Can Buddhism Save the World?
MICHAEL WELTON
JANUARY 15, 2016
Counterpunch
The topic of socially engaged Buddhism is complex and very
important to the future of the dharma in our troubled, fast-moving and
intensely competitive global world. Buddhist scholar Stephen
Batchelor says that phrase “socially engaged Buddhism” was coined
in the 1930s when some monks opposed France’s occupation in Viet
Nam.
In his lucid historical study, The Awakening of the West:
the encounter of Buddhism and Western
culture (1994), he tells
the story of Thich Quang Du who, while sitting in meditative calm
repose on a street in Saigon, poured gas over his body and torched
himself on June 1, 1963.
Images of monks aflame—“seated like a Buddha
engulfed by fire in a country ravaged by war sears itself into the
Western mind” (p. 353)—aroused incomprehension among those who
imagined Buddhists as totally other-worldly.
But the practice of “engaged Buddhism” could really
be said to begin with the Buddha himself. The Buddha didn’t remain
silently seated under the Bodhi tree, keeping his awakening to
himself, hidden in his soul’s depths. Rather, he went out into the
world, and the dharmabegan to
engage with its culture and society of 2500 years ago.
He created the sangha, a kind of community of resistance to the
existing caste and hierarchical system. In itself, it was a model
of community and community development. The Buddha also taught
about worldly affairs. Yet we must recognize that the Buddha taught
not only perennial truths about the human condition and the way to
happiness. He also articulated his understanding of human suffering
(dukkha) in the Iron Age world where society was
viewed essentially as a collection of individuals (Stephen
Batchelor, After Buddhism: rethinking
the dharma for a secular
age [2015], pp. 1-28).
Some Buddhist scholars argue that the socially
engaged Buddhist movement is really the creation of modernity. That
is, the central preoccupation of Buddhist Asian civilizations has
not been the “saving of the world.”
As the dharma traveled from the East into the
West, western teachers and practitioners had to speak the dharma
into highly complex capitalist social formations, societies of
immense material abundance and social and political
complexity.
Western societies understood themselves within the
narrative of progress. They had hard-won traditions of human
rights, liberal democracy and collective welfare.
These were also societies that had been secularized.
Religion gradually receded and relinquished its control over all
domains of existence, and came to be imagined as a mostly private
matter or concern.
Moreover, these western liberal democracies suffered
from the “malaise of modernity”: loss of meaning, feelings of
alienation and powerlessness, unhappiness in the midst of the glut
of material possessions, despair over deepening discrepancies
between rich and poor, social fragmentation, moral confusion and
pervasive personality disorders and addictions, plus an ever
degrading eco-structure.
For many western Buddhists, then, it certainly
seemed that any spirituality that focused exclusively on the
cultivation of the inner world would not speak to the anguish of
modernity. Buddhists in both the West and the East were forced to
examine their own traditions and practices as they sought, and
struggled, to be an integral part of the conversation about the
future of their societies.
Socially Engaged Buddhism: a
definition
Kenneth Kraft (The Wheel of Engaged
Buddhism: a new map of the
path [1999]) argues that:
“…engaged Buddhism is an international movement whose participants
seek to apply the Buddhist ideals of wisdom and compassion to
present-day social, political, and environmental issues. Although
Buddhism has typically given priority to the spiritual liberation
of the individual, engaged Buddhists look for ways to expand the
notion of spiritual liberation to other arenas (without abandoning
the essential role of individual enlightenment)” (p. 9).
Kraft then provides us with a working definition:
“Engaged Buddhism entails both inner and outer work. We must change
the world, we must change ourselves, and we must change ourselves
in order to change the world. Awareness and compassionate action
reinforce each other” (p. 10). Left humanist visionaries must take
this challenge to heart.
Socially engaged Buddhist thinkers and practitioners
reject the idea perpetuated by some comparative religion scholars
(like Max Weber) that Buddhism is a world-denying, world-rejecting
religion. “Sitting practice” is not set off against “non-sitting
practice.”
