What common features can we see across Asian cultures? If forced to generalise about unstated framework assumptions in a range of societies from India to Japan, where might we start? What differences might we note with respect to Europe?

HARMONY

Consider attitudes to conflict and progress. The millennial cast of western thought favours struggle and change. Traditionally, even bad things that happen take humanity closer to the millennium; conflict may prefigure or begin the great clash between good and evil that will bring resolution. Post-secularisation, this translates into a sense that while there may be ups and downs upon the road we are always making progress, and conflict is often the only way to extirpate regressive tendencies. At the level of the individual life, there is a sense that fulfilment involves continuous, busy striving; action is almost its own reward, and friction its inevitable concomitant. None of these patterns works in quite that way on the eastern side of the equation, where time has always been understood as cyclical.

Who could doubt that the idea of progress has taken firm root across Asia? Moreover, a ‘cult of conflict’ has featured consistently among the perceived western characteristics that Asians have emulated. From Meiji Japan through Mao’s China to the India of the BJP, attitudes once confined to military groups have mutated and emerged into the mainstream. Yet a concern for harmony continues to underlie individual and collective value judgements. There is a great stress on maintaining good relations between persons, classes and ethnicities, both horizontally and vertically i.e. within the state.
This picture emerges in many contexts. In Suhartoist Indonesia, four things could not be discussed in the media: religion, class issues, race and ethnicity. Or consider the Asian communist movements, in Japan, China, Vietnam, Indonesia and elsewhere: these have actively promoted class warfare, but it is arguable that the cultural value placed on harmony informs their history.

Mao’s late phase took conflict to unprecedented lengths. Whence that desperate urge to throw all the cards in the air? Mao’s personality and isolation played a role. Arguably, there was also a sense of how hard it was to overcome the deep-rooted bias within Chinese culture towards stability and harmony.

In paradoxical ways, subsequent events may support this view. On the one hand, the apparently pointless turmoil may in the end, perversely, have served a purpose, in that the rootless, restless Cultural-Revolution generation formed a broad base of people ready to exploit Deng Xiao-Ping’s opening to modern entrepreneurship; on the other, the Party found a new claim to legitimacy as the one body able to contain and channel the restless dragon’s energy in the name of social harmony. Thus the dynamic of Chinese communism can be seen in the context of a culture that prizes harmony. Similar arguments can be made in relation to comparable movements.

Less authoritarian Asian countries also address issues of social segmentation with a predisposition towards accommodation and balance. India is an obvious case in point; Japanese and American income differentials compare strikingly; and so on. Consider South Korea. Its politics and industrial relations are robust, but those who have sought to frame the key question of relations with the North in terms of a struggle between right and wrong, which must lead to a clear-cut victory for one side or the other, have gained little traction. Among the factors at work here is a concern for long-term harmonious relations with the inhabitants of the North.

An aversion to confrontation is widely in evidence — from Japanese corporate decision-making to inter-state relations in ASEAN. This may involve a rejection of transparency and an unwillingness to assume leadership burdens; there is also a sense that the proper and effective way to relate to other people and groups is to preserve harmony by giving them respect. If they have an independent position and we must collaborate, it will be better if they have their say and come in on their own steam. If they are on a wrong course, they will in time find it unworkable; so the question is how to bring them to that realisation, and through it, with the least damage to all concerned; the answer is encourage them to think things out calmly.

To give respect means to be seen to give respect. So it is often inappropriate to answer a question with a view solely or even primarily to facts. It may instead be wise to gear one’s answer to the motivations that one sees reflected in the other’s question. If the other knows the conversation is proceeding on this principle, he or she will make suitable allowances and clarity can still be achieved. This approach, designed to preserve harmony, is found in societies as diverse as India and Japan.

The image of the admirable, successful person is still largely of someone who has good relations with those around, and achieves this by being at home with him- or herself in a way that is independent of activity and achievement in the world but instead proceeds from the inside out. The ultimate ‘winner’ is a calm, clear-thinking, benevolent individual whose status is achieved without creating losers.

On the surface, much of this seems to be going by the board these days. To a degree, people are perhaps starting to adopt western-style patterns of living. Equally, what replaces the established value-systems is often just anomie. Ultimately, it is hard to shift an old culture’s underlying centre of gravity.

In sum, while progress is of course a key preoccupation, its importance is largely framed by the need to restore balance. Internally, economic growth will relieve tensions; externally it will remedy the weakness of Asians vis-à-vis Westerners. So, while war and lesser conflicts have been prominent in recent history, nonetheless harmony remains the basis of moral authority and so under-girds state authority.

THE PERSONAL AND THE POLITICAL

Where does the Buddhist element come in to this? Consider the following schema.

• Harmony between persons, classes, communities and nations is all of a piece. If it happens, it happens on a broad front.
• Harmony between units at any level is a reflection of harmony within each unit. A nation prone to class conflict is quarrelsome. An ethnic community wracked by internal struggles will contend with those around it.
• Finally, what happens higher up the scale reflects what happens lower down; e.g. if each community within a multiethnic nation can sort itself out, the nation will be at peace within itself and a good neighbour to adjacent states.
• Accordingly, harmony in the world depends in the end on the capacity of individuals to make peace with themselves.

This analysis is not peculiar to any culture or tradition. It has particular resonance within Asian cultures. Moreover, these cultures often seem to share, at some level:

1. Some basic ideas about how individuals can improve themselves:
   • A balanced, calm, peaceful, harmonious experience is satisfying; ultimately, nothing else is. Quality of experience is measured against that goal.
   • Quality of experience need not depend on external circumstances. Similarly, it is reflected in and supports physical and social behaviour, but is not produced and sustained by such behaviour.
   • A person must work to create the conditions for experience quality to improve. This involves a process of introspection.
   • The assumptions guiding that process have to do with detachment. Just as my world reflects the way I go about experiencing it, so also e.g.:
     • I am not my emotional states. They intrude upon me.
     • Thought is not locked up within heads. I am not my thoughts.
     • My body is part of my world. It is not me.
     • Feeding appetites seems fun, but the attraction soon palls.
     • Concern for self-image and self-identity is not helpful or necessary.
   • The end-point of the process is a condition in which a person, e.g.:
     • is not troubled by desires or setbacks;
     • is full of goodwill, and is good to be around;
     • spontaneously knows and does what is right.

2. A sense that harmony in the external world is achieved by an analogous, connected process, such that, e.g.:

• People who are right with themselves behave right.
• Nobody’s that special. People in important jobs help groups to cohere.
• People and groups that get all excited about issues tend to go off the rails.
• In deciding a course of action, factual knowledge and sound reasoning are necessary but not sufficient. The key is to understand the people who will be involved and how they will be affected.