Disengaged Buddhism Jan 2019 Amod Jayant LeleAmod Jayant Lele

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Disengaged Buddhism

January 2019
Journal of Buddhist ethics 26:240-89
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Abstract
Contemporary engaged Buddhist scholars typically claim either that Buddhism always endorsed social activism, or that its non-endorsement of such activism represented an unwitting lack of progress. This article examines several classical South Asian Buddhist texts that explicitly reject social and political activism. These texts argue for this rejection on the grounds that the most important sources of suffering are not something that activism can fix, and that political involvement interferes with the tranquility required for liberation. The article then examines the history of engaged Buddhism in order to identify why this rejection of activism has not yet been taken sufficiently seriously.

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Disengaged Buddhism

Article  in  Journal of Buddhist ethics · January 2019

 

author: Amod Jayant Lele

Boston University

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Journal of Buddhist Ethics 

ISSN 1076-9005 

http://blogs.dickinson.edu/buddhistethics/ 

Volume 26, 2019 

 

 

 

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Disengaged Buddhism 

 

Amod Lele 

Boston University 

 

Copyright Notice: Digital copies of this work may be made and distributed provided no change is made and no alteration is made to the content. Reproduction in any other format, with the exception of a single copy for private study, requires the written permission of the author. All enquiries to: vforte@albright.edu. 

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Disengaged Buddhism 

 

Amod Lele   

 

Abstract 

Contemporary engaged Buddhist scholars typically claim either that Buddhism always endorsed social activism, or that its non-endorsement of such activism represented an unwitting lack of progress. This article examines several classical South Asian Buddhist texts that explicitly reject social and political activism. These texts argue for this rejection on the grounds that the most important sources of suffering are not something that activism can fix, and that political involvement interferes with the tranquility required for liberation. The article then examines the history of engaged Buddhism in order to identify why this rejection of activism has not yet been taken sufficiently seriously. 

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Introduction  

In a chapter entitled “All Buddhism Is Engaged,” Patricia Hunt-Perry and Lyn Fine quote Thich Nhat Hanh as follows: “‘Buddhism is already engaged Buddhism. If it is not, it is not Buddhism.’”  (Hunt-Perry and Fine 36) What does this quote actually mean? Hunt-Perry and Fine do not spell it out. It could be a simple tautology: by “engaged Buddhism” we simply mean “Buddhism,” such that a forest monk who refuses all contact with society counts as an engaged Buddhist. Such an approach would be entirely unhelpful; for, in that case, there would be no need to speak of “engaged Buddhism” rather than simply of Buddhism, and to do so would merely confuse the issue. 

 More commonly, “engaged Buddhism” is used as a shorthand for socially engaged Buddhism, a Buddhism that embraces social and political activism. Hunt-Perry and Fine themselves use the term this way. If “engaged Buddhism” is indeed understood in this way, then the quote could mean one of two things. It could be a factual claim that everyone practising Buddhism has, in fact, been socially engaged, or it could be a normative definition that says self-identified Buddhists who are not socially engaged are not truly Buddhist.  

 The factual claim that everyone practising Buddhism has been socially engaged is false. For in fact many revered Buddhist thinkers have not merely refrained from social engagement, they have actively discouraged it. As a consequence, the normative definition is far more exclusionary than Hunt-Perry and Fine would likely want it to be.  

 I refer to the Buddhism of these thinkers as disengaged Buddhism.  Disengaged Buddhists, in this sense, reject involvement with social and political issues as unfruitful and even harmful. I intend no negative connotation to the term “disengaged.”  In colloquial conversation, when a friend is involved in conflict surrounding other acquaintances that has negative emotional effects, we might give that friend the helpful advice that “You need to disengage from that situation”—advice that, we will see, has an analogue among the positions of the disengaged Buddhists. 

 This article does not argue that a Buddhist disengaged view is correct. Rather, I argue that disengaged Buddhism is a coherent, thoughtful position to be found across a variety of at least classical Indian Buddhist texts; as such, it deserves more constructive ethical attention than it has so far received. Western engaged Buddhist scholars, in particular, have typically given the claims of disengaged Buddhism insufficient attention in two different ways: either they act as if it never existed, or they treat it as an unwitting lack, a vacuum to be filled. They have generally not taken it as a thoughtful position worthy of response and debate.  

 This article is a response to those Western scholars, because they occupy a very prominent place in the scholarly field of Buddhist ethics, especially constructive or normative Buddhist ethics. It is not in response to Asian or other engaged Buddhist activists, who are outside this article’s purview. The aim of this article is not to critique what engaged Buddhists do (that would be a very different article), but how they think and write, especially about the Buddhist past. I am critiquing the scholarship and advocacy, rather than the practice, of engaged Buddhism. 

 This article is in sympathy with James Deitrick’s claim that, to date at least, American “socially engaged Buddhist social ethics is derived less from Buddhist sources than from the American religious culture in which it has grown” (i). It aims to go beyond Deitrick by examining those Buddhist sources and the positions they take in opposition to contemporary Western engaged Buddhist thought. I will present several texts from classical South Asia (roughly the eighth century CE and before) that directly discourage involvement in politics or other forms of activism, and I will explain the reasoning that underlies this discouragement. I have intentionally selected a broad range of texts from across the period in question—mainstream  and Mahāyāna, narrative and philosophical—to highlight how widespread disengaged ideals were across this context.  

 I stick to this classical South Asian context to avoid losing focus, though disengaged Buddhist ideals extend beyond this context.7 I am not claiming that every Buddhist text from this period is disengaged in the sense I use here. Steven Collins acutely notes two “modes of dhamma” in the Pāli literature, one of which accommodates both politics and violence, and one of which resists them both (Nirvana 419-423). I am deliberately focusing on texts in the latter mode in order to highlight an aspect of classical South Asian Buddhism that has been unjustly neglected in contemporary Buddhist ethical reflection. Still, I hope that the wide variety of texts in this article shows that even if the disengaged tendency is not universal in classical Indian Buddhism, it is nevertheless widespread—widespread enough that a normative definition of Buddhism as socially engaged would bar a wide variety of revered thinkers and texts as not truly Buddhist. 

 I will begin the article by articulating the ways in which engaged Buddhist scholars have so far approached historical Buddhist texts, noting that those approaches take two different forms, though neither form has so far done justice to the positions the texts articulate. Next, I will introduce the classical texts at issue and explain the methodological reasons why the claims of these texts matter. I will then show how these texts reject the idea that social engagement is a duty, and then explain their reasoning. Briefly, they claim that the significant sources of suffer-

                                                                                                                                         

are affiliated with Mahāyāna traditions, most in classical South Asia were not so affiliated.  

7 For example, recently Thanissaro Bhikkhu has constructively made some of the sorts of arguments I describe here as disengaged, with reference to some of the texts cited here. Later in the article we will also see Judith Simmer-Brown speaking of contemporary Buddhist teachers who advocate disengaged Buddhism. 

ing are not the sort that social engagement can address, and that political participation is typically harmful to well-being.  Finally, I will look at the history of engaged Buddhism to explore why disengaged Buddhism has so far been generally ignored.  

 

Engaged Buddhist Scholarship and the Buddhist Past 

The movement of engaged Buddhism is well-studied, in part because it includes many religion scholars among its members. They have offered a variety of definitions of engaged Buddhism, though not necessarily precise ones. One of them, Christopher Queen, identifies engaged Buddhism in terms of “energetic engagement with social and political issues and crises” (ix). Another term for this “engagement” is activism. Thomas Tweed identifies activism as “the concern to uplift individuals, reform societies, and participate energetically in the political and economic spheres” (xxiv). 

 Sallie King similarly says engaged Buddhism consists of Buddhists who “engage with the problems of their society—inclusive of political, social, economic, racial, gender, environmental, and other problems—on the basis of their Buddhist worldview, values, and spirituality” (“Problems” 166). Not explicitly included on this list are psychological or spiritual problems of craving, anger, and ignorance. A call for papers for a 2000 conference on engaged Buddhism (published in JBE vol. 7) made that exclusion explicit, stating that engaged Buddhism is 

[c]haracterized by a reorientation of Buddhist soteriology and ethics to identify and address sources of human suffering outside of the cravings and ignorance of the sufferer—such as social, political, and economic injustice, warfare, and violence, and environmental degradation. (qtd. in Jenkins 2000) 

 The political element of engaged Buddhism is particularly important. We may note first that all three definitions just quoted include the term “political.” I have not yet seen an engaged Buddhist article that defines “political,” but they seem to be in line with the definition proposed by the political scientist Matthew Moore in his examination of Buddhist political theory, as having to do with government:  

I understand government to be the processes and institutions either authorized to make or effectively capable of making binding decisions for a geographically bounded population, including the power to enforce those decisions coercively. Politics, more broadly, is the set of practices and institutions that are concerned with the operation, staffing, maintenance, and possible modification of government, including the extreme of wanting to abolish government altogether or at least radically change it. (8990) 

 Thomas Freeman Yarnall’s examples of social engagement— ”voting, lobbying, peaceful protest, civil disobedience, and so forth” (1)— are all political in this sense, of practices involved with government. Likewise, in looking for a historical exemplar or precursor of engaged Buddhism, many scholars turn to the figure of Aśoka/Asoka, the thirdcentury (BCE) emperor who united most of the Indian subcontinent under his rule. Joanna Macy, for example, proclaims:  

One of the great heroes of Buddhist tradition is King Asoka, who in his devotion to Dharma built hospitals and public wells and tree-lined roads for the ‘welfare of all beings.’ Historians recognize his efforts in the third century B.C.E. as the first public social service program in recorded history. (173)  

 The reasons that engaged Buddhist ethics urges activism vary, but they typically involve a conviction that ethical action requires the sort of systemic change that government can provide. As Main and Lai describe it, socially engaged reasoning recognizes action as moral only when it changes the nature of the social relations and situations that cause the other to experience pain, privation, and exclusion. From early in the twentieth century, this has meant systematic solutions and broad reform to properly address social problems. (24) 

It is conceptually crucial to distinguish social and political engagement, in this sense of activism, from other different phenomena which are sometimes confused with it. First, as Queen (14-17) rightly notes, engagement is not at all the same thing as altruism, kindness, or compassion.  Karuṇā and maitrī are praised throughout the Indian Buddhist world, and they are particularly important for Mahāyāna Buddhists. Mahāyāna Buddhists like Śāntideva take altruistic action as an essential part of the good life. But for several important Mahāyāna Buddhists, neither karuṇā nor maitrī nor altruism implies social or political activism at all. We will see, indeed, that Śāntideva and Candrakīrti explicitly reject political engagement while nevertheless singing the praises of compassion and altruism. For them altruism and political engagement are entirely different from each other. 

 Nor is engagement identical with “living in the world,” with a life within saṃsāra that rejects the detachment of the forest monk. Contra Thich Nhat Hanh,10 living with one’s family as a Buddhist is not sufficient to make one an engaged Buddhist, if the term “engaged Buddhism” is to mean anything of significance at all. Classical texts on a householder’s conduct, like the Sigālovāda Sutta, do not indicate that a householder should address issues “inclusive of political, social, economic, racial, gender, environmental, and other problems.” They do not advocate political activism or systemic change, and so should not count as engaged Buddhism. Likewise, the altruism of Śāntideva and Candrakīrti requires them to engage with other people in society, but that engagement may well take the form of recommending those others reject political involvement. 

 Engaged Buddhist scholars often claim that engagement with social and political problems (“outside of the cravings and ignorance of the 

                                                                                                                                         

ing the kind of political activism for systemic change pursued by engaged Buddhists. As we will see, in many respects they oppose it. 

10 In a 1989 lecture at First Unitarian Church in Houston, Texas, Nhat Hanh said “Engaged Buddhism is just Buddhism. If you practice Buddhism in your family, in society, it is engaged Buddhism” (White). Like the earlier “Buddhism is already engaged” quotation, this quotation is often quoted without the original source, although in this case I was able to track it down.  

sufferer”) is a duty, an obligation. Kenneth Kraft closes the Engaged Buddhism in the West collection with these words:  

How best to respond to the plight of the world? The twenty authors of this book concur unanimously on the first part of the answer:  We must be engaged. (506) 

 Those last four words get their own paragraph, to emphasize the idea that social engagement is a duty, a necessity, something we must do. Engaged Buddhist writers often believe that something is wrong or lacking with people or traditions who are not engaged in the ways specified.  

 The major point of disagreement among Western engaged Buddhist scholars is about the extent to which the Buddhist past fits that description, of lacking a proper degree of engagement. It is a matter of some controversy among engaged Buddhist scholars whether engaged Buddhism, in fact, amounts to a reorientation of Buddhist ethics, as the 2000 call for papers had proclaimed, or whether it was always present. 

 Yarnall helpfully distinguishes between two major orientations on this latter question. He refers to these as “traditionist” and “modernist.” I agree with his assessment that these terms are not ideal, but they do serve present purposes, so I adopt them rather than attempting to coin further neologisms. 

 “Modernist” writers, in Yarnall’s sense, emphasize the discontinuity of engaged Buddhism with the Asian Buddhist past. They assert that Buddhists in the past were not socially active, but they rarely treat that disengaged past as an intellectual opponent worthy of response and refutation. More commonly, they speak of that past as if it were an unwitting lack, a primitive stage that Buddhists would have progressed beyond if they’d just thought about it enough. Gary Snyder argues that “Historically, Buddhist philosophers have failed to analyze out the degree to which ignorance and suffering are caused or encouraged by social factors, considering fear-and-desire to be given facts of the human condition” (Snyder 82). Sallie King says that a concern for individual spiritual growth “has tended, especially in some sects like Zen, to retard the development of an attitude that more energetically embraces social activism as a good thing” (King, “Social Engagement” 167). George Tanabe similarly identifies traditional Buddhist philosophy’s refusal to engage with political concerns as a sign of premodern Buddhism’s lack of advancement:  

Whereas Buddhists throughout the ages have been involved with society, their development of a social and political philosophy has not been as advanced as their teachings on inner spirituality. Engaged Buddhism arises from and responds to this vacuum . . . (Editor’s preface to King, Benevolence, ix; emphases added to all quotes) 

 By contrast “traditionists,” like Yarnall, often see modernist ideas of “advancement” beyond a “vacuum” as disrespectful to the existing Asian Buddhist past. However, not only do the traditionists give disengaged Buddhism no intellectual consideration, they deny that it was widespread or even that it existed. So Yarnall says his traditionist “group of scholars maintains that Buddhists have never accepted a dualistic split between ‘spiritual’ and ‘social’ domains. To engage in the spiritual life necessarily includes (though it cannot be reduced to) social engagement” (4; emphasis added). 

 Traditionist scholars often cite textual evidence from classical Indian Buddhism to support their position. Stephen Jenkins argues that in traditional texts, “in order to create the conditions necessary for benefiting people spiritually, one must first attend to their material needs.” He claims that in the Cakkavatti-Sīhanāda Sutta, “Material well-being is a prerequisite for moral development, and its absence leads to social disaster.” Likewise, Joanna Macy invokes Bodhicaryāvatāra chapter VIII’s famous arguments for altruism in order to claim that Śāntideva “saw service to others as the path leading to enlightenment . . .” (Macy 173) 

 I dispute both the traditionist and modernist engaged interpretations of classical Indian Buddhism. Against the traditionists, rejections of social and political activity were widespread among Indian Buddhist thinkers, including in some texts that the traditionists take as examples of engagement. The modernists are an interpretive step up from most traditionists in that they recognize how often premodern Buddhism was disengaged; what they rarely acknowledge is the thoughtful reasoning underlying that disengagement.  

