Socially Engaged Buddhism in Contemporary World

[Full title: The Conceptualisation of Socially Engaged Buddhism in Contemporary World]

The term “Socially Engaged Buddhism” has been coined by the most venerable Thich Nhat Hanh, an expatriate Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk who was born on October 11, 1926 in central Vietnam. A teacher, author, poet and peace activist, he joined a Zen monastery at the age of sixteen, studied Buddhism as a novice, and was fully ordained as a monk in 1949. He is commonly referred to as Thich Nhat Hanh. Thich is a title used by all Vietnamese monks and nuns. It means that they are part of the Shakya (Shakyamuni Buddha) clan.

During the early 1960s, he laid the foundation of the school of Youth for Social Services (SYSS) in Saigon, a grassroots relief organization that rebuilt bombed villages, set up schools and medical centers, and resettled families left homeless during the Vietnam War. In course of his numerous trips to the U.S., he studied at Princeton University, lectured at Cornell University and taught at Columbia University. But the major purpose of those travels was to urge the U.S. government to withdraw from Vietnam. He urged Martin Luther King, JR. to oppose the Vietnam War publicly and spoke with people and groups about peace. In a January 25, 1967 letter to the Nobel Institute in Norway, King nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize. Venerable Nhat Hanh led the Buddhist delegation to the Paris Peace Talks.

Venerable Thich Nhat Hanh is one of the best known Buddhist teachers in the West, his teachings and practices appeal to people across various religious, spiritual, and political backgrounds. He offers a practice of mindfulness adapted to Western sensibilities. He created the Order of Interbeing in 1966, and established monasteries and practice centers around the World. He has traveled worldwide giving retreats and talks. The term “Engaged Buddhism” or “Socially Engaged Buddhism” was coined by him in his book Lotus in a Sea of Fire.

Engaged Buddhism: Venerable Thich Nhat Hanh is considered to be one of the primary thinkers behind the concept of Engaged Buddhism. The ideal that enlightenment can be sought not only through study and formal meditation, but also by mindfulness of daily life, extended to all actions. In particular, Engaged Buddhism advocates for a compassionate, Buddhist approach to social justice and social engagement covering a range of issues such as environmentalism, human rights, education, and poverty among others.

“Engaged Buddhism” teaches a cyclical process. By understanding the true nature of the self, we can better understand the truth of the society; then we use that enhanced understanding to gain an even deeper understanding of self, which leads to deeper understanding of the society and so on. Ultimately, we understand that the self and the society have no separate existence. They are just two ways of looking at the same unified reality. Society per se makes it hard to realize this. In fact, it teaches us to worry about the relationship between individual and society, as if the two were separate pieces of puzzle that must somehow go together, though they cannot fit together. Society perpetuates this false problem because it wants us to be asleep, so that we will not do anything to change the status quo.

Awareness of interdependence makes it immediately evident that each of us shares responsibility for all that happens and will happen. Therefore, there is no phenomenon in the universe that does not immediately concern us. As soon as we recognize that responsibility, we are moved to act to improve the situation: “If we are very aware, we can do something to change the course of things.” We are most motivated to work for change when we realize that our sense of being a separate self is illusory. We are all part of the same human process and driven by the same processes. Changing that process means changing both situation and self: “Mindfulness is to see deeply into things, to see how we can change, how we can transform our situation. To transform our situation is also to transform our minds. To transform our mind is also to transform our situation, because the situation is mind, and mind is situation.”

Since the individual and society co-exist each must nourish the other, or both will wither. The preservation of oneself is the same thing as the preservation of all; the improvement of oneself is the same thing as the improvement of all; the healing of one’s own suffering is the same thing as the healing of all suffering. This is what Buddhists mean by compassion. It does not mean reaching out to another. It is (as the literal meaning of the word suggests) “feeling together with” in a broader sense, compassion means experiencing one’s own fate and the fate of the supposed other as identical. Thus, it also means experiencing the other’s suffering as one’s own suffering.

Compassion does not make any moral judgments about who is innocent and who is to blame. While making such moral judgments, we usually tend to take the stance of a subject observing objects. Thus, we lose the sense of immediate interbeing which is the essence of compassion. But when we identify with everyone, we realize that our own being and society’s good and evil aspects all share the same essential nature. “When we realize our nature of interbeing, we will stop blaming and killing, because we know that we inter-are.” So we stop splitting the world into good versus evil. Instead, we will love and become friends with everyone.

When we are truly mindful, we recognize that nothing in life is any more permanent or secure than an ocean wave. We are always riding the crest of a wave. Try to hold on to anything is to pursue an impossible illusion of security. When we accept the truth of this impermanence, we realize that all boundaries are human constructs imposed on the unpredictable, and therefore uncontrollable, process of reality. So we make no effort to control or impose ourselves on others. We simply respond to the demand of the moment, without expecting to control the future.

Why is it necessary to respond? It is a natural impulse to give vent to our own suffering. If we accidentally put a finger in the fire, we do not think about what to do; we instinctively take the finger out of the fire. Compassion implies the tendency to have the same instinctive desire to ease all suffering, irrespective of where it occurs and who experiences it. This is the motive of engaged Buddhism and its efforts to create a more just world.

Compassion also allows us to be more objective, because we can see thing more clearly and be more fully aware of the whole situation. This is in keeping with the assumption that “To love is to understand.” This assumption suggests that when suffering is humanly caused, the perpetrators actually suffer along with the victims. It also implies that the perpetrators are causing suffering because they themselves have suffered. In the nutshell, the better we understand the causes of suffering, the more effectively we can work to relieve it. So, when we offer love and understanding to others, no matter how evil their deeds are, we may be able to defuse the anger that is often the source of those deeds. Certainly, we can be better models of the behavior we expect from others.

