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Title: More of Marx than Buddha
Review: The "social activist" Buddha Brazier presents constantly bristles around the edges with the very desire and animosity that the Buddha warns against. One could recuperate the author's stance by arguing that it reproduces something of the tensions between the first and second Buddhist vehicles: the Hinayana that concerns the person's relation with his own, ultimately evanescent ego; and the Mahayana which turns the resolutions of the Hinayana toward the problems of society. But "activist"? I keep hearing echoes of the standard marxist self-deception, which hides (unsuccessfully) the activist's own self-aggrandisement behind the rhetoric of "concern for social injustice," etc. Brazier knows enough about Zen to know that when human constructs (like "society," which is the standard "essentialist" nostrum of the marxist and marxoid aggressor) become the object of our concern, we have thrown ourselves back into the cauldron of samsara.
