Hello and welcome to the history of Japan podcast.

Episode 182, Building Better Worlds.

This week, as a sort of capstone to our most recent series, I want to do a short biography

with you all, but first, credit where credit is due, thanks to listener Simon for suggesting

this idea, and good luck with the post-grad work.

So before we get into our character for this week, I want to introduce a concept to you,

one that you very likely have not heard of before, but which I think makes a certain degree of

intuitive sense.

We talked a bit during the last series about the idea of Christian socialism, and how many

early socialists were inspired to join that political tradition because of their own religious one,

specifically because of the very specific injunctions against greed or the hoarding of wealth laid out in the gospels.

Christian socialism is not what it used to be, thanks in part to being out-competed by Marxism, but for a while it was the

driving force behind the socialist movement. However, it's far from the only religiously driven

socialist movement, and in particular, Buddhist socialism has its own rich history. When you think about

it, the idea of Buddhist socialism makes a lot of intuitive sense.

Both socialism and Buddhism reject excessive attachment to things as a cause of suffering.

If you ever read the popular novel, Siddhartha in high school, and incidentally, I don't love

how popular a novel about Buddhism written by a German non-Buddist is,

but what can you do?

Remember that the whole middle part of the book is in the end about realizing that money can't really make you happy.

Both socialism and Buddhism are also fundamentally interested in transforming a person's worldview

through rigorous study and practice,

...