Tada Tōkan and Intimations of a Higher-Order Federalistic Isonomia
by Jason Morgan
Friedrich Hayek, Meet Tada Tōkan
Friedrich Hayek’s vision of isonomia (or “isonomy”) includes two main components: equality under the law, and federalism. Hayek writes in the context of the American founding and of the European legal and political histories that helped shape it. But what if Hayek’s isonomic vision had already been realized on a much grander scale, and much earlier in time than the late eighteenth century? What if isonomia and federalism were not freighted with Enlightenment ideology, but buoyed by faith and ritual? What if, instead of working to create a new, post-national order of equality using the framework of the American nation-state (and, later, empire), we had only to learn how such an order had already been achieved in the pre-nation-state past, and within a much richer historical and religious milieu?
In this essay I up the isonomic ante by reinterpreting “equality under the law” to mean “equality under the Buddhist law,” or dharma. In doing so, I find whole worlds opened to me, rich with the kind of border-crossing federalism in peace to which other scholars of Hayek might also wish to attain.
As my guide to this Buddhist world of equality under the dharma and fundamental equality of all (sentient beings!), I choose Tada Tōkan (多田等観) (1890-1967). Tada, from Akita Prefecture in the northeast of the main Japanese island of Honshū, was introduced to Tibetan Buddhism when he began to study at the Nishi Honganji temple in Kyoto to be an interpreter for a small delegation of Tibetan monks visiting Japan at the time.1 Tōkan would eventually join the monks on their return journey to Tibet, arriving in Lhasa in 1913.2 He stayed nearly ten years there, becoming, almost certainly, the first and only Japanese person to achieve the rank of Geshe, the highest level of erudition and mastery in Tibetan Buddhism.3 Tada returned to Japan in 1923 and worked mainly as a university lecturer. Despite his unique achievement, he remains virtually unknown in Japan or elsewhere.
Tada Tōkan was a remarkable scholar, and also had a canny awareness of the political landscape of his time.4 He understood that his presence in Tibet, and the wider prospects of Buddhism for Asia at the time, could work toward ending the distinct a-federalism and heteronomia of, for example, the British Empire.5 I hope to write more about him, and other Japanese pioneers who visited Tibet, in the future. For the time being, I would like to think about what Tada Tōkan and Buddhism more generally can teach me about isonomia and federalism.6 The combination may seem unwieldy. It is certainly uncommon. And undeniably serendipitous. The name “Tōkan” is what first prompted me to think of Buddhism’s isonomic possibilities. It means literally equality or equanimity of seeing, in native Japanese rendering hitoshiku miru (等しく観る). But I see this combination as a very good and promising thing. The fact that Tada Tōkan was a Buddhist and that his given name is a wonderful expression of the Buddhist ideals of compassion and non-detachment, and that he was from one country and lived for a long time in another country—and the fact that the editor of Isonomia Quarterly very graciously asked me for a paper on something isonomic—all made me start thinking about how isonomia and Tada Tōkan could open up new ways of envisioning a federalist world future of equality and peace.
Serendipity, the Middle Way, and Equality under the (Buddhist) Law
There was plenty more serendipity in my encounter with Tada Tōkan. I would not have known of him had it not been for a Tibetan scholar living in Japan named Pema Gyalpo. In early 2023 I had the honor of translating one of Pema-sensei’s Japanese essays. In it, Pema-sensei reflects on the series of events that brought him to Japan from a refugee camp for exiled Tibetans in India. Pema-sensei writes:
In 1960, Tada Tōkan (1890-1967) and Kitamura Hajime (1923-2003) paid a visit, while they were sojourning in India, to the school for Tibetan refugees, known as the Tibetan Refugee Self-Help Centre, that I was attending in Darjeeling. Those two men were the first Japanese people I had ever met.7
As to why Tada and Kitamura were in Tibet in the first place, Pema-sensei explains, in the same essay, as follows:
The Tibet Research Office at Tōyō Bunko participated in the Rockefeller Foundation initiative under the director of Research Office Director, Master Tada Tōkan. For a three-month period beginning in February of 1960, Master Tada Tōkan, accompanied by Kitamura [Hajime], sojourned in India.