 

Method in Buddhist Ethics 

Engaged Buddhist scholarship occupies both descriptive and normative ground, and I take this to be a good thing. However, such Buddhist normative ethics needs to respond to classical Buddhist claims it disagrees with, such as disengaged Buddhist claims.  

 Kenneth Kraft notes that there is a potential ambiguity in the term “engaged Buddhist studies:” although it can mean simply the study of engaged Buddhism without any commitment to it, it nevertheless also “suggests approaches that incorporate personal religious beliefs, political commitments, or other forms of involvement” (79). It is easy to see that engaged Buddhist scholarship in practice takes such normative approaches frequently. Kraft’s own “we must be engaged” is an obvious example. Sallie King, likewise, often claims in her works that they are written “from the perspective of engaged Buddhism” (“Social Engagement” 179n3; “Response” 638). Even the works of King’s that do not explicitly proclaim a normative perspective nevertheless implicitly take it up, such as when she proclaims that “it is easy to take expressions of contempt and acts of violence as criteria for discerning what is not a valid expression of the Dharma” and uses explicitly normative language of “at best” and “at worst” to describe various forms of Buddhist political expression (Socially 25-26). Franz-Johannes Litsch introduces a description of German engaged Buddhism by proclaiming: “To practice engaged Buddhism is to unlock the deepest potential of persons, to serve others, and to become enlightened” (423). Brian Victoria (“Skeleton” 72) proclaims that “I personally am a strong supporter of this movement” (i.e. engaged Buddhism). Acknowledging his status as a fully ordained Zen priest (Zen xiii), he then declares it a “glaring deficiency” of his second edition that it “fails to address the question of how Japanese institutional Buddhism, most especially Zen, can be restored to its rightful place as an authentic expression of the Buddha Dharma” (Zen 232). These examples of engaged Buddhist scholars’ normative commitments could easily be extended. 

 Importantly, Kraft says of this ambiguity in “engaged Buddhist studies” that “perhaps it is a welcome one” (79). I agree with Kraft on this point. When done well, normative engaged Buddhist scholarship can help to fill the unfortunate “void” identified by José Cabezón (27) “in the triangle between a) purely descriptive philology, b) uncritical traditionalism and c) uncritical popular literature.”  

 Such a void is created when Buddhist or other theological or constructive concerns are considered to have no place in scholarship. David Chappell (371), for example, recommends that his conclusions’ “validity and usefulness now need to be measured by trying to apply them as a guide for various ethical decisions. But perhaps this is a task for Buddhists rather than scholars”—as if somehow one could not be both. When one assumes that scholarship is not Buddhist and Buddhism is not scholarly, one limits and deprives both of them.  

 Chappell makes no argument for this separation of Buddhism from scholarship; in my experience, such a separation is typically more assumed than argued. There have been some scholars of religion who have argued for it, most notably Donald Wiebe. Wiebe argues that university scholarship must be “scientific,” which in his view requires a commitment to “description, analysis and explanation” alone, not hermeneutic interpretation or the dissemination of social or cultural values. (95) But such a criterion would rule out not only the entire discipline of philosophy, but the normative dimensions of political theory and of fields like gender studies, literature, and art. Wiebe frequently attacks “humanists” (112-113, 281, 286), so he seems to accept this implication; but it seems unlikely to me that Chappell and most others who would make such claims in Buddhist ethics are willing to do so.  

 Nor should they. The separation of “scholars” from “Buddhists” leaves no room for scholars to do Buddhist ethics, only to study other people’s Buddhist ethical beliefs. If Buddhist ethical scholarship were to be limited in that way, it would be analogous to limiting biologists to the study of other people’s beliefs about biology without their ever making any biological claims of their own. The scholarly field of Buddhist ethics needs to include normative ethical work. Yet typically scholars have been too timid to include it; thus, even when Damien Keown expresses the genuine need for Buddhist ethics to move “beyond simple descriptive ethics,” he still moves only to a descriptive meta-ethics, explicitly avoiding normative ethics (3, 6). Keown’s approach is striking since the study of ethics, from Aristotle’s coining of the term onward, has been an overwhelmingly normative discipline—as one would expect, since, for most people studying ethics over the centuries, normatively identifying how human beings should live has been the point.  

 It is, then, an enormous virtue of the field of engaged Buddhist studies that it has often avoided such an impoverished, merely descriptive, view of Buddhist ethics: engaged Buddhist studies has aimed to articulate what is good and bad for us Buddhists to do, not merely what others have said about the topic; and it has done so within a scholarly context.  

 What engaged Buddhist ethics has not yet had is sufficient rigor in defending its constructive ethical claims—a task central to making any claims that one makes as a scholar. A key difference between biology and Buddhist ethics is that, in the latter, descriptive historical and sociological claims are directly relevant to constructive and normative claims. Most engaged Buddhist scholars make normative inferences from some 

Buddhist texts; they agree that the question of whether the texts or the Buddha said something is relevant to whether it is true or should be adopted. But once one agrees with that premise, then one must take seriously the claims of those other Buddhist texts that disagree. Many engaged Buddhists would take texts addressed in this article as canonical; indeed, some of them, such as the Cakkavatti-Sīhanāda Sutta and Śāntideva’s Bodhicaryāvatāra, are among the very texts that engaged Buddhist scholars typically quote. Therefore, it is critical for engaged Buddhist scholars to confront the disengaged arguments made in those texts, as to date they have not. As Cabezón notes, the norms of scholarly humanistic discourse require “breadth of analysis,” which  implies that no source will be dismissed in an ad hoc manner. I take such a commitment to imply a willingness to grapple with what, from a contemporary perspective, 

might be considered the most problematic and anachronistic portions of the tradition. (35) 

 Brian Victoria’s Zen at War and the recent works of Stephen Jenkins (“On the Auspiciousness,” “Making Merit”) have been exemplary in this regard. Victoria and Jenkins have shown how wide swaths of Buddhist tradition have argued for violence and war in the name of the dharma. They have done an excellent job of bringing engaged Buddhists face-to-face with parts of the tradition (including revered texts and thinkers) that argue for a politics contrary to contemporary engaged Buddhist scholars’ ideals. Considerably less “grappling” has so far occurred with those elements of Buddhist tradition that contradict contemporary engaged Buddhists in urging their audiences not to participate in politics at all.  

 In the sections to follow, I will show the claims of these disengaged Buddhists using an intentionally wide variety of classical Indian Buddhist texts. The earliest texts at issue here come from the Pāli Canon (Tipiṭaka), a collection dating from the first Buddhist millennium and still held sacred by contemporary Theravāda Buddhists. The Pāli texts cited here include several suttas (discourses of the Buddha) and the Mūgapakkha Jātaka, one of the Ten Great Jātakas (the stories of the Buddha’s ten last births before his final birth as Gotama Buddha).  

 I also include Aśvaghoṣa’s Buddhacarita (Acts of the Buddha, abbreviated BC), a famous Sanskrit courtly poem (kāvya) from approximately the first century CE, which recounts the Buddha’s life story and is considered authoritative in China as well as India (Li). To demonstrate that the disengaged Buddhist approach is found in Mahāyāna as well as mainstream (“Hīnayāna”) sources, I also refer to the seventh- and eighth-century Mahāyāna Madhyamaka philosophers Śāntideva and Candrakīrti. On the latter I refer specifically to Śāntideva’s two major works, the Bodhicaryāvatāra (BCA) and Śikṣāsamuccaya (ŚS), and to Candrakīrti’s Catuḥśatakaṭīkā (CŚṬ), a commentary on the Catuḥśataka (CŚ) verses by the earlier Madhyamaka philosopher Āryadeva. These Madhyamaka works were all composed in Sanskrit, though the CŚ/CŚṬ is now only extant in Tibetan.  

Is Engagement a Duty? 

Against Yarnall’s claim that “the spiritual path necessarily includes . . . social engagement” or Kraft’s claim that “we must be engaged,” several classical Indian texts explicitly reject involvement with social and political issues. Let us first consider first the figure of the cakravartin (in Sanskrit, cakkavatti in Pāli), the ideal “wheel-turning” ruler. When a cakravartin is the head of state, many classical texts claim, his society is uplifted tremendously for the better. The Lakkhana Sutta proclaims that his polity will be “a land open, uninfested by brigands, free from jungle, powerful, prosperous, happy and free from perils” (DN III.146). He even has the power to “end all strife” (DN III.173). The act of becoming a cakravartin enables one to create a world where social systems are perfected, idyllic. 

 Becoming a cakravartin is something that every buddha is capable of doing—and yet every buddha decides not to do it. The Pāli texts repeatedly proclaim that a great person (mahāpurisa) has only two options: to be a cakravartin, or to be a buddha.  Several texts praise the buddhas for declining the former option and selecting the latter. They have the option of not merely improving, but effectively perfecting, society—and they decline it.  

  The Mahāpadāna Sutta (DN II.16-30) tells the story of Vipassī, a prince of an age long before ours. A prophecy informed Vipassī’s father, the king, that only two options were open to his son: to become either a cakravartin or a buddha. The king was excited that his son could make the kingdom flourish and afraid that the son would leave him to be a monk, so he built luxurious palaces full of sensual pleasures to keep Vipassī around, hooked on the delights kingship had to offer. But soon enough the prince left the palace to see the outside world, and saw what later tradition would immortalize as the “Four Sights.” That is, he saw an old man, a sick man, and a dead man, and realized that all these fates awaited him in the end, even as a king. On his fourth trip out, he saw a monk. He immediately recognized the monk’s path as a better one, a way beyond the clinging that characterizes the ruler’s life, and he explicitly chose that life as one better than political rulership. 

 Later sources tell a similar story about Siddhārtha or Gotama Buddha, the buddha of our age. Aśvaghoṣa makes it the central drama in his story of the Buddha’s life. First Siddhārtha’s father, the king, tells him that his dharma, his duty, is to remain in the family and be a king (BC V.32); then the family priest (purohita) tells him to abandon his idea of monkhood for the sake of dharma (dharmārtham) (BC IX.15). But the Buddha-to-be rejects their claims in both cases, specifically responding by saying “a kingdom thus provides neither dharma nor joy” (BC IX.42). We might think that the king’s main reason for telling his son to be a king was his familial love rather than a desire to make the kingdom prosper, but later in the text the Buddha-to-be encounters a different king (Śreṇya, the king of Rājagṛha ) who offers his own kingdom if the hero will not accept his father’s. He pleads for Siddhārtha to become king because he will create great prosperity: “association with the virtuous makes the virtuous prosper” (BC X.26). But Siddhārtha turns Śreṇya down too.  

 The Rajja Sutta  (SN I.116-117) goes yet further. Here, even to rule according to dharma (dhammena) is presented to the Buddha as a temptation from Māra, the evil tempter figure. As the Buddha comes closer to awakening, he wonders: “Is it possible to exercise rulership righteously [dhammena]: without killing and without instigating others to kill, without confiscating and without instigating others to confiscate, without sorrowing and without causing sorrow?” Māra replies that he can and should indeed rule righteously. But the Buddha, of course, refuses this temptation, and proceeds instead on the monastic path.  

 Classical Buddhists texts do not merely claim that buddhahood is such a lofty goal that it exceeds the goods a cakravartin could provide, or that only a monk should reject the path of the ruler. In the Gilāna Sutta (SN IV.302-304), the highly regarded householder disciple Citta is sick and about to die, and the gods ask him to vow that he will become a cakravartin. But he turns them down, saying: “That too is impermanent; that too is unstable; one must abandon that too and pass on.” Citta is not a bodhisattva or aspiring to be a buddha; he is simply aiming at arhatship, the lower kind of awakening possible for a normal person. But even that is a greater goal than being a ruler who will bring general prosperity and flourishing to his society.  

 Nor is it merely rulership per se that the texts reject. The Tiracchāna Kathā Sutta rejects even talking about social problems and institutions: “Do not engage in the various kinds of pointless talk: that is, talk about kings, thieves, and ministers of state; talk about armies, dangers and wars . . . talk about relations, vehicles, villages, towns, cities, and countries . . . .” (SN V.419) 

 So far, I have cited only mainstream (non-Mahāyāna) texts. One might imagine that the thoroughgoing altruism of the Mahāyāna would demand political engagement for the benefit of the world. But Śāntideva, one of the greatest Mahāyāna ethical thinkers, lists learning about law and politics (daṇḍanīti śāstra) among the kinds of learning that are fruitless, against liberation, and leading to delusion, which should therefore be avoided by bodhisattvas (ŚS 192). When he offers advice to kings, the advice is that they give their kingdoms away (ŚS 27). Nor does the alleviation of poverty take high priority in his work, as he asks: “If the perfection of generosity consists in making the universe free from poverty, how can previous Protectors [buddhas] have acquired it, when the world is still poor, even today?” (BCA V.9). Candrakīrti, too, quotes and comments approvingly on a verse that a “sensible person does not acquire a kingdom” (CŚ IV.13).  

 It should be clear, then, that a wide range of classical Indian Buddhist texts look with suspicion on, or even actively reject, engagement with social and political problems. The next three sections will explain their reasons for doing so.  

 

Arguments Against Engagement: Where Does Suffering Come From? 

Why do many Indian Buddhist texts reject engagement? First, they reject the idea that social problems such as war or poverty are significant causes of suffering (dukkha), when that suffering is properly understood. The Second Noble Truth states that the origin of suffering is craving; disengaged texts typically agree that the causes of suffering are primarily or entirely within the sufferer’s mind. To the extent that these texts identify causes of suffering beyond the sufferer’s mind, they are inevitabilities of life from which no amount of privilege will allow escape, such as old age, illness, and death. For that reason, they claim, attention to social problems is a distraction at best. So, the Tiracchāna Kathā Sutta explains why one should abstain from talk of society and its problems: “Because, monks, this talk is unbeneficial, irrelevant to the fundamentals of the holy life, and does not lead to revulsion, to dispassion, to cessation, to peace, to direct knowledge, to enlightenment, to Nibbāna” (SN V.420). 

 For Aśvaghoṣa, when Siddhārtha’s father begs him not to become a monk, he says that he will agree on four conditions: “My life shall never be subject to death, disease shall not steal this good health of mine, old age shall never overtake my youth, no mishap shall rob this fortune of mine.” Of course, the king cannot make such a guarantee, and he allows his son to leave. Becoming a ruler will not help Siddhārtha fix the real problems of life (BC V.32-35).  

 In the Rajja Sutta, Māra notes the Buddha is so powerful he could create great prosperity, sufficient to turn the Himalayas to gold. But the Buddha refuses, noting that any wealth always leaves one wanting more: “If there were a mountain made of gold, Made entirely of solid gold, Not double this would suffice for one . . .” (SN I.116-117). 

