"Buddhist" King is Violating Buddhist Ethics
By Gunnar Gällmo

http://hubpages.com/hub/Buddhist-king-is-violating-Buddhist-ethics

If I were living in Thailand, I wouldn't dare to write this article. If so, it might have given me fifteen years in jail, for "lese majesty" - a concept found in Hinduism and in medieval Christianity, but actually not in Buddhism, which is supposed to be the country's state religion.

I am, however, living in a country - Sweden - which, unfortunately, is a monarchy as well; but where, fortunately, it is permitted to criticize the chief of state.

And why on earth shouldn't it?

The most basic moral principle of Thailand's official state religion, the first precept that every serious Buddhist is supposed to try to follow, is non-violence, the principle that intentional killing should not be done.

Not even by kings.

Especially not by kings.

Not by their own hands, not by giving orders to others, and not by neglecting to save a life when in a position to do so, for example by granting pardon to a condemned prisoner.

Original Buddhism was not very positive to monarchy, or to power in general. According to the traditional story, the Buddha himself was born a prince, but had to actually run away from home to avoid becoming a prince, finding it impossible to combine power and wisdom.

However, he was not in a position to change the world; so to minimize the damage caused by kings, there is a traditional list of ten royal duties (dasa-raja-dhamma). Number eight of the ten is non-violence.

Traditional Buddhist ethics does not care whether a killing is legal or illegal. If intentional, it is wrong; it does not matter whether secular law forbids it, permits it or even orders it to be done.

Killing in war is not better than killing in peace.

Murder is murder, even if legal.

And even if renamed "capital punishment".

So for a Buddhist ruler to permit a death sentence to be carried out just isn't possible. If a ruler is Buddhist, he doesn't permit it; and if he permits it, he isn't Buddhist.

Buddhism is supposed to be the state religion of Thailand. King Bhumibol is supposed to be a Buddhist, and a protector of Buddhism, and to rule in strict accordance with Buddhist ethics.

Which, unfortunately, he doesn't.

A time ago I read an article from the Bangkok Post, through Buddhist Channel, at

http://www.buddhistchannel.tv/index.php?id=70,8497,0,0,1,0

The Bangkok Post is careful not to say anything about the king's personal responsibility - its editors may not want to spend fifteen years in jail - but it does mention the possibility of "individual Royal Pardon".

Because king Bhumibol has not granted such pardon, two men have recently been killed in cold blood by the kingdom of Thailand.

The Ten Duties of a King, as formulated in the Pali Jatakas, are:

1. Dana: Liberality, generosity, charity, concern with the welfare of the people.
2. Sila: High moral character, observing at least the Five Precepts.
3. Pariccaga: Willing to sacrifice everything for the people -- comfort, fame, even his life.
4. Ajjava: Honesty and integrity, not fearing some or favoring others.
5. Maddava: Kindness and gentleness.
6. Tapa: Austerity, content in the simple life.
7. Akkodha: Free from hatred, ill-will, and anger.
8. Avihimsa: Non-violence, a commitment to peace.
9. Khanti: Patience, tolerance, and the ability to understand others’ perspectives.
10. Avirodha: Non-obstruction, ruling in harmony with the will of the people and in their best interests.

Cited from

http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/buddhamorals.html

King Bhumibol of Thailand is not living up to these duties. He is letting people kill each other. He is sometimes in a position where he could stop it, but doesn't, and people die because of his neglect.

According to basic Buddhist principles, this makes him morally guilty of murder.

What Is a Buddhist King?
By Gunnar Gällmo

After writing two earlier hubs about Buddhism and political power -

http://hubpages.com/hub/Buddhist-king-is-violating-Buddhist-ethics
http://hubpages.com/hub/Buddhist-Imprimatur

- I got a question from a commentator:

"What is a 'Buddhist' king anyway?"

A good question, and I would like to add two others:

1. Is a Buddhist king at all possible?

2. Has there ever been a Buddhist country?

I personally think the answer to both questions is "no".

