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The Buddha as an Activist

Good morning. Here we are on a Sunday morning at IMC in California, and a good day to those of you who are in other places around the globe. What I would like to talk about today is maybe a little bit experimental. It is more of a continuation of reflections that I have been having, and perhaps it is a way of continuing to think out loud about this.

We all know that there is a tremendous amount of social division and discord that exists in our society and the world, but especially here in the United States. Especially now with the election season in full swing, for some of us, there is more animosity, tension, and hostility in society than there has been for over forty years. During the Vietnam War and right afterwards, that time was pretty bad here in this country, so we are going to go through cycles of this.

One of the questions this brings up for reflection is: what is the role of a Buddhist center, Buddhist practice, or Buddhist teachers in times of social discord and conflict? One of the principles that has characterized much of the Insight Meditation movement from the time it started, and which is also part of IMC, is to attempt, to some degree, to be politically neutral so that people of all political persuasions feel comfortable here to practice. The idea is that meditation practice is very profound and significant; it transforms people into better citizens who are better able to live in society in peaceful, harmonious, and generous ways. It benefits people who are suffering, and we want that benefit to be freely available to all people. We want everyone to feel welcome to come here and practice.

So we have made some decisions about staying relatively neutral, and it could be argued that maybe we went too far. For example, during the Iraq War—in 2001 or 2002—someone put a sign up on the window at IMC saying, "No War in Iraq." It was taken down because there was a divided country back then, and there were people who came who believed it was appropriate to go to war. We wanted everyone who wanted to practice to come and not feel like they were challenged because their persuasion was not appreciated. Certainly, in the Insight Meditation scene, which is predominantly liberal, I have talked to a number of people who have been Republicans. They feel like it is very challenging for them to come and practice here because if they tell people what their persuasion is, there is sometimes quite a hostility towards them. So they just stay quiet about that.

How neutral should we be, and how neutral are we? Should we be engaged with political positions and social action? This is an open question. A friend of mine who is a Buddhist teacher wanted to draw a line between being involved in political issues as a Buddhist teacher versus being involved in the issues of civil rights, human rights, or social justice. For him, civil rights and social justice sit outside the middle of politics, and so it is okay to be involved there and take a position.

That is an interesting point of view, and I am trying to find my way with this also. Where is the line? Where is it too political for us? What is being too neutral? When do we stand up and get involved in things? Maybe once Buddhism has been in this country for a lot longer, it will be just like in Christianity. There will be Buddhist centers that are clearly and overtly identified with liberal positions, and ones that are overtly recognized with conservative orientations. A little bit of that is already beginning to happen, but where are we at IMC, and where do we fit with this?

Ethical Activism

That is the background for my reflections and what I have been thinking about lately. I went into the ancient texts, the sutras^[1], to see what we could read about there that might help us understand the Buddha's perspective on these things. This talk is titled, "The Buddha as an Activist." If an activist is someone who promotes a social reform of some kind or another, then the Buddha was an activist, because he was explicitly trying to affect the whole world and benefit the whole world. He advocated for the welfare, happiness, and well-being of the whole world.

More importantly, he encouraged his followers and disciples to also go out and work for the welfare of many people. The idea was not to simply sit in meditation, do nothing, and go into the forest to be a hermit. There were explicit instructions to go out and benefit the world. In some ways, the highest benefit from a traditional Buddhist point of view is to teach a path of liberation. But is it limited to that? Does that mean not being involved in politics or the social issues of the time?

We have to remember that the Buddha lived a long time ago. He lived in the Bronze Age. Whenever I am reminded he lived in the Bronze Age, I think, "Wow, that is such a different time than where we are today." It was a pre-literate culture and mostly an agrarian society. They think that around the time of the Buddha, it was just the beginning of urban centers where merchants and craftspeople were doing their trades. There were no newspapers, no Facebook, and no mass communication. Most people's relationships were with people they had face-to-face contact with.

It was there that the Buddha addressed issues. He couldn't really address elections; there were no elections in most of the countries he lived in. He couldn't advocate for legislation and new laws, because laws were just the whim of the king. If you somehow crossed the king, it could easily have been lethal to make the king angry. There were no real economic systems or institutions to change, and no way to advocate for different economic theories for how society should be organized. It was very rudimentary. There were no institutions to approach except the king. So there were very few of the channels where activism works in the modern world; there weren't those places to go to try to make a change in society.

Instead of legislative, political, or economic activism, the Buddha focused on changing how people treated each other. I think of it as ethical activism. He put a tremendous amount of effort into this, and he frequently advocated for people to not harm each other. In fact, this idea of not harming each other is really at the heart of what the Buddha was trying to teach over and over again. The path of meditation practice is really a practice of not harming ourselves, but in learning to do that, also coming to a place of not harming the world around us. A noble person—someone with some degree of enlightenment—is described as someone who would not harm anyone at all. This idea of living a harmless life was very important to him.

