There’s a lot brewing around resistance to the Keystone XL Pipeline. In the last post here on TJC, Zen priest Shodo Spring wrote about her vision and plan to organize a “Compassionate Earth Walk” along the route of the proposed pipeline.

The Buddhist Peace Fellowship has organized an awesome phone conference tomorrow (Sunday), April 28, at 5 pm PST to give dharma activists a chance to learn about ways to engage with this issue at a direct level. BPF directors Katie Loncke and Dawn Haney ask:

What will be the role of Buddhists in this struggle?  What can we do to take direct action in defense of the earth, and in deep solidarity with those most impacted by the threat of the pipeline?  As Diné native organizer Firewolf Bizahaloni-Wong puts it, what’s needed are not only allies, but “accomplices.”

 

Shodo Spring will be on the call, as well as Diana Pei Wu and Jack Downey of The Ruckus Society (an organization of trainers in nonviolent direct action). Find out more about the call and watch a video with Katie and Dawn here.

HOW TO JOIN THE CALL

If you’re already a BPF member, you should have received an email message with call details. If you’re not a member but want to join so that you can access this call, visit this page. Members who can’t make the live call will receive a recording, and through BPF there will be opportunities to network with people in your area to continue the conversation and make plans.

This article was contributed by Shodo Spring, a Soto Zen priest who has organized the Compassionate Earth Walk, which will take place from July to September of this year. The walk will trace the Keystone XL route through the Great Plains. 

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A monk asked Yun Men, “What are the teachings of a whole lifetime?”
Yun Men said, “An appropriate response.”

For as long as I’ve been aware of climate change, I’ve been asking the question about an appropriate response. As far as I can tell, our culture is in the process of destroying itself, taking everyone else with it. When I learned permaculture, I realized that the problem was not technical – we already have the methods to sequester carbon, grow foods without fossil fuels, and generally live well by acting like the part of the planet that we are. The problem was spiritual. I am a Zen priest: that problem is my business. Still I did not know what to do. I signed petitions, learned to grow food, was active in my local Transition group, and got involved in local politics. When time allowed, I went to Washington and got arrested in front of the White House with 350.org – over the Keystone pipeline. Nothing was enough.

During the last part of my formal training, I sat two training periods at Tassajara. About a week into the first one, I started having visions of walking along the pipeline.  The visions persisted and elaborated; I asked myself; I consulted with teachers and friends. Finally I accepted the assignment. I found its name – Compassionate Earth Walk – and its meaning – to accept the support of all beings, to rejoin the family of life.  All that is the origin of what now belongs to many people.

This is the official statement:

The Compassionate Earth Walk traces the Keystone XL route through the Great Plains. The ancient practice of pilgrimage responds to present and future environmental catastrophe, focusing on its causes in our own culture. We walk as a blessing to the earth and to those we meet, and as a prayer for all earth’s children.

We walk in the context of a great movement of resistance against the pipeline, the tar sands, the many poisonings of our world. Indigenous people are leading in blockades and movements – the Unist’ot’en in British Columbia, the Anishinaabeg  in Minnesota, Idle No More, Owe Aku of the Lakota, a thousand others around the world. Some of the colonizers are also beginning to recognize how we too are colonized, and to resist. This walk is a part of that movement, and it goes a paradoxical way.  It does not directly protest or attempt to stop the pipeline or the tar sands.

This walk is zazen. In the same way that we meet ourselves on the cushion, here we meet our collective selves while putting one foot after another on the ground. As we face our own thoughts and emotions, here we face that great injury in the earth, that expression of the break in our collective human spirit. As well as we can, we to meet it without turning away.

As in zazen, we walk in the middle of all beings, receiving life from them, offering life to them, allowing the whole to heal itself. We throw ourselves upon the mercy of the universe. We give up attempts to control even our fellow human beings. (We attempt to give up our attempts to control. If you have a sitting practice, you know what I mean.)

The walk is also a ceremony of gratitude to the earth, which has never abandoned us, and an expression of our love for all earth’s creatures including human. Someone said, “When you sit, you call upon Avalokiteshvara.” Thus the walk is also a prayer. And, although this is a Buddhist description of what we are doing, people of all faiths or none will be coming with us.

On July 1 we will gather in northern Alberta, in a beautiful place near the tar sands themselves.  We’ll spend a few days making ourselves ready on both spiritual and practical levels. July 5 and 6 we join the Fourth Annual Healing Walk at the tar sands site. This walk is organized by local First Nations women, with allies coming from around North America and beyond.  Walking and supporting them, we also open ourselves to the experience of the devastation that is the tar sands.

Then we walk south along the pipeline route, with meditation, ceremony, and community, continuing the healing process and sharing with those we meet.