Furthermore, we cannot reach out to the world compassionately unless we become the compassion we want to offer others. As it has been observed by the Buddha, if we cannot be compassionate to ourselves, we will not be able to be compassionate to others. We can only be happy when we accept ourselves as we are. We must first be aware of all the elements within us, and then we must bring them into harmony.” This is certainly not easy to practice. All of us have a desire for security, which makes it hard to accept the truth of impermanence. We all have emotions and ignorance, which create illusions that block our accurate perception. Most difficult of all, usually, is our own unacknowledged anger. It's only after recognizing our own seeds of anger that we can stop nurturing them. Besides that we can convert them into constructive feelings of forgiveness and understanding, nurturing the seeds of compassion.

Ironically, even knowledge can block accurate perception. We seek security from our sense of certainty by clinging to what we are sure we know. When we resist new ideas and refuse to change our views, we cannot see the truth clearly. Most importantly, we cannot see the truth that the world is always changing and the next moment is unknown and unpredictable. Therefore, the world always keeps changing. No ideas are absolutely and permanently true. Ideas are only useful as means to reduce suffering. We should always be ready to give up our current ideas and knowledge when circumstances call for new ones.

In traditional Buddhist teachings and practices, the Buddha was most often presented as the one who knows how to heal suffering because he is “wide awake” (the literal meaning of the name Buddha). “Engaged Buddhism” broadens its horizon by teaching that each one of us can do this. Each of us has a Buddha nature, which is our innate capacity to wake up, to understand the truth of interbeing, and to love all reality. Everyone who is awake embodies the Buddha and therefore becomes a Buddha in body. In that sense, “you yourself are the Buddha.” We need not go to a monastery or a far–off mountain top to become the Buddha. Anyone or anything can help us wake up. It imparts the essence of Buddha’s teachings, just by being what it is, a part of the endless web of interbeing. There are fourteen guidelines^[1] for the engaged Buddhist formulated by venerable Thich Nhat Hanh.

These can be sum up as follows.

1. Do not be idolatrous about or bend yourself compulsively to any doctrine, theory, or ideology, including even the Buddhist ones. Buddhist systems of thought are guiding means; one should not be accepted as absolute truth.

2. Do not think that the knowledge you possess at present is changeless, absolute truth. Avoid being narrow minded and hardcore stickler of present views. Learn and practice nonattachment from views in order to be open to others’ viewpoints. Truth is found in life and not merely in conceptual knowledge. Be ready to learn and to observe reality in yourself and in the world throughout your life.

3. Do not force others, including children, by any means whatsoever, toadopt your views, whether by authority, threat, money, propaganda, or even education. However, through compassionate dialogue, help others renounce fanaticism and narrow-mindedness.

4. Do not avoid or ignore suffering. Do not lose awareness of the existence of suffering in the worldly life. Find ways to be with those who are suffering, including personal contact, visits, images and sounds. By such means, awaken yourself and others to the reality of suffering in the world.

5. Do not accumulate wealth while millions are hungry. Do not make fame, profit, wealth, or sensual pleasure as the aim of your life. Live simply and share time, energy, and material resources with those who are needy.

6. Do not harbour anger or hatred. For anything or anyone learn to penetrate and transform them when they are still nascent stage in your consciousness. The moment they arise, turn your attention to your breath in order to see and understand the nature of your hatred.

7. Do not lose yourself in dispersion and in your surroundings. Practice mindful breath to get back to what is happening in the present moment. Be touch with what is wondrous, refreshing, and healing both inside and around you. Sow seeds of joy, peace, and understanding in yourself so as to facilitate the work of transformation in the depths of your consciousness.

8. Do not utter words that can lead to discord and cause the community to break. Make every effort to reconcile and resolve all conflicts, however small.

9. Do not say untruthful things for the sake of personal interest or toimpress people. Do not utter words that cause division and hatred. Do not spread news that you know may not be true. Do not criticize or condemn things of which you are not sure. Always speak truthfully and constructively. Have the courage to speak out about situations of injustice, even when doing so may threaten your own safety.

10. Do not use the Buddhist community for personal gain or profit, ortransform your community into a political party. A religious community, however, should take a clear stand against oppression and injustice and should strive to change the situation without engaging in partisan conflicts.

11. Do not associate yourself with a vocation that is harmful to humans and nature. Do not invest in companies that deprive others of their chance to live. Choose a vocation that helps realize your ideal of compassion.

12. Do not kill and let others kill. Find whatever means possible to protect life and prevent war.

13. Possess nothing that should belong to others. Respect the property ofothers, but prevent others from profiting from human suffering or the suffering of other species on Earth.

14. Do not mistreat your body. Learn to handle it with respect. Do not lookon your body as only an instrument. Preserve vital energies (sexual, breath, spirit) for the realization of the Way. For brothers and sisters who are not monks and nuns: Sexual expression should not take place without love and commitment. In sexual relations, be aware of future suffering that may be caused. To preserve the happiness of others and respect the rights and commitments of others, be fully aware of the responsibility of bringing new lives into the world. Meditate on the world into which you are bringing new beings.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

Thich. Nhat. Hanh, “Interbeing”: Fourteen Guidelines for Engaged Buddhism, Parallax Press, Berkeley, California, 1993