Action and Force in Engaged Buddhism: Public Policy and the Koan of Engagement

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Action and Force in Engaged Buddhism:

Public Policy and theKoan of Engagement

by

Christopher A. Ford

Dissertation Submitted in Partial Satisfaction of Requirements for Chaplaincy Ordination

Prajna Mountain Order of Soto Zen Buddhism

Upaya Institute and Zen CenterSanta Fe, New Mexico

1st

February 2010


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Any merit generated in the preparation of this paper is dedicated to

the awakening of all beings, and to the cessation of their suffering as

Buddhists understand this term.

I am thankful for the teaching and guidance of Roshi Joan Halifax of

the Upaya Zen Center, and of the coordinator of Upayas pioneering

chaplaincy program, Maia Duerr. I suspect that I part company from these

teachers in some or many of my own views and interpretations of the politics

and policy programmatics of Buddhist engagement, but I remain deeply and

humbly grateful for their wise guidance and good counsel.


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I. Introduction

Engaged Buddhism is sometimes said to be nothing special at all just the natural

result of any open-hearted beings compassionate encounter with the world, with thedesire to alleviate suffering manifesting itself as a determination to live out

compassionate action in dealings with others. It is this. At the same time, however,Engaged Buddhism also embodies a paradox, for there is yet a tension between its

devotion to effecting systemic and transformational change in the phenomenal world of

cyclic birth and death (samsara), in order to relieve suffering, and the fundamentalBuddhist understanding that samsara cannot, within its own frame of reference, be

fixed. If samsara is by definition delusive characterized by the pervasive

inescapability of suffering, which cannot be ended for any being short of thetranscendence of enlightened awakening how can we presume to be able to alleviate

such anguish merely by action within that world?

It is a common characteristic ofsamsaric ideologies to assume to put it inBuddhist terms that the conventional, relational world of cause-and-effect

transformations can be redeemed and transformed through adherence to some particular

program of action. Such ideologies seek Utopia withinsamsara by remaking it to theirspecifications. To the political theorist Eric Voegelin, this kind of utopianism which he

described as aiming for the immanentization of the eschaton,1

the end, through

transformation or destruction, of the present world was both worrisome and dangerous,tending toward an incipient totalitarianism that he felt to be a characteristic weakness of

the political left, but which had its roots in the Gnostic heresies of Christianity. From a

Buddhist perspective, however, such approaches to remaking the world seem doubly

problematic.

First, the manipulative intervention-mind of seeking instrumentally to bring

about such deliberate and programmatic reshaping seems untrue to the spirit of open,nonjudgmental awareness embodying the precepts ofnot knowingand bearing witness

2

to which the Buddhist practitioner aspires. It is indeed true, as David Chappell has

pointed out, that Buddhists should be wary of doctrines because if held too tightlysuch schemas become impediments to enlightenment.

3This surely applies no less to

socio-political theories and prescriptions as it does to specifically religious formulations.

1 See, e.g., Fred Dallmayr,Margins of Political Discourse (Albany: State University of New York

Press, 1989), at 90 (quotingVoegelin).2

The terminology used here follows that developed by the Zen Peacemaker Order (ZPO) foundedby Roshi Bernard Glassman within the White Plum Lineage of Soto Zen, and which has been

continued by Glassmans dharma heir Roshi Joan Halifax in the Prajna Mountain Order. Theseterms appear in the ZPOs particular formulation of the core precepts of Buddhism, but analogues

can be found across the various Buddhist traditions.3

David W. Chappell, Introduction, inBuddhist Peacework(David W. Chappell, ed.) (Boston:

Wisdom Publications, 1999), at 15, 17.


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Second, and in a sense more fundamentally, there is something inherentlyproblematic, from a Buddhist perspective, about presuming that an real release from the

worlds suffering (dukkha) can be achieved by changing the world around rather than

specifically by awakening through the practice of the dharma (Skt; Pali dhamma), theteachings of the Buddha. How, in other words, can we contribute to liberation through a

mere rearrangement of the samsaric deck chairs on which deluded, self-identifyingsentient beings sit? Even apart from concerns about the coercive excesses to which

world-transformative ideologies tend to give rise, therefore, Buddhists should probablyjoin Voegelin in being deeply suspicious of theories that seem to immanentize the

eschaton.

Yet Engaged Buddhism does seek action in the world, and indeed to transform it.

It seeks to serve the cause of Mahayana compassion promoting the liberation of all

sentient beings by just such concrete intervention in the structural and institutionalcircumstances ofsamsara. Engaged Buddhists do not simply teach the dharma: they

march for world peace, feed the hungry, succor the dying, and offer ministry in prisons

and hospitals. If such engagement is not simply to be a lazy re-labeling of garden-varietysamsaric social and political activism as Buddhist action, however and if it is notitself to fall prey to a depressingly conventional ideologization Engaged Buddhism

must come to grips with the paradox of action in samsara. From a specifically Buddhist

perspective, how can changing the circumstances ofsamsara contribute to the liberationof beings?

If policymaking is the process by which institutions make choices about actionin the relational world, the challenge for Engaged Buddhism is thus to reconceptualize

Mahayana compassion as a policy problem while yet keeping that policy recognizably

Buddhist. It demands of us not merely not knowingand bearing witness but also concrete

strategies and objectives and criteria for assessing progress with which to equip actorswithinsamsara in their work to change it. In short, Engaged Buddhism must be able to

answer the question: Can we discern any specifically Buddhist guidance for making

policy choices in the relational world?

This paper seeks thus to explore the problem of action in compassionate

engagement with a particular, but by no means exclusive, focus upon the troublingquestion of the use, legitimacy, and modalities of violence in or by a Buddhist society

through a survey of the literature on Engaged Buddhism and relevant dharma texts and

explications. Any conclusions reached in this regard are, of course, merely this authorsopinions, offered in full awareness of the diversity of Buddhist thought and of the ancient

understanding that, in the figurative phrasing offered by Thich Nhat Hanh the famous

Vietnamese Zen monastic and peace activist who is credited with coining the term

Engaged Buddhism4

there are 84,000 dharma doors through which one can travelthe Path.

5

4 See, e.g., Christopher S. Queen, Introduction: A New Buddhism, inEngaged Buddhism in the

West(Christopher S. Queen, ed.) (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2000), at 1, 6.5

Thich Nhat Hanh, The Heart of the Buddhas Teaching(New York: Broadway, 1999), at 162.


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The views articulated herein are thus not intended to be a knowing of the sortagainst which Buddhist psychology warns us in its quest to forestall the development of

harmful attachments. Rather, it is my hope to articulate here a legitimate perspective

and to some degree, I hope, a persuasive one that deserves contemplation fromthoughtful and serious practitioners. Particularly because modern Buddhists in the West

sometimes seem to approach policy issues as though such matters were ones ofcrystalline clarity and inarguable doctrinal requirements, however, it is my hope that my

discussion will prove at the very least thought-provoking and enriching.

With regard to the philosophical and doctrinal conundrum of engagement, it is, in

my view, probably possible to begin to identify at least some characteristics or factors inthesamsaric world that may make enlightenment more accessible to sentient beings. As

a result, deliberate intervention in that world may be compassionately defensible in

specifically Buddhist terms if such action is devoted to the creation or preservation ofsuch facilitative circumstances. However reflexive some of its incarnations might seem

in conventional political or ideological terms, I thus believe there is no reason to reject

Engaged Buddhism as being necessarily problematic.

My hypothesis, however, posits an indirectlink to the compassionate liberation of

other beings.6

Because of this merely indirect connection, engagement with samsaric

6Some writings on Engaged Buddhism also attribute a motivation for engaged practice notmerely in alleviating the suffering of other beings, but in facilitating the enlightenment of the

engaged actor himself or herself. Citing the 8th-Century Indian sage Shantideva about how service

to others provides an especially quick path to enlightenment, for instance, Joanna Macy suggests

that engagement is driven at least in part by the desire to speed ones own enlightenment. SeeJoanna Macy, In Indras Net: Sarvodaya & Our Mutual Efforts for Peace, in The Path of

Compassion: Writings on Socially Engaged Buddhism (Fred Eppsteiner, ed.) (Berkeley: ParallaxPress, 1988), at 170, 173.