The earth has not turned away from us; we have turned away from the earth. We live in a culture built on illusion, dedicated to being the hungry ghost – always wanting, never satisfied – imagining that material possessions can satisfy the hunger caused by our rejection of the kindness of the earth, willing to kill for that hunger – willing to sacrifice even our own children, along with millions of children we have not met. Or we pretend that it’s not our responsibility, that we are too small to make a difference, that someone else will take care of it.

Finally, for me this walk is a response to seeing faces of my small grandchildren – each unknowingly consuming enough for a hundred people to live on in a sane culture – and our betrayal of their innocence. It is eight years since I turned away from that betrayal; since then I have taken two long walks and gotten arrested for the first time. It is 18 months since the vision came of this, my own appropriate response. Finally, I join those who put saving beings first instead of last in my own life priorities.

If this vision calls to you, please consider joining us as a walker, or as a supporter offering skills, money, hospitality…. You are also invited to hold us in your hearts, to sit with us every morning wherever you are, to place the Walk and our intention on your altar, to remember us in services, and to share information as widely as possible.

Find out more about the walk at:  www.CompassionateEarthWalk.org

Ouyporn Khuankaew, co-founder of IWP

Ouyporn Khuankaew and Ginger Norwood are two Buddhist feminist activists based in Thailand who co-founded the International Women’s Partnership for Peace and Justice (IWP) in 2002. Through IWP, Ouyporn and Ginger and a wonderful team of other activists offer workshops on anti-oppression feminism, collective leadership, gender and diversity, nonviolent direct action, and peacebuilding.

In the winter of 2011, I was honored to spend some time at IWP (located north of Chiang Mai), and have a deep appreciation for the work that Ouyporn and Ginger are doing to support activists from all over Asia. Just a few weeks ago, Ginger graduated from Upaya’s Buddhist Chaplaincy Training Program here in Santa Fe, so our connections with each other literally span the globe.

This summer, IWP is launching a new training program called BEST — the Buddhist Education for Social Transformation Project. BEST is an innovative yearlong certificated course focused on transformation of individuals, communities, the environment, and the world. The program is open to anyone seeking a Buddhist perspective in his or her approach to personal development, social justice and social change work.

I’m very excited to share this news with you for two reasons.

> First — If you are an activist based in Asia or if you know someone who is, the BEST training is now open for applications. The course is open to people of all identities, welcoming of all genders and sexual identities, spiritual/faith traditions and beliefs, ages, ethnicities, education levels, professions, etc. First priority will be given to activists living and working in the Asian region. The deadline for applying is May 1, and you can find the application material on this page. 

> Second — I’m very excited that Ouyporn and Ginger have invited me to teach at BEST during the opening session this July. BEST has limited funding which is prioritized for supporting program participants. I don’t have enough resources to make this trip on my own, so I am asking for help to cover transportation to Thailand so that I may support this great program and teach a workshop on “The Mandala of Socially Engaged Buddhism.”

You can find out more on my fundraising page here: http://igg.me/p/221329/x/510470

I would be deeply grateful for any support you can offer, and my biggest thanks to those of you who have already made a contribution to this travel fund! And thank you also for helping to spread the word about BEST to others who may be interested.

palms together,

Maia

The big headline of the past couple of days has been the U.S. Supreme Court’s hearing on the issue of same-sex marriage. There have been some excellent commentaries from Buddhist bloggers on the matter as well, including this one from Justin Whitaker at American Buddhist Perspective and this one from Kenji Liu on the Buddhist Peace Fellowship website.

But one piece of writing on this topic from a Buddhist teacher that isn’t so easy to find comes from the late Robert Aitken Roshi. Way back in 1995, he offered a Zen Buddhist perspective on the matter and came down clearly on the side of equality and justice.

One of the few places I’ve seen the document online is on the Queer Resources Directory: http://www.qrd.org/qrd/religion/zen.buddhist.perspective.on.same.sex.marriage

I’m re-posting the document here. As I read it, I am reminded once again of Aitken Roshi’s fiercely compassionate intelligence.

______________

A ZEN BUDDHIST PERSPECTIVE ON SAME-GENDER MARRIAGE             

On October 11, 1995, some religious leaders gave testimony to the Commission on Sexual Orientation and the Law in support of same- gender marriage.  It was one of the most moving meetings of the Commission. Of the approximately 9 speakers, three submitted written testimony (two Buddhist and one Lutheran).  I have retrieved their testimony from the archives and will post each on to the internet.  The first is appended below.

Robert Aitken served much of World War II as a prisoner of war of the Japanese; one of his captors introduced Robert Aitken to Zen Buddhism. Today Robert Aitken heads the western region of the United States.

Aloha!

