ABSTRACT

This chapter provides an account of beginning a journey for laying out a sustainable political economy for Buddhism. The rationale for such a quest is provided against the background of the Buddhist intellectual traditions, which is the intellectual need. In addition, this chapter provides the examples of the historical maladies that have continued to seriously affect the Buddhist communities because of the political engagements, which provides the empirical need for such a journey. The major political theories of the past Buddhist communities are expressed as a Buddha-emperor conundrum, a Dharma King theory where the religious ruler and the political ruler are one and the same, a Maitreya revolution. In this journey, the review of how the western democracies have evolved through the sweeping bloody political revolutions in history offers an inescapable lesson that they will knock on the door of Buddhism and they did indeed.

Keywords: Political Economy; Politics; Buddhism; Buddha-Emperor; Dharma Kings; Maitreya Revolution; Western Democracies; Political Revolutions.