The main reason for the rejection of the
dualism—contemplation and action—has to do with the profound
insight into the relationship between the Buddha’s teaching on
suffering as part of our existential condition and suffering that
is produced by social arrangements.
Ken Jones, author of one the first texts on socially engaged
Buddhism (The social Face of
Buddhism [1989]), after noting
that the Buddha’s axial teaching that the root cause of our
suffering is “divisive and delusive self-need” (p. 194), observes
that we live in “socio-historical conditions which institutionalize
alienation, ill-will, aggressiveness, and acquisitiveness” (ibid.).
In turn, these societal conditions are karmically inherited by each
new generation.
Ken Kraft captures the linkage between ontological
and social suffering this way. “Greed, anger, and delusion—known as
the ‘three poisons’ in Buddhism—need to be uprooted in our personal
lives, but they have to be dealt with as social and political
realities. Throughout the world today, large-scale systems cause
suffering as surely as psychological factors cause suffering.
Traditional Buddhism focused on the latter; engaged Buddhism
focuses on both” (1999, p. 10).
Put differently, social structures and ideological
systems can be understood as the institutionalization of the three
poisons. This means that the pursuit of enlightenment is a dual
project. Buddhists insist that we must confront our own divisive
and delusive ego-needs and create different social conditions of a
kind which nurture personality change.
Thus, in our intensely consumerist, capitalist
world, our own delusions and their institutionalization are now so
interpenetrated that “contemplation and activism” need to go hand
in hand. Outer work must be integrated with inner work.
Bringing meditation into daily
life
For socially-engaged Buddhists, meditation is not a
turning away from society. The Buddha is teaching us, they say,
that without healing our own alienation and delusions, we won’t be
able to develop the necessary insight into social dukkha. Our
efforts to effect social change will only be undermined. Here, it
seems, Buddhism speaks to secular activists who often proceed to
try to change particular social or political or cultural
arrangements without any inner work. The great Canadian humanist
adult educator, Watson Thomson, said that radical activists had to
“be what they were attempting to build anew in the
world.”
Most Buddhist traditions and lineages cultivate
mindfulness—attending to our own impermanence, nature of our
suffering, the emptiness of the “I” as well as attending to what is
going on in the world. However, it does seem that the cultivation
of “aspirational compassion or loving-kindness” could remain just
that, an aspiration, inner experience that softens and opens our
hearts to the anguish of the world, but leaves it at
that.
In a much reprinted article, “Buddhism and the
possibilities of a planetary culture,” American Zen poet and
environmentalist Gary Snyder states, rather scathingly, that:
“Although Mahayana Buddhism has a grand vision of universal
salvation, the actual achievement of Buddhism has been the
development of practical systems of meditation toward the end of
liberating a few dedicated individuals from psychological hang-ups
and cultural conditioning. Institutional Buddhism has been
conspicuously ready to accept or ignore the inequalities and
tyrannies of whatever political system it found itself under. This
can be death to Buddhism, because it is death to any meaningful
function of compassion. Wisdom without compassion feels no
pain”.
Nelson Foster, a long-time activist with the
Buddhist Peace Fellowship and a Zen practitioner, writes in a
thoughtful essay, “How shall we save the world?” that he struggled
mightily to come to terms with his tradition’s ultimate outlook on
the subject of saving beings.
He says: “Nowhere do we find great Ch’an or Zen
teachers of yesteryear admonishing their students to go yonder and
shelter the homeless, feed the hungry, protest injustice, protect
forests and rivers, intervene in military preparations, or
otherwise organize for the common good. It simply is not there in
the teachings, as much as you and I might wish it were.”
Foster acknowledges that there were individuals who
engaged in acts of compassionate action. But the record, he says,
“consists mainly of individual acts of kindness and uprightness.”
