THE PATH OF DHARMA

Whereas Christianity was born on the Road to Damascus, Buddhism had its own “Saint Paul,” little-known to most Western students of religion, as, in order to discover him, we must take a detour from the Via Appia of Western Civilization to visit the remarkable historical unicum King Ashoka, who happened to rule India around 265-238 BC.

The reason why Ashoka belongs here as an international figure, and not in the National section as a hero of India proper, is that he is closely associated with the religion of Buddhism, which he helped propel from an insignificant group of faithful adherents to one of the world’s great religions, which however has been and will forever remain a pariah religion in his native India, where Hinduism is firmly in control, as the one and only established national religious practice, not to mention the other constituent parts of the former greater India: the predominantly Moslem Pakistan and the Moslem-Hindu country of Bangladesh, where Buddhism accounts for less than 1% of their respective populations.

Under these unfavorable circumstances, King Ashoka’s propagation of Buddhism, and the fact that the story of his life has certain curious similarities with the life of the Buddha, could not possibly have endeared this great sovereign and sage to the people of India, who, therefore, cannot really count him as their own. At the same time Ashoka can’t be seen as a major religious figure either, because he was, first and foremost, a ruler enlightened beyond belief and even normal comprehension, but still a bona fide ruler of his nation.

Ashoka’s story reads so readily as an apocryphal tale of some zealous early hagiographer that one is tempted to dismiss it off hand as Buddhist propaganda, which is terribly unfair, because even though legend here is indeed closely intertwined with historical biography, the latter can still be distilled from the fiction with the same result of open incredulity toward the possibility that such men as King Ashoka could indeed exist.

While Ashoka’s life immediately reminds us of the life of the Buddha, as I have already observed, the story of his Road to Damascus conversion from a bloodthirsty warrior king into a man of enlightened mind and infinite wisdom elicits a comparison with St. Paul. The next question is whether it is at all psychologically possible to attain this kind of sudden life-transforming enlightenment without an immediate divine inspiration, and in this case, unless we now leave the area of scientific history and enter the waters of pure religion, the answer may be hard to come by.

The most credible account of his life does not come from the pens of his worshiping apologists, but from the lengthy series of his own edicts extant in sometimes lengthy sometimes short inscriptions, found in many places around India and elsewhere across his once vast Maurya Empire.

In the eighth year of his predictably bloody and cruel reign, as he was extending his empire yet further, he, allegedly, became acquainted with the teachings of the Buddha, and had a profound change of heart. Filled with deep remorse for the sufferings he was inflicting on the peoples he conquered, he now resolved to use his power “for goodness and niceness, rather than for evil." From now on, he would be living according to “the path of dharma” preaching it across his empire and the world, and serving his subjects and all humanity. He declared his benign intentions to the neighboring countries, initiating what he called a “conquest by dharma.”

By dharma, in his words, he understood the active practice of honesty, truthfulness, compassion, “little sin and many good deeds,” etc. He did not demand his people’s conversion to Buddhism, but in effect allowed freedom of religion across his vast domain.

Among his public works were the founding of hospitals for people and animals, planting roadside trees and groves, digging wells, and other such things. He and his delegates personally traveled across the land to hear people’s needs, and to provide immediate relief for their sufferings.

Here was an astonishing case of a classic Utopia suddenly becoming a reality, because of the single-handed efforts of one very powerful man. Here is just one quotation from an inscription of his, whose veracity can hardly be questioned, as it was a clear expression of his new policy, rather than a vain exhortation of some eccentric egomaniac: “All men are my children. As for my own children I desire that they may be provided with all the welfare and happiness of this world and of the next, so do I desire for all men as well.”

Remarkable! But, alas, a Utopia it was, even though it endured for a while on the strength of a single man, King Ashoka. But his out-of-this-world policy of dharma did not survive him. With his death, the Maurya Empire collapsed, together with his good works. Eventually, his native India also rejected Ashoka’s love of Buddhism, and returned to the traditional Hindu religions, collectively known as Hinduism. Everything was returning from too good to be true back to normal.

As for Ashoka himself, he has remained an anomaly, an ephemeral spark of bright light, a rare exception to a general rule. As all of these, he cannot be rightly considered a part of India, which has rejected his work, his religion, and therefore his person as such. Ashoka is a separate isolated event in world history, as much as he is now an isolated entry in this section, a genius leader without a country.

And as for his religion of Buddhism, it hardly makes a kinder, gentler nation, either. So what if, say, Burma is ninety percent Buddhist? Until quite recently, its military regime was among the most oppressive in the world. Other heavily Buddhist countries, Thailand and Cambodia, can hardly be called paragons of enlightened civility either. Buddhism around the world is not a state religion making national policy. The Path of Dharma was exclusively the work of Ashoka’s own hands and mind. Religion was his personal inspiration, but not an agent of change in itself.