I am interviewed along with many other Buddhists in a piece published by the Religion News Service this morning on Buddhists in America and the election. (The article also appears at Beliefnet.) The author is Daniel S. Burke, whose excellent reporting on Buddhist issue I have blogged about in the past–specifically, in this post and this post. Dan’s got his finger on the pulse of American Buddhism and I suspect he’ll continue to produce much insightful coverage on the subject. You should make it a point to keep an eye out for his work.
I was very interested to read the final piece. In particular, I’m intrigued by the observation my own quote was weaved into: that Buddhists have a tendency to be perhaps a bit more reserved than other religious persons when it comes to making strong, absolute political statements. As I told Dan, for me as both a Buddhist and someone who has done religious studies in the postmodern age, my own personal reluctance to make categorical statements about “the Buddhist position” on specific political issues has to do with my recognition that there are many different expressions of Buddhism and many individual Buddhists.
My own personal understanding, though, is that to be a Buddhist means to do all I can to benefit beings–hence my mindful involvement in progressive causes and social justice work. It’s clear to me that the Buddha’s Dharma is a Social Dharma. I’m a student of Pāḷi, and I’m struck that the language’s origins seem to be in the vernacular, Prakrit languages of ancient India, and not in the elite Sanskrit languages that other religious personages of the period taught. (Though it seems to have gone through a process of Sanskritization later.) This suggests to me that the Buddha was a leveler–that he didn’t believe that knowledge, that awakening, should be restricted to just a privileged few. And what was his teaching? That nobility was determined not by birth or by status, but by the practices of calm abiding, wisdom, and virtue–practices that could be undertaken by anyone at any moment.
That said, I also recognize that other Buddhists may understand things differently. The Buddha’s dying words were, “Be lamps unto yourselves. Don’t believe things just because I said them or someone else said them. Do your own investigation and contemplation.” That means we’ll always have some diverse positions held within the various Buddhist traditions, I think.
I think we could probably point to a lot of things–textual, traditional, or otherwise–that might generally give Buddhists pause about translating the Dharma into direct political positions. Whether we do it or not, though, I think we always have a responsibility to practice with both a proper historical understanding of Buddhism and an awareness of what is happening in the world around us at this very moment. The history of Buddhism has been characterized by adaptation, integration, and change, so we needn’t necessarily fear the processes of translation and transformation that will naturally occur as Buddhism develops in America. Maybe we’ll even come to new and helpful understandings about Buddhism and politics here as a result of those processes. Furthermore, I’m compelled by Thich Nhat Hanh’s statement that “all Buddhism is engaged”: non-involvement is as much a political statement as active involvement. So it seems imperative to me that American Buddhist communities of all kinds think and talk about political issues that concern them and not ignore politics altogether. They’re making statements either way.
