500 CE, and from 500 CE to 1000 CE, respectively. During each of these periods there was a large-scale though non- violent missionarization of other p arts of Asia. These other specific areas tended to receive the form of Buddhism dominant in India at the time, hence those missionarized earlier tended to resist the new forms evolved later in the Holy Land (Aryavarta), as they still do.

In regard to the first phase of the Individual Vehicle, I need not describe it again, except to repeat that for our purposes we may consider its main function to have been to provide an alternative social world wherein the fundamental, intrinsic human rights to enlightenment, life, liberty, happiness, etc. became accessible to those who sought to claim them. The rights of the individual members of the traditional society were not asserted in any activist way, although the presence of the alternative definitely exerted a tremendous impact, nor were the fundamental responsibilities of generosity, morality, and tolerance aggressively asserted except through example, story, and admonition. The monastic community provided a liberative educational vehicle for those who entered it, and exercised a restraining, civilizing influence on the larger society as best it could. This civilizing process came out in the open during the reign of the Emperor Ashoka (ca. 272-226 BCE), who eventually converted to Buddhism personally, and then actively promoted the Buddhist principles throughout the recently-formed empire, although in keeping with those principles he showed tolerance for the plurality of religions, supporting all those who practiced what they preached, whether Buddhist or not. For the time of Ashoka's reign, the alternative world of the Samgha became something like an establishment, seeking to transform society more actively through education and through encouragement of the emperor's legislative edicts. It is clear, however, that Ashoka in a sense overstepped the pace of development of the society, pushing the people too fast toward non-violence, including vegetarianism, self-cultivation, charity, and tolerance. Symbolically, one might say that he challenged too radically the traditional gods, suspending their sacrificial cults by transforming blood-sacrifice into charitable offerings. Soon after his death, the dynasty fell, and his successors led a reaction marked by a revival of Brahmanic fundamentalism.

In spite of this over-acceleration and subsequent retrenchment, the alternative order continued to exercise its influence, as well as to expand Buddhism beyond India. Sri Lanka was missionarized by Ashoka's grandson and the Theravada form of the Individual Vehicle took root there to last until modern times.

From Ceylon it eventually spread into Burma and Thailand. Ashoka also missionarized Afghanistan and Iran, and perhaps even further westward, at least according to his own account.

Ashoka was also a highly autocratic emperor and, in human rights terms, he set the example of a kind of Asian "monarchical socialism" that is very difficult for westerners to understand, with their experience of Magna Cartas and revolutionary democracies.

However, it is clear that in the Indian case, as often in the Chinese, it was the emperor who was the guarantor of the rights of the individual, forcing the pace of social change and protecting the individual from the oppressions of various intermediate elites. Thus a strong emperor could control the violence of local warlords by superior force, the economic oppression exerted by powerful mercantile interests by maintaining state granaries to prevent hoarding and by taxing private fortunes to finance public works, and the social oppression of caste elites by funding democratic educational institutions such as the Buddhist and Jain monastic schools. Naturally a weak emperor not only failed to check the abuses of regional, traditional powers, he also added to the peoples' burdens, and thus dynasties would fall. The latter cases have caused our perception of "Oriental despotism," and it takes our "modern" minds some effort to see the former's social benefit, usually the basis of the original formation o f empires.

Thus toward the end of the first phase, the Buddhist order gradually became more activist in pressing for social change, less and less content to remain the anchor of an alternative social world, and more and more aggressive in transforming activity.

