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The Dharma of the Rings: A myth for engaged Buddhism?

By David Loy - posted Thursday, 16 September 2004


Sow a thought and reap a deed
Sow a deed and reap a habit
Sow a habit and reap a character
Sow a character and reap a destiny

This understanding of karma does not necessarily involve an afterlife. As Spinoza expressed it, happiness is not the reward of virtue but virtue itself. To become a different kind of person is to experience the world in a different way. When your mind changes, the world changes. And when you respond differently to the world, the world responds differently to you.

The Karma of Power

What is the Ring? Its magnetic-like attraction is a profound symbol for the karma of power. We think we use the Ring, but when we use it, it is actually using us, it changes us – the essential karmic insight. Power corrupts, and the absolute power of the Ring corrupts absolutely.

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Power wants to be used. The Ring has a will of its own. It gets heavier. It wants Frodo to slip it on his finger. If he were to do this, though, it would corrupt him, as it corrupted Sauron and Gollum. Gollum is Frodo’s alter ego, a constant reminder to Frodo of what he could become.

Traditional Buddhism has not had much to say about power. Today, however, the primary challenge for socially engaged Buddhism is the individual and collective craving for power, which like Midas destroys whatever it touches (money as congealed power). In The Lord of the Rings lust for power motivates the greed, ill will and delusions that drive the plot. Sauron rules a totalitarian and imperialistic state. Saruman transforms his domain into a fearsome military machine. Defeated, he slinks off to the shire, where he introduces an ecologically destructive industrial revolution. These are the three enemies that are fought and defeated. But are they the same thing: different expressions of the will to power over Middle-earth and its creatures?

In our world, too, it is not so much physical craving as lust for power that motivates the greed, ill will and delusion now endangering the earth and our societies. People have always craved power, but our situation has become grave today because, thanks to modern technologies, there is so much more power to crave and use; and, thanks to modern institutions, that power tends to function in impersonal ways which assume a life of their own.

Transnational corporations and stock markets institutionalise greed (never enough consumption or profit) in a world where centralised bureaucratic states unleash institutionalised ill will (horrific military aggression) in pursuit of their “national interests”, while under the guise of globalisation, ever more sophisticated technologies are deployed to extend the institutionalised delusion that “dualises” us from the earth (by commodifying, exploiting, and laying waste to its furthest corners). Today they are the Mordor that threatens our future.

Our collective attempt to dominate the earth technologically is related to the disappearance of the sacred. If we can no longer rely on God to take care of us, we must secure ourselves, by subduing nature until it meets all our needs and satisfies all of our purposes – which is, of course, never. Because our efforts to exploit the earth’s resources are damaging it so much, the fatal irony is that our attempt to secure ourselves may destroy us. Is there a better example of institutionalised delusion? We are one with the earth. When the biosphere becomes sick, we become sick. If the biosphere dies, so do we. A technological Ring of Power is not the solution to these problems.

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This article is based on a talk - "The Dharma of the Rings? Tolkien's Buddhist Myth" - given by David Loy at the University of Sydney, September 9, 2004.



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About the Author

David Loy is a tenured professor in the Faculty of International Studies at Bunkyo University in Chagasaki , Japan.

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