Kenneth Kraft has also suggested that [a]nother justification for involvement in thesocial realm is that individual enlightenment cannot ripen fully without a corresponding degree

of social awareness. Through this lens, engagement is at least in part about using engagedactivity as a sort of meditation for the benefit of the engaged actor himself: at least some

individual Buddhists now approach social action as a skillful means for deepening their practice.Kenneth Kraft, Wellsprings of Engaged Buddhism, in Not Turning Away: the Practice of

Engaged Buddhism (Susan Moon, ed.) (Boston: Shambhala, 2004), at 154, 156 & 161. CynthiaEller has described this approach as a theory of action meditation, and says that it has indeed

been adopted by some activists. From this perspective, political activism [is] a way of pursuingenlightenment in its own right. Eller, The Impact of Christianity on Buddhist Nonviolence in the

West, inInner Peace, World Peace: Essays on Buddhism and Nonviolence (Kenneth Kraft, ed.)(Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992), at 91, 104. In this sense, the suffering of

other beings seems almost incidental, taking a secondary position to the enlightenment of the

engaged actor himself.All this may be true, but the role of compassionate engagement in advancing the actors

own spiritual progress is a question I will not discuss further herein. By such a yardstick of

individual enlightenment, social engagement is functionally indistinguishable from solitarymeditation practice, with the presence or absence of others (or the actual degree of their suffering)

being merely incidental. (Indeed, by eliminating the external referent for compassionate moralaction, moreover specifically, the criterion of judging actions by whether or not they are in fact

conducive to alleviating the suffering of other sentient beings action meditation would seem toincline even more toward operational permissiveness than compassion-based engagement. If

consideration of the impact upon others is irrelevant, any sort of conduct would be allowed if it


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circumstances should thus not be undertaken with the specific expectation that it will initself relieve suffering. (After all, Buddhists presumably believe that changing the

architecture of thesamsaric world cannot do this, for it is not adverse circumstances that

create suffering as much as it is our unhealthy and delusively self-obsessed relationshipwith them. That relationship, in turn, is only curable through a sentient beings own

progress along the path of enlightenment.) Rather, the point is to bring about conditionsin which sentient beings are more likely to be able to achieve awakening. Engagement is

about creating conditions maximally conducive to spiritual practice and progress withinan inescapably confused and unavoidably anguish-ridden environment.

The policy prescriptions toward which I believe such a supposition points us orat least which such an interpretation of Buddhist ethicspermits may not necessarily be

precisely those advocated by most Engaged Buddhists in the contemporary West. But

it nonetheless seems to me quite possible to speak of Engaged Buddhism as at leastpotentially a genuinelyBuddhistphenomenon.

Given that meaningfully Buddhistengagement would thus seem to be possible,what does it allow? Despite modern stereotypes, particularly with respect to issues suchas the use of warfare and capital punishment, the dharma, I contend, is not nearly so

prescriptive as one might assume. As we shall see, even with regard to such supposedly

easy questions, Buddhism seems to provide a remarkable range of apparentlycanonically-supportable policy options not least in making it possible to speak

defensibly of coercive and even deadly force being, under certain circumstances at least,

legitimately available as a tool of government or social policy. In undertaking publicpolicy choice through the prism of Buddhist engagement, it is both our responsibility and

our challenge, as moral actors, to choose on an ongoing basis between a wide range of

articulably Buddhist options, and to do so without the crutch of doctrinal clarity. In

this context, what constitutes for Buddhism a right or a wrong answer if indeed thatis clearly resolvable at all, which we should not necessarily presume may be an

extraordinarily complex calculation involving issues of motive, context, and intention

going far beyond questions of simple rule-compliance or conventional effects-consequentialism.

Within the ambit of compassionate engagement, however, I believe that while theresponsibilities of public policy choice are inescapably challenging constituting, at it

were, an awkward and perilous dance around the margins of dangerous and seductive

enlightenment-impeding knowings such policy choice is not impossible, and iscoherently defensible even in specifically Buddhist terms. The following pages will

explore these issues in some detail.

facilitates the actors spiritual progress. Cf.Eller, The Impact of Christianity on Buddhist

Nonviolence in the West, supra, at 104.) What is distinctive and interesting about Engaged

Buddhism is the degree of its genuine rather than merely instrumental concern for thesuffering of others, and its focus upon addressing such suffering by addressing the institutional,

political, economic, and social circumstances ofsamsara.


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II. Engaged Buddhism

The term Engaged Buddhism was apparently first used by Thich Nhat Hanh, in

his 1963 book by the same name,7

and is generally used today to describe a particularflavor of modern Buddhist practice that deliberately, purposively, and explicitly

involves itself in seeking to bring about change to various institutional and structuralaspects of human society. Although Hanh himself believes that all Buddhism is

intrinsically engaged with the world around it and that it would not in fact beBuddhism were it not so

8 many authors in recent years have treated Engaged Buddhism

as a distinctive approach to dharma practice that departs in significant ways from most

traditional approaches. Christopher Queen, for instance, describes the movement asbeing unprecedented, and a new chapter or new paradigm in the history of

Buddhism. Citing a comment by B.R. Ambedkar, in fact, Queen suggests viewing

Engaged Buddhism as nothing less than a Navayana a Neo-Buddhism, a fourthyanain the evolution of the Dharma.

9

In exploring this distinctiveness, many observers who discuss the development ofEngaged Buddhism draw a distinction between what they describe as two different veinsof contemporary Buddhist thinking. On the one hand, writes Kenneth Kraft, there is a

strong element in Buddhism that emphasizes the importance of what might be called

inner work, such as meditation practice, mindfulness contemplation, mantra andvisualization work, and so forth. In the taxonomy of practice suggested by Ken Jones,

such a focus upon meditation, mindfulness, personal experience, and individual acts of

kindness makes one a soft Buddhist practitioner.10

According to Kraft, followers of this inwardly-focused path, which he feels is the

more traditional approach, tend to be skeptical of any form of Buddhism that advocates

an activist engagement withsamsaric circumstances:

A reform movement that is pursued only from a sociopolitical

standpoint, they assert, will at best provide temporary solutions, and atworst it will perpetuate the very ills it aims to cure. Effective social

action must also address the greed, anger, and ignorance that cripple us as

groups and as individuals.11

7Kenneth Kraft, Prospects for a Socially Engaged Buddhism, in Inner Peace, World Peace,

supra, at 11, 18.8

Patricia Hunt-Perry & Lyn Fine, All Buddhism is Engaged: Thich Nhat Hanh and the Order ofInterbeing, inEngaged Buddhism in the West (Christopher S. Queen, ed.) (Boston: Wisdom

Publications, 2000), at 35, 36.9

Queen, Introduction: A New Buddhism,supra, at 1, 1-2;see also id. at 23 (quotingAbdedkar).10

See, e.g., Sandra Bell, A Survey of Engaged Buddhism in Britain, inEngaged Buddhism in theWest, supra, at 397, at 405. Queen similarly suggests categorizing practitioners along a

continuum from mindfulness-based practice to service-based practice. See Queen, Introduction:A New Buddhism,supra, at 8.

11Kraft, Prospects for a Socially Engaged Buddhism,supra, at 12.


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According to Cynthia Eller, this inwardly-focused tradition sees the primary work ofpeacemakers as being that of clearing theirown minds of mental conflict.

12Indeed, Kraft

offers Thich Nhat Hanh himself as an example of this school, noting Hanhs belief that

peacework is principally innerwork, rather than outerwork.13

According to Kraft, thisstrain of Buddhist thought approaches the challenge of relieving suffering in the world

through the assumption that cosmic harmony is most effectively preserved through anindividuals spiritual practice.14

Because [o]ur well-being is the well-being of others,

it has been said, [i]f you take care of your mind, you take care of the world.15

By contrast, some authors assert that social engagement is something new in the

history of Buddhism because it departs fundamentally from the more quietist approach tosocio-economic and political issues that is said traditionally to have been taken by

Buddhism in East Asia in recent centuries. Nelson Foster, for instance one of the

founders of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship laments that on Buddhisms long journeythrough East Asia, it lost its way by abandoning an interest in social justice. As he

describes it, Chinese society effectively bottled up the social impulse in Buddhism,

which led it to become over-specialized in wisdom and the arts, and having only adiminished feel and concern for the sanghas relationship with the society beyond itsgates.

16Gary Snyder has also complained that Buddhist philosophy traditionally cared

more about psychology than about historical or sociological problems. In fact,

Snyder sees Institutional Buddhism as having traditionally ignored or perhapsactually accepted the inequalities and tyrannies of whatever political system it found

itself under.17

Similarly, David Chappell has written that traditional Buddhist

approaches failed to adequately address the special problems of organized society, ofstructural violence, of social oppression and environmental degradation.

18

Engaged Buddhism is thus said to depart from the political passivity of

traditional Buddhism in the Asian cultural context19

by adopting a stance of explicitlyinvolving practitioners in changing the world around them. Nevertheless, there is not

agreement on the degree to which this reactive engagement actually comes from

Buddhist sources. While Foster and Thurman believe that authentic and original themesof social engagement in early Buddhism have been lost and now need to be restored,

Peter Harvey sees modern Engaged Buddhism as a cross-cultural hybrid with its roots in

the meeting of Buddhism with Western values in the colonial era, especially in SriLanka from the late nineteenth century.

