Tags
21st century, Disengaged Buddhism, Donald Trump, Mohandas K. Gandhi, Pali suttas, Siddhattha Gotama (Buddha), United States
Early in the first Trump administration, I preached the importance of disengaged Buddhists’ lessons: to refrain from anger, to remind ourselves that some things are more important than politics. I think that that was easier to do the first time round. For in the end, the main thing that distinguished the Trump administration from previous Republican administrations – until the various self-coup attempts at the end of his reign – was its hostile rhetoric. On policy, on running the government, Trump 1.0 was not all that different from a standard garden-variety Republican: the only major controversial piece of legislation he passed was to borrow money and hand it to the rich, just as Reagan and George W. Bush had done before him. Some of the policies that drew the biggest outrage – like putting children in cages – turned out to be the work of previous administrations, including Obama. While Trump’s bark did make the United States a more hostile place for everyone, it nevertheless remained far worse than his bite. That made it a lot easier to preach taking a chill pill.
I don’t think any of that is true this time around. After the election, my hope had been for a second Trump term mostly like the first, probably a little worse. But nothing of the sort has happened. As far as I can tell, Trump has done far more damage in the first month of his second term than he did in three and a half years of his first. The actions of Trump, and his unelected viceroy Elon Musk, have already killed thousands of African recipients denied aid, and wreaked havoc on the world from Ukraine through Canada to here in metropolitan Boston, where nearly everyone I know has had their job redefined – if not lost – as a result of cuts and freezes to science funding.
Meanwhile, the rule of right-wing authoritarian governments is tightening around the rest of the globe. They’ve already got an iron grip on India – the world’s largest electoral democracy – and on Hungary and Turkey; they’re in charge in Italy; and it may be only a matter of time before they take over in France and the UK and Germany as well.
Back in 2017, I still read the rise of right-wing authoritarians as teething pains on the way to a more just socialist world: working-class people were reacting against their genuine immiseration, lashing out however they could. With Jeremy Corbyn in charge of the Labour Party and Bernie Sanders having come close to the Democratic Party nomination, it seemed to me like this lashing out would soon give way to genuine hope – to people actually fixing the economic misery that Trump capitalized on, inflicted by decades of Reagan-Thatcher corporate rule. But now Sanders’s moment has passed, Corbyn’s leadership is long gone, and while Biden passed more economically progressive legislation than any other president of my lifetime, it didn’t do him (or Kamala Harris) much good. In the recent German election the Left party had an unexpected resurgence – but as far as I can tell, what motivated the resurgence was just a passionate speech against including the right-wing authoritarian party in the government. The Left inspired people to stop the bleeding, but not to have any positive vision for making things better.
Instead the narrative now feels all too depressingly continuous with that of the rest of my lifetime: right-wingers like Reagan step in to make things worse and (supposed) left-wingers like Clinton don’t reverse it; then right-wingers like George W. Bush step in to make them worse still and left-wingers like Obama don’t reverse that; now the new crop of Trumpian right-wingers step in to make them even worse yet. It’s one more step in a continuous long-term pattern where everything gets worse and nothing gets better. The left had its glory days to make government better in the New Deal through the 1960s – not coincidentally a time of unprecedented opportunity for everyone – but that’s not a time I have ever known or ever will know. In 2019 I had offered a range of possibilities about what the world of the 2020s would look like – “A steady global move to soft fascism? A 180-degree reaction moving to global socialism? A repudiation of the current mood that takes us in relief back to the warm seas of the Obama years? A devastating series of global wars?” – and the one that came closest to true were the bad ones, of soft fascism and war. Hope feels very distant – even the hope of getting back to the warm seas of 2012, let alone of any positive social change.
It’s still not clear what we can actually do about any of this. In the US of course we can vote the Republicans out in four years, but there’s so much damage that can be done in the meantime. We’re likely to remove the House of Representatives majority in 2018 – but that just stops Trump from passing legislation, and so far he’s tried to do all this by executive order and not legislation. Mostly we can give money to lawyers fighting Trump’s illegal actions in court – but even those depend on a relatively Trump-friendly Supreme Court. What we can do is not nothing – but it feels like very little. We are mostly powerless. The “mostly” matters a great deal – but the “powerless” matters at least as much.
