Dr. Guang Xing’s lecture has succinctly clarified that the Buddha does not teach us to desert the world in seeking our deliverance. However, the Buddha’s immense compassion for and his preaching of the Dhamma to all mankind is pivotally centered on the cessation of dukkha. I have gross difficulty in linking Dr. Guang Xing’s argument with the historic foundation of a “social philosophy” per se.
The night the Buddha decided to denounce the world, his one-day old infant son has also been denied the basic human right of parental love and care (beyond the worldly happiness and material comfort in palace). The Buddha then ordained his son when he was seven year old, but again causing deep grief to the aging King Suddhodana. And at the night of his step brother, Prince Nanda’s consecration ceremony, the Buddha admitted him into the Order. Wouldn’t it be difficult to conceive the grief of a heart-broken bride and who would have mercy for a weeping woman?
In the end, the Buddha has become the mentor of Venerable Rahula, but nothing as an affectionate father. Venerable Nanda has also attained Arahantship, thanks to the Buddha’s great guidance. And we know that the Buddha has done these because of his greater love for the whole humanity. But his priority in the course of expounding the Dhamma clearly implies that family and social order is simply not his very concern? Individual morality as the driver for consequential relationship in paticcasamuppāda also forms the basis of a moral and harmonious society. But is this perhaps more an unintended consequence instead of a sound historic basis for the establishment of a social philosophy of Buddhism?
