Buddhism Caste System

In the Buddhism religion, there is a Caste system. The Caste system is broken up into 5 different levels. These levels indicate what your Dharma will be for that life. Dharam is your duty you must fulfill while in that life. For example, the highest caste is the Brahmins. These people are typically lighter-skinned and are priests. The lowest possible caste is the Untouchables. The untouchables are the only people that will touch a dead body and even human waste. Untouchables must wear bells or some type of symbol to warn the other villagers that they can not be touched or talked to. In order, all the castes are Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishya, Shudra, and the Dalit (Untouchables). Kshatriyas are warriors or government leaders and Vaishyas are …show more content…
Let's say that Buddhism is completely wrong and has everything mixed up. If this was true then that means people are being born into roles at complete random and being treated as if they deserve to be there. An untouchable could go there whole life thinking that they were a failure in their previous life because of the current teachings. The potential harm this can do to a human being is immense. The impacts this can have on a human can include depression, anger, confusion, and suicide. This is an imbalance of power because an innocent human being can be treated heinously as if they deserve it when in reality it was just the luck of the draw. The underlying point in this is that in life a person can be looked at a certain way because of a label they have on them. Though this label is most likely incorrectly judges who they actually are other people will treat them as if it was fact. In life when faced with a situation such as this one good route to go would be not judging the book by its cover. This means that before you cave into the social pressure of adhering to this label take a step back and take a good look at who the person is for who they truly are. And if this is unable to be done, if the evaluation of their character is not able to happen then the judgment of this person should not happen. Basically, do not jump to conclusions about someone or something. Though this may seem easy to do it is not as easy as it sounds. …show more content…
The government leaders do not need to worry about if anyone will join the military or if they are going to have enough merchants. And the same for the people they do not need to worry if there will be a priest or a government leader to help the people. The reasons for this is because the only way to move up the caste system is to do your dharma and obviously people will want a better next life, therefore, more times than not the people will fulfill their everyday duty. Though it is illegal in present day India to deny someone a political position due to their “caste” it still happens. From this, it is very easy to see the imbalance of power that is happening. Someone who has the potential to do better in their life than what their dharma outlines is not able to do as they please because they think the only way to move up is to do their duty. As American citizens, we should be thankful to have the opportunity to challenge authority and challenge the mainstream ideas and do whatever we want. One’s ability to handle this situation can be extremely difficult due to the fact that it may be illegal to attempt to not do what you are told. In this case, drastic measures such as seeking refugee status in another country or seeking asylum may need to be taken. What we as American citizens are able to take from this is to take advantage of the opportunities presented in front of us