And all this is where the Disengaged Buddhists’ advice is wise: especially the Cakkavatti Sīhanāda Sutta (“Lion’s Roar of the Wheel-Turning King”). This Pali text is often cited to advocate politically engaged Buddhism, because people quote one short sentence – about the king not providing to the poor – out of context, ignoring the rest of the text. But in my Disengaged Buddhism article I showed how the sutta’s message is quite the opposite: it is there to induce a sense of detachment from politics and temporal goods. And that is vitally important because I think it provides us with great lessons in dark times.
The Cakkavatti’s story, above all, is one of decline. Long ago, the Buddha tells us, a kingdom had a golden age where lifespans were eighty thousand years. But the kingdom got poorer and criminal violence ensued; people’s actions got worse, their lives got worse, and lifespans got shorter and shorter, until we reach the present where lifespans are just a hundred years. But that’s not the worst of it: in the (relatively) near future it’s going to be so bad that they live for only ten. In that dystopian future time, hatred will tear families apart, they will even murder each other; even food with tasty flavours will disappear. Yet amid those disastrous conditions, one desperate group will come together and say “let us now do good”, and agree to restrain from killing. Then lifespans will start going back up and lives will start getting better.
The Buddha tells this story as a way of delivering the opening and closing message: “be islands unto yourselves, be a refuge unto yourselves, with no other refuge…” Steven Collins points out that it is intended to cultivate “a sense of detachment from, or at least a (briefly) non- involved perspective on the passage of time.” Time is cyclical and it’s getting worse – but amid terrible material conditions, we can still decide to be better, we can be light in the darkness.
The Cakkavatti, it seems to me, is tremendously inspiring in times like these. It reminds us to avoid the kind of hope I had dashed in the late 2010s, that a better world was around the corner. It warns us that things will get worse before they get better – and that the getting better may well not be in our lifetimes. Yet it also reminds us that material well-being is not necessary for moral improvement. The pessimistic slogan that comes out of it is “things will get worse before they get better”. The optimistic slogan, though, is “things will get worse but I can be better”. We can be the change we want to see in the world (a phrase which Gandhi probably never said in those words, but he expressed very similar ideas). That doesn’t mean the world will actually change with us – though it might. But even if it doesn’t, we can still know that we were light in the darkness, we did not make the violence worse, we were kind, generous, gentle. We can let our own lights sustain us through dark times.
The 14th Century Chinese novel The Romance of the Three Kingdoms begins with “”The empire, long divided, must unite; long united, must divide. Thus it has ever been.” The Chinese have a better sense of “deep time” then we do. Yes, we live in samsara—the world is never a just place, and history is just one damn thing after another—so the Buddha’s parting advice to be lamps to ourselves and recognize all things are impermanent is good advice. The Zen masters of old lived through the upheavals of the Tang Dynasty, the Five Dynasties and the Ten Kingdoms, and the Song Dynasty—through waves of persecutions and rebellions—and they did their practice through good times and bad. And yet–as human beings we are members of families, communities, and socieities to which we do have obligations to do the little we can to improve the lives of those around us. In that spirit, I am a more engaged Buddhist than you are. I have been busy helping organize a Buddhist Coalition for Democracy, and I am ending this comment with the wording of our Call to Action in its present (evolving) form:
A Buddhist Coalition for Democracy: A Call to Action
Since Donald Trump assumed office as the 47th President of the United States we have witnessed what amounts to a coup against democracy and the systematic destruction of norms and institutions that allow free societies to flourish.
We have witnessed the firings of institutional watchdogs and the appointments of political extremists.
We have witnessed the politicization of the Justice Department, the willful defiance of court orders, and attempts to muzzle the free press.
We have witnessed diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts outlawed and the freezing of monies allotted for scientific research.
We have witnessed old allies abandoned and new alliances forged with dictators.
We have seen foreign aid suspended and the nation’s healthcare infrastructure and social safety net endangered.
We have witnessed the deportation of legal residents without due process, threats to detain immigrants in concentration camps, and the targeting of the trans community.
We are witnessing the emergence of a mafia-style kleptocracy run by oligarchs, for oligarchs, and aligned with oligarchs around the world.
We are the Buddhist Coalition for Democracy, a newly formed alliance of Buddhist sanghas and individuals representing multiple traditions and lineages as well as individuals with similar views and values. We feel called upon to respond collectively to the ongoing destruction of democratic principles, institutions, and norms, the rule of law, and to the cruel persecution of demonized vulnerable groups. As Buddhists, we are called to witness the suffering of the world and to mindfully, wisely, and compassionately respond to it. We represent a broad coalition of members with different political philosophies—radical, progressive, liberal, centrist, and conservative—who share a common love for the democratic process and ideal and wish to see them survive.