 Śāntideva, as is well known, takes the well-being of others as his first priority. That he is an altruistic thinker, concerned with others’ well-being, is not in dispute. And yet, as we saw clearly in the previous section, he still explicitly rejects social and political engagement. Why? Because that social engagement does not actually remedy the real causes of suffering. For him as for the non-Mahāyāna thinkers, the real causes of suffering are mental: “all fears and immeasurable sufferings arise from the mind alone” (BCA V.6). Furthermore, the things of this world are unworthy of our attention because they are metaphysically empty. (See Lele “Metaphysical” 273-277.) They will not get us out of suffering; they may even trap us there further. (See Lele, “Revaluation” 98-100 and 124-28 for a detailed discussion of Śāntideva’s reasoning.)  

 For Śāntideva, as a consequence of all these points, the way one can best benefit others is to help them learn to follow the bodhisattva path, not to alleviate any social problems they might be facing. Jenkins disputes this interpretation of Śāntideva, noting correctly that on occasion Śāntideva does say the bodhisattva gives to the poor (ŚS 274, for example). But as I have argued elsewhere (Lele, “The Compassionate”), for Śāntideva the primary purpose of the bodhisattva’s compassionate giftgiving is to make the recipient better disposed to receive the teaching.  The bodhisattva gives to the rich as well as the poor; the recipient, rich or poor, receives no real material benefit from the gift.  

 It is a common mistake in discussions of Mahāyāna to miss this point: they assume that Śāntideva’s concern for others must necessarily imply social or political engagement, even though (as we saw in the previous section) he explicitly rejects it on multiple occasions. So, while King is correct to note that Śāntideva’s meditations on self and other are designed to lead us to compassionate action, she is wrong to equate compassionate action with social action (“Social Engagement,” 164). And while Macy is correct, strictly speaking, to say that Śāntideva “saw service to others as the path leading to enlightenment,” she is not correct to identify that service with social service, or to segue as she does into the Sri Lankan reformer A. T. Ariyaratne and his movement to build “repaired roads, de-silted irrigation canals, nutrition programs, and schools” (Macy 174-175). For Śāntideva, such an approach does not provide the benefits that people really need. To Macy he might reply: “Our duty to others is to save them from the suffering their own cravings inflict on themselves. It helps to give them material goods, but not because possessing the goods helps prevent their suffering; instead because the goods allow them to listen to the message that wealth and poverty are not what really matters.”  

 

The Cakkavatti-Sīhanāda Sutta: Detachment from the Passage of Time 

The Cakkavatti-Sīhanāda Sutta (Discourse on the Lion’s Roar of the Cakravartin) makes for a particularly helpful case study in disengaged Buddhism because engaged Buddhist scholars often take it as a key text advocating the reform and uplift of society. A reading of the discourse in context, however, shows that it actually advocates social disengagement. This sutta begins with the Buddha exhorting monks as follows:  

Monks, be islands unto yourselves, be a refuge unto yourselves with no other refuge. Let the Dhamma be your island, let the Dhamma be your refuge, with no other refuge . . . . Keep to your own preserves, monks, to your ancestral haunts. If you do so, then Māra will find no lodgement, no foothold. It is just by the building-up of wholesome states that this merit increases. (DN III.58)  

 The Buddha adds that one can put this advice into practice by mindfully contemplating body, mind, feelings and dhammas. He then tells a story that extends from the past into the future, which takes up the bulk of the text. 

 The story goes as follows. Once upon a time, the Buddha says, a cakravartin ruled a flourishing kingdom where people lived for eighty thousand years. His descendant mostly ruled well but neglected to give to the needy, so the kingdom became poorer, and criminal violence ensued. Once the decline began, the sutta continues, people began to take worse and worse actions, and as they did so, lives got worse and lifespans continued to decrease further (typically by about half each time), until “the children of those whose life-span had been two and a half centuries lived for only a hundred years” (DN III.59-71). 

 At this point the story’s past tense gives way to the future: “Monks, a time will come when the children of these people will have a life-span of ten years.” This future time is dystopian in multiple ways: families will be torn apart by hatred, even murder; even food with tasty flavours will disappear. But one desperate group of people will come together and say “It is only because we became addicted to evil ways that we suffered this loss of our kindred, so let us now do good! What good things can we do? Let us abstain from the taking of life—that will be a good practice” (DN III.73). This abstinence will start to give them a more beautiful appearance; lifespans will soon increase back to twenty years. So the group will learn to refrain from other sorts of bad actions. As a result, lifespans will continue to move back upward until they again reach eighty thousand years and a new cakravartin will arise, as will the future buddha Metteyya (Maitreya).  

 From that point the text returns to the original frame, exhorting the monks to “be islands unto yourselves, be a refuge unto yourselves, with no other refuge,” to enter states of meditative concentration (jhāna), and to take the dhamma as their refuge (DN III.73-79). 

 Some readers have perceived a tension between the embedded past-future narrative and the solitary exhortations that frame it at the beginning and end. Mavis Fenn, for example, claims that “the effect of the frame tale on the embedded story is to undermine the strong sociopolitical thrust of the embedded story” (104). Richard Gombrich goes considerably further, proclaiming that  

the myth is set in an inappropriate frame. Most of the Buddha’s sermons are presented as preached in answer to a question or in some other appropriate context; but this one has a beginning and an ending in which the Buddha is talking to monks about something totally different. Either the whole text is apocryphal or at least it has been tampered with. (85-86) 

 It is noteworthy that Gombrich says nothing about what is actually in the beginning and ending—namely the exhortations to be islands unto themselves and take the dharma as their refuge—nor why he takes them to be “totally different.” Perhaps he is agreeing with Fenn and Jenkins that the embedded story has a “strong socio-political thrust” (as the frame story does not). But does it?  

 Steven Collins provides a reading of the Cakkavatti-Sīhanāda that does far more justice to the text’s features. Collins notes that there are several phrasings that occur in both the frame story and the embedded story, suggesting the same author was at work in both. We cannot know for sure whether the Cakkavatti is a composite text or not, but even if it were a composite text, there was a redactor who tried to give it unity, and it is that redactor’s version that we have. So, we have textual reason to attempt to read the story as a consistent work (Nirvana 491-492). For his part, Gombrich recognizes “The Theravādin tradition itself, however, does not doubt that the text is authentic . . .” (85-86). 

 Collins argues that the purpose of the whole Cakkavatti is “to induce in its audiences—or at least to make possible as a reaction from some among them—a sense of detachment from, or at least a (briefly) noninvolved perspective on the passage of time.” The embedded story gives “narrative form” to a “sense of the futility of temporal goods . . .” (Nirvana 481). That is, the embedded story—taken as a whole, rather than taking the passage about poverty and crime in isolation—serves to show that good and bad social systems will come and go, and they will get worse before they get better. So the narrative provides a reason why the text’s audience should build personal virtue and embrace the dharma, rather than placing its hope in those social systems or any idea of progress therein.  Read in this way, the message of the frame and embedded stories is entirely consistent—but to the extent that either can be seen as having a “strong socio-political thrust,” that thrust turns out to be a disengagement from society and politics. 

 Earlier I noted Stephen Jenkins’s claim that the embedded story shows “Material well-being is a prerequisite for moral development, and its absence leads to social disaster.” He argues this because it is the king’s failure to provide for the poor that causes theft and creates the downward cycle. But the later sections of the embedded story themselves show that material well-being is not a prerequisite for moral development: beings come together and improve themselves by learning to refrain from bad actions amid fantastically bad material conditions. Rather, that moral improvement is what ultimately makes the material conditions better. The frame story prepares the audience to be able to improve morally even in such a dire situation. To do so, the text says, audience members can and should disengage from society: keep to their own preserves, be islands unto themselves. Then they will no longer be dependent on social conditions for their well-being.  

 When placed in the context of this sutta, the aforementioned prophecy that a buddha can choose to be a cakravartin, but does not do so, is particularly striking. If the Buddha of our era had decided to become a cakravartin instead of a buddha, he could have stopped the downward spiral and taken us to a better era. But he did not do so. Finding the path to liberation was so important that it was worth allowing the disastrous future where lifespans are a mere ten years. 

 

Arguments Against Engagement: The Harshness of Politics 

Let us turn now to politics and government, an area that, as we saw, plays a major role in engaged Buddhists’ engagement. Many classical Indian Buddhist texts reject the activity of governing because they view it as inimical to advancement on the Buddhist path because of the kinds of acts and mental states that governing requires. This is not to say the texts are anarchistic. Governing is a necessary evil—but it is no less evil for being necessary. One will be better off, progress further on the path, if one can avoid engaging in the processes of government.  

 The Aggañña Sutta’s brief section on the kingly (khattiya, equivalent to kṣatriya) caste has become renowned for expressing a “social contract” theory of government. (See Collins, “Discourse” 387-389.) That is, once people first begin to steal and do other bad things, other people decide together that if someone takes on the job of punishing these wrongdoers, they will reward him with a portion of rice, and the sutta presents this as the origin of government.  What is less frequently noted is that the text explicitly proclaims that accusation, punishment, and banishment are bad (pāpaka, akusala), just as the original thefts are (DN III.93). Their role in maintaining society does not stop them from creating bad karma and interfering with one’s progress to nirvana.  

 Likewise, in the Mūgapakkha Jātaka, the Bodhisatta (buddha-tobe)  is born as a prince whose father rules according to dharma (dhammena). Yet even so, when the Bodhisatta sees his father punishing criminals, he thinks: “Ah! my father through his being a king, is becoming guilty of a grievous action which brings men to hell” (Ja VI.3, emphasis added). So, the prince pretends to be deaf and mute in order to get out of the burden of rulership—so concerned to avoid it that he resorts to deception. 

 Aśvaghoṣa’s Buddhacarita makes this point as well. The family priest (purohita) tells Siddhārtha that he will fulfill dharma better as a king than a renouncer (BC IX.15-17). Siddhārtha responds that kingship is dangerous and interferes with liberation because of the harshness or fierceness (taikṣṇya) that it requires: 

As for the scripture that householder kings have attained release, that cannot be! The dharma of release [mokṣadharma], where calm prevails, and the dharma of kings [rājadharma], where force prevails—how far apart are they!19 If a king delights in calm, his realm [rājya] falls apart, if his mind is on his realm, his calm is destroyed; for calmness and fierceness [taikṣṇya] are incompatible, like the union of fire and water, heat and cold. (BC IX.48-50) 

 Notice here the dramatic contrast to the claim of Yarnall’s traditionists, noted earlier, that “Buddhists have never accepted a dualistic split between ‘spiritual’ and ‘social’ domains.” In the Buddhacarita, a major Buddhist author not only makes an explicit distinction between the domains of mokṣa and of rājya, he claims that the mental states they involve are incompatible. Perhaps there were some classical Buddhists who did not accept such a split, but Aśvaghoṣa was not among them. So, likewise, the idea of engagement as a duty is explicitly rejected: the kings tell the buddha-to-be that dharma requires his political involvement, and he says no. Indeed, the higher Buddhist dharma of liberation requires the exact opposite.  

 These are mainstream (non-Mahāyāna) thinkers. One might think that since governing produces a more functional society, the more altruistic Mahāyāna thinkers might see governing as a necessary selfsacrifice, such that the ruler should sacrifice his own well-being for the sake of a better society. But this is not the case.  

 We saw earlier how Candrakīrti says a sensible person does not become a king. For Candrakīrti, the most important reason for this decision is the harshness in which a king must engage to maintain order: “he cannot reign without oppressing the people” (commentary on CŚ IV.24). For him, that punishment is a necessary evil does not make it any less of an evil. Introducing CŚ IV.10, he entertains the objection that “If the king punishes evil people in order to protect his people, he accumulates no bad karma [sdig pa]  because he benefits the good people.” The objector wants to make the utilitarian claim that the net benefit of punishment makes it a karmically good act. But to this objection Candrakīrti says no:  

The king believes that punishment is his job and that there is nothing nonvirtuous about it. In this way, reasons that are satisfying are created. But the bad karma of these actions is not destroyed. It is just the same for the king. Since the king mostly engages in karmically bad actions, he will experience the maturation of that bad karma in bad rebirths.  

 

Western Engaged Buddhist Presuppositions 

The disengaged Buddhist texts we have considered—the Mūgapakkha 

Jātaka, the works of Aśvaghoṣa, Śāntideva and Candrakīrti, and various Pāli suttas—are at odds with claims of both “traditionist” and “modernist” engaged Buddhists. Against the traditionists, we have seen that South Asian Buddhists not only made an explicit separation between liberation and socio-political domains but thought that the two were in direct opposition to each other. Against modernists we have seen that, far from constituting a “failure” or a lack of development, these Buddhists had plausible, considered reasons to oppose social and political engagement. The texts in question are hardly obscure; the Ten Great Jātakas and the works of Śāntideva are among the most beloved works in contemporary Theravāda and Tibetan traditions respectively. The widespread nature of disengaged Buddhism in classical South Asia should have been easy to see.  

 Yet somehow many Western engaged Buddhist scholars have, indeed, failed to see it. This failure is despite the fact that some Western scholars have observed Buddhist anti-political tendencies for a long time. While Max Weber’s (206) depiction of Buddhism as a “specifically unpolitical and anti-political status religion” was in important respects exaggerated, it captures the ideas we have encountered here far better than many engaged Buddhist scholars have.  

 Sometimes disengaged Buddhism is not even unseen so much as intentionally ignored. Consider Judith Simmer-Brown’s description of the group that would become the Buddhist Peace Fellowship. The implications of this passage are striking enough to merit a close reading. 

Simmer-Brown says this group  was concerned that Buddhist practice centers and groups had become entirely removed from the social and political issues of the day: some teachers and organizations were even actively discouraging political involvement. The Maui group envisioned an organization which would attract a wide range of Buddhists, fomenting political discussion and action. Something had to be done, and specifically something political needed to be done by Buddhists. “Anyone, feeling compassion, seeing no boundary between self and others, would feel compelled to do something,” observed Nelson Foster, reflecting on the occasion. (69) 

 In this passage, Simmer-Brown describes the teachers’ discouragement of political involvement with “even,” strongly suggesting that she finds this discouragement surprising, unexpected, or extreme. Does Simmer-Brown then react as one would expect a scholar would react to a surprising or unexpected development, by probing further and exploring the reasons for it? No. Simmer-Brown does not deem the teachers’ objections relevant enough to be worthy of any recognition, regard, or consideration beyond this half-sentence. Nothing further is said about them, not even their names.  

 Instead, Simmer-Brown proceeds with the story of what the group did in apparent defiance of its teachers, by saying something had to be done. This “had to” is a claim of normative necessity, like Kraft’s “We must be engaged.” As I’ve argued above, it is a good thing that engaged Buddhist scholars make normative claims. However, they also need to justify them, and Simmer-Brown does nothing of the sort. The teachers, after all, were explicitly saying that something did not “have to” be done. If they were right, the claim that “Something had to be done”—a premise that underlies the laudatory tone of Simmer-Brown’s overall story—would therefore be wrong, and vice versa. So, from this passage I can only infer that she thinks it obvious that these teachers were wrong, and that she believes her audience will share this sentiment. She thinks, that is, that her audience will take it as obvious that this group “had to” disregard the advice of its own teachers, so much so that there is no need to discuss their reasons in a story constituted by the actions the group took in defiance of those teachers. The teachers’ voices are deemed irrelevant; only the defiance matters. Indeed, since those teachers apparently did not “feel compelled to do something,” Nelson Foster’s claim, approvingly quoted by Simmer-Brown, has the further eye-opening implication that the group’s own teachers were not feeling compassion. Yet even after implying this startling accusation against the group’s teachers, with no evidence provided for it, SimmerBrown still does not deem it relevant to give the teachers a voice or a chance to defend themselves against it.  

