Writings on Socially Engaged Buddhism

·期刊原文
The Path of Compassion: Writings on Socially Engaged Buddhism
by Fred Eppsteiner
Reviewed by Katy Butler

Whole Earth Review
No.76 (Fall 1992)
Pp.98
COPYRIGHT POINT 1992

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Many of the first Zen teachers in America taught not only Buddhism,
but disengagement from activist politics. (Many Japanese monasteries
historically enjoyed the sponsorship of emperors) But in the last
ten years, American students hove become less imitative and are
finding their own voices, This anthology includes contributions from
the Dalai Lama, Jack Kornfield, Thich Nhat Hanh, Joanna Macy, Robert
Aitkin, a woman who was roped after a sesshin, and a British monk
who ran for Parliament. Contributors argue that there is nothing
inherently Buddhist about social passivity. It introduced me to
traditional Buddhists, especially in the Theravadan traditions of
Sri Lanka and Burma, who integrate religion and politics much as
Gandhi did. --Katy Butler
* Although Mahayana Buddhism has a grand vision of universal
salvation, the actual achievement of Buddhism has been the
development of practical systems of meditation toward the end of
liberating a few dedicated individuals from psychological hangups
and cultural conditionings. Institutional Buddhism has been
conspicuously ready to accept or ignore the inequalities and
tyrannies of whatever political system it found itself under. This
can be death to Buddhism, because it is death to any meaningful
function of compassion. Wisdom without compassion feels no pain.
No one today can afford to be innocent, or to indulge themselves in
ignorance of the nature of contemporary governments, politics, and
social orders. The national polities of the modern world are
"states" which maintain their existence by deliberately fostered
craving and fear: monstrous protection rackets. The "free world" has
become economically dependent on a fantastic system of stimulation
of greed which cannot be fulfilled, sexual desire which cannot be
satiated, and hatred which has no outlet except against oneself, the
persons one is supposed to love, or the revolutionary aspirations of
pitiful, poverty-stricken marginal societies. The conditions of the
Cold War have turned most modern societies -- both Soviet and
capitalist -- into vicious distorters of true human potential. They
try to create populations of preta -- hungry ghosts, with giant
appetites and throats no bigger than needles. The soil, the forests,
and all animal life are being consumed by these cancerous
collectivities; the air and water of the planet is being fouled by
them.
There is nothing in human nature or the requirements of human social
organization which intrinsically requires that a society be
contradictory, repressive, and productive of violent and frustrated
personalities. Findings in anthropology and psychology make this
more and more evident. One can prove it for oneself by taking a good
look at Original Nature through meditation. Once a person has this
much faith and insight, one will be led to a deep concern with the
need for radical social change through a variety of nonviolent
means.
The joyous and voluntary poverty of Buddhism becomes a positive
force. The traditional harmlessness and avoidance of taking life in
any form has nation-shaking implications. The practice of
meditation, for which one needs only "the ground beneath one's
feet," wipes out mountains of junk being pumped into the mind by the
mass media and supermarket universities.