This process culminated in a "new" form of Buddhism, the Universal Vehicle (Mahayana), whose foundation was a metaphysical insight into the absolute emptiness and universal relativity ( sunyata/ pratityasamutpada) of all things, including any personal Nirvana, and a corresponding ethical impulse toward universal compassion ( mahakaruna), the drive to assist all beings each achieve his own fulfilling happiness in liberation and enlightenment. Philosophically this new movement, ushered in by the mythically great Nagarjuna, was critical of the excessive individualism of the Individual Vehicle monks who sought their own fulfillment in the alternative reality of their hypothetical "remainderless Nirvana." And institutionally, it was critical of the excessive aloofness of the monastic establishment, considering itself a place apart from and superior to the ordinary social world. Monasticism was still considered essential as the anchor of individualism against the tides of holism in the traditional society, but just as the individual saint was not considered perfect just through personal transcendence but must strive beyond that to make liberation available to all, motivated by great compassion, so also the monastic institution should move beyond its anchoring function and actively promote the welfare and especially the education of all citizens. And just as the dualism of samsara and nirvana was challenged by the Mahayana's insight into ultimate non-duality, so the social dualism between monk and layperson was challenged by the drive of great compassion. Hence, the monasteries slowly developed into great educational centers, whose famous examples are the great universities of Takshashila, Vallabhi, Nalanda, Sri Parvata, Kanchi, etc.

The Universal Vehicle emerged in a social atmosphere of a refined, urban civilization of great wealth and sophistication. Some of the great figures of its Scriptures are laymen, such as Vimalakirti, and laywomen, such as Shrimala. The cold, analytical wisdom (prajna) of the Individual Vehicle whereby the personal release from the egocentric complex was achieved became the warm, intuitive transcendent wisdom (prajnaparamita), a goddess, the Mother of All Victors ( sarvajinamata).

Human rights, now more taken for granted in a civilized, pluralistic society with large educated classes, a powerful bourgeoisie ( vaishasie!), were still anchored in the now pervasively accepted tenfold commandments/injunctions (not to take life/to save life, etc.). The focus in the Universal Vehicle, therefore, was on the positive injunctions to transcendent virtues, the "ultra-obligations" of transcendent generosity, morality, and tolerance. What had been ideal exemplary virtues in the Jatakas now took hold as positive precepts to be enacted by monastic and layperson alike. People of all walks, sexes, occupations should now become enlightened, educated and then actively responsible "in place" in society, as it were, with no need necessarily first to abandon the ordinary realm to enter the liberated realm of the order, although that option could still be helpful to some. Of course, the social realm, with its ups and downs, its good rulers and its bad, could not realistically be expected to become so rapidly transformed.

Therefore the messianic drive of compassion found its ideals realized in a variety of heavenly social realms, the famous "pure lands" or "Buddha-fields" of the Universal Vehicle Scriptures. These lands became imaginative icons for the populace wherein Buddhahood and social kingship fused in visions of unimaginable splendor.

Emanating from this Beatific Realm ( sambhoga-kaya), numerous divinized forms of Buddhas, "Buddhasses," male and female bodhisattvas, appeared to succor the individual in his or her struggle to live up to the high ideals of the teachings. And mundane kings had a hard act to follow to come any where near the majesty and power of the celestial Dharma-king Amitabha, who paled even the splendor of Indra. (As was noted in a warning written by a Confucian scholar to a Chinese emperor, that the pure land vision would cause the masses to lose reverence for the Central Country and its emperor!) During the ascendance of the Universal Vehicle, its message of profound wisdom and loving solidarity with all life and its rich iconography enabled it to missionarize much of Asia. It spread through Central Asia to China early on, and its large-scale adoption in China after the fall of the Han up to its height in the T'ang is one of the wonders of history. From China it spread to Korea and Japan and Vietnam, although t he latter had another current coming from India and Ceylon as well. It also spread as a further strand into the Sri Lankan, Burman, and Thai traditions, though it never became too firmly entrenched wherever the Theravada had become strict orthodoxy.

Now the Theravada Individual Vehicle countries, from the human rights perspective, accepted the original alternate social reality institutional presence of monastic Buddhism and preserved it in a pattern reminiscent of the pattern I described above in the account of early Buddhism in India. It anchored individual rights, but in an alternative realm, and only gradually exerted pressure on the traditional ordinary societies. Without normatively accepting Universal Vehicle doctrine on any large scale, the latent Universal Vehicle in the Jatakas and in the basic Buddhist ethical principles gradually emerged and transformed the ordinary realm institutions of kingship, attempting with more or less success in various countries and periods to establish an Ashokan pattern of kingship, accepting a righteous king as the chief layperson, supporter of the order and defender of the orthodox faith. Unfortunately, too often unscrupulous kings used the metaphysical/ethical dualism of the Individual Vehicle to give th emselves room by lavish support of the monastics with the other hand. There thus developed a pattern of despotic behavior vis a vis lay subjects, coupled with generosity and tolerance vis a vis the order.

