Heart Sutra Mantra

My calligraphy of Heart Sutra
Siddhaṃ script

The Heart Sutra is a synthetic text composed in China from three main elements:

1. Extracts from Kumārajīva's translation of the Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra (T 8.223; ca. 5th century).
2. Elements drawn from the devotional cult of Avalokiteśvara (觀自在 Guānzìzài). 
3. The cult of dhāraṇī chanting, and a mantra probably drawn from existing Chinese texts. 

The first element is quite well covered in the literature, especially as Jan Nattier (1992) focusses on this part of the text in her reconstruction of its provenance. My next essay will address a lesser known aspect of this issue which is buried in Nattier's footnotes. The second element deserves a little more attention, but is covered briefly in Nattier (174-5). This essay will largely focus on the third element. 

In her long essay on the origins of the Heart Sutra, Jan Nattier notes (footnote 52 & 53) that two other scholars have found mantras similar to the Heart Sutra mantra in other places in the Chinese Tripiṭaka. One of these references is particularly significant as it seems to pre-date the composition of the Heart Sutra itself. This essay will present the Chinese source texts for these mantras. Before dealing with these mantras, we need to pay some attention to the dhāraṇī cult itself, and try to establish some terminological boundaries. 

The cult of dhāraṇī chanting is sometimes placed in the context of Tantric Buddhism, but I think this is a mistake. It is true that mantras are a feature of Tantric Buddhism. However, as Ryūichi Abé. has shown, Tantric Buddhism requires certain elements to be present in order to be Tantric. In The Weaving of Mantra he emphasises the abhiṣeka or initiation in particular because the abhiṣeka is the ür-ritual which underpins all of Tantric Buddhist practice. In Japan, prior to the arrival of Kūkai and Saichō with genuine Tantric Buddhism, some Tantric elements were present: images, dhāraṇī and mantra, and even texts such as the Mahāvairocana Abhisaṃbodhi Tantra. However, in the absence of the Tantric paradigm and organising principles, these elements did not add up to Tantric Buddhism.

Abé is trying to revise the history of Japanese Buddhism, but he has enunciated an important hermeneutic for discussing the presence or absence of a mode of Buddhist thought. For example: if a person bows before a Buddha statue, burns incense, and chants oṃ maṇipadme hūṃ, but has no knowledge of why Buddhists do such things, does this make them a Buddhist? These are simply decontextualised actions with no intentional underpinning. They are Buddhist in externals only. A similar argument is simmering away with respect to the Jon Kabat Zinn inspired mindfulness treatments. Does the teaching of mindfulness amount to teaching Buddhism, or does it lack key elements, such as "going for refuge", that render the teaching non-Buddhist? Some Buddhists who teach mindfulness argue that they are teaching Buddhism when they teaching mindfulness. Others argue that the lack of context for the practice, particularly the absence of Buddhist metaphysics, means this is a beneficial secular practice that does not conduce to liberation.

In any case, the point is that although dhāraṇīs were incorporated into Tantric Buddhism, there is nothing in the dhāraṇī sūtras or the chapters inserted into larger texts such as the Saddharma-puṇḍarīka or Survabhāṣotama, to indicate a Tantric context. The first hints of Tantra associated with a mantra seem to be found in the Kāraṇḍavyūha Sūtra according to Alexander Studholm's study of that text, which includes an account of something like an initiation, though it still lacks the central features of the abhiṣeka ritual. The point of chanting dhāraṇīs seems largely to have been protection from malign forces or entities. And thus they have much more in common with the Theravāda practice of parittā chanting than with Tantric practice (at least with respect to the Tantric Buddhism practised by Kūkai). It's not until they are incorporated into rituals centred on the abhiṣeka, that they become Tantric. This criteria is common to other elements that were incorporated, not least the elements from Vedic ritual. No one, to my knowledge, argues that Vedic fire rituals were "proto-Tantric". 