As to Buddhist kings, the classical legend says that the Buddha had been born a prince, but that he found it impossible to develop wisdom in the palace, so in order to avoid becoming a king, he made what is usually called "the Great Renunciation" (which, in a more irreverent wording, means he ran away from home).

In the collection of the Jataka stories, there is one about how the Buddha-to-be was born in an earlier life as prince Temiya; but when he found out that his royal father was imposing cruel punishments on his subjects, for example the death penalty, he thought it isn't possible to rule a country without sowing a lot of unwholesome seeds - and he remembered that, after having been a king himself in an even earlier life, and acting as kings use to do, he had had to boil in hell for eigthy thousand years as a result.

So he started acting as if he were mentally retarded, and did so right up to the age of puberty, when he was finally declared unfit to be a king and became a hermit instead.

(This seems to me to be a story with a tendency that we today could call Anarchistic - or perhaps I should say Anarco-Pacifistic, to avoid associations to more violence-oriented Anarchists.)

It is also said, according to traditional legend, that two kings became lay disciples of the Buddha during his own lifetime: Pasenadi of Kosala and Bimbisara of Magadha (two countries in what is now Uttar Pradesh and Bihar in India).

But it seems that this didn't help their political ambitions, for both were ousted from their thrones by their own sons, and Bimbisara even murdered by his son and successor, Ajatasattu.

The Sutta about the last days of the Buddha, Maha Parinibbana Sutta, begins with a story how this parricide king, Ajatasattu, tried to get the Buddha's advice about how to invade a neighbouring republic. Instead, the Buddha repeated the advice he had given to this republic how to remain independent, and how to remain a republic.

Finally, there is in the Tipitaka some mentions of a so-called Cakkavatti, often rather freely translated as a "Wheel-Turning Monarch". Whether such a person is supposed to have ever existed, or to be just an ideal for rulers to try to live up to, is debatable - the Tipitaka is not a text-book in history.

In any case, there are two important things said about a Cakkavatti:

1. He both gets and retains his power without any use of violence whatsoever. (That's a point where the emperor Asoka doesn't live up to the Cakkavatti ideal; he got his power before his conversion, by using a lot of violence. I don't think there has ever been a chief of state, or chief of government, who managed to live up to it.)

2. As long as he remains a ruler, even he can't get enlightened; there is no such thing as an enlightened monarchy.

According to traditional legend, it was said about the new-born Prince Siddhattha - the Buddha-to-be - that he would grow up to become either a Cakkavatti or a Buddha; but even he couldn't be both, and that was why he ran away from home before inheriting the throne from his father.

For the reasons above, a combination of Buddhism and Monarchism seems to me not to have a solid foundation in the classical texts of Buddhism.

I think the basic ideology of a ruler, of any ruler, regardless of his public claims, is Machiavellism (which existed long before Machiavelli; some of his ideas can be found in the Arthashastra, written a couple of millennia before he was born).

As to Buddhist countries, Buddhism is a way to be realized by each person individually (paccattam veditabbo viññnuhi.) It is a way going against the stream of this world (patisota), so you can't expect a whole country to follow it, although it may be more or less influenced by it.

And sometimes, certain ethical ideas of Buddhism are easier to find in openly Non-Buddhist countries than in countries that claim to be Buddhist. The death penalty, for example, is abolished in almost all of Europe (which proves it isn't needed), but retained in Sri Lanka and Thailand.

Also, Buddhism seems to have originated in a climate of free and open discussion; at least, that's the impression I get when reading the stories in the Tipitaka about the dialogues between the Buddha and his opponents.

In later Asian history, this climate is not so easy to find; but it arose in the West from the Renaissance and onwards, and may have made it easier for Buddhism to be accepted by many Westerners.

And this would probably make it quite impossible for Pope Benedict to write to Prime Minister Berlusconi of Italy, as the four Mahayanakatheras of Sri Lanka have written to their President, and ask him, as they have done, to suppress all books who present his religion in a way he doesn't like.

His own faithful would just laugh him out.