Liberation Dharma Minifesto

The Four Noble Truths

We accept and affirm the teachings on The Four Noble Truths as taught in the earliest strata of the Buddha’s teaching.

Three Jewels of Buddha Dharma and Sangha

We see taking refuge in the Three Jewels of Buddha Dharma and Sangha and committing to keeping the five lay precepts or renunciant monastic precepts as foundational practices.

Parissa

We understand the community (parissa) in which these practices take place to be made up of the fourfold sangha of nuns, monks, laywomen, and laymen.

Nibbana

We hold the four levels of realizing nibbana in which one releases or weakens some or all of the ten habit energies of ignorance, craving, and aversion that cause rebirth to be foundational in describing who a realized being is.

Our Basis

We base our contemplative theory and practice on early Buddhist, Greater Magadha Yogic, and early Daoist traditions in critical correlation with later Asian yogic traditions and with indigenous pre-Greco-Roman-imperial-contact traditions throughout the world.

🔶 We are in solidarity with libertarian socialist movements based on secular humanism and environmental regeneration.

🔶 We welcome dialogue with agnostic humanists and practitioners of other contemplative traditions.

🔶 We ask dogmatic materialists to reflect on the extractivist roots of that doctrine and take seriously the contemplative empiricism of ancient shamanic and yogic traditions.

Our Advocacy

We advocate for the integration of social ethics, contemplative practice, ritual, regenerative agriculture, holistic medicine, education, art, music, dance, film, and sustainable trade guilds of skilled labor.

🔷 We support the integration of land, labor, and life force through wholesome cultivation practice that supports the fertility of the soil, sociopolitical harmony, and the liberation of all beings. 

🔷 We support the flourishing of libertarian socialist societies based on yogic principles of regeneration, transformation, and liberation.

🔷 We support the hermeneutics of suspicion and recovery of religious traditions in order to recognize and uproot extractivist views of racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, classism, ableism, speciesism and all other forms of socio-political and ecological oppression.

Our Rejections

❌ We reject the dogmatic view of scientism which claims that consciousness can be reduced to matter despite not having any empirical evidence to support that claim.

❌ We reject the cognitive imperialism

❌ We reject the fetishization of the single lifetime because it lacks empirical evidence and because it has been used to support doctrines of exceptionalism behind extractivist imperial regimes.

Our Affirmations

🌐 We affirm the seeking of the three traditional goals of Buddhism, namely welfare and happiness in the present life, favorable rebirth, and realization of nibbana.

🌐 We affirm indigenous pre-imperial worldviews and culture. We denounce all forms of extractivism in which a perpetrator individual or group uses a dehumanizing ideology to justify the extraction of land, labor, or life force from a target individual or group.

🌐 We affirm the right of every living being against discrimination and oppression and the right of every being to live in a healthy sustainable ecosystem

🌐 We affirm worldviews that are open to the experience of ancestors, spirits, deities, and mystical experiences.

Our Heart-Minds

We see the ideal society as being libertarian socialist, focused on nourishing the fertility of the soil and the spiritual consciousness of our heart-minds in order to cultivate sustainable community in which the diversity and the richness of the natural and spiritual ecosystem is cultivated in harmony with human health, wellness, and spiritual liberation.