 This sort of neglect of disengaged Buddhism—an assumption that political disengagement is obviously bad—itself calls for explanation. A significant part of the problem is that engaged Buddhists have often been blind to their movement’s own history. Consider this additional claim of Foster’s:  

I find no evidence that the emerging [engaged] culture of the American Zen sangha has been forced upon it as a protective adaptation to yet another foreign environment. Rather, the new forms seem to have taken root spontaneously, from within, as teachers and students found them helpful to express realization. After all, the values that have cropped up in the American sangha are hardly those that prevail in the population of the United States. (52) 

 This last sentence is deeply misleading. American engaged Buddhists’ values may be at odds with those that prevail in Alabama or rural Michigan, but they are not easily distinguished from the values of their non-Buddhist fellows in Berkeley and Vermont and Boulder. Indeed, some of the characteristics Foster attributes to engaged Buddhists are stereotypically so, like “recycling, gardening, and organic farming” (52). Such values appear far closer to those of their non-Buddhist neighbors than they do to the values in the classical Buddhist texts we have considered.  

 Foster’s earlier sentences are more misleading still. Far from having “taken root spontaneously,” the values of American engaged Buddhism are fully contiguous with the early reception of Buddhism in the United States. In documenting that early reception, Thomas Tweed has noted the remarkable degree of normative agreement between American Buddhist apologists and their (typically Christian) critics on one key point. That is: “Whether there is a personal creator or a substantial self . . . there still must be optimism and activism” (155, emphasis in original). Notice the exact parallel with Kenneth Kraft’s contemporary claim that “we must be engaged.”  

 Americans and Englishmen of the late nineteenth century shared a great suspicion of Buddhism for its perceived lack of social engagement. Charles Henry Appleton Dall, a Unitarian missionary to India, proclaimed that Buddhism is to be judged by its contributions to society: “What Buddhism has accomplished in the world, that it is.” Dall found it lacking because of its emphasis on renunciation, which left it unable to generate the requisite “energy”  for worldly accomplishment, such that “the properly Buddhist nations of the world are all asleep” (quoted in 

Tweed 144). Henry Melville King, on the executive committee of the American Baptist Missionary Union, claimed that Buddhism promotes a way of life in which the individual is “wholly idle, and to all besides himself absolutely useless” (quoted in Tweed 145). And in the Atlantic in 1894, the mainline Protestant writer William Davies wrote:  

If we make a comparison of Buddhism and Christianity, however great a similarity may appear in some of the elements of its teaching, its distinct inferiority in scope, purpose, and adaptability will become apparent. The religion of the Buddha could never be brought to combine with the advancement and progressive amelioration of society. It works by abandonment, leaving the world every way as it finds it. It lacks the helpful and actively loving spirit of Christianity. (quoted in Tweed 145) 

 Such views took on a particular poignancy in a colonial context, when Buddhists’ Western political rulers took their subjects’ social disengagement as grounds for discouraging Buddhism in favor of an alien tradition. George Bond (124) notes that British officials and Christian missionaries took Buddhism’s “other-worldly” nature “as an argument for promoting Christianity and Christian schools. Since Christianity was identified with Western culture and knowledge, the British praised it as progressive and condemned Buddhism as backward.”  

 It was this context that formed the background for the newfound activism of Anagarika Dharmapala, the Sinhalese reformer in whom Queen (20) says we “first recognize the spirit and substance of the religious activism we call ‘socially engaged Buddhism,’” and whose message, as Bond notes, “profoundly influenced later Buddhist reformers” like A. T. Ariyaratne, the Gandhian sarvodaya social reformer often taken as an inspiration by Western engaged Buddhists. Dharmapala “stressed ‘the constructive optimism’ and fundamental ‘activism’ of authentic Buddhism. ‘Buddhism’, he claimed, ‘teaches an energetic life, to be active in doing good work all the time’” (Tweed 148). Bond agrees that in “advocating a Buddhism of activity and service, Dharmapala was undoubtedly responding to the Western and Christian criticism of Buddhism as too other-worldly”; Dharmapala agreed with his colonial rulers in referring to Sri Lankan monks as “‘indolent’” (124). 

 Dharmapala made these criticisms as what Yarnall would call a traditionist, writing Buddhist activism back into the past. He claimed his “‘indolent’” contemporaries had “‘lost the spirit of heroism and altruism of their ancient examples’” (quoted in Bond 124). H. L. Seneviratne (3132) claims that Dharmapala agreed with the criticisms “that Buddhism is other-worldly and provides no basis for a progressive society, that Buddhism is selfish, and that the Sinhalas are lazy”—but also believed that these criticisms were true “only of the modern-day Sinhalas, not the true Sinhalas of old.”  

 Views like those of Dall, King, Davies and the British rulers of Sri Lanka remain alive and well in the modern West. And they continue to form the present background to contemporary engaged Buddhism, just as they did to the incipient engaged Buddhism of Dharmapala. Stephen Batchelor notes:  

Most Buddhist practitioners have been asked at one time or another—”Why do you go off on these retreats? Isn’t it selfish? Why don’t you go out and do something useful in the world?” Engaged Buddhism is, in a way, counter to that objection. (quoted in Bell 414) 

 Such questions echo the critiques of previous generations of Western anti-Buddhist critics, and engaged Buddhism is a product of that context. Batchelor responds as follows:  

The question is what motivates a person to adopt engaged Buddhism? Is it because they feel they have to somehow justify themselves in the light of Western criticism of Buddhism? Or is it a spontaneous and genuine outflow of their Buddhist practice? (quoted in Bell 414) 

 I submit that the emphasis on “spontaneity,” here as in Foster, is misplaced, at least insofar as it implies a personal attitude independent of historical context. Engaged Buddhism in the West is the product of a long Western history of assuming that activism is a good thing and even an obligation. Western engaged Buddhist scholars, of both “traditionist” and “modernist” varieties, share more in common with the early Western anti-Buddhist critics described above than they might like to think. For clarity, we may phrase those critics’ argument as a deductive categorical syllogism:  

1. Not to engage in social activism is to be deficient. 

2. The tradition of premodern Buddhism generally does not engage in social activism. 

3. Therefore, the tradition of premodern Buddhism is generally deficient. 

This syllogism is valid: if premises 1 and 2 are true, then conclusion 3 must be as well. Naturally, Buddhists will aim to avoid the implication that Buddhism as such is inferior. Traditionists attempt to avoid that implication by rejecting premise 2, in ways that (as we have seen above) typically do interpretive injustice to a significant portion of premodern Indian Buddhist tradition. Modernists reluctantly accept the whole syllogism, instead aiming to build a newer, modern Buddhism about which premise 2 ceases to be true.  

 But the traditionists and the modernists share something not only with each other, but also with Dall, King, Davies and the colonial rulers of Sri Lanka. That is, they all share an endorsement (even if only implicit) of premise 1: there must be something wrong with a tradition that is not activist. To refrain from activism and political involvement would be “selfish” or “indolent,” not “useful.” We must be engaged.  

 It is that premise, so widely shared among pro-Buddhist and antiBuddhist Westerners alike, that the disengaged Buddhists reject. But the premise is taken so much for granted among Westerners that they often refuse to take its rejection seriously, choosing instead to ignore or silence its rejectors. This refusal has existed for a long time; Tweed “found no evidence that any midcentury American who encountered the challenge of Buddhist negation seriously considered abandoning Victorian presuppositions,” including the presupposition that activism is necessary (Tweed 13).  

 Viewed in this light, Yarnall’s militant criticism of “modernist” engaged representations of traditional Buddhism takes on a very different cast. Because modernists treat engaged Buddhism as a new improvement on an Asian failure or vacuum—the approach we have seen in Tanabe and Snyder—Yarnall accuses them of “a subtle form of neocolonial, neo-Orientalist bias” (Yarnall 6). But Yarnall’s grounds for this criticism turn out to apply to his own “traditionist” work at least as much as to theirs.  

 Adapting criticisms of Carl Jung made by Donald Lopez and Luis Gómez, Yarnall claims the modernists create a “neo-colonial economy” because they “judge the raw materials of Buddhism to be valuable, but unusable and even dangerous (or irrelevant) to the modern Westerner in their unrefined form” (Yarnall 33). As his preferred alternative, Yarnall approvingly quotes David Seyfort Ruegg on the need for an analysis that “will not superimpose from the outside extraneous modes of thinking and interpretive grids in a way that sometimes proves to be scarcely distinguishable from a more or less subtle form of neo-colonialism” (Yarnall 76-77). 

 But elsewhere in his piece, to “superimpose from the outside extraneous modes of thinking and interpretive grids” is exactly the agenda that Yarnall calls for. To wit, “Interested scholars (both traditionists as well as open-minded modernists) should now revisit the history of premodern Buddhist Asia with the express purpose of discovering examples of engagement as defined (more or less) by Queen and/or other modernists” (Yarnall 71, emphasis added). That is, he takes a mode of thinking defined in the terms of modernists extraneous to premodern Buddhist Asia, and urges that scholars superimpose that very extraneous mode of thinking on the history of premodern Buddhist Asia when they revisit it. Moreover, he makes both this call and this accusation of neo-colonialism with no more than one passing parenthetical reference to any premodern text.  We should, it would seem, read our own modern Western preferences for social activism and engagement onto premodern Buddhist texts from the outside, irrespective of anything those texts actually happen to say. We can’t allow those texts to advocate political disengagement, because then they would be unusable, and even dangerous or irrelevant. Our extraneous mode of thinking and interpretive grid tells us so.  

 Yarnall, then, apparently misses the irony that he advocates exactly that mode of analysis which he himself has labelled “scarcely distinguishable from a more or less subtle form of neo-colonialism.” I want to emphasize here that I do not myself think that Yarnall’s project, or that of any other engaged Buddhist, is in any way a form of neocolonialism, subtle or otherwise. I take neo-colonialism to be a serious accusation, and one uncalled for by the evidence at hand. As Gadamer reminds us, we all come to inquiry with a set of preexisting presuppositions of some sort or another; that Western engaged Buddhist scholars’ endorsement of activism is Western in origin by no means makes it wrong. One can be justified in one’s views while acknowledging their historical roots; a view does not need to be a “spontaneous” historical anomaly for it to be justified.   

 Rather, I dwell on Yarnall’s accusation of neo-colonialism only because it makes so visible the lack of self-scrutiny among too many engaged Buddhists to date (a lack that an insistence on spontaneity tends to worsen). Yarnall’s article never once considers as a possibility the idea, so widespread in premodern Indian Buddhist texts yet so rarely expressed in the West, that social or political engagement might be a bad thing. Instead he follows the longstanding tradition, with its deep roots in the West, of assuming activism is a good and taking that good for granted; as a result, he assumes that to describe premodern Buddhism as disengaged must be to criticize it. In that lack of introspection his article is typical of the present Western engaged Buddhist literature—and because of it, he inadvertently accuses himself of neo-colonialism! 

 

Responses to Disengaged Buddhism 

It is rare for Western engaged Buddhist scholars to acknowledge that disengaged Buddhists have reasons and arguments for disengagement. But the arguments of disengaged Buddhists have not gone entirely unnoticed by Western engaged Buddhist writers. Hsiao-Lan Hu and Sallie King, in particular, pay them some attention, but not enough. For they do not address the arguments made in the historical sections of this article, as made either by the thinkers I have quoted or by anyone else.  

 Hu’s This-Worldly Buddhism is one of the more systematic expressions to date of an engaged Buddhist ethic. Hu shows admirable clarity about engaging in normative ethics—acknowledging that “I am joining those who engage in critical and constructive Buddhist thinking” (Hu 5). She justifies her points with detailed references to the Pāli suttas, especially the Saṃyutta and Majjhima Nikāyas. Yet the disengaged Rajja, Gilāna, and Tiracchāna Kathā Suttas, which are all in the Saṃyutta, get no mention in the book. The Cakkavatti Sīhanāda appears only for the brief portion of the story where the king’s inattention to poverty causes decline, and not for any of the story’s wider advocacy of disengagement. She cites the Aggañña approvingly on greed creating a need for punishment (Hu 112), but does not mention the way the text treats punishment as bad.  

 Hu improves on most engaged Buddhist scholars by referring briefly to the arguments of Buddhists who have “not provided much direct critique of existing social structure . . .” But the particular arguments she mentions only justify those social structures in terms of past karma (Hu 120). She does not reply to the kinds of Buddhist arguments discussed in the previous sections, that the causes of suffering are mental or that politics interferes with tranquility.  

Neither does King. Possibly alone among Western engaged Bud-

dhist ethicists, she does refer directly, by name, to texts that appear to advocate disengagement, and cites their arguments, referring specifically to the Fire Sermon (Ādittapariyāya Sutta) and Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta. She looks at these texts in order to examine “what is controversial about engaged Buddhism,” and notes that “many Buddhists have taken teachings like this to mean that samsara is inherently flawed, that the correct response toward it is to feel revulsion and to flee it if at all possible” (Socially 40-45). 

King’s response notes other texts, like the Mettā and Sigālovada 

Suttas, that do advocate living in the world of saṃsāra, and reads the Fire Sermon to note that its critique is really directed at the “three poisons” of craving, hatred, and delusion: 

If these three poisons are indeed the root of the problem, then the problem is in our minds, not in the world. We can free ourselves of duḥkha by practicing Buddhism in such a way that we rid ourselves of this craving, hatred, and delusion. This has nothing whatsoever to do with leaving the world and everything to do with transforming ourselves, here and now. (Socially 43; emphasis in original) 

 King interprets this text correctly in this passage. Yet everything King says in this passage is compatible with the disengaged arguments made in previous sections of this article. If “the problem is in our minds, not in the world,” that is itself a reason why it is folly to seek the kinds of worldly goods that social activism can secure, rather than the more important goods of mental cultivation. It is also why one must avoid participation in the political action that is likely to increase the hatred (dveṣa or dosa) in our minds. Or so the texts claim, anyway, and to these points King has offered no refutation.  