Nattier points to the opinion of Fukui Fumimasa (1981. Source text is in Japanese) that the name of the Heart Sutra in Chinese is 心經 Xīnjīng, literally "heart sūtra", but that 心 xīn (heart) here connotes dhāraṇī rather than 'pith' and that the text might well be a chanting text, i.e. a dhāraṇī text. We know from Xuánzàng's record of his journey to India that he used the text as a protective measure against unseen malevolent spirits. The title of the short text in Sanskrit, Prajñāpāramitāhṛdaya, does not include the word sūtra, and it seems likely that the original, short text was not considered as a sūtra. That transition probably happened in India when the traditional elements of a sūtra, such as the beginning evaṃ maya śrutaṃ... and the appreciation at the end were added. Another reading of 心 is "gist" with the idea that rather than Heart Sutra, the meaning is Gist Text, with the text representing the gist of Prajñāpāramitā.

The dhāraṇīs of the pre-tantric Mahāyāna texts are often radically different in form from the mantras of later Tantric Buddhism. Of course there is a huge amount of variation and cast-iron definitions are difficult to construct.


Defining Mantra and Dhāraṇī

Tantric mantras have a number of structural features in common: a beginning (usually oṃ); a name or function; and a final seed-syllable. 

Typically Tantric mantras begin with oṃ (not auṃ) which served to mark what follows as a mantra. However in the earliest fully-fledged Tantra, the Mahāvairocana Abhisaṃbodhi Tantra, the mantras all begin namas samanta-buddhānāṃ or namas samanta-vajrānāṃ. The ending -ānām indicated the genitive plural case (of the Buddhas). However, in Prakrits (including Pāli) the dative case (to or for the Buddhas) endings began to be replaced by the genitive case endings. Here ending is the usual genitive, but the sense is dative and the words mean "homage to all Buddhas/vajras".

What follows oṃ can be the name of a deity (oṃ amideva hrīḥ, oṃ vajrapāṇi hūṃ, oṃ vagiśvara muṃ) or relate to a function in the ritual, especially purification with the śūnyatā mantra or the Vajrasattva mantra. Names of deities are sometimes in the dative case, or in a kind of faux dative created by the addition of -ye to the end of the word: oṃ muni muni mahāmuni śākyamuniye svāhā. The correct dative of śākyamuni is śākyamunaye (final i is replaced by aye)

Tantric mantras typically end with a seed-syllable (bījākṣara) related to the deity or with svāhā. Sometimes the seed-syllable is specific to the deity, or to the "family" they belong to. Mantras of the vajra family typically end in hūṃ, while the padma family often end in hrīḥ. At other times it seems unconnected to other considerations. For example  oṃ maṇīpadme hūṃ is a padma family mantra. Some mantras incorporate dhāraṇī style features into them which would include the Heart Sūtra mantra and the Tārā mantra (oṃ tāre tuttāre ture svāhā). The variety of mantras is partly due to their being a number of systems existing in parallel. 

Dhāraṇī by contrast seldom begin with oṃ and almost never end in a seed-syllable. They almost always end with svāhā. The word svāhā is the Vedic equivalent to the Hebrew amen. It is used in the Yajurveda to solemnise offerings: one makes an offering of rice mixed with ghee to the fire while chanting, for example "agnaye svāhā" or 'For Agni, amen' (Taittirīra Saṃhitā 7.1.14.1). The content of the dhāraṇī is a string of words or sounds which seldom reference names of deities, and frequently include nonsense words such as hilli, huru often with repetition and ringing the changes of the first syllable: hilli hilli milli milli. There is a tendency to use words ending in -e. Various theories have been proposed to explain this phenomenon, but my opinion is that the -e ending is a Prakrit masculine nominative singular. This probably also applies to the well known oṃ maṇipadme hūṃ mantra. A feature of dhāraṇī, then, is the use of Prakrit or Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit. 

Typical dhāraṇīs from the Saddharmapuṇḍarikā Sūtra:

anye manye mane mamane citte carite same samitā viśānte mukte muktatame same aviṣame samasame jaye kṣaye akṣaye akṣiṇe śānte samite dhāraṇi ālokabhāṣe pratyavekṣaṇi nidhiru abhyantaraniviṣṭe abhyantarapāriśuddhimutkule araḍe paraḍe sukāṅkṣi asamasame buddhavilokite dharmaparīkṣite saṁghanirghoṣaṇi nirghoṇi bhayābhayaviśodhani mantre mantrākṣayate rute rutakauśalye akṣaye akṣayavanatāye vakkule valoḍra amanyanatāye svāhā.

iti me iti me iti me iti me iti me; nime nime nime nime nime; ruhe ruhe ruhe ruhe ruhe| stuhe stuhe stuhe stuhe stuhe svāhā.

