In the parable of the city, Gotama [the Buddha] compares himself to a man wandering through a forest who chances upon an ancient road. Following it, he reaches the ruins of a city. On leaving the forest, he reports this discovery to the local king and urges him to rebuild the city, which once again becomes "prosperous, well-populated, attained to growth and expansion.*" This story is one of the few occasions in the canon that provides a clue as to how the Buddha saw his dharma enacted through the structures of the world. By comparing the ancient road in the forest to the noble eightfold path, he implies that the goal of the path is not the transcendent experience of nirvana, achieved through the cessation of death and rebirth, but the building of another kind of society, based on understanding the four great tasks as a function of the principle of conditionality. Although the redactors of the canon struggled to make this parable fit with the orthodox goal of bringing existence to an end, its guiding metaphor of a thriving, bustling city strongly resists such an interpretation.
Gotama depicts the city as a space that encourages human flourishing through the provision of economic opportunity ("prosperity"), security ("ramparts"), family life ("well populated"), and leisure ("parks, groves, ponds"). A city is a civic space where individuals can live in close proximity as "rational, sociable agents who are meant to collaborate in peace to their mutual benefit.**" Since the dharma has no place for either the providential designs of a Creator or a divinely ordained social hierarchy, the realization of the city's potential lies squarely in the hands of human beings who enjoy equality.
~Stephen Batchelor, in after buddhism
* Nidanasamyutta, Samyutta Nikaya
**Charles Taylor, in A Secualr Age
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