Zen teachers name this “entering the marketplace with helping
hands” as represented in the final frame of the Ten Ox herding
Pictures, but it is not mobilization to overturn the status
quo.”
We cannot go into the reasons for this
world-withdrawal. But proponents of “Critical Buddhism” in Japan
have proposed that the reason lies in the Ch’an and Zen teaching of
“original enlightenment”—the understanding that “sentient beings
are originally Buddha’s.” Thus, if slaves and clear-cut hillsides
are Buddha’s from the beginning, why worry?
Perhaps this contentious debate within Buddhism
alerts us to the way Buddhist notions could be interpreted to
justify withdrawing from engagement with various forms of
exploitation and oppression. Karma is a good example:
misinterpreted, karma can be blamed for the fate of those, say, who
find themselves in the sex trade in the mean streets of
Bangkok.
But socially engaged Buddhists argue strongly that in the act of
helping others our egoism begins to crack, disassemble and our
spirit breaks out of its narrow confines. In her astute reflections
inMeditation for
Life (2001), Martine Batchelor
offers “guided meditations” that expand compassion beyond
ourselves—from people we like to those we rather detest.
Mapping the contours of the socially engaged
Buddhist movement
What does engagement actually look like in practice?
Ken Jones (1989) provides a simple, yet helpful model that involves
three types of practice that can be considered as
socially-engaged.
1) alternative societal models, for example monastic
or quasi monastic communities;
2) social helping, service and welfare, both in
employment and voluntarily; and
3) radical activism, which is ‘directed to
fundamental institutional and social changes, culminating in
societal metamorphosis’ (p. 216).
There are many different forms of socially-engaged Buddhism, in
the West and in other places of the world. There are also several
international networks—the Buddhist Alliance for Social Engagement,
the Buddhist Peace Fellowship and the International Network of
Engaged Buddhists (which publishes the Turning Wheel) are three fairly well-known organizations.
Buddhists believe that their dedicated inner work and gradually
transforming the way they are present in and with the world, will
radiate out from themselves into community and social
relationships.
Shifting gears, let’s look at six specific
contributions that Buddhism makes to social activism and struggles
for social justice.
1) One has to “be peace” in order to “make peace.” Here one is
cultivating certain psycho-spiritual qualities—breaking with one’s
own fear and self-protection and desire for vengefulness—so that
one can be present in the face of anger and violence with a deep
calmness and compassion. This is the practice of equanimity. Joanna
Macey’s early book, Despair and Power in the
Nuclear Age (1983), worked
innovatively with the Buddhist idea that one had to face, and move
through one’s own fears, before one could be a peace
activist.
2) The Buddhist cultivation of selflessness. Mahayana
teachings—the way of the bodhisattva—emphasize the fundamental
importance of “getting ourselves out of the way” to be present with
the suffering of others. So selflessness and compassion are two
sides of the same coin. The difficult and c0ntroversial Tibetan
practice of tonglen shatters the dualism of good
self/evil other by taking the evil imaginatively into one’s heart
space and, by so doing, breaking any sense of “superior/inferior
self”.
3) The theory and practice of non-violence. Both Christianity
and Buddhism are non-violent in origin. Neither is, however,
without blemish in its historical actions. Buddhism teaches that
hating and acting violently earns negative karma as individuals and
as a society. So, they insist that we must refrain from violent
acts and hateful thoughts (For an incisive commentary on Buddhism
and violence, see Bernard Faure, “Part III: Buddhism and society,”
in Unmasking
Buddhism [2009]).
Violent actions sow violent “karmic seeds.” Buddhist
contemplative practices move us inwardly in ways that go against
our cultural conditioning, and tendency to solidify ourselves
through defining the other as threatening and fearful. Many
Buddhist teachings and writings analyze how we can “transform
anger”. This is a particularly essential practice for those
struggling for social justice. One might argue that unless we expel
the oppressor within our anger fueled by injustice will replicate
the patterns we are trying to transform. That was Paulo Freire’s
point, too, in his classic text, Pedagogy of the
Oppressed (1970).
