New Voices in Engaged Buddhist Studies(12)
In 1977, when few Westerners were familiar with engaged Buddhism, political scientist William Ophuls wrote:
A Buddhist philosopher works with the grain of history, respecting the actual situation: he has no grand designs, no inflexible ideologies, no particular set of institutions to peddle—only the principle of upaya, or “skillful means” that manifest wisdom in action.(58)
As engaged Buddhist thinkers continue to refine methodologies, the concept of skillful means will itself be subjected to new tests. On this, Western scholars and Buddhist practitioners agree: a good method must also be a self-reflective one.
Conclusion
The process of articulating a field is not only an avenue to understanding; it can also be a type of engagement. We are compelled to define terms, make distinctions, take stands, and accept the consequences of taking stands. It is of course possible to study Buddhist ethics from the outside, and that approach has its place. In engaged Buddhist studies, the ethical issues within the work are recognized as well. As the participants in the Sarvodaya movement have discovered, “We build the road, and the road builds us.”
The next steps may be respectably deliberate or freely experimental. Eventually the field may support networks and other forms of organization that accommodate both Sangha thinkers and academy scholars. I can imagine an Engaged Buddhist Forum or a Partnership for Research on Buddhist Engagement (which yields the acronym PROBE). Even if efforts in that direction come to naught, the underlying questions will not vary much. One of those questions is, 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.
End Notes
I am grateful to Wes Borden, Stephanie Kaza, Trudy Kraft, Donald Swearer, and William Washburn for their thoughtful comments on a draft of this essay.
- Tricycle: The Buddhist Review 8:3 (spring 1999), 117. Return to text Here is a far-from-definitive list of books published in the past decade (since 1989) that represent work in engaged Buddhist studies:
Beyond Optimism: A Buddhist Political Ecology, by Ken Jones;
Buddhism and Bioethics, by Damien Keown;
Buddhism and Ecology: The Interconnection of Dharma and Deeds, edited by Mary Evelyn Tucker and Duncan Williams;
Buddhism and Human Rights, edited by Damien Keown and others;
Buddhism after Patriarchy: A Feminist History, Analysis, and Recoconstruction of Buddhism, by Rita Gross;
Dharma Rain: Sources of Buddhist Environmentalism, edited by Stephanie Kaza and Kenneth Kraft;
Engaged Buddhism: Buddhist Liberation Movements in Asia, edited by Christopher Queen and Sallie King;
Engaged Buddhist Reader, edited by Arnold Kotler;
Entering the Realm of Reality: Towards Dhammic Societies, edited by Jonathan Watts and others;
Inner Peace, World Peace: Essays on Buddhism and Nonviolence, edited by Kenneth Kraft;
Inner Revolution: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Real Happiness, by Robert Thurman;
Luminous Passage: The Practice and Study of Buddhism in America, by Charles Prebish;
Mindfulness and Meaningful Work: Explorations in Right Livelihood, edited by Claude Whitmyer;
Mutual Causality in Buddhism and General Systems Theory: The Dharma of Natural Systems, by Joanna Macy;
Soaring and Settling: Buddhist Perspectives on Contemporary Social and Religious Issues, by Rita Gross;
The Social Face of Buddhism, by Ken Jones;
Socially Engaged Buddhism for the New Millennium, edited by Sulak Sivaraksa and others;
World as Lover, World as Self, by Joanna Macy. Return to text The scholarly Journal of Buddhist Ethics, inaugurated in 1994, is distributed online. Seeds of Peace (1985– ) is edited in