And about Tada Tōkan—whose given name jumped out at me as I translated Pema-sensei’s words—Pema-sensei has the following to teach:
Dr. Tada obtained the title of Geshe, the equivalent of a doctorate in philosophy today, from Sera Monastery, one of the ‘Great Three’ Gelug monasteries of prewar Tibet. Dr. Tada was also on familiar terms with the highest levels of Tibetan society, at the pinnacle of which milieu stood the towering figure of the Thirteenth Dalai Lama, Ngawang Lobsang Thupten Gyatso Jigdral Chokley Namgyal (1876-1933). I never had occasion to live in direct contact with Dr. Tada, but I knew of his reputation inside of Tibet as a Geshe of the Sera Monastery, a scholar and researcher of extraordinary ability.
It may be difficult to see it at first, but in this passage one finds Hayek’s isonomic and federalist visions fulfilled, or at least nicely sketched in. Tada Tōkan was in Tibet for purposes of liaison and research, it is true. But the fundamental reason for his sojourn was Buddhism. Fundamental in two senses. First, studying Tibetan Buddhism was Tada’s main goal in going to Tibet. Second, it was the nature of Buddhism that made it possible for a young man from Akita to travel halfway across Asia and be accepted as an equal aspirant to a deeper understanding of Shakyamuni’s teachings. In Buddhism, we sentient beings are equal under the dharma, the law of suffering and rebirth. One learns to look with compassion on others in Buddhism, for all are locked in this cycle of desire, misery, and trying again. The equality of condition which Buddhism teaches—and Tada Tōkan stresses that this is especially the case in Mahayana Buddhism, of which Tibetan Buddhism is a part—is the conceptual ground of a pre-Enlightenment federalism uniting human seekers across ethnic and linguistic boundaries.
This equanimity of vision—deftly rendered as 等観, tōkan—is thus generated by the dharma and worked out by sentient beings awakened to it. It is by that measure the seed of a truly international federalism in a world of interlocking ethnic and political groupings. Tada Tōkan was able to meet His Holiness the Thirteenth Dalai Lama because, in a very practical sense, Buddhism transcends borders. Pema Gyalpo, a boy when he first caught a glimpse of Tada Tōkan, was able to come to Japan for the same reason. Pema remains in Japan, where he educates a new generation and lives out his Tibetan Buddhist faith in a country different than that of his ancestors.
That country, Tibet, is under the iron fist of a communist dictatorship now. And yet, the Thirteenth Dalai Lama’s successor, His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, has met Tibet’s oppressors’ grasping at worldly power with a compassionate approach known as the Middle Way. For His Holiness the Dalai Lama, the Middle Way is inevitably shaped by the teachings of Je Tsongkhapa (1357-1419). His Holiness heads the Gelugpa sect, one of the five schools of Tibetan Buddhism, which Je Tsongkhapa founded in the fourteenth century. Je Tsongkhapa, along with the earlier Indian Buddhist thinker Nāgārjuna (ca. 150-250) and others, advanced a theory for understanding both ultimate and conventional reality, and for finding an epistemological path between these two covalent truths.8 This theory is known as the “middle way.” On the political front, the Dalai Lama renounces political independence for Tibet, choosing instead the “middle way” of pursuing meaningful cultural and religious autonomy within the political framework of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). In this concrete way, the world’s most famous Buddhist is resisting the depredations of a politics-crazed nation-state and working toward a federalist and isonomic paradigm.9
Chö-Yön Relationships as Practical Buddhist Federalism
There is another way in which Tibetan Buddhism offers a way past the loggerheads of nation-states and dictators grasping at worldly power. The chö-yön relationship, often glossed as the relationship between Buddhist prelate and political patron, is an important element of Tibetan history.10 But the chö-yön relationship is no historical relic, but a real possibility for federal renewal in our time. As the nation-state disintegrates, and as exclusion and jingoism cease to be viable models for political assembly (if they ever were), what is needed is an organic paradigm for uniting people in various stations of life in open-ended covenantal relationships, human bonds for human beings. The chö-yön relationship hints at federalist possibilities far beyond the current nation-state arrangement.