In the Mahayana countries on the other hand, there arose the opposite problem. That is, the monastic establishment never did become strongly established culturally, independent of the political authority, at least not for very long. They enjoyed periods of patronage, quite lavish at times, but then succeeding regimes would strip them down again to recover lands and taxes and to reincorporate subjects back into the ordinary social realm. Therefore, when the Universal Vehicle entered with its focus on altruistic responsibilities, the fundamental individualistic rights anchored in the Individual Vehicle were not that taken for granted. And while the Universal Vehicle was highly popular, with its profound philosophy and sophisticated meditative technique for the intellectuals, and its magnificent ideal of compassion and its visionary religious profusion of devotionalisms for the populace, its leaders and institutions were all too often inclined or forced to compromise with secular imperial authority, una ble to exercise very effective ethically critical leverage over the social power structure. Thus, the universities of the East Asian countries never fused with the monastic establishment, which had been the creators of the first universities in India, but continued to be based on a classical Confucian model, turning out a secular (from the Buddhist perspective) elite. With theneo-Confucian resurgence in the Sung, wherein the traditional elite began to appropriate in their own terms some of the transcendentalist strategies of the Universal Vehicle, while the Ch'an houses revitalized the Individual Vehicle uncompromising pursuit of individual enlightenment, a very creative period ensued, but the Mongol invasion confused the picture and we cannot trace where otherwise its evolution might have gone. An interesting point is that the Buddhist ethical ideal seems to require the combined activity of the Individual Vehicle, with its anchoring of rights even in an alternative realm, and the Universal Vehicle, with it s expansive promotion of altruistic responsibilities, to be really effective in causing liberative social evolution; that means not to be subsumed into a static traditional holistic society.

Now when we come to the third phase in India, that of the Vajra Vehicle, we should expect to see the fullest flowering of over a thousand years of social evolution under the combined impetus of both Individual Vehicle and Universal Vehicles to further both individualistic rights and universalistic responsibilities.

At first glance, to judge from secondary sources, it seems a dismal failure.

We find even modern Buddhist writers labeling this period that of the "degeneracy" of Buddhism in India, with a previously sound monastic institution degenerating into Tantric popularistic ritualism, with the philosophical tradition of a long line of creative thinkers petering out and being swallowed up in a resurgent neo-Hinduism, with finally waves of conquerors destroying effete dynasties and Buddhism apparently disappearing altogether from the "land of its birth." The greatest figures of this period, the Great Adepts (mahasiddhas), seem to be frightful and unsavory characters, a kind of hippy sadhu sorcerers, dabbling in the most scandalous sexual and aggressive magic. In spite of this daunting picture, we might feel encouraged to take a closer look if we realize that most of the western writers who have dealt with this period are products of a culture that has only a mere century of exposure to depth psychology, that most of the Buddhist writers on it come from cultures wherein either Individual Vehicle or Universal Vehicle is doctrinally normative, and hence the integration of either one into a new integration might look like a "degeneration," and that if we recall the basic principles we have discussed at the heart of the Buddhist metaphysical/ethical tradition, Buddhisms institutional "disappearance" could be considered its success as well as its failure. Buddha created an alternative reality as a device to transform slowly and indirectly the ordinary social reality, at first for individuals through their enlightenments, eventually for society, which is merely all individuals. The goal is by no means a permanent dualism, and we can clearly see in the imagery of the pure land, for example, the "withering away" of the monastery as a sign of evolutionary success. In fact, I do not consider the work to have been completed in India of l000 C.E. by a long shot, although perhaps a great deal more may have been accomplished than has been recognized. The actual reason for the institutional disappearance, however, is equally complimentary to Buddhism. The new invading rulers of the second millennium clearly took note of the Buddhist establishment as the immovable anchor of an ideal and habit of freedom, i.e. in their eyes insubordination, and so they systematically set out to erase its every physical trace, razing monasteries, burning books and monks, smashing up devotional sites. Fortunately by that time the impetus for social evolution no longer depended that heavily on buildings, books, and professionals, and it went on subterraneously, set back of course by having to deal with the level of culture of the conquering peoples.

