> The funny thing about communists is that many of them share the same
> spiritual idea of humanity, only in godless terms. There is One Spirit
> that
> unites us, but it's of this world, here and now, and if only enough
> people
> understood the emancipating power of socialism, they would flock to the
> ideal. So, in general terms, the atheist left isn't that far from the
> spiritual left -- the difference lies in the definition of reality,
> and the
> point of life itself.
I think that the area of agreement between Buddhist thought and left (esp. Marxist) thought is somewhere around the idea of solidarity -- a concept that has only been fitfully and partially appreciated by American leftists. Also, Marx's idea of "species-being," the "ensemble of social relations" (6th Thesis on Feuerbach). Try digging the connections between this idea and the Buddha's "co-dependent origination."
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________________ A gentleman haranguing on the perfection of our law, and that it was equally open to the poor and the rich, was answered by another, 'So is the London Tavern.' -- "Tom Paine's Jests..." (1794); also attr. to John Horne Tooke (1736-1812) by Hazlitt