The Politics of Going for Refuge

Reflections on the Three Jewels

Every Buddhist knows about going for refuge to the Three Jewels, the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Noble Sangha. The reason we seek refuge in the Three Jewels is that we cannot find any refuge in samsara, aimlessly wandering from lifetime to lifetime throughout the six realms inhabited by sentient beings.

These days, however, there is a growing trend amongst Buddhist leftist literati who insist that we integrate this or that political conviction with the Dharma. Dissatisfied with classical Buddhist silence on issues of class, modern issues are projected onto the Dharma, and those who dissent from these projections are found morally impoverished . Can the Dharma inform our political choices? Of course, but more likely our political choices will be motivated by self/class interest. Can Dharma be a catalyst for humanitarian and ecological activism? Of course. Can it be reduced to that? No. Why? No form of mundane activism can eliminate suffering and its causes.

For example, there is an intelligent article on Substack advocating communalism (a polite name for anarchism) as an appropriate political structure for Buddhists to express their political and economic interests—one I happen to agree with—but it goes too far in denigrating so-called Buddhist liberals for their liberalism. We Western Buddhists are too few to start sniping at each other over “right politics.” There are more important things to debate, such as websites offering Buddhish grift, mindfulness apps, and other forms of commodification.

Liberalism succeeded monarchism with the rise of the Western democracies, and while it indeed partners with capitalism, hand in glove, it’s impossible to overlook the fact that liberal capitalist society gave us the social and economic advantages to even meet the Dharma. During my clinical internship in Amdo, Tibet, in 2009, Tibetans were constantly amazed at how much access to Dharma we Western students had. I have to acknowledge that this access was due in part to the need for lama’s to come to the West to raise funds, and as such, like everything in the West, Buddhist teachings have been commodified, with respected Asian teachers running internet websites and foundations that annually pull in millions of dollars in revenue.

The writer of the referenced article overlooks the fact that going for refuge in the Three Jewels has nothing to do with one’s politics. No mundane leader, political system or ideology, or political party can be a refuge for a Buddhist. Also, there is no such thing and can be no such thing as collective liberation. There is no Marxist, Anarchist, Capitalist, Monarchist, etc., varieties of liberation as well. Not even the system outlined in Vinaya is de facto liberative. Liberation, meaning freedom from afflictions that drive rebirth, arises solely from seeing how things really are. That is solely a result of personal cultivation and insight.

Dharma is not a political movement. It never was. While the Buddha criticized certain notions around birth rights, he did not articulate a theory of class, power, and hierarchy, other than to point out differences in class, and so on, were generally determined by karma and its ripening. This mechanism strikes modern people as too simplistic, and justifiably, people have observed the theory of karma used as an excuse for social and economic inequality. However, the Dharma insists that all human beings are equal in their potential to liberate themselves from samsara. But no one is able to liberate another from suffering, as the Buddha himself declared. Social movements can employ principles like generosity, non-violence, compassion, and so on, but what they cannot do is provide refuge. Political leaders, systems, and parties cannot provide refuge. Only the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Noble Sangha can provide refuge. We need to keep this in mind.