Tom Ramsey

Co-Coordinator, HERMP

Robert Aitken’s Written Testimony to the
Commission on Sexual Orientation and the Law

October 11, 1995         

I am Robert Aitken, co-founder and teacher of the Honolulu  Diamond Sangha, a Zen Buddhist society established in 1959, with centers in Manoa and Palolo [macrons are over first a's in each word]. Our organization has evolved into a network of Diamond Sangha groups on Neighbor Islands and in North and South America, Australia and New Zealand.  I am also co-founder of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship and a member of its International Board of Advisors.  This is an association whose members are concerned about social issues from a Buddhist perspective.  It has it headquarters in Berkeley, California, and has chapters across the country, including one here on O’ahu, as well as chapters overseas.  I am also a member of the Hawai’i Association of International Buddhists.

I speak to you today as an individual in response to the Chair’s request to present Buddhist views, particularly Zen Buddhist views, on the subject of of marriage between people of the same sex.

The religion we now call Zen Buddhism arose in China in the sixth century as a part of the Mahayana, which is the tradition of Buddhism found in China, Korea, Japan and to some extent in Vietnam.  Pure Land schools, including the Nishi and Higashi Hongwanji, as well as Shingon and Nichiren, are other sects within the Mahayana.

The word Zen means “exacting meditation,” which describes the central practice of the Zen Buddhist and from which emerge certain quite profound realizations that can be applied in daily life. Most practitioners come to a deep understanding that all life is connected and that we are each a boundless container that includes all other beings.

The application of this kind of intimacy can be framed in the classic Buddhist teaching of the Four Noble Abodes: loving kindness, compassion, joy in the attainment of others, and equanimity.

Applying these Four Noble Abodes to the issue of same-sex marriage, I find it clear that encouragement is my recommendation. Over my long career of teaching, I have had students who were gay, lesbian, trans-sexual and bisexual, as well as heterosexual. These orientations have seemed to me to be quite specific, much akin to the innate proclivities which lead people to varied careers or take paths in life that are uniquely their own.

We are all human, and within my own container, I find compassion—not just for—but with the gay or lesbian couple who wish to confirm their love in a legal marriage.

Although historically Zen has been a monastic tradition, there have always been prominent lay adherents. Those who enter the state of marriage vow to live their lives according to the same sixteen precepts that ground the Buddhist monk’s and nun’s life in the world. This way of living opens our path into life. Like life itself, marriage is absolutely non-discriminatory and open to all.

Buddhist teaching regarding sexuality is expressed in the precept of “taking up the way of not misusing sex.” I understand this precept to mean that any self-centered sexual conduct is exploitative, non-consensual—sex that harms others. In the context of young men or young women confined within monastery walls for periods of years, one might expect rules and teachings relating to homosexuality, but they don’t appear.

Homosexuality seems to be overlooked in Zen teachings, and indeed in classical Buddhist texts. However, my own monastic experience leads me to believe that homosexuality was not taken as an aberration, and so did not receive comment.

All societies have from earliest times across the world formalized sexual love in marriage ceremonies that give the new couple standing and rights in the community. Currently both rights and standing are denied to gays and lesbians who wish to marry in all but three of the United Sates. If every State acknowledged the basic married rights of gay and lesbian couples, young men and women just beginning their lives together, as well as those who have shared their lives for decades, a long-standing injustice would be corrected, and these fellow citizens would feel accepted in the way they deserve to be.

This would stabilize a significant segment of our society, and we would all of us be better able to acknowledge our diversity. I urge the voters of California to keep gay and lesbian marriages legal. This is the most humane course of action and in keeping with perennial principles of decency and mutual encouragement.

This past week, I was invited to offer the opening prayer at the legislative session of the New Mexico State House of Representatives.

The woman from the Clerk’s Office of the capitol who called me with the invitation explained that the House has been intending to bring in members of diverse religious and spiritual traditions. She found my name because I’ve been attending monthly meetings of a local interfaith leadership group. I’m not entirely sure, but I think I may be the first Buddhist brought in to offer the opening prayer. I was honored.

Some of you have asked me how things went at the Capitol that day (this past Wednesday, February 6).

It was a great experience. I was welcomed into the speakers’ room next to the House chambers and then escorted to sit on the rostrum next to the  gentleman with the gavel who steered the morning’s proceedings. A group of high school students came and sat next to me a few minutes later. They were from Las Cruces, NM, and were at the Capitol for the day to learn about the workings of our state government.

At 10 am, the proceedings started with a roll call of all the representatives. Once a quorum was reached, things got underway. The clerk invited everyone to stand and then introduced me for the opening prayer.

