Don't Worry Baby..........

from;
Buddhism and Marxism in Taiwan:
Lin Qiuwu's Religious Socialism and Its Legacy in Modern Times

By
Charles B. Jones
Assistant Professor, Department of Religion and Religious Education
Catholic University of America
CBJones57@aol.com


A Pure Land on earth
Historically, the most popular form of Buddhism in China and Japan is not Zen, but Pure Land. Briefly, Pure Land Buddhism, as understood by the majority of its devotees, teaches that far, far to the West of our present world of suffering, a Buddha named Amitaabha dwells in a land made pure by the purity of his own conduct and consciousness. There are no temptations there, all its inhabitants obtain what they need just by thinking about it, and the Buddha and his attendant bodhisattvas stand ever ready to provide perfect teachings aimed at each inhabitant's individual level of readiness. Even the songs of the birds in the trees and the babbling of the streams preach the Buddha-dharma continually. It is a place where conditions are ideal for meditation, study, and the eventual (and guaranteed) attainment of Buddhahood.
The good news of Pure Land Buddhism is that Amitaabha created this Pure Land for the express purpose of drawing to it beings who, because of the less-than-perfect circumstances of life in this world, have no chance of escaping the vicissitudes of birth and death through their own study and practice. As represented in the Wuliangshou Fo Jing (T. vol. 12, no. 360), Amitaabha, while still a monk cultivating the religious practices that led to his own eventual attainment of Buddhahood, made a series of forty-eight vows that set forth the conditions under which he would accept enlightenment. Among these, the eighteenth states that he would not accept Buddhahood unless even impure and unenlightened beings, by having faith in him and calling his name as few as ten times, could gain rebirth there (Inagaki and Stewart 1995:34). In the course of time, the monk who made these vows did achieve Buddhahood under the name of Amitaabha, indicating that these vows have been fulfilled by definition.
For millions of Chinese and Japanese Buddhists, this opened an "easy path" to religious cultivation, giving them hope that, even if they lacked the intelligence, motivation, leisure, and resources to practice and attain perfect Buddhahood in this world, they could, by the power of Amitaabha's vow, come to the Pure Land in the next life and be assured of attaining final liberation there. The only requirement for the present was that they entrust themselves to Amitaabha's compassionate vow and recite his name tirelessly.
From a Marxist perspective, of course, such a conception of religious practice represented a "false consciousness." A Marxist analysis would point out that this mode of Buddhism saw the present human situation as utterly unsalvageable, and thus encouraged a passive acceptance of all the ills of life, including the existence of oppressive social structures. By encouraging the masses to give up hope of ever improving their lot in this life and turning their attention to a golden land in the hereafter, Pure Land thought seemed to demonstrate quite aptly that religion was indeed the opiate of the masses.
Rather than simply dismiss Pure Land devotionalism as counter-revolutionary, Lin chose instead to appropriate its vocabulary and redefine it for his own purposes. Quoting Lenin in an article in his magazine Red Path News, he wrote:

From each according to his ability, to each according to his need, without a trace of selfish intention, each and every person strives to produce in common. In this kind of society, everyone will have enough, and thievery will disappear all by itself. Buddhism has a name for this kind of world: the Pure Land of Utmost Bliss. (quoted in Li 1991:163)

This indicates that Lin wished to redefine the Pure Land as something that had to be built here in this world rather than sought after in the world to come. Furthermore, the wording in this passage and the one below shows that, for Lin, this was not an innovation, but the proper understanding of what Buddhism had always meant by the "Pure Land" and the practices that called it into being. In another place, Lin made clear the means by which the masses can build this Pure Land in the here and now: class struggle. In an article published in The South Seas Buddhist in 1929 called "Class Struggle and Buddhism," he wrote:

When Buddhism calls people to construct a Pure Land in this world, . . . it does not mean to utilize some outside, artificial power, or to bind oneself with ritualistic practices, or to bring the masses to make only surface changes. . . . Rather, it means to concentrate on taking firm and steady steps with a passionate attitude to call people to awake to their original nature in the midst of their daily activities, calling forth their dormant strength and faith! . . . In sum, the Buddhist attitude toward the class struggle is of a piece from start to finish: It means to stand within the no-self that is also the Great Self, to take as one's purpose that one will cherish the propertyless masses and liberate the deprived classes, using methods that exclude military force and violence, and especially taking as one's basic principle the resistance that is non-resistance. (reproduced in Li 1991:171-172)

Why had social classes, and with them the class struggle, first arisen? In brief, classes arose because of greed and grasping, which in turn could only come about on the basis of a false view of the self. He wrote:

How do human beings give rise to thoughts of greed? Because they are unable to understand the true principle of the non-duality of mind, buddha, and sentient beings, thinking instead that the four elements [that is, earth, water, fire, and air] are their body, or that the five aggregates [body, sensations, perceptions, mental constructions, and consciousness] are their self. Because they have this view of "self," they develop hatred and desire, grasp at or reject all kinds of things, and make distinctions [among people] between relatives and strangers. Finally, the time comes when the means of production become increasingly complex, which gradually brings forth the rise of practical scientific methods, clandestine conspiracies, and capitalists who exploit the laboring classes. Because of this, those on opposite sides of the loss and benefit [equation] take the pretext of [the other's] misconduct to form parties and advance their own selfishness, or they come up with some other way to distinguish themselves from the other, discriminate against each other, and gradually, the class struggle arrives. ( Lin 1929:55; reproduced in Yang 1991:56)

Thus, according to Lin, one can draw a straight line from the initial delusion of a separate, isolated self as defined by Buddhism to the class struggle as defined by Marxism.

 
Well it's been building up inside of me
For oh I don't know how long
I don't know why
But I keep thinking
Somethings bound to go wrong

But she looks in my eyes
And makes me realize
And she says don't worry baby
Don't worry baby
Don't worry baby
Everything will turn out alright

Don't worry baby
Don't worry baby
Don't worry baby

I guess I shouldve kept my mouth shut
When I started to brag about my car
But I can't back down now
I pushed the other guys too far

She makes me come alive
And makes me wanna drive
When she says don't worry baby
Don't worry baby
Don't worry baby
Everything will turn out alright

Don't worry baby
Don't worry baby
Don't worry baby

She told me baby, when you race today
Just take along my love with you
And if you know how much I loved you
Baby nothing could go wrong with you

Oh what she does to me
When she makes love to me
And she says don't worry baby
Don't worry baby
Don't worry baby
Everything will turn out alright