The Buddha believed in tradition, fairness, equity, and social justice, as well as skilful intelligence, practical and simple living, and cooperation. It should not be surprising to discover that the Buddha expressed a political philosophy. The Buddha was a member of the ruling military caste by birth. The teaching unites ethics and ontology. If ethics are fundamentally “given,” then so are politics. Freedom requires structure to function. The teaching defines the necessary structure of freedom. It is the delusion of the West to think that the absolute freedom of the individual can be a fundamental political principle.

The teaching is not merely the foundation of the spiritual life. It is also the foundation of the ethical life and the life of the householder – life in the world. The teaching is the essential truth of the fundamental core of everything. The teaching includes civil society, politics, and government. How can there be any separation between the spiritual life and the worldly life? The state must have a standard higher than its own power if it is not to fall into tyranny. Therefore, the teaching is the standard of the state, the ultimate authority to which power must yield, the universal authority of truth and righteousness itself. As such, only the individual can enforce it on the individual, and by individuals on each other in their personal immediacy. One can tell the teaching, but one cannot force it. Enforcement is an attempt to hold time in stasis. It is adharmic because it is impossible. The Buddha said that the imposition of law and order on society by force would never work. The Buddha was anti-military and anti-monarchy.

The dharmic state benefits its citizens and all beings, including animals and the physical environment, through the provision of fundamental protection, shelter, and safety for all. This includes national defence, infrastructure, and police and other legal regulatory authorities.

The Buddha’s concept of the state is liberal progressive or social democratic in principle. The state builds and maintains the social infrastructure. It recirculates money through the system to maintain trade based on the common rule of law. The Buddha advocates government control of land, resources, the circulation of money, social redistribution of wealth, and a large public service with generous wages and liberal laws. I think that the Buddha would recognize that social vitality requires a “wholesome” level of competitiveness. But I do not think that he would make competition or money moral absolutes, as it is today. Therefore, they cannot be the essential social or political principles either. Although the Buddha recognized the necessity and even the social value of trade, he distrusted money and business and forbade the monastics from trading or handling money. The Buddha identifies parenting, teaching, family, friends, employees, and students and followers of the spiritual life as activities that the state should protect.

The Buddha held that by providing for the fundamental needs of all, the Buddhist republic would exhibit strong social cohesion. This would make it resistant to decline. The Buddha took as his model of the ideal middle-way society the Vajjian confederacy of northeast India. He applied the same principles to his own order.

The Vajji or Vajjian Confederacy was a notable ancient political commonalty in northeast India during the 5th century BCE. The Vajjians lived to the southeast of the Buddha’s own Shakyan country. It was a republic or oligarchic federation of several clans, including the Licchavis, which were the most prominent. The Vajjian Confederacy was in the region of present-day Bihar, with its capital at Vaishali, which still exists. Vaishali was a significant city and an important center of political, economic, and cultural activities, known as the birthplace of Mahavira of the Jain religion. The Buddha spent considerable time in Vaishali, and he gave his last discourse there. The Vajjians were patrons of the Buddha and his teachings. The Vajjians practised a form of democratic government, with a council that made decisions through discussion and consensus. This contrasted with the more autocratic monarchies that were prevalent in other parts of northeast India. Society organized itself along clan lines, with each clan having its own autonomy but cooperating within the larger confederacy for mutual benefit and defence. The decline of the Vajjians came with their conquest by Ajatashatru of Magadha. After their defeat, the Vajji territories were absorbed into the Magadhan Empire, contributing to the rise of Magadha as a dominant power in the region. The Vajjian Confederacy is an important example of early republican government in ancient India and is significant for its contributions to the political, cultural, and religious history of the region.

The Buddha taught seven principles to ensure the stability of society: collective public decision-making, cooperation, a common law tradition, respect for seniority, respect for women, a vital private spirituality, and a public spiritual organization. Instead, in the West today we find increasing authoritarianism, nationalism, individualism, competitiveness, militarism, ageism, sexism, misogyny, secularism, and materialism. The Buddha’s social and political ideas are like those of certain Chinese and ancient Greek ideals. The Buddha’s teachings are obviously in the same vein as those of ancient Greece. All lead toward a revolution in thinking that would lead to the transition from the autocracy of the individual king to the autonomy of the universal individual. Thus, the Dalai Lama can say that he is a Buddhist and a Marxist.

The teaching is a spiritual world that exists in the minds and hearts of the citizens of the Buddhist commonweal. Body, speech, and mind exhibit it. The Buddhist community exists in a similar relation to society. The self-vigilance required to follow the teaching in this way is the essence of the system of rules of organization of the Buddhist monastic community, called the Vinaya. If one pursues it with the right attitude, it can become a “skilful means” of spiritual development. The Pali etymology dispels the notion that the Vinaya is essentially ethical. Vinaya means something more like self-control than ethics, although self-control is of course the essential prerequisite of ethics. The actual benefit of the Vinaya is that it imposes a system of “hypervigilance” that in turn facilitates the development of concentration and awareness.