There is a world of difference between these two dhāraṇī and most Tantric mantras.


The Heart Sutra Mantra

The Heart Sutra mantra is clearly referred to as a mantra by the text. But it has more features in common with dhāraṇī in form and content. It's lacks the opening oṃ for example, though some traditions have simply added one. The repetition and play of sounds in gate gate pāragate pārasaṃgate is typical of dhāraṇī. Why then does the text refer to this as a mantra? I will look more closely at this issue in the next essay.

Meanwhile let us compare the Heart Sutra mantra with the three mantra/dhāraṇī listed in Nattier's footnotes as being similar. Of these T 12.387  大方等無想經  Dàfāngděng wúxiǎng jīng (Mahāmegha Sūtra), identified by Fukui (1981), is important because it was translated in the early fifth century, two centuries before the proposed date for the composition of the Heart Sutra.

Mantras and dhāraṇīs are typically not translated by the Chinese, but the sounds are represented using characters for their pronunciation.  Unfortunately it can be very difficult to reconstruct the Sanskrit from a Chinese transliteration. For example the character 卑 bēi has been used to transliterate the Sanskrit syllables pra, pre, pe, pi, vi, and vai. Note that I'm using Pinyin Romanisation in these posts, which often does not reflect pronunciation at the time the texts were composed. The language of the day is referred to as Middle-Chinese (MC). Where relevant and possible I will indicate the MC pronunciation 

The dhāraṇī in question is:

竭帝　波利竭帝　僧竭帝　波羅僧竭帝波羅卑羅延坻　
三波羅卑羅延坻　婆羅 婆羅　波沙羅　波娑羅　摩文闍　摩文闍　
遮羅帝　遮羅坻 波遮羅坻 波遮羅坻　三波羅遮羅坻
比提 嘻利 嘻梨　薩隷醯　薩隷醯　富嚧 富嚧 莎呵

jiédì bōlìjiédì sēngjiédì bōluósēngjiédì bōluóbēiluóyánchí
sānbōluóbēiluóyánchí póluó póluó bōshāluó bōsuōluó mówéndū mówéndū
zhēluódì zhēluóchí bōzhēluóchí bōzhēluóchí sānbōluózhēluóchí
bǐtí xīlì xīlí sàlìxī sàlìxī fùlú fùlú shā hē

Fortunately for us some markers are clear at the beginning.  The Mantra in the Heart Sutra in Chinese is:

揭帝　揭帝　般羅揭帝　般羅僧揭帝　菩提 僧 莎訶
jiēdì jiēdì bānluójiēdì bānluósēngjiēdì pútí sēng shāhē

One does not need to understand the characters to see that many of them graphically match up between the two mantras above, especially at the beginning. The opening characters of both are very similar. Both 竭帝 jiédì and  揭帝  jiēdì are transliterations of Sanskrit gate (the difference in pronunciation is a matter of tone). MC pronunciation in both cases was gal (with a hard g sound).

The first words in the Mahāmegha Sutra mantra are: jiédì bōlìjiédì sēngjiédì bōluósēngjiédì which most likely represent Sanskrit: gate parigate saṃgate paragate. The Mahāmegha mantra ends 莎呵 shāhē; the Heart Sutra has 莎訶 shāhē; both represent svāhā. Note the graphic similarity of 呵 and 訶 which have the same pronunciation, he, in MC.

A little note here that the mantra in Xuánzàng's version of the Heart Sutra (T 8.251) has an extra out-of-place character, 僧 sēng, between bodhi (菩提 pútí) and svāhā (莎訶 shāhē). Even though this is probably the oldest version of the text, it is not without problems! 

A similar dhāraṇi is also found in T. 21.1353 東方最勝燈王陀羅尼經 Dōngfāng zuìshèng dēngwáng tuóluóní jīng (First-radiance Knowledge King Sūtra = Sanskrit Agrapradīpadhārāṇīvidyarāja-sūtra). As in T 12.387 the dhāraṇī shares opening elements with the Heart Sutra mantra using the same transliterating characters.