What made his efforts a form of activism, in my understanding, is that he didn't just do it for himself, and he didn't just go out himself to advocate for people to live ethical, harm-free lives. He strongly advocated that his followers do that as well. He encouraged his followers to go out and prompt ethical behavior, and to support and encourage that for our society. In that sense, he was trying to do more than just give teachings to the people he directly encountered; he was trying to have a wider influence on the society of his time, and that is where the Buddha was an activist.

Prompting the Good

One place where this is explicit is that the Buddha often taught that people should avoid the ten unskillful, unwholesome, or unethical actions. Instead, they should do the ten skillful, ethical, wholesome actions. In one set of teachings, he lists what the ten unethical behaviors are and says they are harmful, but what's worse than being harmful is what he goes on to explain. He says that abstaining from these unethical behaviors is beautiful. The word kalyāṇa^[2] overlaps with the word "ethical," but it literally means "beautiful." It has a different flavor than just saying "immoral" or "unethical."

Abstaining from these ten unhealthy actions is beautiful. And then he says there is something that is more than beautiful. First, he gives the teachings on the ten unskillful actions: killing, taking what is not given (stealing), sexual misconduct, lying, speaking divisive speech, harsh speech, frivolous or pointless chatter, having ill will, being covetous, and having wrong view. Doing those things is harmful, but what is worse is to encourage others to do so as well.

Now, what is beautiful is to abstain from all of those. What is better than beautiful—what transcends beauty—is to prompt others to abstain from these unethical behaviors. It doesn't take a lot of reflection to think about that. What we have happening in our society at the political and social levels is the expression of a tremendous amount of these ten unskillful actions.

What I find very interesting here is that he says we should prompt others to live ethically. He doesn't give instructions to oppose others in terms of their ethics, or oppose those who are unethical, but rather to motivate them to be ethical. That is a challenging thing to do. Sometimes it can seem a lot easier to oppose people. If we oppose people, we can defeat them. We can stop them. But the danger with opposition is that even if people do stop, they might be angry and more upset. It builds up the pressure of an angry society if it is just a matter of winning and losing.

Is there another option? Finding a way that is not oppositional is much more difficult; however, it might have longer-term benefits to avoid having winners and losers.

Non-Oppositional Action

One of the places you see that the Buddha emphasized this non-oppositional approach is in how he talked about divisive speech. He says that there are people who try to create division and perpetuate the divisions that are already there. They love factionalism, they delight in factionalism, they enjoy factionalism, and they speak to create factions, partisan positions, and real separations of "us versus them."

However, for those people who abstain from divisive speech, the speech they engage in is speech that unites those who are divided and supports those who are already united. They speak in such ways as to create harmony. His instruction was to find a way to avoid division. If that is at the heart of this activism, it creates a particular flavor not only to what is being taught but also how it is being done. You can't really create opposition and divide if what you are trying to do is create harmony.

If we are trying to get people to stop killing and stealing, and governments to stop all these unethical behaviors—if we want politicians to stop engaging in violence, taking what's not given, sexual misconduct, lying, divisive speech, harsh speech, pointless speech, ill will, and covetousness—how do we do that in ways that avoid creating opposition?

When the Buddha was talking to his monastics, he told the monks and nuns that they should act for the welfare, benefit, and happiness of many people. He really made this point to go help people and work for their benefit. They should do that in three ways: they should prompt others in physical acts of concord, prompt others in verbal acts of concord, and prompt others in mental acts of concord to create unity and community. We see this emphasis again on concord.

Storytelling as Activism

In the ancient world, it was probably hard to advocate with kings to change their ways. At the slightest whim, a king could kill a person back then, and they did. But what the Buddha did was he told stories. He was a great storyteller. Some of these stories might be considered myths in our modern understanding.

He told a myth about ancient kings and how they lived. He said that if there is poverty, the king should provide the poor with means and support. The myth is a story of a king who didn't do this. When he didn't do it, poverty spread. And as poverty spread, people stole just to be able to eat. Then the king used violence to punish people, and this only spread violence through the kingdom as well. The violence, factionalism, and conflict spread not only between all the different parties in society but also within families, and things got pretty ugly.

The Buddha used myth to tell this story. When I first read about these Buddhist myths, I didn't think too much about them. But then I considered that in an oral culture, before there was literature, it was through memorable speech that ideas spread through society. These myth-like stories functioned like the Facebook of the ancient world. If you had a good story, people would tell it and retell it. If that story promoted ethics, care for other people, and avoiding divisions, factionalism, and violence, that was a way to change minds in a roundabout way, rather than going up to the king and protesting directly.