I went by the honorific “Reverend,” which I received after being ordained as a lay Buddhist chaplain last March by Roshi Joan Halifax. I rarely use that title and it was interesting to “wear” it for this occasion. I could feel myself standing up straighter and being much more aware of the reverence within me. Then I had a passing thought — wow, what would it be like if we called each other “Reverend” all the time? We might remember each other for the sacred beings that we always are.

The blessing I offered was a shortened version of the Metta Sutta as well as part of an original blessing that was composed by Karen Lohmann, one of the graduates of Upaya Zen Center’s Buddhist Chaplaincy Program. Last year, Karen was invited to offer the opening prayer to the Washington State House of Representatives (she lives in Olympia, WA). I loved what she wrote and decided that her words were perfect for this occasion as well.

Even more meaningful to me than the words I offered was my experience of inviting the whole assembly to take a moment to return to our collective breathing. I am guessing this may have been something that hasn’t happened in a legislative session before. After I finished, a number of people turned to thank me and said the blessing was a beautiful way to start the day.

Here is the prayer I offered:

This morning, I am honored to share with you a prayer that is based on a text from the Buddhist tradition called “The Metta Sutra.” The word metta means lovingkindness. Metta is one of the most important qualities that Buddhists try to cultivate, as it is believed that lovingkindness is a powerful way to help alleviate the suffering of this world.

I invite us all to take a moment to close our eyes, and to become aware of our breathing together… to remember that the air we are breathing is the same air, and connects all of us…

Let us pray:

Oh, Holy One, that which you may hold most divinely in your heart; Guide us as servants, collaborators, and curious ones, to listen deeply to your voice.

This is what should be done

By one who is skilled in goodness,

And who knows the path of peace:

Let us be
Straightforward and gentle in speech.
Humble and not conceited,
Contented and easily satisfied.
Peaceful and calm, and wise and skillful,
Not proud and demanding in nature.

Let us wish: In gladness and in safety,
May all beings be at ease.
Whatever living beings there may be;
Whether they are weak or strong, omitting no one,
The great or the mighty, medium, short or small,
The seen and the unseen,
Those living near and far away,
Those born and those yet-to-be-born,
May all beings be at ease!

Let none through anger or ill-will

Wish harm upon another.
Even as a mother protects with her life
Her only child,
So with a boundless heart
May we cherish all living beings:
Radiating kindness over the entire world.

Let us begin this day remembering that any one of us could die in an instant, or become homeless, or suffer the loss of a loved one.

Holy One, help us to remember why we are here in service to the good,

For the benefit of all Beings. In your name, we pray,

Amen

If you enjoyed this article, you might enjoy checking out my ‘stealth Buddhist blog,’ The Liberated Life Project. That’s where I mainly am these days… look forward to seeing you there!

The author, on the occasion of ordination as a lay Buddhist chaplain, with Roshi Joan Halifax

Four Scenes from the Life of the Buddha, Pakistan-Afghanistan, ancient Gandhara. Courtesy of Freer Gallery,

As some of you may know, in addition to all the other hats I wear, I am a bonafide cultural anthropologist. In fact, my beginning years as a dharma practitioner coincided with getting a graduate degree in anthropology at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco from 1993 – 1996.

This year, I was invited to participate on a panel at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association, held last month in San Francisco. The panel was titled, “The Anthropology of Buddhism and the Buddhism of Anthropology: Crossing the Borders Between Religion and Science” which dovetailed nicely with the theme of the entire conference: Borders and Crossings.

I thought some of you might be interested in reading the paper that I presented at the conference, a rather personal reflection on my experiences as both a Buddhist and an anthropologist… and an exploration of what “engagement” might mean. I’d love to hear your comments.

“Towards An Engaged Anthropology:
What Socially Engaged Buddhism Can Teach Us”

November 2012

When Les Sponsel [the organizer of the panel] first sent me an email to be part of this panel, I thought he had sent it to the wrong person. Since I haven’t worked formally as an anthropologist for a number of years now, I thought he was probably looking for my colleague and good friend, Dr. Joan Halifax. Dr. Halifax is an anthropologist, Zen Buddhist teacher, and founder of Upaya Zen Center.

But no, Les reassured me that he was, indeed, looking for me. Once we got that sorted out, I was thrilled to be invited to be part of this panel and offer some personal reflections on being both an anthropologist and a practicing Buddhist.

Writing this paper has given me the opportunity to reflect on my multiple identities – anthropologist, writer, editor, and Buddhist chaplain. (And I’m leaving out a whole lot of other identities!) The intersection of Buddhism and anthropology is a subject that is near to my heart, and one that I’ve been exploring for quite a long time now, though in ways that might be unconventional for most anthropologists.

Back in 1996, I gave a paper at a symposium held at the California Institute of Integral Studies where I earned my master’s degree. That paper was titled, “Toward an Engaged Anthropology: What Engaged Buddhism and Mindfulness Practice Can Teach Us.”