With the above as prolegomena, we can begin to look at the third phase itself, getting started in the post-Gupta period in the north, and in full swing by the eighth century, especially under the Phala rulers of Bengal and Orissa. The Great Adepts, far from being simple-minded sadhus who could not manage the monastic discipline and could not embrace the bodhisattva responsibility, were graduates and masters of both traditions who went beyond their spheres and began a movement of outreach into every sphere of Indian life. Take the example of Naropa (ca. 10th- 11th C.E.). He was an outstanding monk, universally respected for his purity and insight. He was an abbot of Nalanda, a reknowned scholar and teacher. Yet he felt that, while impeccably orthodox in both Hinayana and Mahayana, he was still not fully enlightened in his heart, and he was not really taking up the ultra-responsibility of the bodhisattva. He abandoned his identities as monk and professor and went forth into nature, seeking the innermos t core of the Dharma through Tantric Unexcelled Yoga (anuttarayoga) practice. He became, after incredible ordeals reminiscent of the Buddha's own period of ascetic tribulations, perfectly enlightened and taught fruitfully thousands of disciples from all walks of life and even from all religions of the time, not just Buddhists, though his greatest disciple and heir was a Tibetan Buddhist named Marpa. Naropa's story illustrates how the Vajra Vehicle was not in any way a degeneracy of Buddhism, but rather the natural, creative evolution of Individual and Universal Vehicles in continuation of their civilizing missions. It does also, of course, indicate that the establishment of the day had become somewhat prey to formalism and hence no longer effective without further development in carrying out its purpose. It is reminiscent of Bodhidharma or Hui Neng or Dogen, who renewed Buddhist practice in their eras by going to the heart of the matter and not staying with institutional strategies that, by themselves, were no longer adequate to the social moment.

Let us remember that the Individualist monasticism answered a need to create a space for individualism and the individual's rights to liberty and enlightenment within an excessively holistic society. Universalist messianism had answered a need to intensify the drive for social transformation through love and compassion and their altruistic ultra-responsibility by rousing the laity and expanding the educational activity of the monastics to include all those so inclined among the large urban educated classes. By the time of the third period, urban India was flourishing with unprecedented wealth, tolerance and individualistic pluralism was assured, there was little internal war, class boundaries were relaxed, and the educated were well taken care of by the establishment. But there was still the vast range of village India, and the untouched masses of tribal India, not to speak of the wild border countries such as Nepal, Tibet, Assam, and even far-flung islands such as the Isle of Gold (Java-Suvarnadvipa ), and Japan. New ways of expressing enlightenment had to be manifested by masters who were carrying on the civilizing program of the Dharma. They had to enter the realm of the "shamanic," they had to develop the ability to wrestle with the tribal deities of these new peoples within and without India, as indeed Shakyamuni had wrestled with Mara and Indra and Brahma to start the movement. And now they had to refined their civilizing technique, they could integrate individualism and universalism in the direct approach of Vajrayana.

In regard to the missionarizing aspect of the third phase, the Great Adepts spread this integrated form of Buddhism to the hinterlands of India, to the villagers and the tribals, to the borderlands of Tibet and Nepal, and to the southeastern islands. Bodhidharma spread this new wave in an appropriate manner to China, and his lineage of the Dharma saved the day during the late T'ang persecutions, when official urban Buddhism suffered mightily, as his heirs such as Pai Chang moved out into the mountains, cultivated the skill to deal with the uneducated and the provincial, and carried on teaching and practice free of the old formalisms. Kukai spread the formally Tantric strand of this third period to Japan, where it served as a foundation of Japanese Buddhism, and the Zen masters of the Kamakura period continued that effort with the formless strand. While these masters drew disciples from, and never condemned, the Individualist and Universalist institutions, they never depended on them either, and hence it was they who sustained their vitality throughout the second millennium with its tremendous political problems. Thus they embodied and taught the fullest individualism, they were the most effective universalists as well. And they never compromised one iota with the social power structures, at times being the only critical force against their excesses.

