ISSN 1076-9005
Journal of Buddhist Ethics 7 (2000)

New Voices in Engaged Buddhist Studies

By Kenneth Kraft

© 2000 Kenneth Kraft
Reprinted from Engaged Buddhism in the West with permission of
Wisdom Publications, 199 Elm Street., Somerville, MA, 02144 U.S.A.,

An American Buddhist magazine recently ran the following classified ad:

The Greyston Mandala, an innovative Buddhist-inspired community development organization in Yonkers, New York, is creating a new position of Director of PathMaker Services. With 120 employees, Greyston serves economically disenfranchised families and individuals through housing development, enterprise creation, jobs….
Masters degree preferred, with professional experience in human resource/organizational development, counseling, popular education, engaged Buddhism or other socially engaged spiritual tradition, or related field. Excellent salary and benefits…(1)

Professional experience in engaged Buddhism as a job qualification? The placement of “engaged Buddhism,” “masters degree,” and “salary and benefits” in such close conjunction is surely a first, and may indeed have caught the eye of an unusual group of job-seekers.

The Greyston ad is also an auspice of an emerging field: engaged Buddhist studies. Other evidence abounds. In 1995 the Naropa Institute of Boulder, Colorado, “a fully accredited Buddhist university,” introduced a program leading to a masters degree in engaged Buddhism. Judith Simmer-Brown accordingly refers to a colleague as “engaged Buddhism faculty at the Naropa Institute.”* The Boston Research Center for the 21st Century, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has pioneered an engaged Buddhist research center based outside academia. Created in 1994 by Soka Gakkai International and administered in a nonsectarian spirit, the Center supports an ambitious roster of activities and publications.
*Citations without annotation are from this book.

In 1996 Harvard University's Center for the Study of World Religions hosted a major conference on Buddhism and ecology. Over a dozen recent books qualify as initiatives in engaged Buddhist studies.(2) Three very different journals, the Journal of Buddhist Ethics, Seeds of Peace, and Turning Wheel, are extending the conversation.(3) A first-of-its-kind electronic conference on engaged Buddhism, featuring peer-reviewed papers and free public access, will take place in the spring of 2000, coordinated by the Journal of Buddhist Ethics.

This volume builds on these developments and advances the field. The contributors have backgrounds in academia, Buddhist practice, political activism, the environmental movement, and international relief work, often in combination. Because this is the first collection of essays to focus on engaged Buddhism in the West, the collaboration is unprecedented for the writers as well as for readers. In many cases, engaged Buddhist scholars and thinkers are learning about one another's work for the first time, having yet to meet in person.

Parameters of Engaged Buddhist Studies

The subject matter of engaged Buddhist studies is engaged Buddhism, but the meaning of “engaged Buddhism” is far from settled. The title of the first chapter asserts, All Buddhism Is Engaged. Paula Green declares in her essay, “Every moment of life is engagement; every moment of life is Buddhist.” Franz-Johannes Litsch goes on in this expansive mode: “Engaged Buddhism…encompasses all schools, all cultures and ethnic groups, both genders, and…the totality of life on our planet.” Although such inclusive definitions are appealing in some situations, more precise definitions are needed in others.

For example, it is important to be able to say what is not engaged Buddhism. Aum Shinrikyo, the “new-new religion” in Japan whose members released lethal sarin gas on Tokyo subways, uses Buddhist terminology and has definite ideas about changing the world for the better. There is even a photograph of the group's founder, Asahara Shoko, being greeted warmly by the Dalai Lama. Yet Aum Shinrikyo hardly qualifies as a form of engaged Buddhism. Why do we believe it does not? How would we compose an explanation?(4)