Western students of (socially) engaged Buddhism have usually additionally thought-about themselves practitioners of engaged Buddhism, in a method that’s extra widespread than with different types of Buddhism. Thus scholarship on engaged Buddhism usually tends to tackle a theological solid. I don’t assume it is a dangerous factor. I’ve lengthy tried to advocate that non-Western traditions ought to be handled as companions in dialogue, not as mere objects of examine; we ought to be doing ethics and not only doing ethics studies. The sphere of engaged Buddhism is one the place students usually do Buddhist ethics and never merely examine different individuals who do Buddhist ethics, and I admire that concerning the area very a lot – in opposition to these like Victor Temprano who object to such normative work.
Now theological scholarship nonetheless is, and ought to be, scholarship, topic to requirements of educational rigour. That is the place engaged Buddhist scholarship has typically been missing. Engaged Buddhist students usually write as if all Buddhism is socially engaged Buddhism, ignoring the Buddhists who advocate social disengagement. I’ve said my piece about that half. Right this moment I need to level to a different space the place engaged Buddhist scholarship has lacked rigour prior to now: the query of what engaged Buddhism is.
Wherever we stand on the political spectrum, there are going to be Buddhists partaking in politics from a distinct place than us. Like myself, most engaged Buddhist students sometimes come from a standpoint of left-wing non-violent motion. This isn’t the standpoint of Wirathu, of the Bodu Bala Sena, of the militant monks of southern Thailand. One may argue that these are dangerous Buddhists (and I do), however they’re nonetheless self-identified Buddhists. And by any regular or commonsensical definition of the phrases “engagement”, “social engagement” or “political engagement”, they are socially and politically engaged: they’re performing in organized actions to alter society and authorities.
So if they’re engaged they usually take into account themselves Buddhists, does that make them engaged Buddhists? The plain reply could be sure. However that isn’t the reply you’ll get from studying engaged Buddhist scholarship. (Chris Queen recently claimed that “It’s exhausting to understand the grounds on which Brown and her colleagues consider that these violent ethnocentric and nationalist Buddhists ought to be referred to as ‘engaged Buddhists.’” Actually? They’re engaged in politics they usually’re self-proclaimed Buddhists – is that basically so exhausting to determine?)
For a lot too lengthy, engaged Buddhist scholarship’s method to right-wing nationalist Buddhists was largely to disregard them, simply examine extra sympathetic figures like Thich Nhat Hanh and faux the unsympathetic ones don’t exist or are irrelevant. Brian Victoria’s pathbreaking work helped significantly to alter this, by exhibiting what number of Buddhist lecturers admired by Western students had supported the fascist Japanese authorities in World Battle II. Such right-wing or violent Buddhists are thankfully not ignored. However the query of whether or not they depend as engaged Buddhists continues to be a reside one, for a number of engaged Buddhist students would nonetheless argue that they don’t and mustn’t.
Fortuitously, that is at the least now a debate. Paul Fuller’s book on engaged Buddhism counted right-wing and violent Buddhists as engaged; pal of this weblog Donna Brown lately argued in the Journal of Buddhist Ethics that the idea of engaged Buddhism “ought to be democratized to incorporate all Buddhists and their social engagement.” However the older conception nonetheless has its defenders: Sallie King recently responded to Brown, claiming “Changing into a socially engaged Buddhist displaces being a nationalist Buddhist. One can’t be each.” So King’s argument deserves a more in-depth look.
King’s argument focuses on the International Network of Engaged Buddhists (INEB), a gaggle of politically lively Buddhists and Buddhist organizations initially based in Thailand by Sulak Sivaraksa. King appropriately notes that INEB’s members are largely Asian, and look at themselves as engaged Buddhists. She additionally notes INEB’s declare that it “has by no means wavered from its dedication to non-violent engagement”, and goals at “creating solidarity with people and teams who maintain comparable such values from different religions”. King notes that the latter level stands in distinction to the Asian Buddhists who persecute Muslims or Tamil Hindus, and factors to an electronic mail communication that “INEB doesn’t embrace any Buddhist nationalists-ethnocentric Buddhists in its organizational construction”.
The query is, what do all these factors truly entail? INEB is one group of self-identified engaged Buddhists. That doesn’t give it the best to talk for all engaged Buddhists. There are Theravādin self-identified Buddhists who would say that Mahāyāna is “probably not Buddhism”; if these self-identified Buddhists don’t get the final phrase on who counts as a Buddhist, then why would a community of self-identified engaged Buddhists get the final phrase on who counts as an engaged Buddhist? Had been Wirathu or the Bodu Bala Sena additionally to self-identify as engaged Buddhists, it’s not clear why the INEB’s method ought to cease us from classifying themselves as such, for they might be simply as a lot self-identified Asian engaged Buddhists because the INEB is.
Now it is vital on this regard that, so far as I do know, right-wing or ethno-nationalist Buddhists usually don’t name themselves “engaged Buddhists”; I don’t get the impression that they’ve discovered the idea or motion of engaged Buddhism to be worthy of their consideration. So we may prohibit the idea of “engaged Buddhism” to those that self-identify as engaged Buddhists. Or, in an analogous and possibly extra useful vein, we may argue that “Engaged Buddhism” names a traditionally particular Buddhist social motion, and not a normal tendency inside Buddhism. (This could be a wonderful purpose to capitalize the E, as King does.) I feel King implies such a view when she proclaims that “the title ‘Engaged Buddhism’ (and ‘Socially Engaged Buddhism’) is already taken!” The time period would then title the trendy motion (or set of actions) going again to Thich Nhat Hanh and his predecessor Taixu, and people people and organizations – together with the INEB – who see themselves as following that motion. On that account, being a Buddhist who’s socially engaged doesn’t itself make you an Engaged Buddhist, simply as being in opposition to fascism doesn’t itself make you Antifa.
Let’s be away from the implications of what that transfer could be, although. It could rule out the interpretation that Tom Yarnall calls “traditionist”, based on which previous Buddhist figures and texts – King Aśoka, Nāgārjuna’s Ratnāvalī – may be counted as Engaged. For these thinkers and texts didn’t self-identify as Engaged any greater than Wirathu does, nor have been they a part of the trendy Engaged Buddhist motion. (Queen, and others whom Yarnall calls “modernists”, would probably be okay with that implication.)
I feel that’s a transfer we can make, although it would make a number of engaged Buddhists uncomfortable. However we do want readability. Maybe Engaged Buddhism is a traditionally particular trendy motion going again to Thich Nhat Hanh and the ideology he set out, and people not affiliated with that motion don’t qualify. Or maybe engaged Buddhism is a broader, extra literal factor: Buddhists who have interaction in politics are engaged Buddhists, they usually’ve been round since at the least the time of Aśoka. It could be that each usages stay applicable relying on context – however we must be clear about which we’re utilizing. I suppose we may do worse than utilizing “Engaged Buddhism” with a capital E to call the primary, and “engaged Buddhism” with a small e to call the second. However we must be clear: if Wirathu isn’t an Engaged Buddhist, then neither was Aśoka.
Cross-posted on the Indian Philosophy Blog.