 An alternate response to disengaged Buddhists comes from Matthew Moore, who does not identify with engaged Buddhism and demonstrates considerably more awareness of disengaged Buddhist views, which he cites extensively under the rubric of “limited citizenship” (Moore 87-111). He notes further how this “limited citizenship” approach contrasts with a Western tradition from Plato onward that assumes the good life must be political: “It is virtually always true that the cure proposed for anomie, alienation, sectarian conflict, disempowerment, and other political ills is . . . more politics!” (Moore 136). But Moore’s normative response, too, is unsatisfactory, when he identifes this contrast as an irreconcilable conflict between value preferences. The pro-politics party argues that the virtues that can be cultivated only through politics are more important than the 

virtues that can be cultivated only by eschewing politics in favor of some other important pursuit like meditation, while the limited-citizenship party argues the opposite. Absent a noncontroversial rank ordering of the relevant moral values, there is no principled way to choose between the competing options, and neither choice can be shown to be universally morally preferable. (109-10) 

 Moore, then, presents engagement and disengagement as a choice between options, entirely up to the chooser. What is important to note about this approach is that it expresses a strong disagreement with the disengaged texts discussed above—and also, for that matter, with more politically engaged thinkers like Plato. The disengaged thinkers do indeed believe that the disengaged path is universally morally preferable, and they make arguments to show why this is the case; more political thinkers do the opposite. Both engaged and disengaged thinkers believe they have provided a principled way to choose between the options, partially on the basis of a rank ordering of values. The ordering is controversial, of course, but so is the theory of evolution; the presence of controversy does not imply that both sides or both options are equally valuable.  

 There is no substitute for weighing the arguments on both sides and coming to a resolution—a task that is yet to be undertaken. Is it the case that the goods activism can provide are inherently unsatisfactory and therefore unworthy of our seeking, for ourselves and for others? If so, then social activism is indeed a worthless pastime, just as the disengaged Budhists say it is, and the engaged Buddhists are sadly deluded, for they are leading themselves and others away from liberation. Is it the case that political participation necessarily makes it impossible to attain the tranquility that has been held throughout the ages as a central Buddhist goal?  If so, then Buddhists should not be politically engaged, and perhaps nobody should. I am not endorsing either of these disengaged conclusions; I am arguing that Buddhists should take them, and the arguments that lead to them, with the utmost seriousness, and that to date they have not.  

 

Conclusion 

Against traditionist engaged Buddhist scholars, we have seen that social and political disengagement has a long Buddhist history, one that extends to some of the texts the traditionists take as their sources. Against modernist scholars, we have seen that a thoughtful logic and reasoning underlies that disengagement: social and political problems are not the primary causes of suffering, so one is best served by detaching oneself from the passage of time, and participation in government fills one with harshness of mind. One may certainly disagree with the reasoning behind a disengaged Buddhist position, but that position is not a “vacuum” or a “failure.”  

 It is not my aim to rule out either traditionist or modernist engaged Buddhism as viable intellectual positions, but rather to argue that they must think differently than they typically have. Modernists must engage intellectually—no pun intended—with premodern disengaged Buddhism, in the details of its arguments, and articulate what it is they reject about its premises and why. If the traditionist project is to continue, traditionists must acknowledge the large number of premodern works that are disengaged; they must not only identify engaged works that they find as a counter-current, but explain how they interpret the disengaged works in light of the engaged ones.  

It should, I hope, be clear by now that it is not the case that all 

Buddhism is socially engaged. If one still wished to claim with HuntPerry and Fine that what is not already engaged is not Buddhism, it would need to be as a normative claim—and that normative claim would exclude Aśvaghoṣa, Śāntideva, the author of the Cakkavatti-Sīhanāda Sutta, and many others as not true Buddhists. That claim is radical and drastic, and one that I doubt Hunt-Perry and Fine, or others who quote them approvingly, would actually want to make.  

 If it is to remain an intellectually defensible project, I submit, engaged Buddhism must take the value of activism as a conclusion to be defended, not as a premise to be assumed. Engaged Buddhists must recognize the ways in which the likes of Aśvaghoṣa and Śāntideva oppose politics and social activism, and explain why they reject these thinkers’ positions. It should no longer be considered acceptable either to pretend disengaged Buddhist views did not exist or to dismiss them as a “failure” or “undeveloped.” Rather, we must respect them and take them on as partners in dialogue. 

 

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Abbreviations (primary works cited) 

BC Buddhacarita of Aśvaghoṣa. Edition and translation: Olivelle. 

BCA Bodhicaryāvatāra of Śāntideva. Edition: Vaidya. Translation: Crosby and Skilton. 

CŚ(Ṭ) Catuḥśataka of Āryadeva with Ṭīkā commentary of Candrakīrti. Edition: Peking Tanjur P 5266, v. 98, ya, ff. 33b-273b. Translation: Lang. 

DN Dīgha Nikāya. Pali Text Society edition. Translation: Walshe. 

Ja Jātaka. Pali Text Society edition. Translation: Cowell. 

SN Saṃyutta Nikāya. Pali Text Society edition. Translation: Bodhi. 

ŚS Śikṣāsamuccaya of Śāntideva. Edition: Bendall. Translation: Goodman. 

 

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Bodhi, Bhikkhu. The Connected Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Saṃyutta Nikāya. Wisdom Publications, 2000. 

Bond, George D. “A.T. Ariyaratne and the Sarvodaya Shramadana Movement in Sri Lanka.” In Engaged Buddhism: Buddhist Liberation Movements in Asia, edited by Christopher S. Queen and Sallie B. King. SUNY UP, 1996, pp. 121-46. 

Cabezón, José Ignacio. “Buddhist Theology in the Academy.” In Buddhist Theology: Critical Reflections by Contemporary Scholars, edited by Roger Jackson and John Makransky. Curzon, 2000, pp. 25-52. 

Cheah, Joseph. Race and Religion in American Buddhism: White Supremacy and Immigrant Adaptation. Oxford UP, 2011.  

Collins, Steven. “The Discourse on What is Primary (Aggañña-Sutta): An Annotated Translation.” Journal of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 21, 1993, pp. 301-93. 

_______. Nirvana and Other Buddhist Felicities. Cambridge UP, 1998. 

Cowell, E.B. The Jātaka, or Stories of the Buddha’s Former Births. 6 vols. ed. Luzac & Co, 1969. 

Crosby, Kate, and Andrew Skilton. The Bodhicaryāvatāra: A New Translation. Oxford UP, 1995. 

Deitrick, James E. Mistaking the Boat for the Shore? A Critical Analysis of Socially Engaged Buddhism in the United States. 2000. University of Southern California. PhD dissertation, Religion.  

Fenn, Mavis. “Two Notions of Poverty in the Pāli Canon.” Journal of Buddhist Ethics, Vol. 3, 1996, pp. 98-125. 

Foster, Nelson. “To Enter the Marketplace.” In The Path of Compassion: Writings on Socially Engaged Buddhism, edited by Fred Eppsteiner. Parallax, 1988, pp. 47-64. 

Gombrich, Richard F. Theravāda Buddhism: A Social History From Ancient Benares to Modern Colombo. 2nd ed., Routledge, 2006. 

Goodman, Charles. The Training Anthology of Śāntideva: A Translation of the Śikṣā-Samuccaya. Oxford UP, 2016. 

Hiltebeitel, Alf. “Aśvaghoṣa’s Buddhacarita: The First Known Close and Critical Reading of the Brahmanical Sanskrit Epics.” Journal of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 34, 2006, pp. 229-86. 

Hu, Hsiao-Lan. This-Worldly Nibbāna: A Buddhist-Feminist Social Ethic for Peacemaking in the Global Community. SUNY UP, 2011. 

Hunt-Perry, Patricia, and Lyn Fine. “All Buddhism Is Engaged: Thich Nhat Hanh and the Order of Interbeing.” In Engaged Buddhism in the West, edited by Christopher S. Queen. Wisdom Publications, 2000, 35-66. 

Jenkins, Stephen. “Do Bodhisattvas Relieve Poverty? The Distinction Between Economic and Spiritual Development and Their Interrelation in Indian Buddhist Texts.” Journal of Buddhist Ethics, Vol. 7, 2000.  

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_______. “On the Auspiciousness of Compassionate Violence.” Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies, Vol. 33, 2011, pp. 299331. 

Keown, Damien. The Nature of Buddhist Ethics. Palgrave, 2001. Original edition 1992.  

King, Sallie B. “Buddhism and Social Engagement.” In The Sound of Liberating Truth: Buddhist-Christian Dialogues in Honor of Frederick J. Streng, edited by Sallie B. King and Paul O. Ingram. Curzon, 1999, pp. 159-80. 

_______. Being Benevolence: The Social Ethics of Engaged Buddhism. U of Hawai’i P, 2005. 

_______. “An Engaged Buddhist Response to John Rawls’s The Law of Peoples.” Journal of Religious Ethics, Vol. 34, 2006, pp. 637-61. 

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_______. “The Problems and Promise of Karma From an Engaged Buddhist Perspective.” In A Mirror is for Reflection: Understanding Buddhist Ethics, edited by Jake H. Davis. Oxford UP, 2017, pp. 166-80. 

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_______. “The Compassionate Gift of Vice: Śāntideva on Gifts, Altruism, and Poverty.” Journal of Buddhist Ethics, Vol. 20, 2013, pp. 702-34. 

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http://loveofallwisdom.com/blog/2018/08/the-psychologicalcase-for-disengaged-buddhism/ 

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Bhikkhu Bodhi on traditional versus secular Buddhism - Secular Buddhist Network

Bhikkhu Bodhi on traditional versus secular Buddhism - Secular Buddhist Network

Bhikkhu Bodhi on traditional versus secular Buddhism



·
by Bhikkhu Bodhi

As the winding river of Buddhist tradition flows beyond the boundaries of its Asian homelands and enters the modern West, it has arrived at a major watershed from which two distinct streams have emerged, which for convenience we may call ‘Classical Buddhism’ and ‘Secular Buddhism.’ The former continues the heritage of Asian Buddhism, with minor adaptations made to meet the challenges of modernity. The latter marks a rupture with Buddhist tradition, a re-visioning of the ancient teachings intended to fit the secular culture of the West.

The expressions ‘Classical Buddhism’ and ‘Secular Buddhism’ are to a certain extent abstractions. They do not define fixed categories but stand as the end points of a spectrum of possibilities that may blend and merge in any given individual’s personal commitment to the Dharma. Nevertheless, at certain key points the two branch off in different directions, presenting us with a choice between incompatible alternatives. As we endeavour to find our own orientation to the Dharma, it is helpful to clearly understand where these divergences occur and to recognise the choices before us.

Classical and secular Buddhism

The contrast between Classical Buddhism and Secular Buddhism stems primarily from different ways of understanding the human condition. Classical Buddhism seeks light on the human condition from the canonical texts of Buddhism, particularly from the Buddha’s discourses. Secular Buddhism looks for illumination to modern science and the value systems of secular society. These different perspectives govern their distinctive ways of understanding the Three Jewels of Buddhism – the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha. They also determine their assessments of the nature and purpose of Buddhist practice.

Classical Buddhism sees human existence as embedded in the condition called samsāra, understood literally as the beginningless chain of rebirths. From this standpoint, humans are just one class of living beings in a vast multidimensional cosmos. Through time without beginning all beings have been roaming from life to life in the five realms of existence, rising and falling in accordance with their karma, their volitional deeds. Life in all these realms, being impermanent and fraught with pain, is inherently unsatisfactory – dukkha. Thus the final goal, the end of dukkha, is release from the round of rebirths, the attainment of an unconditioned dimension of spiritual freedom called nibbāna. The practice of the path is intended to eradicate the bonds tying us to the round of rebirths and thereby bring liberation from repeated birth, ageing and death.

Secular Buddhism, in contrast, starts from our immediate existential situation, understood without bringing in non-naturalistic assumptions. Secular Buddhism therefore does not endorse the idea of literal rebirth. Some Secular Buddhists regard rebirth as a symbol for changing states of mind, some as an analogy for biological evolution, some simply as part of the dispensable baggage that Buddhism drags along from Asia. But Secular Buddhists generally do not regard rebirth as the problem the Dharma is intended to resolve. Accordingly, they interpret the idea of samsāra as a metaphor depicting our ordinary condition of bewilderment and addictive pursuits. The secular programme thus re-envisions the goal of Buddhist practice, rejecting the idea of irreversible liberation from the cycle of rebirths in favour of a tentative, ever-fragile freedom from distress in this present life itself.

This difference in fundamental worldviews between Religious and Secular Buddhism shapes their respective ways of regarding the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha. For Classical Buddhism, the Buddha is an exalted being, the teacher not only of humans but of deities and beings in other realms. He attained buddhahood as the culmination of countless lives spent as a bodhisattva perfecting the paramitas, the supreme virtues. His enlightenment involved a breakthrough to the ultimate truth, by which he eradicated the mind’s defilements, penetrated the spiritual laws of the universe and acquired various kinds of psychic powers. As the indispensable guide to liberation, the response he evokes is one of awe, reverence and devotion.

Secular Buddhism has no concern with a multilife background to the Buddha’s achievements, and devotion plays a minor role in its programme. The Buddha is seen as a wise teacher who awakened to the truth of the human condition. His teaching was pragmatic and therapeutic, aimed at the alleviation of suffering here and now. Those who aspire to learn from the Buddha need not place trust in principles that transcend the bounds of ordinary cognition. All are welcome to adopt from his teaching whatever provides concrete benefit in their lives.

Divergent attitudes towards the Dharma also distinguish Classical Buddhism and Secular Buddhism. The Four Noble Truths, the bedrock of the Dharma, provide a sterling example of how they differ. Classical Buddhism gives priority to a ‘horizontal’ view of the Four Noble Truths, seeing them as an evaluation of samsaric becoming. The truth of suffering underscores the defective nature of life in the round of rebirths. Craving and ignorance function as the hidden levers driving the cycle, propelling the stream of consciousness forward from life to life. The end of suffering is attained by eliminating craving and ignorance through insight into the real nature of things. In contrast, Secular Buddhism gives precedence to a ‘vertical’ view of the Four Noble Truths. It understands them as a diagnosis of our present life itself, offering a pragmatic therapy that can lead to a life of equanimity and contentment lived fully in the here and now.

These different outlooks on the Four Noble Truths in turn determine their divergent views on Buddhist practice. Classical Buddhism affirms the value of practices designed to secure a favourable rebirth and promote gradual progress towards the realisation of nibbāna. It thus includes such elements as ritual, the formal observance of precepts, support for monasteries and monastics, and devotional recitations and meditations. The higher meditation practices of serenity and insight (samatha and vipassanā) aim at disenchantment, dispassion and ultimate release from the rounds of rebirths.

Where Classical Buddhism grounds practice in the cosmology of the Buddhist scriptures, Secular Buddhism seeks to integrate Buddhist practice with existential psychology. It assigns the devotional and ritualistic practices to the sidelines or drops them entirely. The path centres on meditation as a means of dealing with uncertainty and stress alleviating the ordeal of afflictive emotions. Secular Buddhism locates ultimate meaning in the immediacy of life in the here and now, lived deliberately with keen curiosity and open attention.

Classical Buddhism and Secular Buddhism also differ in their understanding of the Sangha. For Classical Buddhism the ideal focus is on the ‘Sangha of noble ones’ (ariyasangha), those who have attained the stages of awakening culminating in arahantship, or in Mahayana Buddhism, on the exalted bodhisattvas. However, because the Sangha of noble ones is a purely spiritual entity, without manifest signs, most forms of Classical Buddhism direct their communal veneration towards the monastic Sangha, the order of monks and nuns. The monastics function as the field of merit, recipients of respect and offerings. They are also the supreme teaching authority, whose years of training qualify them to transmit the Dharma.

