Ken Jones on the Four Noble Political Truths

Ken Jones

When we look at the state of the political and social world, we can see Four Noble Political Truths that, like the basic Buddhist principles they reflect, take us from suffering and bondage to liberation.

First is the truth that individual suffering and delusion are socially supercharged. Collectively, we commit immense follies that, if committed individually, would be pathological.

Second is the truth that the fores that drive history and politics are ultimately the same as those that characteristically drive the individual person. The latter experiences a profound sense of lack arising from the impermanence and insubstantiality of this flimsy self. Part of the social response to this has been to bond with other individuals to create a belongingness identity. It may be our race, our nation, our religion, our social class, or anything else.

This collective identity is reinforced by emphasizing the difference of other comparable groupings, and, better still, our superiority, and, even better still, the threat that they pose to us. Ideologies add a gutsy righteousness to this black and white picture. Hates condoned by our community enable us ethically to project all our rancor and frustration onto other communities. Hence the savage warfare, heartless economic exploitation and ravaged environment that occupy such a large part of human history. hence the ease with which former neighbors and schoolmates have slaughtered one another in countless killing fields.

the above process I call “antithetical bonding” — the heart of social delusion, and according to Buddhism the building block of history and society. The concept embodied in these two long words is easy to understand. Every citizen disgusted with conventional politics knows what they mean.

Third, there is a way out of social suffering. Reformers, radicals, and revolutionaries have been telling us this for centuries. But the results have at best been mixed and at worst disastrous. In principle, we now have all the material resources to provide every citizen of our planet with a decent standard of living. But we are unable to do this. The latest ideology — free-market free-for-all capitalism — is actually making the majority of the world’s people poorer. But it provides a rationale for the greedy consumerism of a minority that is wrecking the planet. But there must be something else, something indispensable, that will enable us to find our way out of social suffering.

Fourth is the truth that we must cut the roots of our social problem, the roots of aggressiveness, acquisitiveness, and ignorance as to what we are really up to and why. We need to expose and wither those roots by creating a radical culture of awakening. This would be a culture in which the work of contemplative inquiry — alone and with others — is no less important than earning a living, raising a family, and keeping physically healthy. This would not heal our divisions overnight, but it would begin to dissolve the underlying bloody-mindedness that makes them so intractable. It would nurture wisdom and compassion, and a host of skillful means. Without these resources we cannot build the socially just and ecologically sustainable global comonwealth that is the collective expression of enlightenment. And which, in turn, would provide, for all a positive environment for spiritual growth.