20Cynthia Eller similarly sees in Engaged

Buddhism a blending of Buddhist self-cultivation and a Western or Christian desire for

12Cynthia Eller, The Impact of Christianity on Buddhist Nonviolence in the West,supra, at 102.

13

Kraft, Prospects for a Socially Engaged Buddhism,supra, at 19.14

Kraft, Introduction, inInner Peace, World Peace,supra, at 1, 2.15

Joan Halifax,Being With Dying(Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2006), at 93.16

Nelson Foster, To Enter the Marketplace, in The Path of Compassion,supra, at 47, 50.17

Gary Snyder, Buddhism and the Possibilities of a Planetary Culture, inEngaged Buddhist

Reader(Arnold Kotler, ed.) (Berkeley: Parallax, 1996), at 123, 123.18

David W. Chappell, Buddhist Peace Principles, inBuddhist Peacework,supra, at 211.19

Kraft, Wellsprings of Engaged Buddhism,supra, at 154.20

Peter Harvey, An Introduction to Buddhist Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

2000), at 112.


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nonviolent social action and as fulfilling, at some level, a need to satisfy the crypto-Christian conscience.

21Historically speaking, Christopher Queen follows Harvey in

seeing the origins of Engaged Buddhism in 20th

Century East Asian socio-political

dynamics, most notably the movement of Indian caste untouchables into Buddhismduring the 1950s and 1960s in search of equality and social progress, the development of

the Sarvodaya Shramadana movement in Sri Lanka, and the founding of Thich NhatHanhs Order of Interbeing in Vietnam.22

Whatever its pedigree, however, Engaged Buddhism embraces an explicitly

activist and purposeful involvement in the world. Operating more, in Ken Jones terms,

toward the hard than the soft end of practice, Engaged Buddhists inn some senseseek to redefine what is meant by practice in the first placed. No longer, they contend,

should it include only inward-looking practices such as meditation and mindfulness,

coupled merely with narrowly-focused acts of personal generosity or compassion.Rather, Engaged Buddhists seek to expand the ambit ofdharma practice to incorporate

socio-political engagement, broadening their approaches to include ethics in action in the

broader world.

23

To be sure, many authors seem to exaggerate the contrast between hard and

soft varieties of Buddhist practice. The sharp distinction between inwardly- and

outwardly-focused practices may be analytically (or polemically) convenient, but itoversimplifies. It is probably a mistake to regard the two approaches as being

diametrically opposed, or to suppose that modern Buddhists exist in discrete clumps that

can be associated with one or the other approach.

As suggested by the frequent argument that inner school devotees include Thich

Nhat Hanh himself a monk who rose to fame as an anti-war protester during the

Vietnam era it certainly cannot be said that this group does not care about improvingthe conditions of the world. Nor is there any evidence that the more political activists of

Engaged Buddhism eschew meditative practice and inner cultivation. Instead, the

question thus seems to be one merely of tendency, emphasis, and degree. Bothapproaches seem committed to living out Buddhist ethics in the world so as to help

alleviate suffering, and both can find inspiration in the Buddhas own decision to start

teaching the dharma rather than remaining passively in meditative bliss a decision,Kenneth Kraft has argued, teaching us that spiritual maturity includes the ability to

actualize transcendent insight in daily life.24

21Eller, The Impact of Christianity on Buddhist Nonviolence in the West,supra, at 104-05. At thevery least, Engaged Buddhism does seem to incorporate social justice themes that are in some

ways closer to what one sees in the Abrahamic faiths of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam than tothe approaches traditionally taken in the Buddhist societies of Asia. See David Loy, The Great

Awakening: A Buddhist Social Theory (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2003), at 16.22

Queen, Introduction: A New Buddhism,supra, at 4.23

See Stephen Batchelor, The Future Is in Our Hands, inEngaged Buddhist Reader,supra, at 243,243.

24Kraft, Introduction, inInner Peace, World Peace,supra, at 4.


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Not surprisingly, therefore, Engaged Buddhists insist that they are not solelyabout engagement with broader social structures, and that engaged practice must not

neglect inner work. Kraft emphasizes, for instance, that the heart of Buddhist social

activism, its sine qua non is still individual transformation. Engagement pursued onlyfrom a social/political standpoint, without this transformative element, he suggests, is

not really Buddhist and may both fail to achieve real results and even perpetuatethe ills it aims to cure.25

David Loys account is illustrative. He advocates an engagement that revolves

around work for social justice as an outgrowth of Buddhist ethics. Dukkha, Loy writes,

can have many causes, but Engaged Buddhism recognizes that [i]n the end, our effortsto reduce contemporary dukkha cannot avoid bumping up against institutional and

structural issues in the society around us.26

Ultimately, however, Loy does not feel that

social and individual transformation and social transformation can be distinguished.Activist engagement with the world is necessary, he feels, because the sickness of the

ecosystems and social systems around us so severe as to deny us the luxury of devoting

ourselves only to our own enlightenment.

27

Nevertheless, we cannot neglect our ownawakening, and without work on transforming our delusions, our efforts to addresstheir institutionalized forms are likely to be useless, or worse.

28

Nevertheless, Engaged Buddhism does aim to add a new and quite explicitemphasis upon social justice and activism in seeking to alter the circumstances of

samsara. This is depicted as a natural outgrowth of Buddhist compassion particularly

when viewed through the prism of Mahayana ethics and the bodhisattva ideal of seekingto ensure the salvation of all sentient beings and the key Buddhist concept of

nonduality. Kraft has written, for instance, that no enlightenment can be complete as

long as others remain trapped in delusion, and that genuine wisdom is manifested in

compassionate action. In his description, [t]he touchstone for engaged Buddhists is avision of interdependence in which the universe is experienced as an organic whole,

every part affecting every other part.29

Joanna Macy similarly chastises [m]any spiritual teachers and gurus for

preaching a detachment that appears suspiciously akin to sublime indifference, arguing

that real understanding of the Buddhist concept of dependent co-arising makes suchindifference impossible. In its place, we see ourselves as co-participating in the

existence of all beings and in the world we co-create with them.30

For Christopher

Queen, it is characteristic of Engaged Buddhism that practitioners as indeed allBuddhists should refuse to draw a fundamental distinction between themselves and the

rest of the world. For them, the imperative ofaction in the world is the result of seeing

25Kraft, Wellsprings of Engaged Buddhism,supra, at 157.

26Loy,supra, at 16-17.

27Loy,supra, at 198.

28Loy,supra, at 35 & 198.

29Kenneth Kraft, Engaged Buddhism: An Introduction, in The Path of Compassion: Writings onSocially Engaged Buddhism (Fred Eppsteiner, ed.) (Berkeley: Parallax Press, 1988), at xi, xii-xiii.

30Macy, In Indras Net, supra, at 171.


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others suffering as their own.31

Insight into nonduality (advaya), therefore, is said toprovide the engine for engagement. Through this lens, engagement is the derivative of

compassion, and a necessary one. Kraft, quoting Nelson Foster, describes engagement

as a natural result of Buddhist practice, a spontaneous response of wisdom andcompassion to the social and ecological problems we face.

In this sense, [t]here can be

no such thing as disengagedBuddhism.

32

It may be in Nelson Fosters words peculiar that Buddhism lacks a cleartradition of social service,

33but Engaged Buddhists define themselves by their

commitment to filling that gap. It is doubtless true that as a socio-political movement,

Engaged Buddhism is still in the process of definition,34

and that it parameters aretherefore somewhat hard to pin down with specificity. Nevertheless, its practitioners are

characteristically active in seeking to change the world around them, frequently policy-

oriented, and often explicitly political. They aspire to alleviate suffering by changing thedukkha-producing ordukkha-exacerbating structures and institutions of human society.

It is the aim of engagement, says Sulak Sivaraksa, to bring awakened presenceto the task of influence[ing] the situation for the alleviation of suffering.35

Accordingto Queen, this approach is shaped by a recognition of the social and collective nature of

experience, which is shaped in particular by cultural and political institutions that have

the power to promote good or evil, fulfillment or suffering, progress or decline. Out ofthe assumption that such social structures contribute to suffering arises the necessity of

collective action to address the systemic causes of suffering and promote social

advancement in the world. As a result of this focus upon systemic and institutionalissues, the individual practitioner is no longer the sole relevant unit of compassionate

engagement. Engaged Buddhists tend to feel that they must also consider

the effects of personal and social actions on others, particularly in therealms of speech and symbol manipulation and in the policies,

programs, and products of large and small institutions.36

This is why Engaged Buddhism is said to be radically different: in contrast to

the more traditional Mahayana path of altruism, it is specifically directed to the creation

of new social institutions and relationships.37

Organizations such as the Buddhist PeaceFellowship, for example, stress that suffering must be addressed not just in its individual

form but in its structural and social aspects as well. Unjust social structures create

suffering, and it is the job of engagement to work to remake these structures.38

This cangive rise to a full-spectrum socio-political activism. Roshi Philip Kapleau, for example,

31Queen, Introduction: A New Buddhism,supra, at 6-7.