In Secular Buddhism, the Sangha of noble ones is not recognised as such, or is treated as marginal. While Secular Buddhists may respect individual monastics as teachers and models, they generally do not give priority to establishing a monastic order. The word sangha is in fact broadened in scope to designate all practitioners. Precedence may be given to lay teachers, who share the lifestyles and values of lay students and are thus felt to be more accessible than renunciant monks and nuns. Where Classical Buddhism regards the conservation of traditions as the guarantee of authentic teaching, Secular Buddhism prizes creativity and innovation.

As Buddhism evolves in the West, it is likely that the encounter between these two camps will generate competition and rivalry. Yet it may be the attempt to bring together the respective strengths of each that holds the most promise for the future vitality of the Dharma. This is the case not only in the West but in Asia as well, where educated Buddhists now often look to Western Buddhism for inspiration and models to emulate.

Strengths and weaknesses of classical and secular Buddhism

In my own opinion, each of these two expressions of Buddhism has its distinctive strengths and weaknesses. The strength of Classical Buddhism lies in the commitment to preserving the teachings that have defined Buddhism through the ages. Classical Buddhism stresses fidelity to the Buddha’s words and thereby keeps intact the ancient heritage of the Dharma and the potential for deep practice and attainment. By endorsing the ideal of transcendent liberation, it fosters the spirit of renunciation that motivates the traditional quest for awakening. Its values of restraint and fewness of desires challenges the rampant greed and self-seeking fostered by free-market capitalism. With its respect for the monastic life, it upholds the lifestyle that the Buddha himself made available by creating a monastic order governed by a stringent code of discipline.

The weaknesses of Classical Buddhism are typical of other forms of traditional religion. These include a tendency toward complacency, a suspicion of modernity, the identification of cultural forms with essence, and a disposition to doctrinal rigidity. At the popular level, Classical Buddhism often shelves the attitude of critical inquiry that the Buddha himself encouraged in favour of devotional fervour and unquestioning adherence to hallowed doctrinal formulas.

The main strength of Secular Buddhism lies in its ability to make the Dharma meaningful to people nurtured by a secular culture with a deep distrust of religious institutions and scepticism about tenets outside the range of normal experience. Secular Buddhism thereby opens doors to the Dharma for people inclined to the experiential emphasis of the hard sciences. Secular Buddhists have also devised new applications of the Dharma neglected or bypassed by the tradition, bringing Buddhist practices into such areas as health care, education, prison work and psychotherapy. These last features, however, are generic to Western Buddhism, whether secular or religious, and are not unique to the secularist approach.

The principal weakness of Secular Buddhism may be overconfidence in the naturalistic premises with which is starts. This can lead to a disregard, even disdain, for principles that clearly spring from the Buddha’s own realisation. This is particularly the case with the principles of rebirth and karma. To dismiss these teachings as trappings of Buddhism’s Asian heritage is to cast off the essential backdrop to the spiritual quest that the Buddha himself emphasised by including them in Right View, the first factor of the Noble Eightfold Path. If they are discarded in favour of materialistic naturalism, there is a real danger that the very pillars that sustain the Dharma will collapse, leaving us stranded in the wilderness of personal opinion and reducing Buddhist practice to an assortment of therapeutic techniques. On the other hand, if Classical Buddhism holds fast to its original standpoint, it may well expand the horizons of science beyond materialist reductionism, opening the scientific mind to subtler dimensions of reality.

Although a cross-fertilisation between Classical Buddhism and Secular Buddhism can inspire a revitalisation of the Dharma in ways fitting for our time, in my view the relation between them cannot be symmetrical. Since it is Classical Buddhism that has firmer roots in the original teaching, it provides a more solid basis than Secular Buddhism for preserving the integrity of the Dharma against the temptation to dilution and commercialisation. Nevertheless, while unbridgeable differences between them will remain, Classical Buddhism can learn from Secular Buddhism how to respond effectively and intelligently to the unique pressures of modernity. For example, while most forms of traditional Buddhism in Asia follow a hierarchical organisational structure, Secular Buddhist communities have adopted lateral power-sharing and more egalitarian models better suited to the democratic standards of national governance. At the popular level, where Classical Buddhism tends to posit a sharp contrast between serious Dharma practice and everyday life, Secular Buddhism takes everyday life to be the field for successful practice and thus bridges the two domains. Secular Buddhism has also purged ancient biases that still infect traditional Buddhism, affirming the equal capacities of women and giving full respect to people of diverse sexual orentations.

Some Dharma teachers go a step beyond Secular Buddhism and hold that Buddhist mindfulness practice must be recast as a nondenominational technique stripped of its Buddhist identity. This, they claim, will enable the Dharma to blend unobtrusively into the cultural mainstream. Few Secular Buddhists, however, endorse this proposition, which even they deem too drastic. For traditional Buddhists, bare mindfulness without the support of refuge in the Three Jewels and the rest of the Eightfold Path loses its transcendent orientation and risks being turned into a mere adornment to a comfortable life. Even more concerning, however, is the fact that this approach can easily be taken up by the corporate mindset to suit its own agenda, culminating in the triumph of what some have called ‘McMindfulness.’

Need for social engagement with both both perspectives

With some exceptions, adherents of both Classical Buddhism and Secular Buddhism have tended to treat political and social activism as marginal to their understanding of Dharma practice. While they may engage in certain types of humanitarian service – assistance to the sick and dying, care for orphans and animals, the operation of soup kitchens, or work among prisoners – they often shy away from overt political advocacy, which they may see as a threat to the purity of their practice. This, I feel, is where Buddhism in all its varieties has much to learn from the Abrahamic religions with their prophetic concern for social justice. For billions of people around the world the principal causes of the real suffering they face on a daily basis are endemic poverty, social oppression and environmental devastation. If Buddhism is to live up to its moral potential, its followers must make a stronger commitment to peace, justice and social transformation. Inspired by the ideals of lovingkindness and compassion, they must be ready to stand up on behalf of those who cannot speak for themselves, for those burdened by harsh and exploitive social structures. For all its unsavouriness, politics has become the stage where the critical ethical struggles of our time are being waged. Any spiritual system that spurns social engagement to safeguard its purity risks reneging on its moral obligations. Its contemplative practices then turn into the intellectual plaything of an upper-middle-class elite or a cushion to soften the impact of the real world.

It is still too early to determine how in the long run the encounter between Classical Buddhism and Secular Buddhism will play out, much less the broader encounter between Buddhism and modernity. These are matters for the future to determine, and to learn the answers we must be patient. But as followers of the Dharma, it’s not enough just to sit on the sidelines as observers. Whether we lean towards Classical Buddhism or Secular Buddhism, we must be ready to promote fruitful exchanges between the two, undertaken in a shared quest for a wider understanding of the Dharma in its full range, relevance and depth.

Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi (formerly Jeffery Block) is the founder and chairman of Buddhist Global Relief. He has been a Theravāda monk since 1972. A translator of the Pāli Nikāyas, he lives and teaches at Chuang Yen Monastery in Carmel, New York. Excerpts from his translations of the Pāli Canon are available at wisdompubs.org under ‘Teachings of the Buddha’ in the Wisdom Academics collection.

Originally published in Inquiring Mind, Vol. 31, #2 Spring 2015 (northern hemisphere), this article is © 2015 by Inquiring Mind and republished here with kind permission from Inquiring Mind (inquiringmind.com) which means that the Creative Commons licence of this website does not apply.
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Evamaria GlatzJuly 5, 2015 Reply




Being familiar with Bhikkhu Bodhi’s merits in global „classical“ Buddhism and truly acknowledging them I would first like to point out that Bhikkhu Bodhi presenting himself, or allowing himself to be presented as „Ven.“ (=Venerable) gives me a difficult start. For me as a reader, this imposing abbreviation immediately opens the gap between a viewpoint of being addressed at eye level in contrast to being talked to from a somehow „higher“ position.

Before going into detail I would like to remind us: our world is becoming more and more secular, whether we like it or not. The power of almighty gods and elevated men represented by strong ecclesiastical institutions and men’s devotion towards them has been continuously diminished during the last century. We have to face this trend and accept it.

Some aspects of secular Buddhism Bhikkhu Bodhi does not characterize in ways its followers would agree with:

Nothing brought me closer to the canonical texts of Buddhism than the extended studies of the secular Buddhist Stephen Batchelor. On the other hand, I cannot see where the opinion that secular Buddhism would look for illumination amongst modern sciences stems from. In our present world we have to acknowledge the importance and achievements of sciences. It would be desirable if all sorts of Buddhists would take this into account.

In describing a secular Buddhist’s approach to the traditionally so called „Four Noble Truths“ Bhikkhu Bodhi does not mention the shift towards seeing them not as truths to be believed in, but as tasks to be undertaken. In this understanding they are much more than a „diagnosis and a pragmatic therapy“, but the threshold to nibbana in our ordinary life, here and now.

I do not think, „secular Buddhism seeks to integrate Buddhist practice with existential psychology“. There are just as interesting parallels between Buddha’s insights and this branch of modern western philosophy, as many other matches exist, e.g. with the work of Epicurus, Titus Lucretius, Michel de Montaigne, Erich Fromm and other Western thinkers who were influenced by Buddha’s teachings, directly or indirectly.

As for „the devotional and ritualistic practices being assigned to the sidelines“: yes, there is less devotion in secular Buddhism; I do not miss it as most of my dharma friends do not. Quoting Ludwig Wittgenstein’s famous sentence: „Der Mensch ist ein zeremonielles Tier“ (Man is a ceremonial animal), I would like to add: secular Buddhists need rituals as every human does and are working on generating new ones outside temples.

Secular Buddhists try hard to „stress fidelity to the Buddha’s words“, as „classical“ Buddhists do; maybe they do less for „keep(ing) the ancient heritage of the Dharma intact“ in a literal sense, but they certainly work on developing it for our presence as practitioners did in many stages of history since Buddha’s time.

To discuss karma and rebirth in this brief comment, the two big issues on which classical and secular Buddhism deeply disagree, would be asking too much. But as secular Buddhism tries to offer a set of values without beliefs, many of its followers feel much more comfortable with the agnostic idea of not knowing what might happen to them after death, instead being concerned with living fully in their present.

Reading Bhikkhu Bodhi’s article I find concerns of Buddhism being reduced by its secular adepts’ concern of „materialistic naturalism“, of limitation to therapeutic methods, of „the wilderness of personal opinions“. Nowhere in Stephen Batchelor’s work do I find anything about secular Buddhism being a therapeutic method. I do find him stressing the importance of finding one’s personal way as Buddha does in the Kalama Sutta. I find him pointing out the wonders, the mysteries and the beauty of our life here and now, which he calls: the everyday sublime. Winton Higgins, in a series of four talks that can be found on this website, thinks in a similar way. I would not call this approach „barely materialistic“.

In his last point I totally agree with Bhikkhu Bodhi: „With some exceptions, adherents of both Classical Buddhism and Secular Buddhism have tended to treat political and social activism as marginal to their understanding of dharma practice….” and further on: „If Buddhism is to live up to its moral potential, its followers must make a stronger commitment to peace, justice and social transformation. Inspired by the ideals of lovingkindness and compassion, they must be ready to stand up on behalf of those who cannot speak for themselves, for those burdened by harsh and exploitive social structures. For all its unsavouriness, politics has become the stage where the critical ethical struggles of our time are being waged“.

To this I would like to add a remark Ajahn Brahm uttered a few months ago: „We Buddhists have built so many more temples than orphanages“. I take this as a challenge. As a secular Buddhist trying to integrate all aspects of today’s life I feel a strong need for me and my Dharma friends to develop many more strategies and ways to act not only as social activists but also to nonviolently interfere in global politics, as far as our personal potential and abilities reach.

Evamaria Glatz, Vienna







Winton HigginsJuly 5, 2015 Reply




Bhikkhu Bodhi deserves thanks for his attempt to capture the relationship between what he calls ‘classical’ and ‘secular’ Buddhism. But the problems with his article start precisely with these two categories. Inherited Asian Buddhisms (plural) are far too diverse to fuse together in his classical-Buddhism category which – in BB’s account – really references BB’s own Theravadin school of Buddhism and its idiosyncratic emphases, which diverge markedly from much east-Asian Buddhism, for instance.

The coagulation of ‘secular Buddhism’ in his article generates similar confusions, such that one of the most prominent developments in secular Buddhism (especially in New Zealand, Europe and Australia), that of Stephen Batchelor, disappears without trace in his description. Also, secular Buddhism is a broad church with no orthodoxy and no clear demarcation lines.

Having set up these two unpromising categories, BB then proceeds to place them in a hostile relationship, one involving ‘rupture’, ‘incompatible alternatives’, and ‘competition and rivalry’. Some friction between conventional and secular Buddhism has indeed arisen in some quarters, such as the Buddhist Society of Victoria, whose doors no dharma teacher may darken if s/he hasn’t first literally signed up to belief in rebirth and the proposition that ‘sangha’ (spiritual community) refers to monastics only.

These rules – written by the senior Theravadin monk who acts as the BSV’s spiritual adviser – aim to exclude secular Buddhists (although some Mahayana teachers might end up as collateral damage). They thus fly in the face of the BSV’s own constitutional objective to ‘show respect for all schools of Buddhist thought’. As in this example, the animus has been all one-sided: to paraphrase the Buddha, secular Buddhism doesn’t dispute with conventional Buddhism; conventional Buddhism disputes with it.

Rebirth and monastics-only sangha
Ancient Indian culture carried the working assumption (‘belief’ may be too big a word) that all beings reincarnate. Much like a digital algorithm today, it made thinking outside the dominant paradigm well-nigh impossible; trying to imagine a European atheist in the Middle Ages presents the same degree of difficulty. The Buddha, as a child of his culture, worked from the rebirth assumption. But he didn’t teach it as a central belief. At the end of the Kalama sutta, for instance, he validates dharma practice irrespective of whether the practitioner accepts the idea of rebirth or not. As well, he repeatedly expressed his disdain for all metaphysical beliefs and speculations. Rebirth naturally falls into this category.

Yet, as BB verifies, rebirth is the central pillar of Theravadin practice, which would seem pointless without it. Indeed, the finances of its monastic institutions rest on it: the whole ‘merit-go-round’ whereby non-monastics (‘laypeople’) make material offerings to monasteries and monastics depends on the promise that the donors thereby secure a fortunate rebirth.

The Theravada’s (and BB’s) insistence that ‘sangha’ – the third element in the three refuges of Buddhism – refers exclusively to monastics, completes the spiritual business model. If you want a fortunate life next time around, give generously to monastics now. Thus the BSV’s rules, mentioned above, begin to look less like intolerant religious dogmatism and more like the prudent defence of the intellectual property on which its major revenue stream depends.

Modern western culture doesn’t support the rebirth idea, and it’s a non-issue in most if not all secular-Buddhist circles. And all major religious and spiritual traditions emphasise the inclusive communality of practice and adherence. To be a practitioner is to belong – to give and receive nourishment from one’s fellow practitioners.

This is what sangha is about. It has nothing to do with membership of a professional priestly elite, the likes of which simply didn’t exist among the Buddha’s followers during his lifetime. He took sangha to mean the fellowship of all sincere practitioners and that is how secular Buddhists understand and honour the third refuge today.

