Amber Larson, Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly; Ken Jones, "Buddhism and Social Action: An Exploration" (Paul Ingram, editor, Buddhist Society's journal The Middle Way (Vol. 54, No. 2)
WARNING: Graphic self-immolation! A harmful and condemnable act of suicide conflating Hindu and Mahayana Buddhist concepts praising martyrdom in the name of "protest" -- bringing attention to U.S. War on Vietnam abuses by a Zen Buddhist monk. This harmful idea currently modern Tibetan monastic extremists.
1.1 Buddhism and the new global society
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| Protester (Time/Ted Soqui/Shepard Fairey) |
It is the manifest suffering (dukkha, disappointment, lack of fulfillment, unsatisfactoriness, misery) and folly (moha, delusion, wrong view, avijja ignorance) in the world that invokes
humane and compassionate social action in its many different forms.
For
Buddhists this situation raises fundamental and controversial questions.
And here, also, Buddhism has implications of some significance for
Christians, humanists, and other non-Buddhists. By "social action" we mean the many different kinds of action
intended to benefit humankind.
These range from simple individual acts of
charity, teaching, and training, organized kinds of service, "right livelihood" (nonharmful survival) in and outside the helping professions, and through various
kinds of community development as well as to political activity in
working for a better society.
(Nati) Burmese Theravada monks lead Saffron Revolution against dictator
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| Occupy L.A. activist (WQ) |
Buddhism is a pragmatic teaching that starts from certain
fundamental propositions about how we experience the world and how we
act in it. It teaches that it is possible to transcend this sorrow-laden
world of our experience and is concerned first and last with ways of
achieving that transcendence.
What finally leads to such transcendence
is what we call wisdom (paññā or prajna). The enormous literature of Buddhism is not a
literature of revelation and authority. Instead, it uses ethics and
meditation, philosophy and science, art and poetry to point a way to this wisdom.
Similarly, Buddhist writing on social action, unlike
secular writings, makes finite proposals which must ultimately refer to
this wisdom, but which also are arguable in terms of our common
experience.
In the East, Buddhism developed different "schools" or "traditions,"
serving the experiences of different cultures, ranging from Theravada Sri Lanka
through Vajrayana Tibet and Mongolia to Zen Japan. Buddhism may thus appear variously
as sublime humanism, magical mysticism, poetic paradox, and much else.
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| "Anonymous" NSA/CIA spy |
These modes of expression, however, all converge upon the fundamental
teaching, the "perennial Buddhism." Drawing upon the different Asian traditions to present the
teachings in an attempt to relate them to our modern industrial Western society.
From the evidence of the Buddha's discourses, or sutras in the "Long Discourses" (Digha
Nikaya), it is clear that early Buddhists were very much concerned with
the creation of social conditions favorable to the individual
cultivation of Buddhist values.
An outstanding example of this, in later
times, is the remarkable "welfare state" created by the Buddhist
emperor, Asoka (B.C.E. 274-236). Ven. Walpola Rahula stated the situation --
perhaps at its strongest -- when he wrote:
"Buddhism arose in India
as a spiritual force against social injustices, against degrading.
superstitious rites, ceremonies, and sacrifices; it denounced the tyranny
of the caste system and advocated the equality of all [people]; it
emancipated woman and gave her complete spiritual freedom."
- Ven. Rahula (1978)
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| Lula, Freedom's daughter (occupyla.org) |
Buddhist scriptures indicate the general direction of
Buddhist social thinking, and to that extent they are suggestive
for our own times. Nevertheless it would be pedantic, and in some cases
absurd, to apply directly to modern industrial society social
prescriptions detailed to meet the needs of social order which
flourished 2[6] centuries ago.
The Buddhist householder of the
"Advice to Householders Discourse" (Sigalovada Sutta, DN 31) experienced a different way of life from that of a computer consultant
in Tokyo or an unemployed black youth in Liverpool [England].
And the conditions
which might favor their cultivation of the Middle Way must be secured by
correspondingly different -- and more complex -- social, economic, and
political strategies.
It is therefore essential to attempt to distinguish between perennial
Buddhism on the one hand and, on the other hand, the specific social
prescriptions attributed to the historical Buddha which related the
basic, perennial teaching to the specific conditions of his day.
We
believe that it is unscholarly to transfer the scriptural social
teaching uncritically and with careful qualification to modern
societies, or to proclaim that the Buddha was a democrat and an
internationalist. The modern terms "democracy" and "internationalism"
did not exist in the sense in which we understand them in the emergent
feudal society in which the Buddha lived.
Buddhism is ill-served in the
long run by such special pleading. On the other hand, it is arguable
that there are democratic and internationalist implications in the basic Buddhist teachings.
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| Wat Maha Leap, Cambodia (BokehCambodia/flickr) |
In the past 200 years society in the West has undergone a
more fundamental transformation than at any period since Neolithic
times, whether in terms of technology or the world of ideas. And now in
the East, while this complex revolution is undercutting traditional
Buddhism, it is also stimulating Asian Buddhism; in the West it
is creating problems and perceptions to which Buddhism seems
particularly relevant.
Throughout its history Buddhism has been
successfully reinterpreted in accordance with different cultures, while
at the same time preserving its inner truths. In this way has Buddhism spread
and survived.
The historic task of Buddhists, both East and West, in
the 21st century is to interpret perennial Buddhism in terms of
the needs of industrial humans in the social conditions of their
time and to demonstrate its acute and urgent relevance to the ills of society.
(PS) Zucotti Park: Buddhist monk visits Occupy Wall St. protests
To this great and difficult enterprise Buddhists will
bring their traditional boldness and humility. For certainly this is no
time for clinging to dogma and defensiveness. More