The Buddha’s Attitude to Caste

A famous conversation that he had with the Brahman student Assalayana preserves the Buddha’s attitude to caste. This took place in the ancient Indian city of Savatthi. It was one of the six largest cities of the Buddha’s time. It was located just south of Kapilavatthu. The Buddha’s family lived in Kapilavatthu. Assalayana was a kind of Brahman child prodigy. It appears that he secretly favoured the Buddha. His Brahman peers had to pressure him to question the Buddha about what he thought of the Brahman’s claim to innate caste superiority.

The Buddha shows the falsity of the Brahmans’ claim to be the children of God (literally, ‘sons of Brahma’). He also shows the extent of his international political knowledge when he refers to the Greek colony of Bactria on the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Buddha shows Assalayana that the Brahmans are subject to the same law of moral causality as all beings. Their rebirth is conditional on the quality of their karma. All beings can commit and experiencing good and bad. The Buddha shows that all sentient beings possess the same spiritual potential to purify themselves of negativity. Gradually, the Buddha leads Assalayana to the realization that the qualities that he was attributing to Brahmans as a social class are potentially true of anyone; therefore, the doctrine of innate caste superiority is false.

This story is also a classic example of one of the Buddha’s teaching techniques. He leads the inquirer from a question to a new order of understanding by showing the subtle meaning and implications of ideas in a progressive process of logical inquiry and analysis of underlying assumptions and inferences. In the same way, the Buddha found ethical reinterpretations of the traditional Indian ritual practices, like the worship of the six directions: “Then Sigalika the householder’s son, having got up early and gone out of [the city] of Rajagaha, was paying homage, with wet clothes and hair and with joined palms, to the different directions: to the east, the south, the west, the north, the nadir, and the zenith.” In other words, the practice involved rising with the sun and performing a ritual ablution.

It is characteristic of the Buddha’s methodology that, after asking Sigalika why he performed this practice (which was because it was the will of his dying father); he explains the practice in ethical terms. Thus, the Buddha reinterprets traditional practices in symbolic terms and adjusts the context of his exegesis – in this case, ethics – to his audience, a householder.

The implication that I have tried to draw is that the basis of the spiritual path proper to the householder is ethical observances and practices that affect his karma. Thus, he can earn merit for his future well-being. But the way of moral causality is not the whole way of the householder. He does not exclude spiritual development as such; the Buddha also recommends the cultivation of faith and wisdom for the householder too. The householder is involved with moral causality. Therefore, karmic observances are of special relevance to him. It is also noteworthy that the Buddha recommends the cultivation of wisdom to women. Thus, he makes no essential spiritual distinction between male and female householders.

The Buddha attributes the east, the place from which the sun gives light and life, to the parents. The south – the ecliptic, the path of the sun and planets – is the guru. The west, the complement of the parents, is the wife and children, the family. In addition, in the north, the complement of the guru, are friends and companions. The nadir is workers and servants. The zenith is spiritual practitioners and teachers. The Buddha elaborates the ethical implications of this interpretation. Ethical behaviour may affect moral causality directly.

The implication is that what is effective is not the ritual itself. Rather, what is effective is its meaning. In this case, the ethical implication of Sigalika’s performance is not the ritual. Rather, it is his pious adherence to the memory of his father. One should not take from this text that the only meaning of rituals is ethical, however.

The Buddha’s Attitude to Women

The Pali Canon contains many conflicting statements about women. Bhikkhu Bodhi has noted in his introduction to his translation of the Anguttara Nikaya that more liberal passages in the canon are incompatible with other passages that exhibit hostile views to female monastics and women in general. There are only two possible conclusions: either the Buddha did not know his own mind, or these beliefs are additions to the canon. As for the motives for such an addition, a strong Indian and/or Sri Lankan male monastic tradition is a likely candidate. Indian culture still suffers from a disparaging attitude toward women.

According to tradition, there was a major rift among the male members of the first Buddhist council concerning the ordination of women. We know that this topic divided the male community. Nevertheless, the Buddha clearly intended to institute such an order because he did in fact do so, at least according to the Pali Canon. The Buddha also showed through his behavior that he wanted the male and female monastics to be equal. Dr. Chatsumarn Kabilsingh discusses this point at length in her article, “The History of the Bhikkhuni Sangha.”  However, the Vinaya adds eight additional rules to the monastic order for female monastics. The effect of these rules was to submit the female monastics to the authority of the monks. The adoption of these rules appears to have been politically motivated.

The more liberal traditions left in the canon suggest that they are authentic. Tradition established them too well to remove them. The evidence of the canon is that there were many women in the community. The Buddha speaks with and instructs women, apparently on an equal basis with men.

This would explain the widely doubted conversation between Ananda and the Buddha in which the Buddha refused to ordain women, but Ananda had to persuade him to do so, and the Buddha’s prophecy that the life of the order would halve from 1,000 to 500 years as a result. Many scholars consider this conversation to be an invention. There are many references to female monastics all through the Pali Canon.

