Complexities of social transformation

Irrespective of external conditions, in a right state of mind one can be happy, claim religious and spiritual gurus, and psychology texts but circumstances too are important in life. It is also said that happy people will constitute a more moral, non-violent, harmonious and egalitarian society than unhappy people. Yet the history shows that building a better society is more challenging than making oneself happy. Man has been striving to build a better society since the beginning of human history, a society which is better not only in the material sense but also in the moral sense. Yet, each historical epoch has its own stories of suffering, disputes and contests. One may ask whether society of today is more human or inhuman, more comfortable or more daunting, more healthy or more pathological, stronger or on the verge of extinction, more orderly or more chaotic, more fair or more unjust than in the past. The answer to such questions obviously depends on your paradigm of social development. Confronting social issues is so challenging that even people like Buddha who looked for a simple, rational, easy to communicate Dhamma, with a potential to make anyone happy, could not do anything significant to change the social structure. Many people have followed Dhamma and become happy. Many people are known for following the path of God realization, the path of non-violence, the path of controlling body by the soul, and they claimed that by following this path they became happy. When it came to social issues Buddha too had to compromise. Once a Brahmin Esukari asked him three questions about social inequality:

(a) Why should everyone serve Brahmins while peasants are served only by peasants?

(b) Why should ancestry and lineage have a place in determining the social status of man?

(c) Why are there social status differences in sources of income, Brahmins from alms, nobles from bow and arrows, middle class from ploughing and tending cattle, and peasant from “the carriage of crops on the pole slung over his shoulder”?