32Kenneth Kraft, Wellsprings of Engaged Buddhism,supra, at 156-57.

33Foster, To Enter the Marketplace,supra, at 49.

34Kraft, Wellsprings of Engaged Buddhism,supra, at 154.

35Sulak Sivaraksa, Buddhism in a World of Change, in The Path of Compassion,supra, at 9, 11.

36Queen, Introduction: A New Buddhism,supra, at 3.

37Queen, Introduction: A New Buddhism,supra, at 17.

38Judith Simmer-Brown, Speaking Truth to Power, inEngaged Buddhism in the West, supra, at

67, 80.


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believed that it was [a] major task for Buddhism in the West to work to forestall thepotential catastrophes facing the human race and lend our physical and moral support

to those who are fighting hunger, poverty, and oppression everywhere in the world.39

This, its practitioners aver, is the revolutionary activity of engagement, aiming to turncivilization to a harmonious course: it is the politics ofprajna.

40

Although, as we have seen, some authors have described Engaged Buddhism as

an unprecedented fourth yana of the dharma on account of the explicitness of itscommitment to social change, Engaged Buddhist practitioners commonly also or

alternatively see their approach as an act of recovering or reclaiming, if also expressing

in a new and distinctively modern way, an ethical heritage that had been lost or forgottenover Buddhisms long history. In this regard, it is perhaps the case with Engaged

Buddhism, as so often with cultural expressions and socio-political innovations in the

history of East Asian cultures, that novelty is expressed and defended most powerfully ina legitimacy discourse of rediscovery or return to ancient roots. As Roger Ames has

noted of the Chinese intellectual tradition, cultural discourse is generally characterized

by a commitment to continuity, requiring that a thinker achieve prominence therein notby feeding a Western-style fetish for novelty but rather by stressing the degree to whichhe embodies, expresses, and amplifies his tradition. Novelty is, in other words,

customarily expressed within the tradition, not by its repudiation.41

Whether or not explicit structural social engagement is in fact a genuinely new

phenomenon within Buddhism, modern Engaged Buddhist writers frequently describe it

as being a rediscovery of something that was present from the very earliest years of thedharma even if it was for a long while forgotten. Nelson Foster, for example, cites

various Pali texts in arguing that from the beginning,

Buddhism was aware of itself as a force for social good. Shakyamuniappears in the Pali suttas as a peacemaker, provides guidelines for good

rulership, criticizes Indias caste system, emphasizes morality as the

foundation of practice, and so forth.42

As an inspiration for modern engagement, Dhammachari Lokamitra cites the Buddhas

exhortation to go forth for the welfare and happiness of the many.43

Similarly, Kraftfinds inspiration and legitimacy for the engaged approach in seminal early Mahayana

writings such as the work of the 2nd

-Century Indian sage Nagarjuna, as well the scriptures

of early Buddhism. According to Kraft,

39Kenneth Kraft, Engaged Buddhism, inEngaged Buddhist Reader, supra, at 64, 65 (quoting

Kapleau).40

Foster, To Enter the Marketplace,supra, at 53.41

Roger T. Ames, The Art of Rulership: A Study of Ancient Chinese Political Thought (Albany:State University of New York Press, 1994), at xx-xxi.


43Dhammachari Lokamitra, The Dhamma Revolution in India: Peacemaking Begins with the

Eradication of the Caste System, inBuddhist Peacework, supra, at 29, 32.


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[t]he Pali canon provides evidence to indicate that Shakyamuni Buddhasaw individual serenity and social concord as inseparable, and he left

guidelines for the development of just social institutions. Nagarjuna, the

second-century Indian founder of Madhyamika, also discussed theapplication of Buddhist principles in the social realm. Nagarjuna

envisioned the broad outlines of an individualist, transcendentalist,pacifist, universalist, socialist society. Buddhist popular literature can

also be interpreted in this spirit. In the Jataka tales, Rafe Martin notes,the Buddha is shown not as withdrawing from the world, but as acting

with compassion and wisdom for the benefit of all beings.44

For his part, Roshi Bernard Glassman, founder of the Zen Peacemaker Order, looks to

more recent models, recounting that his teacher Maezumi Roshi lauded the founder of

Japanese Shingon Buddhism, Kobo Daishi (a.ka. Kukai [774-835]), as an example ofhow one can recognize a Buddha by his activities in service to others. Kukai, Glassman

says, was a social activist, keen on building dams and great social works; modern

Buddhists should follow this example, adapting it to the modern world.

45

Kenneth Kraft has argued that while there does exist a Mahayana tradition of

political inactivity, this attitude is merely a cultural artifact rather than anything inherent

in Buddhismper se: such passivity is no more than a byproduct of the restrictive socialenvironment which Buddhism encountered in China and Japan and is not inherent to

the Buddha way.46

Robert Thurman agrees, arguing that Buddhism developed an ethic

of political passivity and even a fearof openly exercising political power during itslong years of survival in East Asia after its collapse in its Indian home. Buddhism in

East Asia, Thurman says, lost the experience of having to be responsible for an entire

society, and even came to think that there was something wrongwith having political

power.47

(As we shall see later, Thurman has no such worries.)

Quite apart from questions of actually holding political power, however a

somewhat idiosyncratic recurring interest for Thurman, who departs from most EngagedBuddhist authors by actually holding up Tibetan theocracy as a model for the

contemporary political world48

it seems clear that most Engaged Buddhists today see

their approach to practice as stemming from specifically Buddhist antecedents andunderstandings rather than as representing something entirely new. The activist drive for

social justice may be a distinctively modern manifestation of Buddhist ethics, but its

fountainhead is said to be ancient, and to derive directly from the Buddhas ownfundamental insights. This may have implications for our effort to explore the contours

of engagement in the context of modern public policy decision-making, for it

44Kraft, Wellsprings of Engaged Buddhism,supra, at 155. Jataka tales are stories of the Buddhas

past lives, ubiquitously employed for purposes of moral education and in order to encourageemulation of the Buddhas enlightenment-facilitating choices.

45Christopher S. Queen, Glassman Roshi and the Peacemaker Order: Three Encounters, in

Engaged Buddhism in the West,supra, at 95, 120 (citing Glassman).46

Kraft, Wellsprings of Engaged Buddhism,supra, at 155.47

Robert Thurman, Buddhas Mother Saving Tibet, inNot Turning Away,supra, at 186, 193.48

See, e.g., Thurman, Buddhas Mother Saving Tibet,supra, at 193.


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underlines the importance of understanding Engaged Buddhism through the prism ofBuddhist doctrine and of looking to Buddhist traditions of scholarship and

interpretation for help as we struggle with what engagement may properly be said to

permit. These traditions, in turn, may offer a startlingly wide range of apparentlycanonically-approved alternatives.

III. The Challenge of Action

To understand the peculiar challenges that Engaged Buddhism faces in

approaching the task of alleviating suffering in the samsaric world, it is useful to beginwith as clear an understanding as possible of what precisely Buddhism means by

suffering in the first place. The specifically Buddhist meaning of the term is not

necessarily coextensive with how the word is used in conventional discourse, with theresult that any departures from ordinary usage may have profound implications for how

to ensure that ones effort to effect change in the broad social and institutional structures

of the world remains an engagement that is specificallyBuddhist.

Some writers discussing Engaged Buddhism have asked pointed questions about

to what extent the actions of Buddhist activists in society are distinctively Buddhist

examples of socially engaged practice.49

Others, among them Kenneth Kraft, have evenwondered whether there has to be anything distinctively Buddhist about Engaged

Buddhism.50

If indeed modern Buddhist engagement with social justice issues is to claim

intelligible roots lying specifically in the dharma, however rather than just constitutingsomething in which certain Buddhists happen to be involved, much as would be the case

with a Buddhist basketball league or train-spotting club it would seem that Engaged

Buddhism needs to be able to point to something identifiably Buddhist about its

approach. Because it is the distinctive ambition of Engaged Buddhism to expresscompassion by engaging with social structures in order to lessen or eliminate the

suffering of other beings, it seems reasonable to begin assessing its dharmic legitimacy

with a close analysis of what Buddhism means by suffering. Only by understanding theconcept of suffering as Buddhism sees it can one begin to parse what sorts of

engagement for its alleviation are distinctively Buddhist ones.