阿  竭帝　波羅竭帝 波羅僧竭帝　    
a    jiédì    bōluójiédì  bōluósēngjiédì   

a gate paragate parasaṃgate

Here the character 阿 is often used for the Sanskrit short 'a' vowel and thus may reference the idea of the perfection of wisdom  in one letter, or more precisely the fact that all dharmas are empty of self existence (sarvadharmāḥ svabhāvaśūnyatāḥ) because they are unarisen (anutpanna). See also The Essence of All Mantras; and Sound, Word, Reality.

The gate gate mantra itself, with the same transliteration, is found in T 18.901 陀羅尼集經 Tuóluóní jí jīng (Dhāraṇī Collection Sūtra). This was translated ca. 653 CE which is around the same time that Nattier proposes for the composition of the Heart Sutra. Note also that it is a collection of dhāraṇī (陀羅尼 Tuóluóní) rather than mantra. The presence of a dhāraṇī in a collection is not conclusive evidence that it existed detached from the Heart Sutra before its composition, but it at least shows that dhāraṇīs can be detachable. It's quite possible that similar examples may turn up with further examination. 

It seems that, not only is the core of the Heart Sutra an extract, but the "mantra" might also be an extract from a dhāraṇī. It might be thought that the fact that the Heart Sutra is a mash-up of bits from other texts invalidates the text. However the composition method closely resembles many Pāli texts which are clearly constructed from pre-existing elements that can be found scattered around the Canon. Far from being unusual, the Heart Sutra is following standard Buddhist procedure. Even the subsequent addition of a proper sūtra introduction is in keeping with general Buddhist practice. 

In my discussion of cladistic methods applied to studying manuscripts, I argued that it would help to iron out biases. Another bias that Buddhist Studies faces is the prejudice in favour of texts with Indian "originals". In my essay Which Mahāyāna Texts? I outlined an observation made in another publication by Jan Nattier about which Mahāyāna texts are prominent in the West. The existence of a Sanskrit manuscript is one of the influential factors likely to bring a Mahāyāna text to prominence. The fact is that the Heart Sutra is broadly accepted as a genuine masterpiece of Buddhist thought. Commentaries from across the spectrum of Buddhist schools adopt the Heart Sutra as an epitome of their thought. Is a text any less authentic because it was not composed in India? It is true that Buddhists believed that the text was of Indian origin and that was an element in popularising it. Now that we know differently will Buddhists have to abandon this text? I think there is no question of abandoning the text, but the necessary adjustments might be quite difficult. One sign of this is the rejection of the Chinese origin thesis by Red Pine in the introduction to his translation and commentary on the Heart Sutra. Though his reasoning is spurious, it is none-the-less interesting to see how difficult Buddhists find it to absorb information like this.

One of the reasons for writing about Nattier's work is that it has yet to penetrate to the heart of popular imagination and the discussion about textual origins is in its infancy. Such writing raises questions for Buddhists. If we take scholarship seriously, then we are forced to examine our own beliefs and sometimes to admit that our beliefs are based on false assumptions such as authenticity being related to India. 

~~oOo~~

A further note 26 sept 2013.

The Tibetan canonical versions of the Heart Sutra both include tadyathā in the mantra itself. I've looked at this generally in Tadyathā in the Heart Sūtra - the inclusion of tadyathā 'like this' in the mantra is like actors speaking stage directions out loud. One of the versions also interpolates oṃ into the mantra as do some of the Nepalese manuscripts. 

 

Bibliography

I've already written about the mantra of this text a couple of times:

• Words in Mantras that end in -e (see also Some Additional Notes).

• Tadyathā in the Heart Sūtra. 

• Heart Sūtra Mantra. (on my mantra website). 

All Chinese texts from CBETA.

• Abé, Ryūichi (1999). The Weaving of Mantra: Kūkai and the Construction of Esoteric Buddhist Discourse. New York: Columbia University Press.