In the case of the Tibetan representatives of this third phase line of transmissions, it fell to their lot to undertake the taming of the Mongol nations, which task they carried out quite successfully from the 13th to the 17th centuries.

In conclusion of this section, it is necessary to note that none of these strategies ever did succeed in creating for long or on a mass scale a fully ethical society, which we could put right in the center of our chart above, where human rights were fully respected and human altruistic responsibilities were wholeheartedly accepted. But no tradition, especially the modern one, has had such a success either. It is sure from the record of history carefully examined that there were periods of great humanistic flowering in various civilizations. But we never get to see the full conclusion of these glorious moments, because of the magnetic effect they have on neighboring barbarians. Individualism, pacifism, universalism, and social harmony tend to produce fine arts, great wealth, liberated people, and military weakness. All of these things invite cruder, poorer, highly conditioned, and militarily powerful peoples to come and get in on the fun. Whether or not these people are ultimately conquered culturally by their victims' civilizedness, they certainly interrupt the social experiments and spoil our observations for the time. But so far we must conclude that there has been no perfect system.

4. Buddhist Contributions to Current Thought on Human Rights and Responsibilities
I mentioned above that a human rights concept cannot be compelling unless the basic concept of a "human" is clearly supportive of it. It is humans who claim their rights, and those who must respect them are also humans. What they think they are, and what they think the others are obviously control their treatment of themselves and others. For example, if a basic human right is the right to life, a choice to override that right by another is only possible when based on a specific notion of what happens to the victim after death. Spiritualistic, religious killing is thus based on the theory that a God gave the victim his right to life, and thus God can alienate that right by pronouncing such and such a person deserving of death. God will also take care of that person afterwards, either punishing or saving; it's God's problem not the problem of the righteous killer.

Materialistic, scientific killing is based on the theory that humans have no soul, vital essence, spirit, mental continuation (whatever one calls it), and that while the victim has a right to life as a useful member of society, if they become useless or harmful, they can be reduced to nothingness. There is no concern about salvation or damnation, and the rational killer need not worry about his own destiny being ultimately affected, as he too will soon join the victim in nothingness. As I mentioned above, the spiritualist devalues the relative reality, and the materialist devalues the ultimate reality. Thus, the strength of a claim of human rights depends on whether the claimant is believed to be a spiritual or a material being, or, as is more often the case, what kind of combination of the two.

To approach this from a second perspective, the modern notion of human rights seems rather middled. First, they are said to be "natural," "inherent" in being human. Second, they are said to be "entitlements of persons," which implies that title has been granted by something else, god or society. The are said to be "inalienable," except in exceptional cases, yet they are also said to be "held primarily in relation to society." These statements contain clear contradictions, if they have any meaning at all without clarification of the metaphysical questions, "What is 'nature'?" "In what is the inherence?" "Who or what has entitled?" Now there are a variety of Buddhist metaphysical positions on the nature of reality. There are realistic systems, idealistic systems, and the most philosophically developed, the Central Way (Madhyamika) is correctly called a relativistic system, with the understanding that here "relativism" does not mean "nihilism," but rather a position in the center between the extremes of absolutism and nihilism. This system holds that the absolute or ultimate reality of things is universal voidness of any form of intrinsic reality. This voidness itself conceived as a thing apart is itself also devoid of intrinsic reality. Therefore this voidness is the condition for a relative, expirical, and conventional relativity of all things. Thus, all things are ultimately void and no analysis or explanation can capture their reality; and all things are relatively conventional in that concepts and conventions make them what they are in experience and practice. Therefore a God has no intrinsic, static self, a human has no intrinsic self. All descriptions of relative reality are therefore hypothetical or conventional, and our subscribing to any one world or person picture is directly responsible for making it that way. This does not mean that reality is relatively random, in that world-pictures are deep cultural constructions, and the "culture" may include many other types of beings than those presently living and visible on any one planet. Thus relative causality is quite binding on the individual person, on the mental, verbal, and physical levels.

