IN WHAT SENSE CAN ONE SPEAK OF BUDDHIST UTOPIANISM?

The General Conclusion takes up again the overall sense, introduced in the General Introduction III.d, in which I am using the category of utopia – as eu-topia and ou-topia – in relation to the discourse of felicity in the Pali imaginaire. This conclusion to Part 2 addresses narrower issues concerning the typology of ideal societies taken from Davis (1981) to organize the Buddhist ideas and stories in Part 2. As stated in the Introduction to Part 2, I want these terms to sit lightly on the Buddhist materials: nothing essential to my description or analysis of Pali texts is dependent on these labels and definitions. The aim in using them has been to suggest one avenue for comparative understanding, and invite one kind of comparative reflection. Many others are possible. Even for these purposes, indeed, the typology is not obligatory: other scholars may for their own purposes want to criticize, subtract from and/or supplement Davis' terms. Krishan Kumar, for instance, in a useful textbook (1991: 3–19), differentiates utopia from other “varieties of the ideal society or the ideal condition of humanity”: the Golden Age, Arcadia, Paradise, the Land of Cockaygne, the Millennium and the Ideal City. The last has considerable resonance with the Buddhist imagery of nirvana as a city, as also with the city of heaven.