Rajadhammas

"There are listed in the Pali Canon, the scriptures of Theravada Buddhism, what are called the rajadhammas, the virtues and duties of a wise ruler. The first one is the virtue of dana, which means generosity, giving. In almost all Buddhist lists of virtues, dana is always the first one. Isn't that significant? Why do they always list dana first? In a Buddhist sense, any kind of ruler - a universal monarch, a prime minister, a president, a chairman - needs to have this sense of generosity because this is what opens the heart of a human being. Just reflect on the act of giving without selfish demand in return, without expecting a reward. When we give something we like or want, to somebody else, that opens the heart and that always engenders a sense of nobility. Humanity is at its best when it gives what it loves, what it values, to others.

The next one is sila, or high moral conduct. A ruler should be impeccable in morality, a human being you can fully trust. Whether you agree with a ruler's actions or political positions isn't terribly important; it's the moral integrity of the ruler that is most important, because you can't trust somebody who is immoral. But people can easily feel suspicious about someone who has not committed themselves fully to refrain from cruelty, from killing, from taking things that have not been given, from sexual misconduct, from false speech and from addictive drugs and drinks. These standards of restraint are the basic moral precepts, the sila, that you are expected to keep if you consider yourself a Buddhist.

The third virtue is pariccaga, or self-sacrifice. This means giving up personal happiness, safety and comfort for the welfare of the nation. Self-sacrifice is something we need to consider. Are we willing to sacrifice personal comfort, privilege, convenience, for the welfare of our families? In the past fifty years or so, self-sacrifice has almost come to be regarded with contempt, or put down as being foolish or naive. It seems that the tendency is to think of yourself first. What has this government done for you? What can you get out of it? Whenever I've thought in those ways I've always felt I could not respect myself at all. But any time that I sacrificed myself for something, I've always felt that doing so was the right thing to do. Giving up personal interest, personal convenience and comfort for the welfare of others - that is always something that I look back on now with no regret.

The fourth one is ajjava, which is honesty and integrity. This means more than not telling lies to others, but being honest with yourself. You can't be deluded by all the desires and fears that go on in your own mind in order to have this sense of personal honesty, where you are not blaming or condemning others or looking at the world in the wrong way.

The fifth is maddava, which means kindness or gentleness. Living in Britain I've noticed that there is a tremendous desire for kindness and gentleness, and an idealism that holds to that. In daily life, however, one finds a kind of harshness towards oneself or towards others; a tendency to make a harsh judgments; to react with anger; to regard kindness as a bit soppy and wet. Gentleness is considered weak. So we've emphasised the practice of metta here in Britain more than in Thailand. Metta is loving-kindness. It's kindness and gentleness towards oneself and towards others. When we hold to high standards and ideals, we often lack kindness. We are always looking at how things should be, and we become frustrated with life as it is. We become angry and cruel. To be kind and gentle seems wishy-washy and weak, and yet it is a virtue that a universal monarch should have in order to be truly considered a universal monarch.

The sixth is tapa which means austerity or self-control; giving up what you don't really need.

The seventh one is akkodha, which is non-anger, non-impulsiveness, calmness. This is difficult: remaining calm in the midst of confusion and chaos, when things are frustrating, instead of acting just on impulse, saying something in anger, acting in anger. Akkodha is non-anger.

The eighth is avihimsa, or non-violence, non-oppression; not using violent means against enemies or against anyone; not being oppressive or forcing your will unmercifully on other people. Even high-mindedness can be oppressive, can't it? If you live with people who have very high standards and high ideals, they can push you down all the time with their ideas. It's a kind of violence, even though they might believe in non-violence and think they are not acting with violence. You can say, "I believe in avihimsa" but still be very oppressive about it. That's why we often tend to see it as hypocrisy. When we talk about morality now, some people get very tense, because they remember morality as being oppressive, like in Victorian times when people were intimidated and frightened by moral judgments. But that is not avihimsa. Avihimsa is non-oppression.

After avihimsa is khanti, which is patience, forbearance, tolerance. To be non-oppressive and non-violent, not to follow anger, one needs to be patient. We need to bear with what is irritating, frustrating, unwanted, unloved, unbeautiful. We need to forbear rather than react violently to it, oppress it, annihilate it.

The last one is avirodhana, non-deviation from righteousness, or conformity to the law, the Dhamma. Non-deviation from righteousness sounds oppressive, doesn't it? When we become righteous we can often become very oppressive. I've seen it in myself. When I get full of righteous indignation I come at people like one of those Old Testament gods: "Thou shall not!" I can be pretty frightening to people when I'm righteous. Avirodhana isn't that kind of patriarchal, oppressive righteousness. It is knowing what is right, what is appropriate to time and place. Here in Britain, we believe that thinking rationally and being reasonable is right. Everything that follows from that, we think is right, and everything that is irrational or unreasonable, we think is wrong. We don't trust it. But when we attach to reason, then we often lack patience, because we are not open to the movement and flow of emotion. The spaciousness of life is completely overlooked. We are so attached to time, efficiency, the quickness of thought, the perfection of rational thinking, that we view temporal conditions as reality, and we no longer notice spaciousness. So the emotional nature, the feeling, the intuitive, the psychic, all are dismissed, neglected, and annihilated.

Avirodhana, or conformity to the Dhamma, entails a steadiness in one's life to conform to the way things are. The only reason we don't conform to it is that we don't know it. Human beings are capable of believing in anything at all, so we tend to go every-which-way and follow any old thing. But once you discover the Dhamma, then your only inclination is to conform to the law of the way things are.

So these are the rajadhammas, the Dhammas of a universal ruler."
~ Ajahn Sumedho.