• Fukui Fumimasa (1981) Hannya shingyô no rekishiteki kenkyû. [= Historical studies of the Buddhist scripture Prajñaparamita-hrdaya or Heart Sutra.] Tōkyō: Shunjūsha. 

• Nattier, Jan (1992). 'The Heart Sūtra: a Chinese apocryphal text?' Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies. 15 (2) 153-223. Online: http://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/ojs/index.php/jiabs/article/view/8800/2707

• Studholme, Alexander (2002). The origins of oṃ manipadme hūṃ : a study of the Kāraṇḍavyūha Sūtra. Albany: State university of New York Press.

John Lydon was my Elvis

"Americans are really suspicious of anything cerebral, and Zappa didn't disguise his intelligence well enough. In addition to being a man of wide-ranging talent, one amazing thing that always struck me about Frank was his melodic dimension... Frank Zappa was my Elvis."

- Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons

"Ever get the feeling
you've been cheated?"

Zappa was an inspiration to me as well. I once an article called Frank Zappa: the Idol of my Youth. But I think if one person sums up the attitude of my generation, if anyone is 'my Elvis' it was John Lydon, or Johnny Rotten as he was also known. Lydon combined intelligence with anger and outspoken disregard for authority. A lot of people my age believed him when he chanted "no future...". He was acting out something most of us felt at some level. I'm three days shy of being 10 years younger than Lydon, so he seemed more like an older brother than the older generation.

Neither Zappa nor Lydon had much time for hippies. Lydon was once asked why he hated hippies, and replied "they're complaisant". This off-the-cuff sneer has always struck me as apposite. Why is this relevant to a Buddhist blogger? Because most of the Buddhist organisations in the West are now run by Baby Boomers and they took the hippies seriously, or they were actually hippies (some still are). Statistics for the Triratna Buddhist Order, and anecdote from beyond, suggest that Baby Boomers are also still the primary pool from which we draw members. Baby Boomers are officially those born from 1946-1964. The average Western Buddhist was born in these years, participated to some extent in the counter culture, experimented with hallucinogens, and now has a steady, but boring job and a family of 2.4 kids now grown up. They vote Labour or Green and still cling to the idea of a revolution in some form or other. They still believe it's possible to "change the world".

This essay is partly inspired by something written some time ago on Progressive Buddhist, and also a post on Smiling Buddha Cabaret. Western Buddhism quite clearly reflects the values of the people involved in it. Lots of bloggers think that the emphasis is slanted towards the socialist, inclusive, tolerant, feel-good, "nice", all-is-one end of the political spectrum. As I replied to the anonymous author at Progressive Buddhist, the Buddha that one meets in the Pāli Canon:

"...was all personal responsibility, self-reliance, hard work, discipline, and no excuses... traditional conservative values."

I could add that, despite the famous Buddhist tolerance for other religions, the Pāli Canon Buddha went about destroying the religious faith of every non-believer he met, like Richard Dawkins on amphetamine. He wasn't beyond calling people corrupt and spiritually destitute fools (e.g DN 13) and likening the Brahmins to dogs (AN 3.56). Insults, invective and ironic humour make for laugh out loud reading at times (DN 27.23 - well you have to know Pāli to see the pun, but it is funny). And just look at the monastic establishments of Asia. They are arch conservatives, resistant to all forms of change, clinging to decades old traditions they claim date from millennia ago. The views of the Buddhist establishment in Asia seem almost the polar opposite of liberal Western democracies. Views on women, for example, seem archaic and bizarrely hostile.

So how come Western Buddhism is do different to traditional Buddhism? Partly I suppose it appealed to disillusioned Baby Boomers who had already lost trust in authority, and rightly so, but were floundering for lack of clear goals and values. They tended to lean to the political left, even to the extent of foolishly thinking that 1960's Russia or China offered a via alternative to the status quo. They wanted, desperately, to believe in a communist utopia and some still do. The values of friendliness and compassion gelled with the all-embracing, giddy free-love of the hippies, and the we're all-in-this-together communists. But none of it had substance. Unfortunately it sometimes survives in what Sangharakshita has called pseudo-egalitarianism: the idea that we are literally all equal, all the same; indeed that "all-is-one". This leads to rampant relativism and further erosion of values.