The chö-yön relationship is no historical relic, but it does require some historical contextualization to understand. Scholars of Tibetan history and politics Michael van Wal van Praag and Miek Boltjes write:
About the time of Chinggis Khan’s death in 1227, the final conquest of the Tanguts [a Tibetan people who formed the Western Xia dynasty] pushed the Mongol empire’s frontier to the Tibetan plateau. Mongol authority was extended to Tibet by Koden Khan [(1206-1251)] and consolidated in 1252 after a military expedition. […] At an organization level, the Mongol conquest of Tibet conformed to the exigencies of the Chinggisid Mongol legal order. Yet the manner in which it was subsequently ruled set it apart and anchored it firmly also in the Tibetan Buddhist legal order. Rather than governing Tibet directly by installing a Chinggisid ruler (i.e., a close descendant of Chinggis Khan) in the new imperial dominion, it was ruled indirectly through the Tibetan hierarchs of the dominant Sakya order of Tibetan Buddhism. The construct chosen for formalizing the basis of Mongol rule over Tibet was the chö-yon relationship, a unique Tibetan Buddhist bond forged between a spiritual master and his disciple, protector and benefactor. […] [The chö-yon relationship] was given prominence by Khubilai Khan [(1215-1294)] and Lama Pakpa [Drogön Chögyal Phagpa (1235-1280)], as the former became the protector and benefactor of the Sakya hierarch, his Buddhist order and institutions, and supported the Sakya hegemony in Tibet, while the latter provided Buddhist legitimacy, powerful initiations and teachings to the Great Khan and offered him his and his followers’ prayers.
In this quote, and in the chö-yön relationship more broadly, can be seen the ability of Tibetan Buddhism as a lived reality to decenter power and subtly subvert political hierarchy with a much richer, more human, religious hierarchy transcending the political. Consider how the chö-yön relationship as historical fact helps also to attenuate claims by dictatorial political regimes in the present, in a way arguing for isonomia and transnational federation from even the distant past.
The federative aspects of Tibetan Buddhism become even more apparent on a diachronic reading of the chö-yön relationship. Van Walt van Praag and Boeltjes write:
The Tibetan Buddhist world stretched well beyond the Tibetan polity, which at the time of the Fifth Dalai Lama spanned the Tibetan plateau. It included the Himalayan polities of Bhutan, Sikkim and Ladakh, the Zunghar empire, the Mongol Khanates in Inner Asia and […] the Manchu imperial court. This is particularly important because this entailed the application of the Tibetan Buddhist legal order not just to the governance of Tibet and the Himalayan polities, but also to the legitimation of rulers and to inter-ruler and interpolity relations in this entire region.
Although successive Dalai Lamas, especially the Fifth [Ngawang Lobsang Gyatso (1617-1682)] and Thirteenth, exercised considerable religious and political authority throughout the Tibetan Buddhist world, polities outside Tibet did not come under their worldly rule and could be linked to other centers of authority as well. Mongol polities had their own rulers, and Himalayan polities and those on the eastern part of the Tibetan plateau in Kham and parts of Amdo were, for periods, ruled by khans, kings, chieftains, or lamas. While all subscribed to the religio-political principles of the Tibetan Buddhist world, they gave shape to them in a variety of ways that often added to their distinctiveness. What sustained the Tibetan Buddhist world as a whole were the common overarching religio-political concepts, principles and constructs. Together these constituted a normative legal order that shaped and made sense of authority, and of relationships within and between polities.
The Tibetan Buddhist world was not centrally nor uniformly ruled and needs to be understood in terms of relationships rather than territorial authority. The overarching religio-political paradigms common to all Tibetan Buddhist polities did not constitute exclusive principles of legitimacy and governance everywhere.