Basic Principles:
1) We believe in the structures, norms, and laws that enable free societies to flourish: free and fair elections; the separation of powers; a free press; freedom of speech, religion, and association; the rule of law; an impartial justice system; and a military committed to preserving and protecting the Constitution.
2) We believe no one should be discriminated against or subjected to cruelty on the basis of ethnicity, race, religion, country of origin, political beliefs, age, gender, or sexual orientation.
3) We affirm the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which afford dignity and basic rights to every individual.
4) We believe everyone should have access to the necessities of food, shelter, clothing, a living wage, a decent education, and quality health care.
5) We believe government officials should speak truthfully and transparently, avoid conflicts of interest, and not govern to enrich a selected few.
6) We believe that society flourishes best when free inquiry and creativity are promoted and supported in medicine, science, the social sciences, the humanities, and the arts.
7) We believe human flourishing is imperiled by climate change and that governments have a responsibility to limit greenhouse gas emissions.
Resolutions:
Given the above principles, we resolve to:
1) Bear witness to suffering.
2) Compassionately support victims of mistreatment.
3) Partner with civic, religious, political, and legal organizations seeking to preserve democracy and the rule of law.
4) Support and encourage political officials and community leaders to resist attacks on the rule of law and democratic governance.
5) Educate about how autocracy, oligarchy, and kleptocracy adversely affect our daily lives.
6) Resist and refuse to collaborate with those causing harm.
7) Embody and maintain right speech, non-violence, and loving hearts in pursuit of our goals.
8) Practice an ethics of care, asking of ourselves and others: “What is needed? How can we help?”
We call on Buddhist sanghas and individuals to join us in this essential endeavor to preserve democracy and protect the vulnerable. We ask that you join us in developing strategies and actions to respond for the benefit of all sentient beings.
Here are two specific actions to consider:
1) Provide your contact information so that we can keep you informed. Email us at: buddhistcoalitionfordemocracy@gmail.com.
2) Become a signatory to this Call to Action by sending your name and other identifying information (e.g. title, affiliation) to: buddhistcoalitionfordemocracy@gmail.com
Thanks, Seth. I’ve signed up for the mailing list – I am interested to see what they do.
I’m reminded of my comment on the earlier post “The psychological case for disengaged Buddhism” (2018), where I said that the relevant psychological advice is simply Buddhist, regardless of how engaged one is, which depends to a large degree on one’s life circumstances (e.g., one might choose a job that requires more engagement). So, most broadly conceived, the subject here is “practicing Buddhism in the second era of Trump”. As I commented on the earlier post:
In further discussion there, we agreed that political and social engagement in tune with Buddhist ideals can be difficult to do. Perhaps it’s best for people of a certain character and certain life circumstances. People need to know why being relatively “disengaged” is a reasonable path, even while there is a sense in which, to quote the title of an article on Thich Nhat Hanh and the Order of Interbeing, “all Buddhism is engaged”.
My thinking about this subject was influenced by David Budbill’s article “The hermit and the activist” (Shambhala Sun, January 1999), which emphasized how engagement and disengagement can be complementary across and between people’s lives. Budbill wrote:
When I look at disengagement and engagement as Budbill does, I can see the nonseparation between Amod’s and Seth’s positions expressed above.
Even in this post, I make a suggestion about the small actions we can engage in to help stop all of this, and I think that’s a good thing to do. I think many classical Buddhist texts (likely including the Cakkavatti) do implicitly or expilcitly discourage political action, and I wrote the article because I think their perspective is important and valuable. That said, I do think there’s a value to activism as well, and I see the perspective I take above as meeting them halfway. So overall, I basically agree with you – especially on the point that it’s best suited for different character and life circumstances.
Speaking of Engaged Buddhism–have you by any chance read Martin Southwold’s “Buddhism in Life”? It’s a fascinating but strangely polemical sociological account of contemporary Sinhalese Buddhism–one which takes constant aim at those he calls Buddhist Modernists, and in particular at the idea that meditation is essential to Buddhism.
But what strikes me about his narrative is how he sometimes seems to be portraying a struggle between two rival *kinds* of Buddhist modernism–the Engaged kind and the meditation-centric kind.