One of the great ironies of the hippy age was that they preached brotherhood while selfishly indulging in sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll. Meanwhile the regressive Baby Boomers were organising themselves to take over governing the world - and I mean this literally. Governments that were nominally conservative but were in fact infected with enthusiasm for a new kind of liberalism, ruled the UK and the USA almost throughout the hippie heyday, partly as a result of political apathy on the left. The one US exception was JFK and he was assassinated. In the UK Callaghan's Labour (and the Labour-Liberal coalition) presided over the Winter of Discontent in 1977. Drunk on the power of their collectivity unions began to be greedy and to extort concessions from the bosses. It could only ever end badly, as the wealthy are happy to tolerate many things, but not attacks on their wealth and privilege. Addled by drugs the hippies were a force for confusion and inertia. Tune in, turn on, and drop out.

By the late 1970s the Right in the USA had begun to make common cause with the previously apolitical Christian fundamentalists. Allowing the Neoliberals to dominate government was to fundamentally misunderstand the nature of politics. You can't opt out. By not participating you simply open the field to more motivated people - and the right-wing are nothing if not motivated. What was worse however was that Neoliberal ideology went mainstream. In New Zealand we elected a Labour government in 1984 and by the mid 1990's they had done to our economy exactly what Thatcher did in Britain. They turned it into a model Neoliberal economy with no trade barriers, no strong unions, minimal protection for workers, free movement of capital, and huge debts. If anything NZ was more extreme than either the UK or USA. When New Labour came to power in Britain they continued to implement Neoliberal economic policies, freeing the finance sector to build up a huge debt bubble. Yes, it fuelled an unprecedented boom that seemed like an economic miracle, but the price was the collapse of the economies of Europe and the longest recession in history for the UK. In this they aped policies implemented by Alan Greenspan in the USA. The influence of the Chicago School of Economics and former executives of Goldman Sachs was worldwide.

Neoliberals tuned in, turned on and took over. And this led to the debacle of the every-man-for-himself 1980's. I was a teenager and really thought it likely that Ronald Raygun would start a nuclear war with Russia. My generation, teens in the 1980s and 1990s, became selfish in a totally different way. We were still disillusioned with authority and perhaps with even more reason to be, but we were also disillusioned with hippies and communists. In short, we had nowhere to run. The Sex Pistols broke up before I really switched-on to their music, but the punks symbolised an attitude of "Fuck You" that played out for a little while before Neoliberals took control of record companies and made the music bland again. Lydon and the Pistols gave shape to the impotent rage we felt as yuppies replaced hippies. My generation did not take drugs for fun and indulge in fantasies of universal brotherhood, we took drugs to escape the fear of a world gone mad with power and felt isolated from everyone. The subculture that defined Generation X was the Goth. We saw a world in which multinational corporations became increasingly powerful and rich, and in which financial speculation reaped huge profits when it worked, and impoverished ordinary people when it did not. We saw, if we were watching, the impoverishment of Africa and South East Asia by the IMF and the World Bank's imposition of Neoliberal policies there. We saw Japan come from nowhere to world domination of the car market, to long term crushing recession and the end of jobs for life, just in our teen years. And presuming we did not simply join in, we tended to spiral into depression (sometimes both) and to fracture into innumerable sub-cultures with no sense of counter-culture. 

Lydon was angry, but funny; raving but witty; frightening, but on our side (though perhaps he would sneer at such a sentiment). He was not a likeable character, but as we grew up public figures seemed more and more manufactured and dishonest. And at least Lydon said what he thought and was against the phonies. "Anger is an energy" as he was later to sing. And he had a lot to be angry about in the late 70s and early 80s in London. After the winter of discontent, it was the Thatcher years. In the US it was Ronald Raygun and George Bush Snr. In retrospect President Raygun forced the Soviets to bankrupt themselves through the arms race and that caused the collapse of the Iron Curtain. Ironically, I suspect he will be treated kindly by history for that, despite being one of the principle players in the Neoliberal take over.