Most likely the Buddha, like Jesus, was far ahead of his time in his attitude to women. You may remember his fondness for women during his time as a Bodhisattva. Ananda was also known for his fondness for women. Probably he freely admitted women to the community, and conversed with them as equals, just as he did with the four castes of the Indian caste system, which he opposed. This seems to be the view of women most consistent with the tone and tenor of the ethical teachings in general, especially concerning caste. Within the community, the only proper separator was seniority.

Perfect Livelihood

Right livelihood is the fifth step in the Eightfold Path. It is the highest step of the middle, ethical section of the Path, consisting of three steps. Right livelihood specifically addresses the dharmic way of living as a householder. The Eightfold Path begins with Right View and the cultivation of wisdom. This shows that the experience of awakening is not exclusive of the state of a worldling, especially if one accepts Peter Masefield’s sequential view of the path, which the discourses also support.

Awakening is sufficient to achieve enlightenment, though not identical with it. Therefore, enlightenment does not exclude the householder. Formal chastity too is not a requirement of awakening. The Buddha commended householders to practise self-restraint and mutual respect. The Buddha praised the love that arises from the state of being married. He declared that such love could bring about a fortunate rebirth in a spiritual world. He also preferred marriage based on love to arranged marriage. The Buddha considered arranged marriage to be a degenerate practice of the Brahmans. He also taught the practice of loving kindness.

If there were any further doubt, the example of King Bimbisara of the Magadha Empire is instructive. Ajatasattu, his son, later assassinated Bimbisara. King Bimbisara was both a householder and a king. Nevertheless, he achieved “stream-entry.” Stream-entry is equivalent at least to the attainment of Right View. I have called this state “awakening.” Such an individual is automatically noble, if not emancipated. Therefore, he is a member of the noble community, whereas the ordinary community includes worldlings. Dr. Masefield has documented this in detail.

The Way of the Worldling

The Buddha was passing through the market town of Kakkarapatta, in the country of the Koliyans. A man called Dighajanu approached the Buddha. He asked him how he and his people, as lay people and householders, with children and families, engaged in sensual pleasures, could benefit from the teaching, both in this life and in the next. The Buddha, in turn, taught him four things that lead to satisfaction in this life, and four more things that lead to satisfaction in the next life.

To obtain benefits in this life, the Buddha recommends learning a profession, saving one’s money, cooperating with neighbours, and living simply and frugally with self-restraint. To obtain benefits in the next life, the Buddha recommends following the teaching, practising self-restraint, being generous, and cultivating wisdom. He especially recommended the realization of the truth of impermanence and the chain of moral causality. These realizations are widely considered to be the essential realizations that lead to the realization of emptiness and emancipation itself. The Buddha gives the same advice to women. One may use the law of moral causality to benefit oneself in this life and the next. It is also a way of spiritual development that leads directly to enlightenment and not merely to some secondary state.

Living Magically

The law of moral causality on the one hand, including mind in the six sense spheres on the other, gives mind the same ontological status as seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, and smelling. The recognition of mind as a “sixth sense” results in the realization that the individual can influence their experience of the world, and therefore the world itself, directly through the exercise of intention. Intention is the foundation of merit and the meditation on loving kindness. Therefore, it follows that, by a combination of self-purification and beneficial actions, one can exercise a general influence on one’s future destiny. If one accepts that the ordinary householder can do this, how much further can the non-ordinary man take this, the arhant, the bodhisattva, or even the Buddha himself? In Tibet, in the tulku tradition, one can predict or discover the time and place of the future rebirth of a practitioner who has reached a certain level of realization by intuitive methods.

When travelling amongst the Bhagga people, the householder Nakulapita and his wife, Nakulamata, approached the Buddha. Nakulapita performs an act of truth. He affirms that he has never wronged his wife, even in his mind. By this act of power, he declares the intention that they should be reborn together in their next life. Nakulamata amplifies this act of truth by a second act of truth, identical to her husband’s.

Rather than admonishing the couple, the Buddha declares that a couple who has the strong intention to be reborn together should exist in a single harmony of spirit. By the force of their intention, they will achieve their will. The law of moral causality is not something abstract or theoretical. It is vital, powerful, real, and influential. Causality is the force of intention. The “power of truth” is an example of the teaching that developed into Tantra. Keep in mind that this is an ancient text. Along with many other references, it shows that “proto-Tantra” reaches into the deepest strata of the Pali Canon.

This situation is like Christianity. Some Gnostic or proto-Gnostic texts are as old as the canonical writings preserved in the New Testament, to the embarrassment of the Church. The Buddha also declared that this kind of love, which clearly includes romantic love, purified by self-restraint and mutual respect, merits rebirth in a spiritual world, that is, one of the higher, more spiritual realms. Therefore, it may be a spiritual practice.

Anathapindika was the foremost lay follower of the Buddha. He was reborn in the Tusita world as a bodhisattva. Anathapindika’s attainment of the “dharma eye” means that he entered the irreversible stream of the path immediately during or just after his first conversation with the Buddha. It refers to the attainment of Perfect View. Anathapindika was a wealthy householder and businessperson. He was a married man with two sons and three daughters. He was not celibate. Subsequently, he became impoverished and predeceased the Buddha.

Revised October 4, 2025