Biography of Ichikawa Hakugen

Excerpt from a longer essay about Hakugen I’m working on which explains and expands on his political-religious thought. Ichikawa Hakugen (1902-1986) was an important but poorly-known contributor to the theory of Buddhist anarchism, particularly to anarchism in the Zen tradition. Following in the footsteps of anarchist Buddhist priests Uchiyama Gudo and Taixu, he drew on […]

updates

I’m currently working on a longer essay about the political and religious philosophy of Ichikawa Hakugen. It’s taking longer than I expected, but I hope to make it worth the wait. After that’s done I plan to return to the third part of the Buddhist-anarchist history essay. In the meantime, if you are interested in […]

An Anarchist History of Buddhism from the 1800’s to the 1920’s

Following an inquiry into anarchic elements of pre-modern Buddhist history we arrive in the 19th century, where “anarchism” first moves beyond philosophy and becomes a self-identified force driving social movements. As the primary ideology within the worker’s movement in the 1870’s-1910’s (Gradually becoming eclipsed by Bolshevism and social democracy by the mid 20th century), anarchism […]

Common Consciousness (Heibon no Jikaku) by Uchiyama Gudo

Translated by Fabio Rambelli What is common consciousness? Before I answer to this, let me try to talk a bit about consciousness. Consciousness means to become aware of something by oneself. This, in turn, does not mean to discover something that others do not know, nor does it mean that one should not learn from […]

Waiting for Gudo: On the possibilities of Anarchist Buddhism

Uchiyama Gudō: Buddhist, Anarchist, Martyr

Uchiyama Gudō (内山愚童) was born May 17, 1874, in Niigata Prefecture, Japan. He came from a family of rural woodworkers, and learned to carve Buddha statues from his father at an early age. When he was sixteen, his father died, which lead Gudō to renounce worldly life and join the Soto Zen sect, ordaining as […]

An Anarchist History of Buddhism: 400 BCE-1800 CE

I dislike the liturgical lists of revolutionary heroes, martyrs, writers, etc. which we rely on to define ideologies and history. But I can’t deny it isn’t useful for legitimating arguments and telling interesting stories. Buddhists who were also anarchists, anarchists who were Buddhists; People inspired by both Buddhism and anarchism but self-identified as one, both, […]

Axioms

Graham Priest and the “0th Noble Truth” I recently listened to a podcast interview with philosophy professor at CUNY Graham Priest in which he discusses Buddhist ethics and Anarchism. He raised some interesting points which I think are relevant for this project, so I thought I would post my notes here: Priest supposes the classic […]

On Selves and Masters

“Taken as a whole, man is nothing but a resultant, always changeable, of all his diverse faculties, of all his autonomous tendencies, of brain cells and nerve centers. All are related so closely to one another that they each react on all the others, but they lead their own life without being subordinated to a […]

The Transmission of Freedom

In the Zen school, there is a concept called “face-to-face transmission of dharma”. It is the principal means by which a teacher passes on knowledge, tradition and lineage and confirms a student’s theoretical and direct (non-conceptual) understanding of the Buddhist teachings as passed down through the Zen schools. The story goes that this practice goes […]