Engaged Buddhism: How Political Is the Dharma?
DAVID LOY
JOAN SUTHERLAND, ROSHI
MUSHIM IKEDA
Does Buddhism inevitably include some element of political engagement?
DAVID LOY: The Buddha emphasized that all he really taught was suffering (dukkha) and how to end it. But given the political context he lived in, the kinds of social and political dukkha that he could address were limited. The Western emphasis on social justice has helped us become more aware of the opportunities not only for socially engaged Buddhism but politically engaged Buddhism.
As we deepen our awakening, we realize that our own suffering can’t be distinguished from the suffering of others. As we overcome our delusive sense of a separate self, we can no longer pursue our own well-being with indifference to the well-being of others.
JOAN SUTHERLAND, ROSHI: The results of practice can lead to political engagement. Over time, there tends to be a deepening of gratitude for the fact of existence, for what we speak of as interpermeation. That gratitude is not an emotion but a way of being, fundamentally, and its expression quite often occurs as generosity. The generosity then looks for ways to be helpful. That seems to be quite a natural, organic development with long-term practice.
MUSHIM IKEDA: Human interactions are inevitably political, so except for people living totally off the grid, they’re going to have some level of political engagement. Even with just one other human being, political dynamics are at work because people have different needs and different ways of strategizing to fulfill those needs.
JOAN SUTHERLAND, ROSHI: One of the offerings we can make to the world at large is the practices that have developed within Buddhism, and one of these practices is to ask questions rather than make statements. Approaching political engagement as a series of questions and explorations is very different from approaching it with position papers or assumptions that you already know what something means.
DAVID LOY: Politics in the broad sense involves engagement with lots of people, most of whom are not interested in Buddhist practice. We have to acknowledge that we’re dealing with many different types of ego and ego-based institutions. Buddhists like to emphasize being in the here and now and we want to focus on the process rather than a goal. But if we get involved in politics, it’s because we’re trying to achieve something. That can give one a future orientation that tends to lose the here and now.
There’s always going to be some tension between thinking in terms of means and ends—causality—and acting out of an emptiness that has nothing to gain and nothing to lose. The challenge of political involvement for Buddhists is not sacrificing one because we’re so completely focused on the other.
Many a Buddhist practitioner would say that they go on retreat or sesshin because they want quiet time, a respite from the world where they can work with their own mind. If that space becomes politicized, they may no longer feel it is a refuge for them.
MUSHIM IKEDA: I have to laugh when people say they would like to live in a temple or monastery because they want to be alone and meditate all the time. In any community, virulent tensions will arise because of individual differences. Human beings are going to have conflict, and conflict generates a lot of noise, both internally in the mind and externally in the environment. As an example, I heard about one residential community where the kitchen staff got into an acrimonious and lengthy debate about whether there should be one large bottle of Tabasco sauce kept in the condiments area or small bottles at each table.
JOAN SUTHERLAND, ROSHI: I can understand the desire for the silence and the space to relax and to begin to see things more clearly, but the dichotomy between that and the Tabasco sauce wars is illusory. Neither can exist in isolation, and if one part of our practice is about a deepening experience of spaciousness, the other part is about embodying that in the world. It’s the old form and emptiness thing, and if you fall too far on one side or the other, something is missing.
You have to do the difficult work of getting tossed back and forth between the quiet, spacious world and the active, lively world until it doesn’t feel like you’re being tossed anymore, until you find something underneath that contains both the stillness and the activity, no matter what the circumstance. The more we rest in that and emerge from that in our activities, the less there is a sense of losing something because we’re including the other and the more there is a sense that practice is one whole thing we can gladly work with.
DAVID LOY: It’s important to distinguish Dharma practice on the personal level—where we work on our own transformation—from political activities. Practice is what enables us to see the connections between personal transformation and social transformation.
JOAN SUTHERLAND, ROSHI: The tensions we’re talking about can be tremendously creative if we’re willing to hang out with them and be uncomfortable. In Japan during World War II, for example, Zen became involved with imperialism. It was a horrible period in the history of Zen, and for a while in the postwar period, people in Zen didn’t want to get involved in politics. Then, a few decades later, a movement began toward becoming politically engaged. But it was now an engagement that benefited from the lessons of World War II. Staying alert to how time and circumstances and people are changing is tremendously important.
If acting politically is a natural outgrowth of Dharma practice, what kind of actions would it be skillful for a Buddhist to take? Is it skillful to join in protest movements in the name of Buddhism or a Buddhist organization?
DAVID LOY: The more groups, religious and otherwise, that join in such demonstrations, the more effective they would be in showing breadth of support. So from that side, I don’t see a problem. The issue arises if one is going to represent a particular sangha or not, and how does one decide that? Would the Buddhist teacher make that decision? Would it be a democratic process on the part of the group, requiring a 51-percent vote?
JOAN SUTHERLAND, ROSHI: We went through a process in Santa Fe, and for us it was very important that we had a meeting where everybody had a chance to say what they wanted. I felt very strongly about supporting the Occupy movement. It seemed to be doing exactly what Buddhists have always done, which is to bear witness. Occupy was saying: Hey, there’s a serious problem here; people are really suffering, and we need to pay attention to that. That was about as pure a Buddhist message as I could imagine.
On that basis, I put the question to the community. At the meeting, some people had what I thought was an important concern—that we not engage in the kind of us-and-them and sometimes aggressive or violent rhetoric that was occurring in some places.
We decided we would participate in Occupy Santa Fe once a week. There was no coercion or obligation, and whoever wanted to come would show up for an hour on Wednesday mornings, bringing warm clothes and groceries to share. We’d just sit—no banner, no tent, no literature—meditating on tarps on the ground, and when we left, we’d haul out some garbage.
