David Brazier

Most people place subordination to the state as the highest inevitability, and subordination to economic factors — even relatively trivial ones — as the next highest, and then try to fit their spirituality into whatever space is left — if that has not already been used up by the energy consumed in the dynamics of personal life. In consequence, spirituality means little to them and their lives are built on other principles.

The modern world maintains its caste system (delusion) by relying upon national rivalry played out through force (politics, hate) and money or debt (economics, greed). We think that our white countries are democratic and feel proud, for instance, but where there ever to be a worldwide election — for the UN Security Council, say—where would the white caste be then?

As long as Buddhism’s primary goal is subsumed within nationalism and national cultures, it will never be met. Unless Buddhism can help us to rise out of our local culture, caste and so on, no real enlightenment will occur. An enlightened person is a citizen of the world, not a citizen of Japan or Germany or Britain or any other local power structure. Ideas of historic or economic determinism are myths that seek to excuse what should not be perpetrated, and to lull people into thinking that the things that they knowingly do

that are bad, or not the best they can do, are necessary and inevitable. Determinism of either kind is, simply put, a lie. — Beliefnet.com, concluded