E.g., he met a monk who, among other good deeds, admirably fought against caste prejudice in his village–and who was full of contempt for the meditating monks who selfishly withdrew from the world to pursue their own enlightenment.
Interestingly, he says that meditation-centric Buddhists tended to believe that nirvana was realistically attainable in the current age, whereas the activist Buddhists insisted that it was impossible to gain for eons, or until the coming of Maitreya–as well as enunciating a quasi-Mahayana view that it was selfish to seek one’s own enlightenment while others were suffering. https://archive.org/details/budhisminlife0000unse/page/98/mode/2up?q=hodge&view=theater
What makes the author interestingly different from most Engaged Buddhists is that he doesn’t claim that the historical Buddha taught it–he skeptically says that it’s impossible to know what the historical Buddha taught about anything. And he doesn’t claim that the Buddhist scriptures teach it–he agrees that the Pali Canon is quite pro-renunciation.
But he argues that the living tradition of what one might call actually-existing pre-modern Buddhism *does* valorize this-worldly social and political engagement, from Ashoka’s inscriptions onward.
You’ve agreed with this to some extent–but IIRC argued that Engaged Buddhists who take this line need to acknowledge the dark side of historic ‘actually existing Buddhist’ activism, like violence.
Interesting. No, I hadn’t read it, but that does make sense: while political engagement and meditation have both become more prevalent because of modernist reforms, there’s no necessary connection between the two. (In the Disengaged article I quote Stephen Batchelor – I think – who notes how many people have asked “Isn’t it selfish to go on all these meditation retreats?” and describes Engaged Buddhism as a response to that objection.)
And yes, you’re correct: the premodern South Asian text I know of that most clearly and obviously endorses politics is the Mahāvaṃsa – which is a text cited by Sri Lankans massacring Tamils, since it endorses a war against the “Ḍamilas” and minimizes the slaughter of unbelievers as something not particularly bad. There are at least two big problems with Engaged Buddhists’ reading of the tradition: 1) they ignore the very common disengaged Buddhist critique of politics; and 2) they assume that “political engagement” must mean “the kind of political engagement we support”.
I’ll have to check out what Stephen Batchelor says!
I apologize for this unrelated question:
Many Indian Mahayana sutras—e.g., the Nirvana Sutra and the Srimaladevi Sutra—seem to teach doctrines of what amounts of to a substantially-existing eternal atman (the Buddha-nature) and a substantially-existing eternal Brahman (the Dharmakaya).
In East Asia, it seems like this became the standard Buddhist view. In Tibet, this “shentong” position was accepted by the Nyingma and Kagyu schools.
But it seems like these ‘Vedanta-sounding’ scriptural texts were never taken literally by anyone in the Indian Buddhist philosophical tradition, even Yogacarins. Or am I wrong here?
The ‘rangtong’ interpretation of these sutras is that they were using ‘Hindu’ ideas as a skillful means to win over people for whom Buddhist doctrines would seem off-puttingly nihilistic. I would dismiss this as an implausible attempt to deny the presence of real contradictions in the canon—but the odd fact that *no* Indian Buddhist philosophers (who certainly disagreed with one another about plenty!) seems to have taken the texts at face value makes me think that their original authors may not have done so either.
Morgan, I’m not not by any means an expert here, but the Wikipedia entry on Buddha-nature is not a bad place to start, and the 5th Century Ratnagotravibhāga shastra may be another place to start.
OK. I may have missed a lot, over the last thirty years. I did not seriously consider learning more of philosophy until the last twenty years or so, when I read people including Sellars; Ryle; James; Dewey; Rorty; Dennett; Wilber and Murdoch. There were more, and, I learned something from each and every one. Your frustration and disappointment is palpable and I agree with much of your reasoning. But, for me, rhetoric is pointless, if it generates no action—and cannot. Terms like *soft fascism* are unhelpful, and, *socialism*, and *socialist* are perjoritative, when hurled at neighbors (ie,Canada) who are doing well with their system, and by their citizens. Doing something requires having avenues to get to that action.(Please excuse my ignorance, but, I have always considered Buddhism disengaged.) Currently, the Republicans, under leadership(?) by an incurable narcissist and hubricist, are marching a garden path to autocracy. Or, Oligarchy. I think Mr. Trump is enamored with Putin’s power, and wants nothing less for himself and the USA. What do YOU think?