Tada Tōkan writes, from his experience in Tibet, of the hierarchies which existed among the Buddhist communities there. Tada speaks of the “various classes [kaikyū]” into which the monks are divided, and of the “aristocratically higher-ranking monks” who stood “over the regular monks,” noting that those higher-ranking monks were “reincarnate lamas.” However, in the very next sentence, Tada qualifies what might at first sound as though inequality had been smuggled in to a doctrine ostensibly preaching radical isonomia under the dharma. “The one decided upon as a reincarnate lama must enter the sangha (kyōdan) and be educated.” All but the Dalai and Panchen Lamas, who receive special education, Tada writes, belong to a temple and receive the same education as everyone else. They are treated with great respect because of the dharmic encounters (hōen 法縁) and virtue they achieved in their previous lives. And yet, even lamas who lack resources or proper bearing are not accepted into the sangha.
Some of Tada’s account may seem to be a piece of conflicting evidence weaking the argument for Buddhism as isonomic transnational federalism. If there are hierarchies, then surely it must mean that there is not equality.11 Equals do not pull rank. And yet, on deeper reflection the Buddhist nature of the isonomia I am outlining here appears dispositive. It is true that there are hierarchies in Buddhist communities, in Tibet and elsewhere. But this is more of an acknowledgement of natural differences in ability and achieved differences in mastery of Buddhist teachings, than a hard rule of enforced separation along upper-and-lower lines. As can be seen in the chö-yön relationship as well, Tibetan Buddhism accommodates inequality of station, but does not enhance it, and instead undermines worldly status differences through the absolute equality of all sentient beings under the dharma.
Toward an Isonomic Federalism of Sentient Equals
Tibetan history is a lesson in the powers of Buddhism to effect isonomia and federalism across great swaths of Asia. Modern Tibetan history, while marred by violence and oppression, can also be read as an even more powerful testimony to the ability of Buddhism to overcome inequality and centralized, even dictatorial, political control. In occupied, brutalized twentieth- and twenty-first-century Tibet, the dharma has quickened as hatred and fear have gained sway, and compassion, especially on the part of His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, has bridged what the hard of heart, the ignorant of the law, have tried to divide. “If I die as a refugee and the Tibetan situation remains like this,” His Holiness has said, “then logically, my reincarnation will appear in a free country.” Tibetan Buddhism, such as with the chö-yön relationship and in the example of the Japanese scholar-monk Tada Tōkan, offers concrete hope for a world of equality and federalism. It also, as the Fourteenth Dalai Lama demonstrates, allows the mind to leap across space and time, bypassing contemporary roadblocks and setting political inequality and centralized power within a radical, inalterable isonomic-federalist plane.
Friedrich Hayek’s emphases on isonomia and federalism are important interventions in the history of political philosophy in the West. However, these interventions will probably prove incapable of providing lasting solutions to the inequality found in the modern world. The reason is that political equality is tenuous because man is not a political animal, but a religious one. The Buddhist spirit of isonomia offers much greater hope for federalism and world peace. In Buddhism, we are equal under a higher law, and so are free to pursue the much bigger possibilities of our existence. This is the lesson to be drawn from Tibetan Buddhism in particular, and from the example of Tada Tōkan, who lived the spirit of isonomia and federalism in our time.