A. The Idiosyncrasy of Suffering

The Buddhas teaching of the Four Noble Truths the truth of suffering (dukkha),the origin of suffering (samudaya), the cessation of suffering (nirodha), and the way to

achieve its cessation (magga)51

are at the core of Buddhism. As explained in Acariya

Anuruddhas classic treatise ofAbidhamma philosophy, the noble truth of the origin of

49Darrel Wratten, Engaged Buddhism in South Africa, inEngaged Buddhism in the West,supra,

at 446, 449 (emphasis added); see also Kenneth Kraft, New Voices in Engaged BuddhistStudies, inEngaged Buddhism in the West,supra, at 485, 496 (quotingquestion raised by Helen

Tworkov ofTricycle magazine about What Makes engaged Buddhism Buddhist?).50

Kraft, New Voices in Engaged Buddhist Studies,supra, at 496-97.51

See Walpola Rahula, What the Buddha Taught(New York: Broadway, 1959), at 16.


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suffering identifies its roots in a single factor, craving (tanha), which is identical with thecetasika (mind-event) of greed (lobha). Coupled with its derivative phenomenon of

clinging, craving constitutes, in effect, a description of an unhealthy relationship with the

samsaric world. In the traditional account, craving can have three aspects, asdistinguished by their objects craving for sense pleasures (kamatanha), craving for

continued existence (bhavatanha), or craving for annihilation (vibhavatanha)

52

but thebasic idea is that craving is the result of a feeling that arises through contact with some

circumstances in the world. Such craving gives rise to clinging (upadana), and thus byturns the whole mass of suffering.

53

Craving produces clinging because we wish feelings of pleasure to continue andfeelings of pain to stop. (Either way, we cling. We cling to what we like because we like

it, and we cling to what we hate as an object of hatred.) The outcome of this clinging

response is suffering (dukkha),54

which we create by denying ourselves happiness. InPema Chdrnswords, this happens as we

spend all our energy and waste our lives trying to recreate zones ofsafety [for ourselves], which are always falling apart. Thats the essenceofsamsara the cycle of suffering that comes from continuing to seek

happiness in all the wrong places.55

The pleasurable is not genuinely enjoyed because our fear of its impermanence leads us

to smother potential happiness with desperate efforts to hold on to its surrounding

circumstances, while that which is unpleasant becomes the focus of unhealthy aversiveobsessions rooted in our fear of it notbeing impermanent. There is no peace, and can be

no genuine or lasting happiness, for anyone caught in the whipsaw of such clinging.

Because the overriding practical aim of the Buddhas teaching is to bring about

deliverance from suffering, Buddhist practice necessarily becomes in part an enterprise ofmental re-training, a psychological ethics of noble living and mental purification56

through which we learn how to have progressively more joy and peace in the present

moment of the world we experience.

Critically, however, suffering is notseen as being the result of the circumstances

in which we find ourselves insamsara or at least not in any direct way. The mediatingrole of the mind is crucial. Suffering is the result, in effect, of the nature of ourdialogue

with our circumstances: it arises not from those circumstances, per se, but as a result of

our tainted attitudes57

in encountering them. Buddhism thus tends to hold that

52Acariya Anuruddha, Abhidhammattha Sangaha: A Comprehensive Manual of Abidhamma(Bhikku Bodhi, ed.) (Mahathera Narada, trans.) (Onalaska, Washington: BPS Pariyati Editions,

1999), at 289.53

Anuruddha,supra, at 297-98.54

Andrew Olendzki, Meditation, Healing, and Stress Reduction, inEngaged Buddhism in theWest,supra, at 307, 312-13.

55Pema Chdrn, Comfortable with Uncertainty (Boston: Shambhala, 2003), at 24.

56Bhikku Bodhi, Introduction, in Anuruddha,supra, at 5.

57Bodhi, Introduction,supra, at 5.


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achiev[ing] happiness only happens through the mind,58

for the root cause of ourproblems is not

an external agent of this life, but rather an internal agent developed overmany lifetimes

59 the habitual tendencies of our own minds. The body

might be well fed, and the eyes might look upon beautiful sights, but it isthe mind alone that translates this into happiness. Conversely, the body

might have pain, and other people might pour abuse into our ears, but it isthe mind alone that translates this into suffering. Nothing good or bad

happens to us unless our mind labels it such. The state of our mind alone

determines happiness and unhappiness.60

As Andrew Olendski has similarly explained,

[t]he content of our experience is entirely benign the sights and sounds,

flavors, odors, and physical contacts that make up the data of our

experienced world are never, in themselves, causes of suffering. Buthow we respond to this experience, to what extent we succumb to themotivation to pursue pleasure and avoid pain by clinging in various ways

this is the crucial point at which it is determined whether we suffer, or

claim our freedom to simply be aware of our experience in all its naturaldiversity. It is in this sense that the expression is used by a number of

modern meditation teachers, Pain is inevitable, but suffering is

optional.61

Whether our experience is good or bad and even the idea that it has to be good or bad

is a creation of our mind and its relationship to the world around it.62

Not for nothing,

therefore, does Buddhist practice focus upon mental training and the reconstruction of the

58Geshe Tashi Tsering,Buddhist Psychology (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2006), at 1.

59The truth of this statement does not depend on taking literally the common Buddhist references toour progress through multiple lifetimes. As we shall see, an allegorical interpretation, in which

it is understood that we progress continuously through bardo-stages of innumerable minibirthsand minideaths,see, e.g., Stephen Batchelor,Buddhism Without Beliefs (New York: Riverhead

Books, 1997), at 74 stands up equally well, and makes no less psychological sense. Buddhismdoes not seem to require that one pick one interpretation or the other, for this distinction would not

seem to have much bearing upon the imperative or nature ofdharma practice in our present life,whatever that might mean.

60Tsering,supra, at 3, 10, & 19.

61

Olendzki, Meditation, Healing, and Stress Reduction,supra, at 313.62

One may perhaps see this idea reflected in the old Zen story of good luck/bad luck, in which afarmer loses his mare, to which other villagers console him by saying, bad luck. When the

horse returns, however, followed by a strong stallion, they congratulate him on his good luck.These smiles turn to condolences again when the farmers son falls off the stallion and breaks his

leg bad luck but the villagers pronounce it good luck once more when that injury preventsthe son from being conscripted for a bloody war. The farmer, however, reacts with detached

wisdom throughout: Good luck or bad luck? Who can say? We are clearly meant to emulate hisdetached perspective. See Maha Ghosananda, Letting Go of Suffering, inEngaged Buddhist

Reader,supra, at10, 10.


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deep habits of mind that structure and shape the kind of dialogue we have with ourcircumstances.

It is not that our state of mind is wholly disconnected from what happens in theexternal world, of course, for [a] happy state of mind might be brought about by a nice

word from a friend, or a good meal. Nevertheless, the experience of suffering is notthedirect result of such occurrences, but rather the outcome of how we approach them: the

substantial cause of suffering (or happiness) is not something in the world but insteada preceding moment of mind. As Geshe Tashi Tsering colorfully puts it, [a] good

meal cannot turn into a mind.63

We may not be able at least not prior to our

enlightenment, at any rate to achieve nonsuffering entirely independently of oursamsaric circumstances, but our state of mind plays a crucial role in our experience of

happiness and suffering, and if we can maintain a calm and peaceful mind, our external

surroundings can only cause us limited disturbance.64

Because of the dependence ofhappiness (nonsuffering) upon our state of mind, therefore, our understanding of the

mind must extend to the crucial relationship between the mind and the external, material

world.

65

This is why Buddhist conceptions of suffering can depart, sometimes

significantly, from conventional usage. In everyday secular discourse, to experience

violence, discrimination, poverty, hunger, or illness is to suffer: no distinction is drawnbetween adverse circumstances and suffering, and, by definition, fixing the circumstances

ends that suffering. Buddhism, however, takes a more nuanced view, because if it is true

that by transforming our minds, we can free ourselves from dependence on externalconditions,

66it follows that, from the perspective of Buddhism, to experience awful

circumstances is not necessarily to suffer. To the extent that one refuses to have an

unhealthy psychological dialogue with ones circumstances, one does not suffer in the

Buddhist sense.

Thus could Milarepa, living in threadbare cotton in an icy Himalayan cave,

declare that for him, everything is comfortable.67

And thus could Thich Nhat Hanhrecount facing racial discrimination in old South Vietnam, but yet observe that I didnt

suffer, I didnt suffer at all. (With practice of the Buddhist perfections of virtue, or

paramitas [Skt; Pali paramis], Hanh says, what has made you suffer in the past is nolonger capable of making you suffer anymore.)

68As Pema Chdrn describes it, in fact,

concrete circumstances and even physical harm are not really the issue in dealing

with suffering. If you got burned or cut, it would hurt, she admits, but this is notreally what causes us misery in our lives.

69Pain, for instance, according to Roshi Joan

Halifax, is physical discomfort, while suffering is the story around pain. One can, and

should be able to, declare in terrible circumstances that I am in pain, but I am not

63Geshe Tashi Tsering,Buddhist Psychology (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2006), at 13.