You’ll notice that my paper today has a nearly identical title. Even though the title is almost the same, much has changed in the 16 years since I gave that first talk.

First of all, the world itself has changed, dramatically. Back in 1996, I was just getting my feet wet with writing papers on a computer rather than a typewriter. I don’t remember being able to do research on the Internet (this was pre-Google, after all). And there was no Facebook or any other kind of social media to distract me from writing my thesis.

In 1996, the World Trade Center towers were still standing, there was no such thing as a global war on terror, we boarded airplanes as we pleased and said goodbye to our loved ones at the gate.

In 1996, I was very new to both anthropology and Buddhism. I had begun my meditation practice in 1994, and I graduated from CIIS with a master’s in anthropology in 1996. But even at that early stage of the game, I could sense them as parallel paths. Some things have stayed constant. What I wrote in my original paper still feels true:

As both an anthropologist and a Buddhist practitioner, I have been struck by the parallels between these two disciplines. On a personal level, both have functioned for me as a kind of spiritual practice, what I like to think of as the way of awareness.

So today, I want to re-visit that original paper, informed by where I’ve been in the past 16 years as well as how the field of anthropology has evolved. These are the questions I want to explore in this paper, which we might call “Toward an Engaged Anthropology, 2.0”:

• What does it mean to be an anthropologist who practices Buddhism?
• What does it mean to be a Buddhist who practices anthropology?
• What are the implications of being “engaged,” in both disciplines?

DHARMA AND ANTHROPOLOGY

Over these past 16 years. I’ve worked as a magazine editor, a nonprofit organization executive director, a writer, a research associate, a bookseller, an organizational consultant, a fundraiser, and now I’m even a Buddhist chaplain.

No matter what job I’ve held, I’ve always brought my anthropology lens with me. I see in terms of culture and systems, and I’ve learned to ask questions that help people identify the assumptions they may be carrying. I know the importance of building rapport, of taking things slowly when I enter a new situation in order to come to a deeper understanding of what’s going on around me, and enlisting the “natives” in any given environment to help me understand what might be happening from their point of view. In ways that I couldn’t have anticipated, I think this made me a much better executive director than I would have been otherwise, as well as an organizational consultant.

It’s been just as true that during the times when I have held positions with the title of “anthropologist,” I bring my Buddhist or dharma filter with me. What’s interesting is how similar the Buddhist and the anthropology lens are, and how well they complement each other and have enriched my life over the past 16 years.

In my 1996 paper, I focused on one aspect of Buddhist practice – mindfulness – and wrote about how it informed my work as an anthropologist:

The practice of mindfulness means looking deeply into the present moment and situation, and realizing the nature of our interconnection: all things arise from conditions, nothing has a separate self identity. In a similar way, I view anthropology as a practice of questioning our assumptions, and doing so with a compassion that recognizes the cultural conditions which shape our world view and those of the people with whom we work.

A core Buddhist concept that informs my anthropology practice is this teaching of dependent co-arising. Vietnamese Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh explains the concept very simply but eloquently. He writes,

Can you see the sun in a grain of rice? For without the sun on the rice fields, there would be no rice. Can you see the cloud in a wooden table? For without the cloud there would be no rain to water the tree, and there would be no wood to make the table. (1990, p. 75)

In 1998, I became a member of the Zen Peacemaker Order founded by Roshi Bernie Glassman. Glassman is a pioneer in socially engaged Buddhism. He took traditional Buddhist teachings and rendered them into a more contemporary language. The three tenets of the Zen Peacemaker Order that Glassman and others developed are:

• Not knowing
• Bearing witness
• Compassionate action

I find each of these to be very compatible with an anthropological perspective. Not knowing is the starting point. This means acknowledging that will never know everything. And that, in fact, most of the time we know nothing. The trouble comes when we lose sight of that truth or do not understand it to begin with. Here’s what Glassman says about “Not Knowing”:

This doesn’t mean not having enough information. Information is great. Study different languages, read books, talk to the large heads and the small heads. Put it all in your backpack, but don’t get attached to it. Not knowing means entering a situation with openness and listening deeply. You don’t arrive with the idea that you’re going to fix something. (2011)

This is the most foundational practice in Buddhism and, to my mind, in anthropology as well. We have to be willing to acknowledge that our perspective will always be limited. There’s a wonderful phrase that conveys this, from 12^th century Japanese Zen master Eihei Dogen, founder of the Soto school of Zen: “merely looking through a bamboo pipe at a corner of the sky” (from Dogen’s Mountains and Rivers Sutra). From an anthropologist’s standpoint, we can never truly know what it is like to be the “other,” and it is only by acknowledging that very fact that we are able to approach a more accurate understanding of the other’s life and perspective.

