Buddhism and Social Justice

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Venerable Acharya Buddharakkhita is Founder and President of the Maha Bodhi Society in Bangalore, India. In 1954, he was a member of the Editorial Board of the Sixth Buddhist Synod in Rangoon, which brought out a complete edition of the Pali Canon. Since then, he has written numerous books and translations of Buddhist texts, which have been published in many countries. Best known is his classic English rendering of the Dhammapada. He also edits and publishes a monthly magazine, Dhamma. An internationally recognized meditation master, he has lived and taught abroad, and founded the Buddhist Meditation Society in the United States. He has also taught Buddhology at the Nalanda Pali Post-graduate Institute, Bihar University. Firmly committed to putting Buddhist principles into practice, he has achieved distinction for multi-faceted humanitarian activities in his native India.

How the Buddha brought an unprecedented and unique social change by introducing measures of social justice entirely by popular choice and without violence and bloodshed, is the theme 'Buddhism and social justice'. There are twelve sections, each dealing with an aspect of the theme.
A comparative study of the two main systems, the Vedic or brahmanic and the Buddhist social orders, provide two distinct approaches to organizing religion, culture and civilization. The vedic system is based on catubbanno-the four-tiered hierarchy, namely, brahmin, khattiya, vessa and sudda, which originated way back in the vedic times.
The caste system is based on a religio- social gradation of the Ariya-varna and Dasa- varna, the light-skined and the dark-skined Ariyas and Anariyas i.e. the upper class masters and the lower class servants. This is the Indian version of racism based on birth and colour.
The four-tiered caste-hierarchy is founded on vedic religious injunction and birth which the Buddha rejected because it is morally and spiritually retrogressive and socially unjust. The caste system imposes blind and superstitious belief and goes against progressive human evolution.
In the Buddhist social order, there are only two categories, the monastic and the lay followers of the Buddha. Buddhist social structure, is not stratified by caste or class. The two categories are mutually complementary. The monastic community depends on lay devotees for material needs and the laity depends on the monastic community for moral and spiritual guidance.
Further there is no discrimination between man and woman, rich or poor, light-skined or dark-skined. This non-discriminatory approach to human relationship is the hallmark of progress in every field of human activities. Buddhism spread throughout the world without violence, exactly because of its humanistic and egalitarian approach to human development.