64Tsering,supra, at 11 & 19 (citingcomments by XIV

thDalai Lama).

65Tsering,supra, at 11.


67Harvey,supra, at 68.

68Hunt-Perry & Fine, All Buddhism is Engaged, supra, at 54 (quotingThich Nhat Hanh).

69Pema Chdrn,Practicing Peace in Times of War(Boston: Shambhala, 2007), at 66.


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suffering.70

Traditionally, Buddhism has been much more about retelling this story thanspecifically addressing the circumstances of discomfort.

Conversely, it follows from this that improvedphysical circumstances also do notnecessarily translate into nonsuffering. In the Magandiya Sutta, the Buddha helps

Magandiya understand, in Olendzkis words, that it is

not just the lack of physical affliction in the body at any particular time[that constitutes health], but rather a deeper experience of well-being that

is accessed when the mind no longer clings in the presence of pleasure or

pain.71

For Chdrn, similarly, preventing or ending physical pain or other adverse

circumstances is not the answer to transcending suffering. Rather, the objective is to healthe mental relationship we have with our circumstances, whatever they are. Even if you

were the Buddha himself, she notes, you would experience death, illness, aging, and

sorrow at losing what you love.

72

The key is what one does with the rawness of thatencounter.

B. Suffering and Engagement

This conception of suffering has great implications for Buddhist engagement in

changing the social, political, and economic institutions ofsamsara. Simply put, if such

activism is indeed to be distinctivelyBuddhist, it will need to be built around some theoryof the relationship between the external structural samsaric circumstances and the

internalexperience of suffering by sentient beings who face such circumstances. It is not

enough, in other words, simply to follow conventional activism in assuming that adverse

circumstances are suffering, and seeking to alleviate those circumstances on that basis.Instead, if engagement is to be Buddhist, it would seem to require a theory of how and

when circumstances translate into realsuffering (as Buddhists understand it), and what

sortof changes to those circumstances will therefore translate back into the lessening ofsuffering.

Some of the literature of modern Engaged Buddhism recognizes this challenge.David Loy, for instance, suggests that Engaged Buddhists face two basic alternatives.

First, he says, we might simply buy our social theory ready-made, more or less off the

rack73

by which he apparently means importing a framework and an agenda from thenon-Buddhist world and simply relabeling it as Buddhist: adopting conventional

approaches to politics and social activism and simply calling them Buddhist, without

developing a specific chain of reasoning rooted in the dharma to justify these particular

answers. Alternatively, Loy suggests we might consider alternatives inspired (or at leastinformed) by what Buddhism has to say about human dukkha (suffering) and its

70Halifax,Being With Dying,supra, at 72-73.

71Olendzki, Meditation, Healing, and Stress Reduction,supra, at 311.

72Chdrn,Practicing Peace,supra, at 66.

73Loy,supra, at 18.


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causes.74

He clearly considers the latter approach preferable and more genuinelyBuddhist and urges the development of a dukkha-based social theory.

The example of fighting poverty is perhaps illustrative of the problem. TheBuddha advises us in the Dhammapada that [h]unger is the most extreme of

afflictions,

75

but is this allegory (i.e., a general statement about the mental phenomenonof craving)76

or should it be taken only literally (i.e., a comment about the lack of

physical nourishment)? Conventional social activism certainly abhors having people facehunger and poverty, but from a Buddhist perspective we must remember that these ills do

not intrinsically result in suffering. (Just ask Milarepa.) Nor is abundance and economic

comfort necessarily a ticket out ofdukkha: from the perspective of Buddhist ethics, oneis still blameworthy if ones attitude to ones wealth is greed and longing, with no

contentment or heed for spiritual development,77

and such tainted attitudes will ensure

that prosperity brings no escape from suffering.

As David Loy summarizes, [h]appiness cannot be gained by satisfying desire, for

our thirst means there is no end to it. Happiness can be achieved only by transformingdesire.78

Properly speaking, Buddhist nonattachment seems quite circumstance-independent: it specifies an attitude to be cultivated and expressed in whatever material

condition one finds oneself. The problem ofdukkha, therefore, is primarily spiritual.79

If by poverty one simply follows conventional usage in meaning lowly financialcircumstances rather than a quality of mind (poverty-mind) characterized by a

fixation upon the possession (or lack) of monetary wealth80

there would thus seem to

be, from a Buddhist perspective, nothing wrong with poverty per se.81

After all,Buddhism has had 2,500 years of monks surviving on alms and without personal

possessions. If anything, poverty may be more spiritually advantageous than attachment-

produced and attachment-encouraging wealth: Shakyamuni Buddha felt it necessary to

abandon his pampered princely life in order to find his way to awakening.

74Loy,supra, at 18.

75 See, e.g., Hammalawa Saddhatissa,Buddhist Ethics (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2003), at 127-

28 (quotingDhammapadda., at v.203);see also Harvey,supra, at 196 (translating same passage as

[h]unger is the greatest illness).76

The juxtaposition of hunger with health as opposed, for instance, with satiation would

seem to suggest an allegorical meaning, cf. Saddhatissa, supra, at 127-28 (quotingDhammapadda., at v.203-04), but one should perhaps be cautious about reading too much into the

subtle linguistic distinctions that seem to exist in translation.77

Harvey,supra, at 187.78

Loy,supra, at 28 (see also 32 (noting that fulfillment of desire does not provide happiness, onlytransformation of desire).

79Loy,supra, at 78-79.

80According to Loy, in fact, [a] world in which envy and miserliness predominate cannot be

considered one in which poverty has been eliminated. Loy,supra, at 57.81

If anything, it should be noted, Loy seems to feel that an avaricious prosperity may be worse for

spiritual practice than a general impoverishment. He argues that there is a fundamental andinescapable poverty built into consumer society, and that [a]n intense drive to acquire material

riches is one of the main causes of ourdukkha. Loy,supra, at 58 & 74.


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On the other hand, truly abject poverty might distract from, and thus impede,spiritual insight and ultimate liberation. Arguably, the Buddha himself could be said to

have discovered this in finding extreme, body-weakening asceticism not conducive to his

meditative progress. In accepting the famous bowl of milk from the passing maidenSujata

82 a step that horrified the ascetic extremists with whom the wayward prince

Siddhartha Gautama had until that point been practicing he perhaps illustrated the ideathat too much conventional poverty can indeed impede spiritual progress. To this extent,

and perhaps to this extent only, Engaged Buddhism would thus seem to have adistinctively Buddhist reason to help the very poor and the hungry. To put it bluntly,

however, without such a theory and without some conception of what it means to be so

needy that ones prospects for enlightenment are imperiled there is no reason for aBuddhist, as a Buddhist, to care how poor someone is. (Nor, at least in these terms,

would there appear to be any reason to care about how great a gap exists between the

poor and the rich.)

In this regard, genuinely Buddhist engagement thus seems to part company with

non-Buddhist activism. The secular social activist,

83

Ken Jones says, merely setshimself the endless task ofsatisfying th[e] desire that is at the root of suffering insamsara. For this reason, such an activist cannot succeed in eliminating that suffering.

By contrast, the Buddhist is concerned ultimately with the transformation of desire,

which is the only way in which suffering will truly cease.84

This distinction is a profoundone, for it would seem to pit Buddhist ethics resoundingly against any engagement in

society that seeks merely to provide deluded and suffering sentient beings with what their

delusion leads them to want. As Robert Thurman recounts Nagarjuna observingcenturies ago, [t]he foremost type of giving is notsatisfying material needs, but rather

leading them to freedom and transcendence and enlightenment.85

If Engaged Buddhism is really to be engaged Buddhism, therefore, it requires atheory of the causal connection between specific actions to change the conditions of

samsara and sentient beings ability to transcend their delusive attachments therein. It

cannot be enough, we might conclude, simply to provide people with what they desire;our involvement must aim at helping them overcome such desires. This requirement

hardly precludes work to satisfy some desires (e.g., for food, shelter, prosperity, safety,

defense against aggression, or social justice), but Engaged Buddhism would need to insistthat any such provision have the clear objective of transcending samsaric desires and

that any action taken be based upon a plausible theory of how each step contributes to

this ultimate goal. If Engaged Buddhism is really to be Buddhist, in other words, itcannot just lazily rebrand conventional social activism.

82 See Thich Nhat Hanh, Old Path, White Clouds (Berkeley: Parallax, 1991) at 37.

83Jones refers to conventional engagement as secular, but this is probably too narrow. It mightequally stem from motives having their roots in the Judeo-Christian traditions (e.g., Christian

charity). Perhaps non-Buddhist would have been a better term.84

Ken Jones, Buddhism and Social Action: An Exploration, in The Path of Compassion,supra, at

65, 66 (emphasis added).85

Robert A. F. Thurman, Nagarjunas Guidelines for Buddhist Social Action, in Engaged

Buddhist Reader,supra, at 79, 82. (This appears to be Thurmans paraphrase.)