Glassman compares the second tenet, Bearing Witness, to “grokking,” a term coined by Robert Heinlein in his 1961 book Stranger in a Strange Land. Glassman writes:

…grokking is the intermingling of intelligence that necessarily affects both observer and observed. Heinlein: “Grok means to understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the observed—to merge, blend, intermarry, lose identity in group experience…” Bearing witness means spending time in a situation trying to get into the space of non-duality, until you become the situation. (2011)

Bearing witness, then, sounds a lot like ethnography.

The third tenet is loving action. Glassman writes, “If you can do numbers one and two [Not Knowing and Bearing Witness], then loving action will arise. Attempts to heal will occur.” (2011)

Whenever I enter a situation as an anthropologist, these practices are deeply embodied within me. They have become my framework for understanding what it means to be a skillful ethnographer. The last tenet, “Loving action,” also leads us to look at the concept of  “engagement” in both anthropology and Buddhism.

ENGAGEMENT

Since I wrote my paper in 1996, I went on to spend a great deal of time within the socially engaged Buddhist movement. From 1999 to 2008, I worked at the Buddhist Peace Fellowship (BPF). BPF was founded in 1978 to link Buddhist teachings of wisdom and compassion with progressive social change. One of BPF’s co-founders was the late Robert Aitken Roshi, a Zen master who drew on his in-depth knowledge of 19th and 20th century anarchism as well as his long experience as an anti-war activist.

In 2005 and 2007, as part of my work, I helped to organized two “Buddhist Peace Delegations.” These were groups of Buddhists who converged in Washington, DC, to join mass marches calling for an end to the war in Iraq. During each march, around 200 people walked together in silence, ringing a bell of mindfulness, in the midst of the loud and agitated conduct of many of our protesting comrades. Throughout the day, many people gravitated toward our group, telling us that they had been hungry for a way to take part in the action without getting so caught up in anger and divisiveness.

So in these past 16 years, I’ve gotten quite a bit of miles under my tires in both theory and practical applications of socially engaged Buddhism.

Then there is engaged anthropology. When I wrote my paper in 1996, there wasn’t a great deal of literature on that concept. Roy Rappaport (1995) wrote about it in his foreword to Global Ecosystems: Creating Options Through Anthropological Perspectives, a publication of NAPA. That same year, Nancy Scheper-Hughes used the phrases “critical applied anthropology” and “militant anthropology” (1995).

Since that time, the field of engaged anthropology has been given a much more thorough treatment through articles (e.g. Lamphere, 2003), books (e.g. Sanford and Angel-Ajani, 2006), and symposiums and conferences. One landmark event was “Anthropology Put to Work/Anthropology That Works,” organized in 2005 by the Wenner-Gren Foundation, and later published as a book (Field and Fox, 2007).

In January of 2008, Setha Low and Sally Engle Merry presented a workshop titled, “The Anthropologist as Social Critic: Working toward a More Engaged Anthropology” in New York. This workshop evolved into an AAA Presidential Symposium held at the annual meetings in 2008. A collection of articles from that symposium was published as a supplement to Current Anthropology in 2010. In the introduction to that supplement, Low and Merry (2010) propose six forms of engaged anthropology: Sharing and support, Teaching and public education, Social critique, Collaboration, Advocacy, and Activism.

So I think it’s safe to say that anthropology has a more nuanced understanding of what it means to be “engaged” than was true in 1996, and even a beginning taxonomy of the types of engagement.

When it comes to the dynamic of engagement, Buddhism and anthropology share similar characteristics. Anthropology has always pushed the envelope of the subject/object division so prevalent and often unquestioned in other scientific disciplines. Long before quantum physics introduced this idea into the mainstream, anthropologists have known that the observer cannot but help impact that which she or he observes.

Participant observation, as a methodology, begins to break down the duality between the researcher and the community she is studying. There is a growing body of literature that focuses on how ethnographers have been impacted by their fieldwork. Paul Rabinow’s Reflections on Fieldwork in Morocco (1977) was seminal in this category; other works include Ruth Behar’s The Vulnerable Observer (1996).

Similarly, Buddhism is also a project to break down the subject/object division. In fact, one of the fundamental concepts in Buddhism is annata, the Pali term for no-self. Over and over, the historical Buddha emphasized the importance of direct experience over dogma. And like anthropology, Buddhism gravitates toward noticing the granular level of reality rather than formulating universalizing truths.

For both disciplines, experience is primary. Knowledge or wisdom is derived from direct experience, not from theory. In that way, both Buddhism and anthropology are inherently engaged.

