Government has become something that happens to us in service of the economy rather than a vehicle driven by us to realize what we can achieve together. To save the planet and live meaningful lives, we need to start seeing one another not as competitors but as collaborators working toward shared interests.

Kings and ministers thus boasted among themselves over their exclusive fidelity to orthodox Confucian values, even as they worked to assure that the Buddhist institution was aligned with the practical needs of the kingdom.

In this book chapter, Evon explores the enduring interplay between Buddhism and statecraft in Korea, tracing how Buddhist institutions and ideologies have been leveraged by rulers from ancient times through the modern era, emphasizing the adaptive nature of Korean Buddhism in legitimizing political authority.

Socioecological models for agriculture provide an opportunity to explore feedbacks, trade-offs, and synergies that can optimize and strengthen emerging connections between farming and society. With the right incentives, innovative research, and political will, a sustainable agriculture is within our reach.

Because sustainability is a cross-disciplinary field of study, producing this text has required bringing together over twenty experts from a variety of fields….

By covering a wide range of topics with a uniformity of style, and by including glossaries, review questions, case studies, and links to further resources, the text has sufficient range to perform as the core resource for a semester course. Students who cover the material in the book will be conversant in the language and concepts of sustainability, and will be equipped for further study in sustainable planning, policy, economics, climate, ecology, infrastructure, and more.

Objectives of state redaction as set forth by Muriel Rukeyser’s redacted file:

1. Render information illegible to make the reader aware of her/his position as one who will never access a truth that does, by state accounts, exist
2. Isolate text in time and instance
3. …

We find that verbal conflict initiated by governments not only failed to deter ISIS but in fact increased the frequency of ISIS’s attacks on civilians.

In an effort to solidify their reputations, extremists engage in further violence toward civilians, thus leading to worse humanitarian consequences.

the sanitation department is the most important workforce in the city of New York

Despite its successful Buddhist polemics, Sōtō’s Buddhist teachings in Korea were basically political propaganda viable only within the framework of Japanese colonial imperialism.

Over the course of the twentieth century, America developed a right that fought the government and a left that hobbled it. […] new institutions can make new kinds of thinking possible.

Thoughtful state intervention is critical for both the invention of new technologies and for scaling them up to solve pressing, societal issues. This idea forms the core of the authors’ proposed “supply-side progressivism”: “a liberalism that builds.”

A ruler had no power to enact law. He was born to maintain order and peace and to protect his subjects from dangers…

The fascinating history of the law: first as it was understood in ancient India, then as it was practiced in medieval Burma, and finally how it was enacted in modern Thailand.

… one camera
for every ten heads.
Most of the time,
I can’t even recall
my own reflection …

The paper explains how the hierarchy emerged historically out of the attempts by the Siamese government to exercise control over the monasteries and how its rigid hierarchy is tempered by the Thai sense of “suitability” leading to an organization that balances central goals against local concerns. Each level of the hierarchy and the parallel system of royally-bestowed honorifics are explained in detail, including their qualifications and responsibilities.

they were in the middle of a lake in the middle of a desert in the middle of a war zone…

How fourteen ships of different nationalities trapped in the Suez Canal quickly formed a community.

In 2025, in 1812, in 2000 BC, the death of a young child is the worst thing that could happen to any parent.

Buddhism in Burma is involved in a continuing and intense struggle against a repressive military regime.

While much continues to unfold, the struggle between the Burmese military and its Buddhist subjects has, regrettably, only deepened in the decades since this article was first published.

I intend that this offering will, however imperfect, stand as a memorial to the many Cambodian Buddhist monks and laypeople, both named and unknown, who lost their lives or had their futures traumatically altered by the tragedy that overwhelmed their country in the 1970s.

We find strong evidence that indigenous territories with secure tenure not only reduce deforestation inside their lands but also lead to higher secondary forest growth on previously deforested areas.

Stateless people do not elect officials, enjoy diplomatic representation, or possess the lucre of a corporate lobby. Without political rights they can exert only so much pressure; activist groups, charities, and NGOs are their main source of support. This makes people without a citizenship uniquely vulnerable to exploitation

Policy-makers often mistakenly view host state security and refugee security as unrelated–or even opposing–factors. In reality, refugee protection and state stability are linked together; undermining one factor weakens the other. Policies to protect refugees, both physically and legally, reduce potential threats from the crisis and bolster state security. In general, risks of conflict are higher when refugees live in oppressive settings, lack legal income-generation options, and are denied education for their youth.

In the early post-independence period in Burma, a large number of hierarchical, initiatory, and secretive esoteric congregations were founded by charismatic leaders in urban areas. These attracted many devotees, including representatives of the state. The relationship between the state and the esoteric congregations was tense, especially during the rule of the military governments, and the state sought to suppress the congregations in the early 1980s.