The sources of ‘classical’ and ‘secular’ Buddhism
Bhikkhu Bodhi’s account of the doctrinal sources of his ‘two camps’ doesn’t pass muster either. He contrasts classical Buddhism’s ‘conservation of traditions’ and ‘fidelity to the Buddha’s words’ with secular Buddhism’s apparent nonchalance towards the latter while it privileges ‘materialistic naturalism’, and ‘an assortment of therapeutic techniques’, with ‘existential psychology’ in the lead position.

In fact, ‘sutta study’ (communal study of the Buddha’s discourses) features regularly in many secular-Buddhist sanghas, which see themselves as expressions of a living tradition started by the Buddha himself. By way of an example, Stephen Batchelor’s forthcoming After Buddhism (Yale University Press) will provide a master class in rigorous sutta study. BB might be pleasantly surprised to discover how familiar his own name is among secular Buddhists as a translator of their study materials. Perhaps the Buddha’s discourses find fewer readers in ‘classical’ circles, where commentaries and other scriptures (including quite a few dumbings-down), ones that post-date the Buddha, tend to upstage them. As for most ‘classical’ Mahayana traditions, what we now understand as the words of the historical Buddha hardly see the light of day there.

Much of the literature that post-dates the Buddha comes from institutional sources and spins doctrine to bolster institutional interests. For this reason fidelity to the Buddha’s words can collide with the ‘conservation of traditions’. Assuming we could make sense of BB’s ‘two camps’ at all, the real distinction consists in the secular project’s burning interest in the Buddha’s teachings as they stand, and then finding ways to apply them to dharma practice in the context of our own culture, while mainly bypassing the traditional commentaries. We need to free the Buddha’s teachings from later institutional and cultural accretions that are alien to our situation, and then express them in ways that capture affinities in our own cultural heritage.

Foremost among these valuable affinities are not the natural sciences and psychotherapy (as BB imagines), but ancient and modern western philosophy (for example, scepticism and phenomenology respectively). Many are the moments in sutta study when we get the feeling that we’ve seen this movie before, or one quite like it, but that time around the soundtrack was in Greek, German, French or English.

On the other hand, because of its wonderful lack of metaphysical baggage, Buddhism has enjoyed an easy relationship with science in general, and psychology in particular, since it first appeared in the west. But Buddhism, the natural sciences, and the various corners of the psych world all represent separate disciplines arising from distinct generative questions and protocols for tackling them. They need neither contradict nor colonise each other as they compare notes and learn from each other (which they frequently do).

Buddhist ethics-based politics today
When the Buddha was alive around 2500 years ago, the human world was much more violent; political communities were small-scale, and customary practices and natural phenomena rather than rulers tended to govern how people lived and died. In other words, political arrangements had very little efficacy compared to their formative influence (for good and ill) today.

So the Buddha didn’t have a whole lot to say about politics, from which silence later institutionalised ‘classical’ Buddhist traditions have drawn the convenient conclusion that a good Buddhist has nothing to say or do in the political sphere. On this abstentionist basis the hierarchs of the institutions in question have been (and many still are) well-placed to uncritically cosy up to temporal rulers, however transgressive they may be.

By contrast, in today’s west, popular sovereignty underpins state systems with enormous power to foster destruction, misery and injustice on the one hand, or justice-based human and planetary flourishing on the other. As citizens we bear responsibility for what our leaders and political communities do; we have ‘civic virtue’ thrust upon us, and abstention is not an ethically sustainable option. Towards the end of his article, BB makes a bold statement to this effect, one which I heartily commend.

But as Eleanor Roosevelt told the UN General Assembly in 1948 while introducing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights for its adoption: good political principles ‘begin in small places, close to home’. For instance, are we cultivating respectful gender equality and inclusiveness in the family home? Are we doing so in other small places close to home that really matter, such as our spiritual practice communities? It’s at this point that the rubber hits the road for a great many vehicles of ‘classical’ Buddhism, not least the Theravada where women continue to be subordinated and marginalised.

One of the great advantages of secular Buddhism lies in its de-institutionalised condition, which replicates the dharma world of the Buddha’s time. Secular Buddhists can shoulder their responsibilities as individuals and citizens without compromising their authenticity by ‘conserving traditions’ that fundamentally flout today’s ethical standards and political imperatives.

By all means let us – as Bhikkhu Bodhi enjoins us – ‘promote fruitful exchanges between the two [camps], undertaken in a shared quest for a wider understanding of the Dharma in its full range, relevance and depth.’ But let’s also understand that such exchanges will need to go beyond anodyne pieties, and can’t be short-circuited by issuing bans and anathemas.







Lenore LambertJuly 5, 2015 Reply




It’s refreshing and pleasing to hear a balanced and dispassionate summary and comparison of ‘classical’ and ‘secular’ Buddhism from an adherent to the former. Thank you Bikkhu Bodhi for a stimulating article. I do also feel compelled to respond to some important points that I believe are misperceptions.

If I had to volunteer for a label, it would be a Secular Buddhist. I run a secular Buddhist meditation group here in Sydney and am part of a network of similar sanghas. I have attended several retreats run by the Batchelors and other teachers of secular, practical, modern persuasions. And I run the Secular Buddhism Australia web site and Facebook Page. I swim in very secular dharma circles.

As such I always find it curious when people from outside of those circles make definitive statements about what Secular Buddhism does or doesn’t do. The movement is barely out of the womb. It’s very much in an early exploratory phase, finding itself as it were. There are no clear marks, traditions, rituals or devotions that identify one as a Secular Buddhist. So making confident statements about the movement is, I believe, presumptuous, premature, and prone to inaccuracy.

In line with this, the comments I am about to make are from my experience of secular dharma practise, here in Australia, and from my connections to those running similar web sites around the world. They may or may not be true of others who would call themselves Secular Buddhists.

First, Bodhi says that classical Buddhism seeks light on the human conditions from canonical texts whereas Secular Buddhism seeks it from modern science and the values of a secular society. That’s not my experience. As Winton Higgins has alluded to in his comments, our secular Buddhist sanghas here in Sydney, draw our light on the human condition from both canonical texts AND modern science and secular values. I would also include philosophy in the cluster of sources from which we draw.

For example, my Sangha has spent the last year and a half, studying the Satipatthana Sutta – a book by a ‘classical’ Buddhist monk, Analayo. We devote one weekly session a month to sutta study. Before that, we studied a selection of suttas from the Pali canon chosen by Stephen Batchelor. Before that we studied the book ‘The Basic Teachings of the Buddha’ by Glenn Wallis which examines in depth, numerous key suttas from the Pali canon. If my experience is anything to go by, Secular Buddhism actually puts more emphasis on canonical study than many other lay Buddhist practices. We want the teachings to guide us, but we want to understand those teachings for ourselves, not have them interpreted for us through Asian cultural values from past centuries, which are in many ways, quite different to ours.

It’s on the basis of this assertion that Bodhi suggests the cross-fertilisation relationship between classical and secular approaches should be ‘asymmetrical’. That is, classical Buddhism on top due to their firmer roots in the teachings, and Secular Buddhism lower down. I think this is wrong. I think the teachings should be held as higher than all of us – the stars at which we are all gazing – and our interpretations of them acknowledged as just that – interpretations. Sure, these ‘classical’ Buddhist traditions have been staring at these stars much longer than secular Buddhists have, which is why we are open to learning from them. However, the focus should be on knowing the starscape, not on privileging any one star-gazer’s sketch of the night sky.

Secondly, Bodhi says Secular Buddhism ‘centres on meditation as a means of dealing with uncertainty and stress and alleviating the ordeal of afflictive emotions’. Again, my experience has been that we centre our practices as much on knowing and implementing the dharma as on meditation. Both serenity and insight are important, as are knowledge of the dharma and practise both on and off of the cushion.

Thirdly, Bodhi says that Secular Buddhism treats the Sangha of Noble Ones (i.e. monastics) as ‘marginal’. This overstates it. Monastics are treated as valuable sources of input. They are not revered or put up on pedestals as they are in many classical approaches, and they are subject to questioning and challenge as all teachers are. However they are not relegated to the margins or dismissed. They are simply taken in context as people who may have a rich knowledge of the dharma but who also have committed to a certain pre-packaged interpretation of it, that is imbued with certain social and historical values from another culture and time.

Fourth, Bodhi says ‘classical’ Buddhism regards the conservation of traditions as the guarantee of authentic teaching whereas Secular Buddhism prizes creativity and innovation. That’s true enough, in that it describes the different orientations of preserving the pre-existing out-workings of the dharma and creating new ones. However it also points to another difference: Secular Buddhism doesn’t blindly trust ‘tradition’ to convey the teachings meaningfully. We want to learn the teachings ourselves as our guarantee of ‘authentic teaching’ rather than swallowing whole, the interpretations embedded in existing traditions coming from cultures imbued with different values.

Fifth, Bodhi points to the concepts of rebirth and karma as principles that sprung from the Buddha’s realisation. He suggests Secular Buddhism’s non-acceptance of these principles as a weakness and that discarding such principles may lead to the collapse of the pillars that sustain the dharma. I’ve heard others from classical Buddhist backgrounds make such assertions and they strike me as perplexing. Rebirth and karma were not principles that sprung from the Buddha’s realisation. As far as we can tell, they were existent beliefs in Indian culture at the time Gotama lived, in the same way that gravity is now a principle we all believe in.

Canonical debates aside, the important question is: can you practise fruitfully without these beliefs? Those of classical persuasion often say they can’t imagine Buddhist practise without them. However I’d go so far as to assert, they’ve probably never tried. I live without them and practise the dharma every day of my life. I don’t need future lives, or a punishment and reward system of distributive justice, to motivate kind action now. I just need awareness of the effects of being kind or otherwise.

If I can truly see that everything is a dependent arising, if I accept that unpleasantness is a part of life and get to know it well, if I develop an ongoing awareness of my craving and aversion habits and work to undermine them, if I cultivate the intentions, action, speech, livelihood, effort, mindfulness and mental integration of which Gotama spoke as ‘the path’, am I not practising the dharma? I don’t see any dharmic pillars falling here. There’s no need for panic!

Bodhi lists one of the strengths of the secular approach being that it ‘opens doors to the dharma for people inclined to the experiential emphasis of the hard sciences’. This is no small benefit! What classical Buddhists need to remember is that those of us who fit this description couldn’t believe in karma or rebirth if we tried. And I have tried! So would they have us miss out on the dharma all together? Secular Buddhism is not trying to ‘take over’ Buddhism or redefine it. It’s trying to make the dharma (not Buddhism) accessible and practical for masses of people who would otherwise miss out on it.

Finally, I couldn’t agree more with Bodhi that more fruitful exchanges between secular and classical approaches to the dharma can be incredibly beneficial. And the idea of the ‘shared quest for a wider understanding of the dharma in its full range, relevance and depth’ is wonderful. Invitation accepted! I just hope he’s told his ‘classical’ Buddhist mates, that we’re not gatecrashers at this party!







Ramsey MargolisJuly 8, 2015 Reply




Taking the time to read Bhikkhu Bodhi’s article slowly and carefully, the first question that came to mind is why he has taken this particular focus in an article for the final issue of the US insight meditation community’s magazine Inquiring Mind. Is he expecting that the numbers of secular Buddhists will crowd out those who start off learning their dharma within insight meditation communities? He may well be right, but only partly I suspect.

Why also, I wonder, does he want to draw a line between what he terms ‘Classical Buddhism’ (in one instance he writes ‘Religious’ Buddhism) and ‘Secular Buddhism’? Is this division more important than say, that between the Buddhisms of Korea, Tibet or Vietnam, or perhaps some of the variants of Buddhism created in the USA since the 1960s, or the 19th century refresh of Theravada Buddhism in which he has spent most of his adult life?

Millions of people, estimated variously at 488, 495 and 535 million and representing seven or eight percent of planet’s human population, were born into a Buddhist culture. Compare this with the number of people in the world, today, who identify as secular Buddhists. How many double decker buses would we all find a seat on? Two? Maybe three?

That he feels the need so emphatically to delineate the differences with such force and set boundaries suggests he is concerned over what this new approach to the dharma has to offer both those who have adopted Buddhist practices and beliefs as adult converts, and those born into communities where Buddhist practices are the norm and Buddhist beliefs taken for granted. He writes, for instance, ’Classical Buddhism can learn from Secular Buddhism how to respond effectively and intelligently to the unique pressures of modernity.’

There’s one instance, mentioned above, in which Bodhi names his preferred kind of dharma as ‘Religious Buddhism’. This creates an assumption that secular Buddhism is not religious, an assumption that has been dealt with effectively by Stephen Batchelor and Winton Higgins. For a description of secular Buddhism by secular Buddhists take a look at this page on this website – https://secularbuddhistnetwork.org/about/why-secular.

Lenorë Lambert makes it clear in her comment on Bodhi’s article that for many secular Buddhists an examination of the Pali canon is vital to understanding the dharma. Bodhi has spent much of his life translating Pali texts into English and secular Buddhists, individually and in community, will be using Bodhi’s translations.

Languages are living things and we are continually learning new ways to interpret what others say, write and mean. Debates around the best ways to translate documents from one language to another will continue for as long as different languages exist. New scholarship in the Pali language and other prakrits is showing that no translation is the be all and end all, and all can be improved on.

Like everything, these writings are impermanent. Within a few decades, we can expect alternative translations will be published that will attribute new meaning to these texts. Such is the normal hermeneutic development. These new translations will, we hope, eschew the Judeo-Christian religiosity of 19th and 20th century interpreters, and monastic retraditionalisers such as Bodhi.

Those who are practising the dharma 50 years from now are likely to view Bodhi’s translations similarly to the way in which the King James Bible is now seen: a delightfully poetical piece of writing, translated from a flawed Latin translation by Erasmus who used a collection of Greek manuscripts whose texts differed in multiple ways. The dharma may attract scholars such as Bart Ehrmann whose book Misquoting Jesus is an object lesson in textual criticism.

By way of an example, there are, for instance, no capital letters in Asian scripts such as that used for the Pali language. When those who translate these words into English give initial capital letters to terms such as the Four Noble Truths, the Eightfold Path, the Three Jewels, and particularly to words left untranslated such as Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, they are investing metaphysical authority in these terms – the sort of authority they bring with them from their Judeo-Christian upbringing.

In the Pali canon, we see the Buddha emphasising self-reliance, becoming autonomous in their practice. The one who has entered the path, we read in the early texts, has become independent of others in the Buddha’s teachings. This goes against other texts – likely to be later insertions from the early monastic traditions – which emphasise finding a teacher, becoming devoted to a teacher, surrendering one’s autonomy to him, as perhaps in the Tibetan tradition, receiving the blessings of the lama or the guru.

A secular approach to Buddhism undermines the authority of those westerners who have donned robes – the retraditionalisers – and presents a very real long term threat to their financial support.

With this in mind, secular Buddhists will doubtless continue to reach out to other dharma practitioners, but will continue to find their generosity of spirit ignored or rejected, as has been the case here in New Zealand.

Is Bhikkhu Bodhi facing a great divide, I wonder, or aggravating one?







Doug SmithJuly 9, 2015 Reply




Hello to all, and thanks for reproducing this interesting article from Bhikkhu Bodhi. For any who are interested I wrote an (all too brief) response to Bodhi and to Stephen Batchelor over at the Secular Buddhist Association website: “A Few Words on Bodhi and Batchelor.
With metta.