The historical Buddha is often described as a physician who diagnosed the condition of human suffering and prescribed an antidote to it in the form of the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path (Bodhi, 2006). The phrase “engaged Buddhism” often refers to viewing everything as an opportunity for practice – washing the dishes can be an act of engaged Buddhism when we do so mindfulness.

Similarly, anthropological knowledge and findings, from the start, were applied to problems such as serving the needs of colonial administrators (Bennett, 1996). In this definition, engagement is usually apolitical and does not recognize or grapple with socio-political complexities. Early anthropologists, for example, did not usually question the ethical implications or long-term consequences of their relationships with those colonial administrators.

However, there is a second way to define engagement. The Buddhist and the anthropologist who are willing to get their hands dirty by wading into the muddy waters of political analysis and critique, of advocacy and activism, are not simply engaged, but socially engaged. Buddhist scholar and Zen teacher David Loy (2004) describes the distinction:

…homelessness in the United States is a serious problem that confronts many of us everyday… We don’t help homeless people because we are Buddhist. We help them because they are not separate from us and they need help; and ultimately, in the act of helping, we do it for no reason at all. Nevertheless, there are broader issues here that need to be considered, by Buddhists as much as anyone else. Why are there so many homeless people, in a country that is by far the richest that has ever existed on earth? Why, for that matter, are there any homeless people in such a fabulously wealthy society? What does that imply about the policies of our local, state, and national governments? If government is an expression of our collective will, what does that imply about us?

To ask these questions is to delve into difficult problems about what kind of society we want to have and how to work toward it – theoretical issues that often seem like a distraction from our Buddhist focus on «just this!»

CONCLUSION

Socially engaged Buddhism and engaged anthropology are powerful modalities precisely because they occupy a space between paradigms. In a binary world, socially engaged Buddhism bridges the gap between contemplation and action. Engaged anthropology bridges the gap between theoretical and applied, between academic and activist.

Earlier I noted that you have to be willing to get your hands dirty in either of these fields. Both Buddhists and anthropologists who are oriented toward this more political kind of engagement will face criticism from those who believe that these Buddhism and anthropology should be left in a “pure” and unsullied state, and not involved in the power struggles of our time.

The practice of socially engaged Buddhism has helped me to develop more equanimity. It’s also given me a moral and ethical framework that clarifies the importance and necessity of speaking truth to power. I resonate very much with what Stuart Kirsch wrote: “activism is the logical extension of the commitment to reciprocity that underlies the practice of anthropology” (2002:178).

I want to conclude with what I wrote in my original paper, which feels just as true to me now as it did 16 years ago:

Engaged anthropology is not only “applied,” but personally and often painfully involved. Ruth Behar, in her book, “The Vulnerable Observer,” writes that, “anthropology that doesn’t break your heart just isn’t worth doing anymore.” I found that in my own fieldwork with people who call themselves psychiatric consumers and survivors, engaged anthropology meant bringing my past experiences as a mental health professional and all the emotions connected with that fully into my work. Far from being an obstacle to understanding what I was seeing in fieldwork, I found these emotions were actually often the vehicle for my ethnographic understanding. Being engaged also meant becoming more politically committed to the advocacy of people experiencing oppression based on their status as current or former mental patients….

Much like mindfulness practice, I believe that engaged anthropology has to do with looking deeply at situations of suffering and conflict, going beyond dualities, and holding a space of ambiguity amidst pressure to “solve the problem,” or to take sides. This does not mean not speaking out against oppression. It does mean seeing into all the conditions that contribute to the situation and the connection between the oppressor and the oppressed. If an engaged anthropology is an anthropology that breaks our heart, engaged Buddhism reminds us, as Buddhist scholar and systems theorist Joanna Macy (2007) says, “the heart that breaks open can hold the whole universe.” (p 129)

References

Behar, Ruth. 1996. The vulnerable observer: anthropology that breaks your heart. Boston: Beacon Press.

Bennett, John W. 1996. Applied and action anthropology: ideological and conceptual aspects. Current Anthropology 37:23-53.

Bodhi, B. 2006. The noble eightfold path: way to the end of suffering. Onalaska, WA: Pariyatti Publishing.

D’Andrade, Roy. 1995.  Moral models in anthropology. Current Anthropology 36(3):399-408.

Field, Les, and Richard Fox. 2007. Anthropology put to work. London: Berg Publishers.

Bernie Glassman. 2011. From a talk given at Hart House Theatre in Toronto, Sept. 9, 2011. Accessed on: http://www.elephantjournal.com/2011/10/bernie-glassman-1-not-knowing-bearing-witness-loving-action/

Kirsch, Stuart. 2002. Anthropology and advocacy: A case study of the campaign against the Ok Tedi mine. Critique of Anthropology 22: 175-200.