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Even among writers expressly dedicated to some form of socio-politicalengagement, it should be noted, there remains a strong commitment to the inner work

of self-cultivation. As Kraft phrases it, Buddhism offers a fresh contribution[] to

politics in the notion that personal peace is connected with world peace on afundamental level. As a result, we cannot meaningfully work for peace as long as we

feel upset, angry, or confrontational.

90

Thich Nhat Hanh emphasizes that our task ofchanging the world begins inside, because our leaders are in each of us. This is why he

sees inner work as the key to peacemaking: we must change ourselves if we wish tochange the world.

91Similarly, the Dalai Lama contends that we must start peacework in

our own hearts, by controlling the mind by cultivating less anger, more respect for

others rights, more concern for other people, more clear realization of the sameness ofhuman beings.

92

Such inward-directed work is felt likely to have an impact upon the externalworld and thus to fit well with the broader socio-political agenda of engagement in

part because one who has become calm and compassionate through such cultivation can

have a profound impact in catalyzing peace around him. According to Thich Nhat Hanh,

[w]e need such a person to inspire us with calm confidence, to tell us

what to do. Only with such a person calm, lucid, aware will our

situation improve. I think that if peaceworkers are really peaceful andhappy, they will radiate peace themselves.

93

Similarly, Robert Thurman describes Nagarjunas Jewel Garland of Royal Counsels asarticulating an individualist transcendentalism, in which the best thing a king can do for

his people is to perfect himself.94

From this perspective, inner work is of the utmost

priority.95

Nevertheless, it is the hallmark ofengagedBuddhism to maintain that this inner

work is not always enough: [e]fforts to change the environment and to change the

individual are both necessary.96

Because Engaged Buddhism aspires to a wholesaleengagement with suffering, its explicit social activism does not allow itself to work

exclusively on a one-heart-at-a-time basis. As we have seen, engagement is impatient

with such an approach, and feels it necessary to address dukkha at the level ofsystems,not just individual beings. Accordingly, it is probably inadequate to argue as does

90Kraft, Engaged Buddhism: An Introduction,supra, at xiv.

91We always deserve our government. Thich Nhat Hanh, Please Call Me by My True Names,

in The Path of Compassion, supra, at 31, 33-34.92

Tenzin Gyatso, the XIVth

Dalai Lama, Hope for the Future, in The Path of Compassion,supra,at 3, 5.

93Hanh, Please Call Me by My True Names,supra, at 37.

94Thurman, Nagarjunas Guidelines for Buddhist Social Activism,supra, at 122.

95Indeed, Thich Nhat Hanh suggests, one could hardly expect to have any meaningful impact uponones external environment withoutsuch cultivation: we know how difficult it is to change the

environment if individuals are not in a state of equilibrium. Thich Nhat Hanh, The Individual,Society, and Nature, in The Path of Compassion,supra, at 40, 44.

96Hanh, The Individual, Society, and Nature,supra, at 44.


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Cynthia Eller, citing the views of monks from the Sri Lankan Sarvodaya movement thatinternal work and social action are precisely the same teaching. She contends that

[w]hether you put it on the psycho-spiritual plane or on the socio-economic plane, there

is suffering and there is cessation of suffering.97

This seems to oversimplify theproblem, however, conflating conventional and Buddhist notions of suffering, and

ignoring the need for a theory of connection and redress that can serve to tie Buddhistsuffering to specific circumstances and explain how rearranging the samsaric deck chairs

will lead to a lessening ofdukkha.

Nevertheless, there are many accounts of modern Engaged Buddhism which

appear simply to proceed from the assumption that troubling samsaric circumstancessimply equate to suffering in the Buddhist sense and that seem to assume that assume

Buddhist social activism is a fairly simple matter of fixing those bad things in the world

around us. It is surely true that the world is full of dukkha, but it does not seemadequate simply to list varieties of suffering asconventionally understood, such as

the dangers of impending world destruction through nuclear weapons,atomic fallout, air land, and sea pollution, population explosion,exploitation of fellow human beings, denial of basic human rights, and

devastating famine.98

Even Ken Jones who appears to understand that one cannot simply translate

conventional social activism directly into a Buddhist framework and who, as we will see,

offers a hint as to how this might work is sometimes vague about the specificallyBuddhistfoundation for the specific engagement he advocates. He urges the creation of a

society free of the degradation of poverty and war99

but while one could certainly argue

that these ills inhibit or prevent enlightenment, he apparently sees little need explicitly to

make that case. Similarly, Nelson Foster argues that [t]he hungry need food dharma,the tortured need justice dharma, and the besieged need peace dharma,100 but he fails to

explain whether or not this is precisely the same thing as saying that the hungry actually

need food, the tortured justice, and the besieged a cease-fire. One might think it essentialto a specifically Buddhist theory of social engagement to offer an account of when these

two statements are synonymous, and when they are not, but most authors seem to miss

the distinction.101

97Macy, In Indras Net,supra, at 179.

98Sivaraksa, Buddhism in a World of Change [hereinafter World of Change II], inEngaged

Buddhist Reader,supra, at 70, 77.99

Jones, Buddhism and Social Action: An Exploration,supra, at 72.100

Foster, To Enter the Marketplace,supra, at 53-54.101

In fairness, it may not simply be modern writers who appear to have skirted the issue of howprecisely it is that action insamsara contributes to beings enlightenment. Peter Harvey describes

accounts of bodhisattva ethics in the lengthy literature of the Mahayana tradition as revolvingaround the idea of benefiting sentient beings by ministering to the needs of others through

doing good deeds such as protecting from wild animals, kings, robbers and the elements,giving to the destitute, comforting those stricken by calamities, and even compassionately

humbling, punishing or banishing others in order to make them give up unwholesome ways andtake to wholesome ones. What is less clear, however, is how such specific samsaric gains

translate into their recipients increased chances for enlightenment. Harvey, supra, at 131.


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Perhaps it is simply the case that although many modern Buddhists clearly feel a

need to undertake social activism, Engaged Buddhism, as a movement, has not yet

matured to the point where it can offer a well-developed grounding theory for itself.According to Eller, it is one of the challenges of engagement that Buddhism still lacks a

clear doctrinal underpinning for such socio-political activism. Quoting other authors, shemakes a point of noting Buddhisms underdeveloped thinking in this regard:

As Ken Jones laments, Buddhism has no explicit body of social and

political theory comparable to its psychology or metaphysics. Or as

Nelson Foster comments, It is remarkable that Zen lacks a clear traditionof social action. One searches in vain for a body of teaching equivalent

to the social gospel of Christianity.102

David Loy argues similarly Buddhism as a whole lacks an intrinsic social theory,

and that anyone searching for such a guiding framework thus cannot look to its

traditional texts for perspectives on contemporary issues.

103

On the other hand, some authors do at least hint at the type of answer Engaged

Buddhism must provide if it is to defend itself as a specifically Buddhist variety of

activism addressed to suffering as Buddhists understand the term. Kenneth Kraft, forexample, has suggested that inner serenity is fostered or impeded by external

conditions.104

He has not, however, spelled out the critical details that any such theory

would have to provide in order for Engaged Buddhists to be able to articulate anintelligible plan for social action. Despite his prioritization of internal work, Thich Nhat

Hanh has also articulated a clear call for creating conditions favorable to other beings

enlightenment: in order for individuals to recover from the mental sicknesses of the world

and be whole, he says, they must be in an environment favorable to healing.Analogizing spiritual progress to psychiatric treatment, he declares that health requires

environmental change and psychiatrists must participate in efforts to change the

environment.105

Sulak Sivaraksa has also suggested that engagement is necessary toimprove the conditions of samsara because [w]ithout freedom from want and

oppression, people cannot be expected to appreciate more sublime forms of personal

liberation.106

This is genuine insight, but more is needed: such vague generalities arestill a thin reed upon which to hang a serious public policy agenda.

David Loy has attempted to provide a specifically Buddhist theory of socialengagement a full-blown Buddhist Social Theory in some detail. For each type of

(Interestingly, in this list of good deeds, the only one having any direct and explicit connection tofacilitating others liberation would seem to be the last forcing the wicked to adopt wholesome

ways and this is a notably coercive idea.)102

Eller, The Impact of Christianity on Buddhist Nonviolence in the West, supra, at 102.103

Loy,supra, at 41.104

Kraft, Introduction,supra, at 2.105

Hanh, The Individual, Society, and Nature,supra, at 44-45.106

Sulak Sivaraksa, Buddhism and Contemporary International Trends, in Inner Peace, World

Peace,supra, at 127, 136.


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dukkha described in the Pali suttas, for instance, he tries to articulate what this categorywould mean as applied in the social sphere: he asks whether it has a specifically

communal manifestation. He suggests, for instance, that dukkha-dukkhata corresponds

in the social realm, in part, to things such as the gap between rich and poor, or thedeteriorating biosphere.