Thus, the Buddhist intuition of selflessness was liberative originally from the theistic, spiritualistic worldviews that held the world a product of an all-powerful creator, and in the same way that modern rationalism was liberative from medieval theism. But it was also liberative from those who carried this liberation to the opposite extreme, the Lokayata materialistic nihilists, who held that ultimate reality was nothingness, hence denied the coherence of relativity and causality. The most celebrated eulogy of the Buddha saluted him as the discoverer of the fact that all things arise from causes (ye dharmah hetuprabhavah), not as the discoverer of religious truth.

Now the causality that has produced human beings, in the Buddhist view, is a process of evolution (karma) emerging from a beginningless past. This evolution is quite mechanical, just like modern biological theoriest, in that a certain pattern of action repeated in the course of living develops a propensity for that action, which eventually crystallizes into a physical mutation in a succeeding generation.

Therefore, a human being, just as in biology, is a product of an inconceivably long process of evolutionary action and represents an amazing achievement due to a process of successful adaptations. But there is this immense difference between the Buddhist and the Darwinian evolutionary theory: the Buddhist evolution is not only a physical process. It is also linguistic and mental (it is intriguing how the verbal is conceived as a level of process somehow midway between the material and the mental). Therefore a human being is not just the product of countless previous generations of others, his horde of ancestors. He or she is the product of countless previous generations of himself or herself. The mental continuum of a human being, while constantly changing even in one life, is itself a beginningless continuum. Therefore, and this is the crucial point of the theory for our purposes, the magnificent evolutionary achievement of human embodiment is the individual human being's own personal achievement. A human person has earned his or her own humanity.

Buddhist thought developed the concept of gotra, which I translate as "spiritual gene," to capture this sense of the individual's being literally self-made in part. And thus the act of conception of a living being in Buddhism involves three sets of genes, those of the mother, those of the father, and those of the person being born. The former two determine the physical characteristics of the being, the latter determines the choice of that sort of physical environment and the being's spiritual or mental characteristics. This is symbolically expressed beautifully in the imagery of the Tantras as the union of three drops (bindhu), the red drop of the mother unites with the white drop of the father and then the blue drop of the child unites with them both, emerging from the subtle realm of pure mental energy into connection with the gross realm of physical matter. In the case of a human child, it brings with it a rich treasure of instinctual propensities coded into a kind of spiritual DNA, the fruit of a ll its previous evolutionary actions.

By the same token, according to the theory, the mental, verbal, and physical actions committed by a human being shape the spiritual gene they take with them through death into their next generation. They are the consequences of their past actions, and they will bear the consequences of their present actions in the future.

No God or nation can damn them or save them, and they cannot count on an automatic anesthesia after death. They are thoroughly embedded in an endless relativity of causes and effects, and they must take responsibility first of all for their own destinies.

This life-description of the Buddha's was hotly disputed by both theists and atheists for thousands of years. There is a rich literature of philosophical defense and elaboration of the theory. But this is not the place to explore the meta- physical debates. Our concern is the ethical impact of this view, which we can immediately see is profound. It provides a metaphysical base for an indomitable individualism. The subscriber to this theory cannot feel he belongs totally to his parents, tribe, nation, or even culture. He has to evaluate every compulsion upon him from family or priest or king in terms of what the actions they demand of him will produce by way of effects he alone must experience in the future. Not even a god can change those effects. Hence if the orders of the god through the priest, or of the king through the general, conflict with his own understanding of what he owes himself, he is rationally serving his self interest if he obeys the evolutionary causal law, expressed as moral injunc tions, instead of the social or political regulations. He feels a pride in his achievement of human life, and he rationally feels a fear of losing that achievement if he should act in a sub-human manner. He has the precious wish-granting gem of human life, in Buddhist parlance, which he will not lightly throw away. As for his rights, while they are not absolutistically innate, or inherent, he has earned them arduously, and then they are relatively innate in his humanness, not granted him by parents, gods, or kings.