Bernat FontJuly 9, 2015 Reply




This is an interesting discussion and many of the things I thought while reading Bhikkhu Bodhi’s piece have already been said by others in a better way that I could. I thought I might offer the perspective of a younger generation (I was born in Spain in 1989), one that did not need to wrestle with God and traditional religions so much because our parents did it already – my parents are one year younger than the Batchelors. My generation directly inherited several of these ideas through our upbringing, and in a much more emotional, non-intellectual, intuitive way. We are, as it were, a little bit beyond it.

Bhikkhu Bodhi says that a “spiritual system that spurns social engagement to safeguard its purity risks reneging on its moral obligations.” I thank, from the depths of my heart, certain Buddhist teachers for engaging with the contemporary society that has informed me, taking all its features into account, and evolving a meaningful and inspiring discourse that allowed me to leave the palace and commit to the Buddhist path. If they had been more concerned with safeguarding Buddhism’s purity, I, and others of my generation with little dust in their eyes, would probably be wasting. And traditions have the moral obligation to speak to their audience, not to themselves.

I have benefited and continue to benefit from the work of ‘classical Buddhism’, and in this sense I have nothing to complain and a lot to feel gratitude about. But at the same time I have often felt they were not talking to me. The shock of encountering secular Buddhism wasn’t so much the obvious relief of reading “I do not believe in rebirth and I am still a Buddhist” but an enthusiasm from hearing the core message of the dharma expressed in a different way, with terms and cultural references I could relate to. A dharma not simply adjusted to include mobile phones in its metaphors, but articulated from the historical time of mobile phones. It is not so much a matter of reason but of sensibility.

In order to devote this life to having a better next life, which will then be spent in the same way, and on and on, until one stops being reborn, it is necessary that one thinks in terms of cyclic existence in the first place, that one is then afraid by that prospect, seeks a way out and finds it in Buddhism. But in the West we generally do not have the samsara concept to begin with. So let’s admit it: how many westerners are attracted to Buddhism because of this? We generally have other reasons (conscious or unconscious to ourselves) and might adopt the beliefs later. And if we do, as Stephen has pointed out, it’s probably because “holding them renders this life meaningful and worthwhile” for us.

So the here and now matters, of course. But this doesn’t mean that all those who practice secular dharma do so only in order to have a better palace life. The important thing for us is that when we leave the palace, we do not travel back in time: we want to enter a 21st century forest. At the same time, a lot of those who follow classical Buddhism are likewise improving their here and now, basically, but with the conviction – and explicit external recognition – that they are advancing squares in the samsaric board. Others simply enter a new palace, albeit a Buddhist one. It is true that we are seeing a lot of aspects of the dharma being put at the service of capitalist consumerism, being used as fuel for the three fires. But this happens as much in secular Buddhist circles as in classical ones.

Metaphysics, perhaps more than ever before, are a hindrance. We all know that the Buddha was suspicious of them. The so-called ‘Great Divide’ might be an example of it. So, why not drop the whole thing? We also know that the Buddha did this in his time, like how he used conditioned arising as a way of not getting into certain arguments about ‘views’. In fact, the thing with my generation is not so much that we don’t believe in rebirth or heaven but that it is simply not relevant to us, or most of us. To put it bluntly: we don’t care. Among the friends of mine that are around my age (26), there is literally zero who care about this. And they aren’t immoral or hollow people, nor mindless consumers. Yes, we are overcome by existential dread sometimes, and still ‘Post-mortem’ is a language we don’t speak.

If the problem with discarding the pillars of karma and rebirth is the potential collapse of the whole edifice of the dharma, I’m with Winton in that there is no need to panic. Perhaps it would collapse for Bhikkhu Bodhi and others but not for the generation I’m describing, since a great majority of us haven’t even used those pillars: we have never built our ethics, values and worldview upon them.

The views of classical Buddhism are immensely diverse. We can continue to look at the moon without getting obsessed about the different fingers pointing at it. If we want to have fruitful exchanges between classical and secular Buddhism, we can start by focusing on what we like about each other’s ideas, on what makes us think, and incorporate it, rather than arguing about what we disagree upon. Let us drop the whole argument on metaphysics. It is a necessary one maybe, but it has taken place already. Enough of it. It just tires and leads to further quarrels and disputes: it does not lead to welfare and happiness, to letting go, to nirvana – however one understands it. What’s important, and relevant to both classical and secular Buddhism, is that one should reduce and extinguish the three fires, regardless of the cosmological or existential consequences this might or might not have. So let’s just do that. And let’s share information about how each one of us does that. Let’s focus on the things that do not bring great divides.







Tony ReardonJuly 9, 2015 Reply




i think that most of the picking at BB’s detail – in the various comments – is really off topic. BB would need a large book to try and lay it all out and we’d still get as much disagreement. I would go as far as to say that there would be as much disagreement no matter who wrote about this or how much they wrote. He’s roughly right about the divide, isn’t he? He says at the start that the two positions are abstractions. I can suggest to the believers that they shouldn’t have beliefs and the believers will tell me that Buddhism is meaningless without the beliefs. People rarely change sides.

I find people like B.B. and Ajhan Sujato very open to my inquiries and sometimes i say hi Sujato rather than Ajhan and sometimes i say Ajhan – i’m trying to bridge what i do think is a divide, trying to be honest on one hand and not offensive on the other.

i think this – bridging – is really the topic [though i’m not holding my breath for agreement!!]







Martin GisserJuly 10, 2015 Reply




Here’s one aspect I’d like to add to the excellent comments: this saeculum poses a challenge to the dharma which I feel both “classical” and “secular” Buddhism aren’t yet up to. While still in robe, Stephen Batchelor wrote: “Enlightenment is nothing but the answer to the deepest questions of human existence. Thus without a vivid consciousness of these questions how can there really be a genuine striving for enlightenment?” (Flight, BPS 1984, p.27). The existential question of the present saeculum is: “Why is the earth silent at this destruction” (Martin Heidegger, Beiträge zur Philosophie, §155. Written ca. 1937, published 1989).

This is one reason why I don’t like the word “secular”. And Bhikkhu Bodhi illustrates this a little. (Of course I can accept the label – it’s just a word after all…)

“Secular” sounds so yestercentury, so Homo Sapiens omphaloskeptic. But this very saeculum, the Anthropocene, is something entirely different to what the Great Apes have seen before: We are standing at a crucial juncture in the history of Life, not just another lousy saeculum in the history of civilization. While secularization still is a noble goal and religious (incl. secular quasi-religious!) fundamentalism is still causing lots of suffering, the Anthropocene poses a new moral and practical challenge, never heard before: unlike in David Hume’s saeculum, the Ought now follows from the Is and from the axiom of preservation of Life. Exaggerated slightly: Not carbon negative, no bodhisattva; not carbon negative, no sangha…

BB: “Secular Buddhism looks for illumination to modern science”. Science no longer is revolutionary secular business, as in Galileo’s saeculum. The stars and galaxies are irrelevant distraction meanwhile – except you need a theory of rebirth somewhere else. A less fundamental science, new and still evolving, neuroscience, might serve illumination – and it seems to confirm the Buddha’s insights. It is time to turn attention towards Earth: It is the facts modern science (climate physics) has gathered that can no longer be ignored or just taken as interesting entertainment. And here we are “beyond materialist reductionism” (BB) which science has anyhow long transcended in the study of the complex emergent systems at the foundations of Life. Here are the “subtler dimensions of reality” (e.g. some 0.01% of carbon dioxide changing the stage of Life). The “materialist reductionism” that spooks BB is long gone. Laplace’s demon is dead. We are now in “The Emergent Age” according to physics Nobelist R.B. Laughlin’s popularizing book A Different Universe (2005). The first emergentist manifesto, by an even greater physicist (e.g. Anderson-Higgs mechanism) is P.W. Anderson’s “More is Different” (Science, 1972, pp.393–6).

Anyhow, the world of spirituality is haunted by a very similar phenomenon, which I like to call “spiritual reductionism”. It is found in christian scholasticism, when overdoing linear causality logic and arriving at an unmoved “God”. It is also in classical Buddhist philosophy, which can feel eerily mechanistic: Like explaining shunyata at the example of a chair (is a bacterium like a chair?) or comparing the aggregates of a person with the parts of a chariot (SN 5.10, MP 28). Or, arriving at the necessity of inter-life rebirth by simplified linear causality thinking combined with atomistic linear time (the same thinking, paradoxically, that leads Christian theorists to the necessity of a moment of creation).
Materialistic reductionism as well as spiritual reductionism are both one symptom of the fundamental mental disease of the Late Homo Sapiens. We need to get over it. Now. It can help looking at the ground that feeds us, here (forget heaven), and transcend the hall of mirrors of our theorizing (papanca producing) left half of the brain.

This is why my hope rests on a modern, postmetaphysical, Buddhism. Methinks the danger to Buddhism is not “dilution and commercialisation” (BB) but keeping the heads stuck in the sands of either metaphysics or classical secularism.

Martin Gisser, Bavaria/Germany







Nick NahlousJuly 23, 2015 Reply




Greetings friends.

Browsing over some of the replies here, I wonder why many take BB so seriously? For those learned in the Buddha-Dhamma, it is quite obvious the ‘Classical Theravada’ position is a form of ‘cultural Buddhism’ and a misrepresentation or distortion of the core Buddhist teachings (such as its bizarre views of Dependent Origination occurring over 3 lifetimes, re-linking consciousness and the 4 Noble Truths explaining ‘rebirth’).

BB has performed a immeasurably valuable service in translating the scriptures into an easily readable and convenient form. Yet there remain crucial errors in the translation and, of course, the accompanying commentaries in the footnotes are abundantly tainted with the ‘Classical Theravada’ view.

Also, the new Australian Theravada sect is now influencing these translations. Monks such as Ajahns Buddhadasa and Chah already provided aspirants with an undistorted introduction into comprehending the teachings. Yet, today, these new old Ajahns are rarely mentioned and, for some reason, the new Australian sect has become very prominent, as though the new Australian sect are competent scholars (which they are certainly not).

A discerning reading of the scriptures offers even more clarity into the purity of the teachings (such as the word ‘beings’, which does not refer to meta-physical organisms but to momentary mental becoming).

I think the term ‘Secular Buddhism’ further distorts the invalid dichotomy created by BB, in that both ‘Classical’ and ‘Secular’ are somehow subjective interpretations, sects or abstractions. What is currently labelled as ‘secular’ actually represents the ‘Heartwood’ or purity of the teachings. It may be both diplomatic and clarifying to use the term ‘secular’ however the secular view is the authentic view in relation to awakening.

I think leaders of the secular movement, such as Stephen Batchelor, who deny the Buddha ended the mind’s defilement and who deny psychic powers, are not helpful here. For example, for the mind to have psychic powers in unrelated to ‘rebirth’ and is merely enhanced sense organs & thought function.

Winton Higgins pointed out, the ‘Classical’ is the cultural view, supporting the monasteries, treasuries and the Sri Lankan, Burmese, Thai, etc, cultures, including their expulsion of the Rohingya.

However, a historical problem here is Buddhism disappeared from India, probably because the Classical view of ending ‘rebirths’ was largely undifferentiatable from the new Hindu position. Obviously Hinduism survived the Muslim invasions so why not Buddhism?

Importantly, the pure Buddha-Dhamma or Transcendent Path does disappear or become lost, due to misinterpretations such as the ‘Classical’ misinterpretation, even though the scriptures remain intact.

The Buddha-Dhamma may be altered to provide solace for the multitude that cannot accommodate impermanence and not-self but does history show that is wise? The suttas provide no recommendations for this.

Although the scriptures do provide general mundane teachings for ordinary people about the future results of karma, the scriptures show the Buddha was very honest and admonished those that distorted his core teachings.

Naturally, a discerning reading of BB arguments show many of them appear illogical. Take BB’s departure into social activism. Surely this cannot represent the Classical view, given social activism is often a form of ‘worldliness’ and thus would be a hindrance to ending the ‘Classical’ rounds of rebirths? Must the Classicals conjure up a Mahayana Bodhisatva ideal (of postponing Nirvana for the sake of all sentient beings) to reconcile their new found embrace of social activism?

I guess, historically, Theravada cultures have probably not displayed a tendency towards social activism given they generally believe in the ‘Classical view’ of karma, namely, misfortune happens due to past karma. It is common in Classical societies that a passive or deterministic position is taken in relation to crimes such a rape, exploitation or child abuse on the grounds of Classical past karma.

It is certainly very wrong of BB to say: “Buddhism in all its varieties has much to learn from the Abrahamic religions”. Having a secular view provides no hindrances to the social activism found in Abrahamic religions (since you are not worrying your concern or even outrage will threaten your Nirvana). However, it is the Classical view, due to its errors about past life karma, that must diminish Buddhism by saying it can learn from the Abrahamic religions.

In short, BB appears to be ‘making it up as he goes along’. BB introduces the notion of social activism, which appears antithetical to Classical Theravada (unless one has given up on liberation in a Jataka fantasy) and then asserts the Lord Buddha, teacher of gods & men, could learn much from the Abrahamic religions.

Why why would anyone interested in enlightenment, peace & liberation entertain the ideas of the former Jeffery Block, now Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi? Life is far too short friends and no amount of merit making can bring one closer to awakening & Nirvana.

BB and the new Australian sect appear to represent the old cultural Buddhism, are a departure from the suttas and a departure from the old Ajahns Buddhadasa and Chah that rebirthed pure Buddhism. Why take these Classicals so seriously or even regard their views at all?

With metta.







John TateAugust 13, 2015 Reply




As a secular Buddhist, whose practice is based upon the teachings of Nichiren, I am thankful for Stephen’s references to the Soka Gakkai and his discussion on how they fit into the Classical/Secular dichotomy of the venerable Bhikkhu Bodhi. Although the Soka Gakkai laity has been instrumental in reducing the role of ancient Buddhist rituals and has taken over many of the functions (for better or worse) traditionally associated with the clergy, key elements of the classical Buddhist teachings, like rebirth, remain.

To address this issue and other issues related to secularization of the teachings, the below-linked Silent Prayers have been developed. Although these prayers are written for the immediate adaptation of Nichiren Shoshu believers who are transitioning from a literalist view, I believe they are also suitable for anyone who recites the Second and Sixteenth Chapters of the Lotus Sutra before a well-kept alter with a Gohonzon.

In closing, if I may please mention, one thing I believe that is omitted from this “Great Divide” discussion is a definition for Buddhist enlightenment that reflects the Buddha’s ultimate attainment, while not relying on the principle of rebirth and other forms of supernaturalism. Based on the Lotus Sutra and the writings of Nichiren Daishonin, my current working suggestion for this is:

“The manifestation of an eternally compassionate aspect of life that resides at every moment in the realm of the potential.”

I was hoping that this definition, or something close to it, might not only be consistent with your organization’s preferred scriptural origins, but also serve as a rational description for the fundamental purpose of most other religious beliefs.

My e-mail address is jrtate1947@gmail.com and the link to the Silent Prayers is https://sites.google.com/site/buddhistrealism/home/silent-prayers