DAVID LOY: Your meditation practice was undoubtedly having an impact on the way Occupy was developing. Buddhism does have something to offer in that situation in its emphasis on nonviolence and avoiding abusive rhetoric.
Some sanghas have forums, usually online, where people have presented strong political views with an implicit sense that there’s prior agreement with them by the rest of the sangha.
JOAN SUTHERLAND, ROSHI: The important question is, what is the culture of your community? If persuading people politically is congruent with that culture, okay, but if people are being made uncomfortable by it, you’ve got a cultural problem and that’s what you need to address.
DAVID LOY: I don’t see this issue as significantly different from whether to take a banner to a street demonstration. Ultimately, it’s up to the members to decide what kind of boundaries they want to set around their political action.
JOAN SUTHERLAND, ROSHI: Saying that supporting a candidate is an expression of my bodhicitta is one thing, but saying that it is therefore also an expression of everybody’s bodhicitta is a cultural problem.
The prevalence of anger in politics scares a lot of Buddhists. How do practitioners work with that anger?
DAVID LOY: Fundamentally, anger is a kind of energy, and the issue is whether we understand this energy and how to use it wisely. If it’s understood in a dualistic way, the self-righteousness of an ego that’s attacking somebody else, it’s very dangerous. But one could also understand anger within the larger context of love. Can we have a politics based not on anger but on love? That, of course, fits in well with the Buddhist emphasis on compassion and nonduality, and realizing that we’re not separate from other people. But there is still a role for the energy that gets expressed as anger, such as when people who should be held in a loving situation are being abused or taken advantage of.
Although we in the Occupy movement may be saying, “We are the 99 percent,” it’s not as though we are trying to promote the interests of the 99 percent by destroying the 1 percent. From a Buddhist standpoint, the emphasis is on realizing that what we’re working toward is ultimately going to benefit everyone.
JOAN SUTHERLAND, ROSHI: I agree that ferocity and fearlessness are important qualities. But I’ve noticed that when I get angry it’s often because I’m taking a break from sorrow. The sorrow is almost unbearable and it can be easier to be angry.
We have a practice of meeting our broken hearts with the great broken heart of the world, which of course is the First Noble Truth. We look to see what’s possible when we’re not fleeing from that sorrow into anger or self-righteousness or numbness. As for ferocity and fearlessness, questioning becomes crucial, because if you’re going to be fierce and assertive and all of that great stuff, it makes a big difference if you don’t believe you’re right. What the Dharma offers is that the most we can aspire to is our best guess—and that’s subject to change, depending on new information.
MUSHIM IKEDA: A good practice question for the Dharma students I work with, many of whom are strong social justice activists, would be: Can I just be purely in that anger over the incredible injustices in the world, over the people who are getting chewed up and spat out by the machinery of our society every single day, without any trace of aggression?
DAVID LOY: The key here is whether the anger arises within a larger container of nondualistic love, in which we’re not taking sides by pursuing the well-being of one group of people at the cost of another group of people. From a Buddhist perspective, the love or compassion we’re talking about obviously does include what is called the 1 percent.
Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche talked about compassion including both “yes” and “no.” Saying “yes” is accommodating, but saying “no”—clearly identifying what is wrong and unjust—is also compassionate.
JOAN SUTHERLAND, ROSHI: On the “no” side of compassion, if we’re holding other people accountable for their actions, we have to be sure we’re holding ourselves accountable too.
One of the ways we can do that is with a rigorous inquiry when we are working for change. When we feel anger about something we think must not stand, we need to ask whom we are trying to make comfortable? There might be an element of “I’m trying to make myself comfortable because I just can’t bear that things are like this,” which is very human. But we need to be aware to what extent our activities are motivated by a genuine sense of wanting to help those who are suffering and to what extent our motivation is wanting to feel more comfortable ourselves.
Is it skillful for Buddhism to be associated with a particular political position, or does that limit our ability to help as many people as possible, including people with different political beliefs?
JOAN SUTHERLAND, ROSHI: I would urge us to be humble. We need to listen to a lot of different voices, and not just because we happen to stumble upon an important conversation. We need to seek out voices we might not ordinarily run into in our lives. There was a discussion in the larger Buddhist world about whether it was right to have a Buddhist presence for the cadets at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. Interestingly, this conversation did not include the people at the academy who are actually involved in living the questions every day.
MUSHIM IKEDA: If I am strongly allied publicly with a particular political position, I’m immediately going to be perceived as the opposition by those who have different values and political beliefs, and my chances for being heard are going to decrease accordingly. Hardening around a particular political stance, as Joan wisely pointed out, might be valid for us today but not meet our needs tomorrow.
DAVID LOY: Social justice is not a traditional Asian Buddhist concept. It developed in the Abrahamic tradition, goes back to the prophets, and ultimately depends upon the duality between good and evil. When the prophets challenged the rulers for oppressing poor people, that shows the positive side of good versus evil. The negative side is that one of the main causes of evil in our world has been our effort to get rid of evil. We try to separate good and evil, when the reality is that they’re two sides of the same coin: we feel good about ourselves when we’re fighting against evil, which means we have to find something evil to fight against. George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden were fighting the same holy war of good versus evil, but what one thought was good the other thought was evil, and vice versa. Ironically, the result was much greater evil.
The Buddhist emphasis is not on good versus evil but on wisdom versus delusion. Buddhism raises all kinds of questions about what really makes people happy. Just because those in the 1 percent have piles of money doesn’t mean they can escape dukkha. One of the wonderful things about Buddhism coming to the West is that our concern for social justice is supplemented by the Buddhist insight of making sure we’re not just caught up in vainly trying to satisfy the greed and negativity of our egos.