This is not a popular piece of advice, even amongst Buddhists. There are strong factions within the Buddhist Community who see political striving for peace and justice to be a Buddhist pillar. I think the label that's been used is Engaged Buddhism. That we develop some Buddhist principles, and then we apply them to the world, as if the world is a person. So we have metta towards the world. We have metta towards the struggles of an underclass or oppressed class.
As I've touched on in other posts, link1 link2 link3, this could be beneficial. If it is helpful in us understanding our blind spots, we should go for it. There's nothing wrong with generosity, and nothing wrong with some a kinship to help homeless people or the environment; it is helpful to the world. But is it helpful for the mind? Or is it hallucinating, bordering on increasing inflexibility and tension.
To be specific, it is most dramatically and obviously helpful if someone who has been disgusted by homeless people, learns about homeless people and then changes their mind. And in whatever way, which could be just donating to a food pantry, or direct advocacy and relief work, that person loosens the previous yuck instinct.
For environmentalism, it is helpful when someone doesn't care about the environment at all and doesn't see the impact of their actions. In some way, this is someone who is very consumerist oriented and very selfish. But then they realize how much their use of fossil fuels or land development is causing damage to the world and its environment. Maybe it's a local issue where there's an animal sanctuary that developers want to tear down so they can build more housing and shopping. And this person becomes inspired to think beyond their own benefits, and to look at the broader benefits.
But the environmental story can get dogmatic and become an unhelpful one. We can become a stereotypical Eco crusader, who sees things in stark black and white. You're either with us or against us. There is a moral imperative to save the whales. And if you are hurting the whales, I have some justification to hurt you.
When things get political, it gets very easy to think in terms of right and wrong. Even if we move towards a more nuanced approach, where there are better choices and worst choices. The key mistaken thought construct is that we assign some universality to the ranking of choices. Keeping a park is always better than building a shopping plaza. And furthermore, the rationalization where we amplify and spin the benefits of a park versus the detriment of a shopping plaza. Essentially assigning an affect of yuck to the shopping plaza, and glorifying the benefits of the park. In a Buddhist approach, there is deep listening in deep seeing in deep observation. We can see the myriad benefits of the shopping plaza, and the myriad problems. We can also see the myriad benefits of the park and it's myriad problems. And furthermore we can look at our own brain's functioning of how it wants to glorify or simplify or what not around each. Essentially the stories we tell ourselves. And the stories we have deeply ingrained that give us our perspective. So for me, when things get political, it's very helpful for me to start applying analysis of qualities, and to start looking at the features that I'm not that used to seeing. Especially how I am seeing. And also looking at how my brain has impulses towards right and wrong, towards making good choices.
And this is further complexifies (moving away from black and white) because there might actually be a better choice. Buddhism isn't there to say that there are worse and better choices, full stop, universal, follow the dogma. Where there is a choice that leads to less harm to others, that leaves less harm to myself, and one that promotes this idea of there being enough, I have enough and I don't need things to be exactly the way I want them... that can be beneficial. And having a sense of care, even if there is some harm to some groups, to acknowledge the harm to those groups, and to acknowledge and include them in a process of figuring out how to mitigate those harms. That can be beneficial.
And one shouldn't be surprised if the people who want the harm mitigated are never satisfied. Or the people who want to deny the harms don't want to include the other side. If politics is done in an observational way (like Alien visitors, trying to figure out how things work), that can be okay. Better than the black-white version of political spin. But even that is potentially distracting from internal assurance and refuge, which is the goal of a Buddhist trying to reach nirvana.
The Buddha himself faced this issue in a dramatic way. His cousin tried to kill him. There were other religious groups at the time who said that harming any other creature was very very bad, and one needed to make every effort to avoid killing other creatures. The example I hear given most is the Jains. They sweep the floor in front of them so that they don't kill any insects. The Buddha didn't reject this, but he didn't embrace it. He put a lot of weights on the idea of intention. That it isn't just the results or output, but it is the input and the thinking process that leads one towards a decision. So, if one takes the right path but for the wrong reasons, it won't be helpful to one's own mind. And if one takes the wrong path for the right reasons, it will be helpful to one's own mind. Especially since when one realizes the mistake, they very easily shift the path.
In the Buddha's situation, it was Devadatta and his intentions of usurping control of the Sangha. D had an approach to creating a schism based on vegetarianism. He criticized the Buddha for eating meats. And he said that the monk should adopt the rule to be vegetarians. This is an interesting story even for today's age. The Buddha didn't disregard this idea. He said it could be beneficial and a monk could choose to be vegetarian and to refuse to eat meat, but he said that monks could maintain meat eating if they wanted to. It was, in a sense, a part of the training. In fact, the Vinaya, it talks about food a lot. The monks have to live based on alms and beggings. And they take what they can get. This approach allows or forces them to develop flexibility about what they eat. See and eat what's given. There is a modern phrase for little kids: we get what we get and we don't get upset. Or we get what we get and we don't throw a fit. I think there's a lot of wisdom to this rule about alms food, it shows that the Buddha took care in these rules. One has to remember that some villagers might have more meat, and want to share that meat. Or some villagers might want to give an extravagant gift, and they might extremely value their meat, so the act of sharing their meat is actually an expression of their generosity and their opening to the dhamma. On the monk side, there are good mental and verbal fabrications around the idea that even vegetarian food is not without cost. It doesn't cost an animal's direct life. But there are all the insects that go into the growing of the food. The weeding of certain plants. The eating of fruits means depriving the seeds of being able to become potential new plants. Not to mention the labors of the farmers who have to work in toil to produce those foods. So these are perspectives where we can start seeing that all food is (in the worldly sense) tainted with death and exploitation and oppression. It isn't all sunshine and rainbows.
I'm not sure if this was in the Buddha's mind when he faced Devadatta. But what is recorded is that the Buddha said I will not make that a rule of forced vegetarianism. And there was a schism. Devadatta was able to persuade several hundred monks to come with him with this stricter discipline. Apparently there was a one-upsmanship in the Buddhist time about who could be more sacrificing and more pious by being more poor. There were austerities around starving or restrictive in food that were praised, and to be fair they had positive effects for many, but it was not a complete path like many people talked about.
And that's just the thing about politics and Buddhism, or environmentalism or engaged Buddhism or vegetarianism. It can be part of the path but it's not the complete path. And the biggest danger for someone further along in the path is what an Engaged Buddhism leaves out. And it leaves out a lot of the analysis of qualities especially around samsara and dispassion and the insufficiency of the world. The world meaning the outside world. It is a slave to craving; it is insufficient insatiable. Uno loco atitto tanha daso. Craving, a slave to it. That is the danger of identifying with worldly outcomes. Remember, everybody dies, ages, gets sick. Separation is normal, unavoidable.
So don't identify with the politics without seeing that there is a slaving to craving that one accepts when one dabbles too much in politics. It comes a bit back to that book of Dhamma questions (I think of Buddhadasa), the five ways to approach all things. To see it's components to see it's origination to see the allure and the danger. And finally to have the skillful view of it to be able to use it without being used by it. And the using it is using it for one's own mental development, not to use it for accumulation of wealth or status.
So I am thankful to our Ajahn Geoff and Ajahn Dick Silarantano. Because their discussion of politics and activism has really re-centered and reframed what I thought were black and white universals. And I feel more squarely on the path.
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