The theory describes further how he came to be human, rising up from the wretched states of hells, the grotesque preta realms, and the vicious realms of the beasts, and not being seduced into the powers and pleasures of the manifold heavens. His human state was slowly evolved by transcending aggression by expressing love, transcending greed by expressing generosity, and transcending delusive stupidity by expressing intelligence and wisdom. These three are called the "three positive mental evolutionary paths." His verbal gifts are analogous to the mental, pleasant speech fitting with love, pacifying speech fitting with generosity, true speech and meaningful speech fitting with intelligence; these four are called the four positive verbal evolutionary paths. And his physical well-being emerges from acts likewise analogous, preserving lives expressing love, giving gifts expressing generosity, and proper sexual interactions expressing intelligence. On the other side, he knows that if he hates, covets, and upholds delusive beliefs, if he reviles, slanders, chatters, and lies, if he kills, steals, and indulges in abusive sexuality, he goes against his humanity, generating an evolutionary causality that will drag him back down into the wretched states. This whole theory is replete with the most elaborate, dreadfully vivid depictions of actual results of actions in experiential states, which, if contemplated by the imaginative, serve to compel compliance with these evolutionary laws. For example, the malicious liar eventually ends up in a hell for liars, in which he is born as a small bulbous globe of consciousness attached to a giant tongue of great sensitivity, spread over many acres of burning iron ground, with little horned devils merrily running red hot iron ploughs back and forth through its nerves from dawn to dusk of a multi-million year day. Or on a less extravagant note, one who kills other beings, especially human beings, will be killed one time in a future life in a similar way, one for each being on e kills.

Now the person who inquires into this theory more deeply begins to worry that, while he now enjoys human life as the result of previous positive evolutionary actions, he may very well face their results in the future. As the past is beginningless, there are no guarantees. Therefore, now that he has human life with its communicativeness and intelligence, he had better explore any possible ways of gaining freedom from such future terrors, attaining liberation and enlightenment, defined either as an escape from involuntary rebirth or as mastery of the causal processes to a degree sufficient to insure favorable rebirths. This terror and this ambition become the motivating drives for enlightenment, which itself is actually the tenth positive path, that of cultivating intelligence or wisdom to the transcendent degree. And he finds that the Buddha's Dharma teaches that the supreme value of the human life lies in its closeness to enlightenment, hence its supreme use is in the quest of enlightenment. Important ly also, since evolution connotes ascent to us, it can be wasted as well, as one can throw away a diamond, and the terror of experiencing a hellish devolution becomes another powerful motive for self transcendence.

In sum, the individual human who possesses rights is presented as a spiritual as well as physical being of unique accomplishments and valuable opportunities.

He has earned his own rights through suffering and transcending egotism in the sea of evolution, and no one can deprive him of them, since no one conferred them upon him. His primary right is that of life, then that of liberty, then that of education. Societies are nothing but collections of such individuals, and they cease to be truly human societies when they cease to acknowledge that each individual's fulfillment is the purpose of the whole. And humans are free also to give away their rights in furtherance of the fulfillment of others. Indeed it is by the supreme generosity of giving even one's life that one evolved into a human out of lower forms. Thus talk of rights quickly passes over into talk of responsibilities, as the self-fulfilled, i.e. enlightened as to selflessness, individual automatically wills to share that happiness of release with others by aiding them in their own quests of enlightenment.

Self-interest and altruistic interest come into coincidence upon enlightenment (wisdom having dispelled the egocentric delusion that one's own life depends on the destruction of others' lives), and one's own life becomes immeasurably enriched by the preservation of others' lives, because of the multi-life environment within which one lives. Morality becomes a matter of evolutionary causality, reason and enlightened will having come into harmony, and there is no longer need of unreasoned obedience or rational expedience.

Such is the Buddhist worldview and ethical position on human rights and responsibilities, in of course an ideal sense.