In this article, one esoteric congregation—the ariyā-weizzā organization—is taken as an example of these congregations:

1. First, the article demonstrates how the members of this congregation view themselves as performing the state, and shows what kind of power they perceive themselves to exercise.
2. Second, in socio-political terms, the article seeks to explain why tensions emerged between the state and the esoteric congregations, and it demonstrates how these congregations have contributed to performing the state.

After intensive logging in the 17th century nearly wiped out Akita Prefecture’s native forests, the government undertook various programs in the 18th and 19th centuries to encourage trees be replanted and preserved for us future generations.

At the same time as we have become more civilized, the state has extended its formal reach, multiplying law and punishing us for transgressions. We have learned to delay gratification, moderate our impulses, resist our instincts, and act with a restraint, forbearance, and self-abnegation unknown in the early modern era. Yet the more we discipline ourselves, the more law the state trains on us.

A history of the state from premodern to modern times with a particular emphasis on how uniquely ubiquitous the modern state is in controlling the life, affairs, and even thoughts of its subjects.

I mean, thank God that the people that run this world are not smart enough to keep running it forever.

A short news article about Arlo Guthrie’s song “Alice’s Resturant.”

It tells the story of how Guthrie was arrested and fined for a simple act of kindness and how this record kept him from being drafted into the Vietnam War. Since being released in 1967, the song has become a Thanksgiving Day staple across the United States.

Take a golden mountain,
made entirely of gold, and double it—
it’s still not enough for one!

The Buddha wonders whether it is possible to rule justly, without violence. Māra appears and encourages the Buddha to try it.

With the restoration of my old ID number, the previous six years of my life, including the three years I spent in prison, became a numberless life. In truth, this was a blessing for me. I believe that the record of my punishment and imprisonment had been wiped from the police system. Networked computers had not yet been widely adopted.

The true story of how a Uyghur poet and film director narrowly managed to escape a genocide—and of the friends and family that he left behind.

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.

For a short discussion on The Declaration’s history and significance, see the Writ Large interview with Mathias Risse.

Let the king provide funding for those who work in trade. Let the king guarantee food and wages for those in government service. Then the people, occupied with their own work, will not harass the realm. The king’s revenues will be great.

A brahmin wishes to undertake a great sacrifice and asks for the Buddha’s advice. The Buddha tells a legend of the past in which a king is persuaded to give up violent sacrifice and instead to devote his resources to supporting the needy citizens of his realm. However, even such a beneficial and non-violent sacrifice pales in comparison to the spiritual sacrifice of giving up our attachments.

Who was harmed? What do they need?

… in the canonical Buddhist texts […] kṣatriya-dharma (The Way of the Warrior) is openly condemned as anti-social, whereas generally in the orthodox Hindu view, kṣatriya-dharma is considered as the norm or legitimate duty of kings

General Gutiérrez Mellado pulls his arm violently out of the Prime Minister’s grip; then the burst of gunfire erupts.

The history of the 1981 failed Spanish coup and of the gestures that saved democracy.

The DPCW is drafted, to some extent, to take account of the evolution in international politics, and the failures of the existing international legal norms dedicated to securing international peace.

The fact that some intersections are still using incandescent bulbs is a little odd.

Musings on the nature of technological progress in a democracy.

… independence was perceived as an opportunity for a particular ethnic group

… there was nothing “private” about either the king’s support of Buddhist communities, or the claims and requests that Buddhist intellectuals made of the king.

[Nāgārjuna] justifies his condescension to the king by his personal affection for him, as well as his compassion for the world, which would presumably be affected by the king’s policies

… the land granted by Gautamīputra Śrī Sātakarṇi did not produce the revenue it was intended to produce, because “the land is not cultivated and the village is not inhabited.” In exchange, another plot of land was granted, this time measuring 100 nivartanas

… a grant was made by Vāsiṣṭhīputra Śrī Puḷumāvi at Nāsik, but this land, too, had to be exchanged for a more productive village three years after the original gift. […] In all of these cases, the land appears to have been intended to provide Buddhist communities with rents

… the edicts [also] reserve the exclusive right to consume the natural produce of a “religious wilderness” to the ascetics who live there. In one of them a prohibition can be read: “…a non-ascetic is not to stay”

Buddhist structures were a major and conspicuous presence in almost all of the major Sātavāhana towns

… precisely because it was not the religion of the state, it took on some of the roles that are associated with civil society

… this kind of cultural hegemony might have been one of the main reasons why rulers, even those who might have been personally hostile to Buddhism, supported them.