The Psychological Foundation

One of the interesting things I see in this ancient teaching is that in being an activist, the activist does not sacrifice their own ethical or wholesome behavior in working to end unethical behavior in others. In other words, you can't be unethical to promote ethics.

We see that in the Buddha's instructions around the ten skillful or ethical behaviors. This includes that one should never be hostile, even privately in one's own thoughts. Instead, one should wish for others to be free from animosity, oppression, and anxiety, and for them to live at ease. Coming from a place of goodwill in everything we do is a high standard that the Buddha set for our behavior in relationship to other people. Instead of speaking frivolous talk, the Buddha said one should speak at the right time, and do so with words which are treasured, reasoned, defined, and beneficial.

In terms of not killing, the Buddha said one shouldn't kill, but he added a positive side to that: we should encourage or prompt other people to put down their weapons. In the Bronze Age, that meant swords, spears, and arrows. In addition to abstaining from killing, one should also be gentle, kind, and caring for the welfare of all living beings.

We find a flavor in the Buddha's ethical teaching: he encouraged people to be ethical, and he encouraged people to support and prompt others to be ethical. It is a very difficult task. How do you change people so they are motivated to be ethical? I don't have an easy answer to that, but what a great goal that is. Being unethical or oppositional to people doesn't really work. I wonder if stories make a difference. The Buddha told myths that evoked people's imagination. That story mind often goes deeper into people's hearts than just protesting.

As challenging as all this is, the Buddha's approach to activism is rooted in one of the main purposes of the whole teaching: in order not to harm, we must be free from greed, hatred, and delusion. The Buddha emphasized that we should constantly be working to uproot greed, hatred, and delusion within us. If we do that, then the way we act, speak, and think in the world will also be free from greed, hatred, and delusion.

This is such an important part of Buddhist practice. If we want to be activists, and if we want to make a change in our society, politics, and economics, it becomes a natural and devoted thing for Buddhist practitioners to do it free of greed, hatred, and delusion. That is what they are working to cleanse themselves from. The goal is to bring that non-greed, non-hatred, and non-delusion into the world and make a difference.

Reflections on Modern Activism

How does all this translate to the modern world for us here at IMC and around this country? I am a little bit self-conscious in talking about this because it seems simplistic. It seems like it's too idealistic and too challenging to make the real difference that many of us would hope to see. There are all kinds of arguments being made about why this kind of non-violent effort can't work, and that we have to use some version of hostility, opposition, or confrontation.

But I think the task for Buddhists certainly can be to advocate for the end of systems, institutions, and politicians who engage in some or all of the ten unethical behaviors. Such advocacy aims to create bridges, not to break bridges down. Because of its strong emphasis on creating concord, unity, and healing divides, is there a way of advocating strongly and powerfully that doesn't perpetuate divides? How do we step in and create bridges for the common good? Can we try to bring people together to work together for the common good, free of factionalism?

Doing such activism is neither easy nor fast. It requires strong confidence in the value of the ethical behavior the Buddha emphasized. It requires strong confidence in the value of staying free of hatred, greed, and delusion. It requires strong confidence in avoiding violence—not just physical violence, but also verbal violence and political strategies that are about imposing one's will onto others, which is a kind of violence.

It is an activism that aims to change the psychological foundation from which unethical behavior arises. Regardless of how idealistic this whole approach is, it is working to establish generosity, love, and wisdom as the foundation for society so that fear is no longer the foundation.

I haven't really answered the question I began with: where is the line between stepping up into this public sphere, taking a stand, and getting too political? How do we do it? Maybe one way to answer that question is that there is an alternative to protesting. Maybe protesting is too oppositional, but there is another way that is more powerful. Perhaps it is powerful acts of presence—showing up in such a way that an alternative is being shown that can't be ignored. Rather than protests, there are demonstrations of love, kindness, and support. This is being demonstrated in such a powerful way that it touches people's hearts and minds, and changes people so they drop their hostility, forcefulness, and division. We can look for the third option. We can look for how we can work together for the common good, and look for options that can work for everyone, not just one party or the other.

That was my attempt at this topic. I feel inadequate in this topic, and it remains an ongoing reflection for me. Maybe some of you are also finding your way. If you were looking towards Buddhism for leadership in this regard, or wondering what Buddhists would do, I hope I have presented the Buddhist point of view in a clear way: whatever we do, we would be ethical, and we would figure out ways to motivate others to be ethical as well. You can't motivate people in a healthy way by threatening them or opposing them. How do we become friends with people in such a way that we touch their hearts and change something?

This will be an ongoing question for me, for some of you, and for our society. Hopefully, we will not only find our way with it, but we will make a difference so the world becomes a better and friendlier place for everyone concerned. May all beings become each other's friends. Thank you.