David Brazier

It was not Marx the economic scientist who achieved this. It was Marx the writer and speaker who created a mythology around the ideas of liberation and revolution. Liberation and revolution are key concepts in Buddhism too. The meaning attaching to them is different, and the suggested means are totally opposite - but the hope of a better world is not really so fundamentally different. The Buddhist revolution - the turning of the dharma wheel - is nonviolent. It is still, however, intended to cut through the hypocrisy of our world and establish a new order. The Buddhist liberation is inner as well as outer. Marx took away religion as the opiate of the people, but he left them hollow. A true revolution requires both inner and outer work - and it never ends.

Marx and his successors thought to impose the new order with weapons, but could only achieve and justify this by making it seem an historic inevitability. Corrupt myths are needed to support corrupt practice. Buddha saw that the only way to a better world was to renounce weapons.

He was the first great proponent of nonviolence as the route to social change. He was a demonstrator in the strict sense of the word — he demonstrated what he meant.

If you are going to overcome caste, then you must give up your own cast. If you are going to abolish oppression and violence, then it is no good employing those methods yourself. People who are willing to be so consistent are rare. — Beliefnet.com