In power, the Left no longer pursue genuinely socialist policies of caring for the society. These are replaced by popularism where the squeaky wheels get the attention. Supposedly leftist governments like Blair's took outrageous (and illegal) actions like going to war with Iraq. There has been a steady erosion of civil liberties associated with the "War on Terror" to the point where that war is itself terrifying. This week a journalist was detained and questioned under anti-terror laws and Chelsea Manning was sentenced to 35 years in jail for exposing criminality in the US military. Frightening. The implications are quite sinister. Two good fictionalised accounts of where this might lead can be found in Cory Doctorow's Little Brother, and Ken McLeods's Intrusion. The first is American and the second British. Intrusion is probably the more frightening vision since it is not very far in the future and reads like a plausible extrapolation of the current trends. Disengagement has allowed Neoliberals to take over the world's governments. Life is not going to improve under these conditions. To be disengaged from politics is abandon self-responsibility.

One of the great ironies of British politics is the Conservative Party. This party of so-called "conservatives" swept to power on a reformist agenda portraying themselves as economic progressives in response to the tired and wasteful economic policies of Labour. In fact their ideology is not conservative at all, it is Neoliberal. They embrace laissez faire economics and have launched major reform programs which are designed to reshape British Society along laissez faire lines. They have opened the door to the eventual destruction of the welfare state for example, and made every effort to punish the poor and weak for being economically unproductive. The Conservatives are now a radical liberal party.

I suspect that the bloggers currently taking aim at Buddhism-lite, at middle-class white Buddhism, at feel-good Buddhism, at 'good Buddhists' are my age or younger. Our parents were the post war Baby Boomers, and we were called Generation X by the media who like a good sound bite. Disaffected from birth, disinclined to political engagement, cynical, but with a fine appreciation of irony and satire. "No future, no future for me" sang John Lydon back in the day, although it must be said that his future turned out rather well and he played a great set at that bastion of mainstream rock, The Glastonbury Festival this year (2013). That said, the future that awaited people our age was to see growing inequality and division. Not an apocalypse, but the gradual transformation of most of the population into wage and debt slaves trapped in small and relatively meaningless lives accompanied by jaw dropping entertainments 24/7. 

So does Buddhism have to be saccharine, woolly, soft and cuddly, all-embracing, lovey-dovey? Hell no. It does not. I'm quite pleased to see words like hardcore being associated with Buddhism, though not particularly impressed by the content of so-called hardcore Buddhism to date. On the whole Western Buddhism strikes me as rather complaisant, even when it is posturing as hardcore. And Buddhists I know are generally more complaisant now than they were when I became a Buddhist 20 years ago.

Perhaps a strand of Western conservative Buddhism will also emerge? One that doesn't simply reproduce the conservatism of Asia but gives expression to something new. A conservatism that does not have the rigidity of Confucianism and the inertia of Taoism at it's heart, but is rooted in the values of the Renaissance and the European Enlightenment? 

We live in a time of confused values, of unclear personal and social boundaries, and of divided communities and loyalties; where virtue is disregarded, and vice rules. Where there is no community, and individuals are simply ground down. Where traditional political movements have abandoned their principles to pursue popularity and self-interest.

Conservative elements in a society force progressive elements to justify change and help to stop change for change's sake. They support individual striving (something Buddhists ought to appreciate). Liberals takes this to the extreme and  Progressive elements prevent society from falling into formalism or being unable to adapt to change that is unavoidable. They ensure that no one is left behind as progress occurs.We need some of each.

Clearly my response to the existential situation is not quite the anarchy endorsed by the young Lydon. While he seems to see himself as a rebel still, he's something of an establishment figure now, albeit as irascible as ever. I recently watched a video of 60 year old Roger Daltrey singing "Hope I die before I get old". No doubt he would now argue that you're only as old as you feel. I think the whole anarchy thing was a youthful pose in any case. Disengagement from politics has served us badly. Extremely badly. We've seen what a small group of motivated and engaged people can achieve in the Neoliberal revolution. And most of us felt unable to stop it because we bought into the idea that we are powerless and alone. Of course they had enormous resources behind them. But they are the 1%, and we are the 99%.

In the UK the membership of the Conservative Party is down to just 100,000 people. That means that if 100,001 more people joined with a common purpose they could take over the party. I suspect that the Triratna Buddhist Order could probably muster enough supporters to do such a thing. If we were united. Imagine that?