I have already pointed out that no so-called Buddhist society has ever yet realized these principles in practice. It is hardly necessary to mention that there is very little chance that the modern world en masse will ever come to adopt such a position. If, however, certain valuable points of the view can be understood, it may be possible to extrapolate from them emphases and critical principles with which to buttress modern human rights ideals and responsible practices.

Without totally challenging all aspects of theistic or non-theistic worldview, it may be possible to lever some of their impacts around to a more compelling position supportive of human rights and inspiring of the assumption of human responsibilities.

For example, in dealing with a theistic movement arguing for use of capital punishment, based on a perceived hopelessness of rehabilitation of certain types of criminals, but arguing from Biblical examples in a literalistic way, based on a feeling that what God giveth God can take away, thereby avoiding a sense of personal responsibility in calling for the blood of these human persons, one might find resources to temper their conviction by thinking of the support from the Buddhist position. "Vengeance is mind, saith the Lord," is like the view that karmic evolution itself causally brings forth eventual retribution. The taking of the second life can then in no way be considered a compensation for the loss of the first, and will have to be faced as itself another murder, and all those members of society who feel strongly motivated to kill the criminal themselves accumulate some form of the evolutionary action of taking life.

Whether or not there is any immediate or obvious rehabilitative success through compassion, the fact that they follow Christ's teaching of "turn the other cheek" is actually much more in their own self-interest as human beings, even if they should be eventually murdered themselves, loving mind and all, by the very criminal upon escape. "Who loses his life for my sake, shall find life everlasting." Or for a nontheistic utilitarian movement that advocates capital punishment, based on the same perception, arguing that there is no space in the prisons, there is too much expense, society must continue to suffer needlessly beyond the original loss of a life, and the murderer himself will find release from his guilt and imprisonment in death's nothingness, one might challenge his certainty that there is nothing after death, pose to him the burden of explaining what it means to say "something, a personal subjectivity can become nothing," and even argue that in that case, the murderer himself can also argue h e helped his victim find release in the nothingness after death. Society's killing for expediency is only different in degrees from the murderer's killing for gain or passion, and then the only lesson taught is that you should not kill unless there are enough of you to get away with it, and what sort of society is that? Admittedly, the convinced materialist is the most difficult person to engage, as he is so emotionally committed to that final nothingness, staving off as it does the terrors of hells and other such "primitive superstitions," and he is so supported by the scientific materialistic worldview we inherit from the past century. But the Buddhist metaphysical tradition has rich resources, especially in the works of the great philosopher Dharmakirti (7th century), to assist Pascal in at least introducing doubt into such a conviction.

The final points here that we can learn from the Buddhist thinkers are 1) that the ethical theory seeking to develop a compelling human rights position cannot dispense with analysis and a stance on the underlying metaphysical issues, as a human rights position cannot be really compelling if it is purely dogmatic or purely prudential, absolutist or spiritually nihilistically relativist; 2) that some form of rationally plausible spiritual irreducibility of a human being may be as essential to support human rights as is a healthy this worldly individualism suspicious of spiritual rationalizations of injustice; and 3) that human rights thought should always be conducted in interconnection with a balancing consideration of human responsibilities. Especially today, if a new and viable central way between the extremes of dogmatic religions and materialistic sciences is to be unfolded, compelling to the minds and hearts of modern humans, then Buddhist thought's long experience of keeping open a center between various types of absolutist spiritualists and nihilist materialists is certainly worth the study.

5. A Buddhist Utopia
Having gone on rather longer than I had thought, I will here refer the reader to the final section of my Buddhist Social Activism (here included as an appendix), if he or she has not already guessed at the ethical dimensions of such a society. In a sentence, education would be the paramount activity of the citizens of such a Utopia, or Shambhala as the Buddhists themselves call what they look forward to, as true human happiness is only possible through enlightenment. The sanctity of life, liberty, and property are all essential ancillaries to the fulfillment of the first right, to the supreme happiness of enlightenment.

And enlightenment has itself the plus that it issues in the spontaneous selfless responsiveness to the needs of others that is the energy of liberative teaching. But for institutional details of such a Shambhala, please consult my commentary on Nagarjuna's rather millennial counsels to his disciple King Udayi of the Shatavahana.

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