4) Non-adversarial approach to ethics. This axiom
links to the notion of selflessness and non-violence. Our sense of
being a separate self is, at root, the source of adversarial
relations and aggressive action. It is not easy to learn that my
good is your good; your good is my good. But the global Buddhist
community, it seems to me, must think deeply about how those who
have Power are confronted, given that they hold on to it against
the wishes of those who are suffering from oppression and
exploitation.
What roles are open to Buddhists who resist
institutionalized greed, ill-will and delusion? Is it primarily
that of a “moral witness” to the suffering caused by particular
social and political actors? How do they (and others too) respond
on the geo-political front to the genocidal actions of groups? Is a
violent intervention something Buddhists can sanction or
support?
5) Cultivating non-harmfulness (ahimsa). This
attitude of embracing all sentient beings, of seeing
interconnectedness or inter-being is the epistemological basis for
Buddhist social and ecological action. There is a growing, and
increasingly sophisticated, literature on the dharma and ecology.
Indeed, many Buddhists are very active in various kinds of
environmentally-oriented social movements.
6) Buddhism is wary of attachment to Ideologies. The
radical teaching of emptiness, once grasped, may loosen attachments
to various perceptions and actions that become dogmatic. Dogmatism
hardens approaches, and accentuates conflict between those inside
the dogma, and those outside.
Challenges facing Western
Buddhism
Traditionally, Buddhism has definitely emphasized
personal responsibility for our own dukkha and awakening. This is,
of course, utterly essential. But today it is important for
Buddhists to realize how conditioning by social structures also
fosters widespread dukkha. The delusion and oppression built into
those structures must also be addressed.
Buddhist philosopher and social theorist, David Loy (author of
the ground-breaking text, The Great
Awakening [2003]), has made a
convincing case for conceptualizing the three poisons, greed,
ill-will and delusion, to show how the modern corporation embodies
greed, the militarization of society produces endless ill-will and
delusion is fostered consciously by the “captains of
consciousness”–advertisers and the Big Bad Mass Media.
Buddhist teachings contain considerable power to
speak to the anguish of our high intensity consumer society where
the “good life” is intimately bound up with consumption of
goods.
Stephen Batchelor (Buddhism Without
Beliefs [1997])
argues that Buddhism asserts both a freedom from the “constraints
of self-centred confusion and turmoil, from the craving for a fixed
identity, from the compulsion to contrive a perfect situation, from
identification with preconceived opinions, and from the anguish
that originates in such attachments” (p. 94).
But he also asserts a freedom “to creatively realize
[the world’s] possibilities unhindered by the cravings that had
previously determined his choices, freed to imagine an appropriate
response to the anguish of others, freed to cultivate an authentic
path that embraced all aspects of human life, freed to form a
community of friendships, and free to create a culture of awakening
that would survive long after his death” (ibid.).
Loy argues that if the Buddhist concern is to save all beings by
reducing their dukkha and promoting their
awakening, western Buddhists need to incorporate that vision into
the path of liberation from dukkha that Buddhism offers.
Thus, Buddhism, like other spiritual practices, can
fall into two extremes: one, that of inner mysticism which simply
abandons profound attention and care for the socially created world
(perhaps arguing that, well, everything is impermanent anyway, why
engage in social action), and two, accommodation to oppressive
political arrangements (even supporting state-initiated violence
against minorities).
Buddhism faces many challenges as it migrates into
the west and takes up residence. Many well seasoned Buddhist
practitioners and teachers have issued warnings that the dharma
could accommodate itself to the advanced, individualism and
consumerism of contemporary American materialism. That is, it takes
its place as one exquisite spiritual brand amongst many in the
crowded self-help and self-improvement market offering salve for
the wounded.