Anup Dhar, Anjan Chakrabarti & Serap Kayatekin

Abstract

This conversation with the fourteenth Dalai Lama—the spiritual-political inspiration of the displaced Tibetan community—revolves around questions of why a practitioner of the Buddha Dharma would like to call himself Marxist, and also his views on the violence of both Marxist praxis and religion. The Dalai Lama splits Marxism into, on the one hand, violent paranoid statecraft, and, on the other, the moral principle of equal distribution. He aligns with the latter. He also displaces other-worldly religion to this-worldly moksha; he calls it spirituality. The conversation brings to dialogue the possible political consequences of a this-worldly spirituality and the possible spiritual consequences of a reflexive Marxism keenly attuned to experiences of human suffering.

Key Words

Buddhism, Marxism, Religion, Spirituality, Violence

From: Rethinking Marxism 2016 28 (3-4) (Special issue: Marxism and spirituality)

Editor: Wang Yi