NOTES
- Tada Tōkan, Makino Fumiko, ed., Chibetto taizaiki (Kōdansha, 2009), pp. 14-20; Kōmoto Yasuko, Chibetto gakumonsō toshite ikita Nihonjin: Tada Tōkan no shōgai (Fuyō Shobō, 2012), pp. 46-50 ↩︎
- Hanamakishi Hakubutsukan, ed., Botsugo gojūnen: Tada Tōkan: Chibetto ni sasageta jinsei (Hanamakishi Hakubutsukan, 2017), p. 14 ↩︎
- For an overview of the Geshe educational requirements, see Tsenshap Serkong Rinpoche II, “The Gelug Monastic Education System” ↩︎
- See, e.g., Shōji Fumio, “Chibettogo yaku ‘Hassen shō hannya’ no kaiyaku katei to sono haikei: kindai Nihon no nyūzōshara ni yoru shōraihon wo tegakari toshite,” Hokke Benka Kenkyū, vol. 43 (2017), p. 1; Kōmoto Yasuko, “Nyūzōsha to ‘sensō’: Manshūkoku Kōanhokushō Jirin Kongōbutsu mandara byō kon ryū wo megutte,” Indogaku Bukkyōgaku Kenkyū, vol. 64, no. 2 (2016), pp. 9-14; Kōmoto Yasuko, “Ishiwara Kanji to Tada Tōkan: ‘Lamakyō’ to no kakawari wo megutte,” Nihon Bukkyō Sōgō Kenkyū, vol. 15, no. 15 (2016), pp. 145-158 ↩︎
- Akita Shiritsu Akarenga Kyōdokan, ed., Akita no senjin: Tada Tōkan shiryōten zuroku (Akita Shiritsu Akarenga Kyōdokan, 1992), pp. 39-40; Tada Tōkan, “Chibetto no shigen to hōhin shinshutsu no kanōsei: Tada Tōkan shi jutsu,” Tokyo Shōkō Kaigisho, Shōkō Shiryō Dai Jūgo (February 1935), p. 17 ↩︎
- See Tada Tōkan, “Indo to Chibetto to no kankei: Ajia seishi renmei no teishō,” in Tada Tōkan zenbunshū: Chibetto Bukkyō to bunka (Hakusuisha, 2007), pp. 263-267 ↩︎
- Pema Gyalpo, “Tibetans in Japan in the 1960s: The Story of a 12-Year-Old Refugee,” in Robert Eldridge and Jason Morgan, eds., Ten Years of Turning Points: Japan in the 1960s (Routledge) (forthcoming). ↩︎
- Tsewang Gyalpo Arya, The Ancient Tibetan Civilization: Studies in Myth, Religion, and History of Tibet (Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, 2022), pp. 157-158; James B. Apple, “Khu lo tsā ba’s Treatise: Distinguishing the Svātantrika/*Prāsańgika Difference in Early Twelfth Century Tibet,” Journal of Indian Philosophy, vol. 46 (November 2018), p. 936; Chris Rahlwes, “Nāgārjuna’s Negation,” Journal of Indian Philosophy, vol. 50 (2022), pp. 315-319 ↩︎
- Tenzin Weosyal and Jason Morgan, “His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s Middle Way: Universalizable Buddhist Philosophy in Action,” forthcoming ↩︎
- “Chö-yön is a conflation of the Tibetan terms chöne—the object of honor, respect and worship; the root guru or tsawe lama; the teacher and spiritual guide—and yöndag—the maker of offerings; the giver of alms to the lama and his monastic community. In English, it has been translated as the priest-patron, chaplain-donor, prelate-disciple, or officiant-benefactor relationship, all of which help describe it and none of which provides a complete sense of the relationship. The connection between the lay ruler and the lama is considered to be that of a disciple and his spiritual master from whom he receives initiations or empowerments, especially important in tantric Buddhism.” Michael van Walt van Praag and Miek Boltjes, Tibet Brief 20/20 (Outskirts Press, 2020), p. 62. See also Timothy Brook, Michael van Walt van Praag, and Miek Boltjes, eds., Sacred Mandates: Asian International Relations since Chinggis Khan (University of Chicago Press, 2018), p. 95 ↩︎
- “The Dalai Lama is the chogyal [hōō] in the religious sense, and is the king of the realm [kokuō] politically. He is, then, an absolute figure, combining both political and religious powers in his singular person.” Tada Tōkan, Chibetto, p. 107 ↩︎
Jason Morgan is an Associate Professor at Reitaku University. Send him mail.
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