The Buddhist monastic way of life that has been carried down through history in various Asian countries contains a great deal of knowledge concerning the ways that minds and societies work. Without it, we cannot expect to have a Buddhism that stands up to the militarism of the age in which we live. (1992a: 89)

Even the possibility of the total destruction of our habitat or of “life as we know it” can be seen to be not quite as “new” or “modern” as we are continually told to believe. Although it is true that the various technologies of destruction (nuclear, chemical, mass environmental pollution and exploitation, and so forth) are truly new and unprecedented, we should not underemphasize the very real threats and realities that many premodern civilizations have endured, including the total annihilation of their “entire world” (their entire society, culture, and habitat—life as they knew it) by other means (invading hoards of armies, etc.). There is much that we still stand to learn from this rich human history. Our situation may be unique, but it is no more unique than anyone else’s in the past. Hence, if modernist engaged Buddhists are truly concerned with transforming the world in which we all live, they might do well to relax and let go of their need to appropriate, own, and reinvent Buddhism from the ground up.

What would be most productive for those of us interested in the socio-spiritual welfare of living beings (both as individuals and as societies) is greater patience, a renewed readiness to respect and dialogue with one another (including “the natives”), more sophisticated methodological approaches, and a much keener self-awareness of the reasons and the agenda motivating our many enterprises.

Notes

Cf. Kraft, 1992: 18; Queen, 1996: 34, note 6; and Prebish, 1998: 273. Return to text
Of course, the very term “tradition” (or “the Buddhist tradition”) itself emphasizes continuity with the past. Return to text
Modernists are often vague about the exact timeframe for their espoused “modern-ness.” When they do specify it, they generally refer to “the past one hundred years or so” (Queen, 2000: 30, note 34; and Robert Aitken, The Mind of Clover, 1984: 164, cited in Queen, 2000: 17). Queen offers the most specific dates when he suggests that engaged Buddhism emerged after 1880 or 1881 (1996: 20), or even only after the 1940s (1996: 18-19). Return to text
Note that I will be using the terms “traditionist” and “modernist” to designate only the views just described. These terms of course carry other connotations, none of which are to be inferred herein. I will thus be employing these somewhat awkward, inadequate labels only for lack of a better set of terms. Return to text
As I will mention shortly, this mutual myopia has been rectified somewhat since 1997, as demonstrated, for example, by some of the essays in Queen (2000). Earlier exceptions to this observation would include Jones (1988) and some of the authors in Queen (1996). Return to text
Here Kraft is citing a comment that Nhat Hanh made in BPF Newsletter 11:2 (Summer, 1989), 22. Return to text
It is worth noting that in his introduction to this anthology (p. 7), modernist editor Christopher Queen refers to this title as “provocative.” Return to text
Here the authors are citing Nhat Hanh’s own words in Love in Action: Writings on Nonviolent Social Change (Berkeley: Parallax Press, 1993). Return to text
It should be noted that Glassman himself does not just “practice in the cave” to “realize the Way” and so forth. As Queen’s interview essay reveals, Glassman is quite “active” and directly “engaged” in many social arenas. And as Queen himself notes in his introduction to the anthology, “Service-based engaged Buddhism is my term for the results-oriented practice of teachers like Bernie Glassman and many of the Buddhist environmentalists, prison chaplains, and peace activists profiled in this book” (2000: 10). However, it can also be noted that when Glassman is asked, “Can a meditator on a retreat in a cave be an engaged Buddhist,” Queen (the quintessential modernist) states that he is “confounded” by Glassman’s affirmative answer (2000: 10). Queen concludes (we can surmise that he finds this paradoxical), “With Glassman Roshi, the continuum from mindfulness-based to service-based engaged Buddhism becomes a full circle” (2000: 11). Return to text
H. H. The Dalai Lama XIV and Thich Nhat Hanh are perhaps the most well-known examples. Return to text
The Sarvodaya Shramadana Sangamaya movement was begun by A. T. Ariyaratne in Sri Lanka in 1958. For more on this “engaged” movement, cf. Macy, 1988: 174 ff., and the essay by George D. Bond entitled “A. T. Ariyaratne and the Sarvodaya Shramadana Movement in Sri Lanka” (chapter four in Queen 1996). Return to text