107This translation from individual to social, he thinks, is what

helps give him the conceptual traction to articulate a political agenda of engagement,prescribing specific policies and structures suited to addressing this form of suffering.

Unfortunately, however, Loys ambitious articulation of social suffering still fails toprovide a clear theory of connection and redress an account of what circumstances in

thesamsaric world promote enlightenment and which ones impede it, and of how social

activism can help increase the frequency of the former compared to the latter. As we willsee, Loy has much to say about what specific policies he believes Buddhists should

promote in their activism to change the circumstances ofsamsara. He does not,

however, always clearly or compellingly ground such recommendations in a theory ofwhy such steps contribute to ending suffering in the very specific sense that Buddhists use

the term.

This is not to say that such a theory is impossible. Quite the contrary. Suchwriters would seem to be right to intuit that there exists a rationale for social

engagement in an appreciation for the fact that notwithstanding Buddhisms

understanding that suffering arises not from conditions themselves but from how werelate to them through the delusive attachments of the ego-self there exists some nexus

between the circumstances of the samsaric world and the likelihood of sentient beings

being able to achieve enlightenment. Circumstances may not be the fundamental causesof suffering, this argument might run, but neither are they entirely irrelevant to its

alleviation. As Tashi Tsering reminds us, while the Dalai Lama has noted that our

external surroundings can only cause us limited disturbance if we maintain a calm and

peaceful mind, His Holiness does notsay that once we have a calm mind, we will neverbe disturbed by external things. His Holiness presents a more realistic view.108

Engaged Buddhists, one might argue, are realistic as well.

Some circumstances, in other words, are likely to be more conducive than others

to sentient beings progress toward awakening, and it is the job of Engaged Buddhists to

bring about more (rather than less) enlightenment-facilitating circumstances out of themessy raw materials ofsamsara. A Buddhist social theory might not care about

changing samsaric circumstances per se, but it should care about worldly conditions to

the extent that they create an environment more or less conducive to the enlightenment ofthe sentient beings therein. Buddhist social engagement, therefore, should be about

creating ever more enlightenment-facilitating conditions. In Jones words,

[t]he social order to which Buddhist social action is ultimately directedmust be one that offers encouraging conditions for its citizens to see

107 See Loy,supra, at 20-23.



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more clearly into their true nature and overcome their karmicinheritance.

109

A Buddhist politics, therefore, would presumably focus upon developing theories abouthow to do this, and policies designed to achieve this end of creating enlightenment-

conducive circumstances. Such work inescapably involves us in the classicallypoliticalandpolicy-focused tasks of finding levers with which to manipulate the conditions of the

modern world.

Some policy agendas might seem to flow relatively easily from this insight. As

we have seen with the example of the Buddhas decision to abandon his harsh asceticismbecause hunger and weakness prevented properdharma practice, it may be possible to

conclude that there exists at least a minimum set of concrete circumstances that are

necessary to permit the kind of spiritual endeavor needed for Awakening. If so, aBuddhist social policy would presumably devote itself to helping ensure that members of

the public did not fall below this floor of practice-impeding absolute penury, wracking

illness, civil chaos, or wartime bloodshed. Nelson Foster has suggested that theprevention of nuclear warfare is an easy case for a Buddhist policy priority, wrylyquoting the slogan of one group within the Buddhist Peace Fellowship that [n]uclear war

is bad for our practice.110

To propose a minimalist social safety net and a desire not to unleash nuclear

Armageddon, however, is a long way from identifying the wisest policies for achieving

these goals, setting the detailed parameters of a public policy agenda on such issues, andknowing how best to conduct policy and resource trade-offs among specific competing

sub-proposals or other matters one also identifies as a high priority for a distinctively

Buddhist politics. Such challenges would seem to require sustained study and analysis,

and a distinctively worldly entanglement with theories of social, economic, political, andmilitary cause and effect. A number of Engaged Buddhist authors have struggled to

define dharmically legitimate public policy agendas, sometimes even with

enlightenment-facilitation as a relatively explicit guiding principle, with varyingdegrees of success.

A. Politics

It is not always easy to identify directteachings in the Buddhist canon that speak

to what, if anything, it means to have a distinctively Buddhist approach to politics. AsHammalawa Saddhatissa recounts, the Buddha left no equivalent to Platos Republic

that is, no teachings directly relating to the political construction of an ideal state.

Indeed, according to Saddhatissa, the Buddha did not even give explicit thought to any

reform in the existing political setup. He argues that the attitude expressed in theNikayas is clear enough to be compared with Platos, but this would appear to be little

consolation for any proponents of Engaged Buddhism searching for an explicit political

and policy agenda for engaging with the world ofsamsaric political structures and

109Jones, Buddhism and Social Action: An Exploration,supra, at 77.



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institutions. As Saddhatissa puts it, the Nikayas teach that affecting politics mustnecessarily begin with improving oneself: the community is secondary, and progress

toward its improvement will depend upon people having first made progress within their

own hearts. According to theDhammapada, each must establish himself in that whichis proper. Only then should he advise others, and not become impure.

111

This teaching by the Buddha, therefore, was one that could address itself to any

particular form of government by urging upon it benevolent behavior. This was, in otherwords, universal advise and all the more universal because the Buddha refrained from

offering that government advice on what sort of government one should have. As

Saddhatissa explains,

[b]ecause of the importance the Buddha assigned to mans moral

standards and outlook one must look for a description of the qualitiesof the people who will operate a scheme rather than for any intrinsic virtue

in the scheme itself. If the scheme is an autocracy, such as prevailed in

the Buddhas day, then one must look for political teaching that willrender that autocracy benevolent; this will consist in injunctions to thekings and their proclaimed duties to their peoples.

112

Whatever ones basic theory of governance, many Engaged Buddhist writers havetried to draw out themes from Buddhist sutras, history, and commentary that suggest the

sort of policies that would prevail under essentially any genuinely benevolent

government. Peter Harveys account of traditional Buddhist writings, for instance, saysthat these texts see a Buddhist ruler as having a responsibility to ensure a peaceful and

harmonious society through various means. The Aggaa Sutta, in fact, articulates a

view of governance-as-benevolent-service that Harvey describes as a sort of social-

contract model of kingship that permits no abuse of the people.113

Elsewhere, herecounts, it is also made clear that role of the cakkavatti (Pali; Skt. cakravartin) the

holy, wheel-turning dharmic ruler is to look after all his people, prevent crime, and

give to those in need.114

In discussing what a Buddhist social policy might look like, Engaged Buddhist

writers frequently invoke the memory of the Indian emperor Ashoka, who ruled theMauryan dynasty in the 3

rdCentury BCE. Robert Thurman, for example, believes

Ashoka offers a model of enlightened politics that should guide modern politics.115

For

his part, David Loy agrees that the emperor offers a model of reforms that remainexemplary.

116

111Saddhatissa, supra, at 113 & 115 (quotingDhammapada,supra, at v.158) (emphasis added).

112Saddhatissa, supra, at 116.

113Harvey,supra, at 113-14 & 118.

114Harvey,supra, at 114.

115 See, e.g., Robert Thurman, Inner Revolution: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Real Happiness

(New York: Riverhead Books, 1998), at 117 & 166-67; Thurman, The Edicts of Asoka, in ThePath of Compassion,supra,supra, at 111.

116Loy,supra, at 31.


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Ashoka is frequently commended for having felt as he put it in his Sixth RockEdict that no task is more important than promoting the well-being of all the people.

His official commitment (when in power, at least117

) to nonviolence, welfare policies,

public works, the establishment of rest-houses and hospices, religious tolerance, efforts tocare for prisoners and their families, are commonly held up by modern writers as

examples of benevolent Buddhist rule worthy of emulation today.

118

(Peter Harvey evenrecounts Ashoka as having undertaken efforts loosely analogous to modern foreign aid

projects, by supporting public works even outside own empire.119

) Interestingly, withAshoka we apparently also have a strong and explicit commitment to the idea of

developing what one might call a politics of enlightenment. In the 12th

of the famous

Rock Edicts which he had inscribed around India during his reign, the emperorproclaimed the objective of government policy to be the promotion of each mans

particular faith and the glorification of the Dharma.120

The specific import, for us today, of the Mauryan emperors political program,

however, is not obvious. David Loy, for instance while he applauds that kings rule as

having been exemplary adds that Ashokas example should notslavishly be followed.What made sense for pre-industrial, agrarian India, he plausibly argues, will notnecessarily work for modern society. Instead, says Loy, we need to find our own way,

taking inspiration from such models, perhaps, but developing a creative response to our

own unique

Documents

Action and Force in Engaged Buddhism: Public Policy and the Koan of Engagement