Lamphere, Louise. 2003. The perils and prospects for an engaged anthropology: A view from the United States. Social Anthropology 11, 2: 153-168.

Low, Setha M., and Sally Engle Merry. 2010. Engaged anthropology: diversity and dilemmas. Current Anthropology 51(Supplement 2):S203-S214

Loy, David. 2004. “What’s Buddhist About Socially Engaged Buddhism?” Accessed at:

http://www.zen-occidental.net/articles1/loy12-english.html

Macy, Joanna. 2007. World as lover, world as self: A guide to living fully in turbulent times.  Berkeley: Parallax Press.

Nhat Hanh, T. 1990. Present moment, wonderful moment: mindfulness verses for daily living. Berkeley:Parallax Press.

Rappaport, Roy.1995. Foreword to Global Ecosystems: Creating Options Through Anthropological Perspectives. In Bulletin of the National Association for the Practice of Anthropology, #15.

Sanford, Victoria, and Asale Angel-Ajani. 2006. Engaged observer: anthropology, advocacy, and activism. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Scheper-Hughes, Nancy. 1995.  The primacy of the ethical: propositions for a militant anthropology. Current Anthropology 36(3):409-420.

Scheper-Hughes, Nancy. 1992. Hungry bodies, medicine, and the state: toward a critical, psychological anthropology. New Directions in Psychological Anthropology. Edited by T. Schwartz, G. White, and C. Lutz, p. 221-247. New York: Cambridge University Press.

“Imagine thousands of people skilled in both organizing and Buddhism,
out in the world working to transform it in the ways we need most.
All with the compassion and wisdom practices that lie at the heart of Buddhism.”
~Katie Loncke

Are you a Buddhist who thinks that talking politics and taking action are an essential part of your dharma practice?

If not, you can stop reading right now.

But if you are, there’s a fantastic new project in the works from the Buddhist Peace Fellowship that you’ll love.

BPF has a special place in my heart — I worked there from 1999 – 2002 as the associate editor of Turning Wheel magazine, served on their board from 2003 – 2004, and then was invited back to serve as executive director from 2004 – 2007. While the structure and staffing of the organization have changed a great deal since then, the mission remains the same:  to serve as a catalyst for socially engaged Buddhism and to cultivate compassionate action.

Now, the dynamic new collaborative leadership of BPF, embodied by co-directors Katie Loncke and Dawn Haney, are creating “The System Stinks” (inspired by one of Robert Aitken Roshi’s favorite phrases). This will be a 12-month dialogue and crowdsourced curriculum, hosted online,  with options to participate by phone and in face-to-face, self-organized local study groups.

The “System Stinks” will create space and opportunities to explore themes like:

• Getting Real About Nonviolence
• Theft of Land, Theft of Culture
• The Lies That Build Empire
• Gender Freedom
• Decolonizing Our Sanghas

Katie and Dawn write, “As Buddhists who care about politics, we need to find each other, learn about one another, and start to discover what role engaged and political Buddhists can play in today’s world.”

You can help make this initiative a reality by donating to BPF’s Indiegogo campaign. Some of the great perks for doing so include

• A selection of 3 Engaged Buddhist Art postcards featuring exquisite original art by Hozan Alan Senauke, Roshi Joan Halifax, Aneeta Mitha, and Nopadon Wongpakdee.
• The System Stinks curriculum + 12 postcards + a beautiful mug featuring the classic Buddhist Peace Fellowship logo.
• An exclusive hour-long group phone call with an engaged Buddhist teacher: Joanna Macy, Bhante Buddharakkhita, Roshi Joan Halifax, and Alan Senauke.

So give our friends at BPF a hand and help be part of creating a very innovative practice/study/action opportunity for engaged Buddhists worldwide. The Indiegogo campaign ends on November 15th, so check it out soon!

And a special bonus: For the next week, everyone who contributes to BPF’s campaign at $30 or more will be entered to win one of 10 slots for a group phone call with a wonderful Buddhist leader — Joanna Macy, Bhante Buddharakkhita, Roshi Joan Halifax, or Hozan Alan Senauke.

Over the next couple of weeks, there are eight “Walks to Feed the Hungry” happening all around the U.S., organized by the good folks at Buddhist Global Relief (BGR).

These walks were initiated in 2010 by Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi and BGR as a way to raise both awareness and funds for food-related projects around the world. He writes:

A walk like this offers us, as Buddhists, a chance to express our collective compassion in solidarity with the world’s poor. It’s also a great form of exercise and an opportunity to make new friends. To walk a few miles may not seem like a demanding act, but when we view this event in context we can see that it has far-reaching implications. The UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights declares that food is a basic human right, which must be fulfilled without discrimination of any kind. Sadly, our world has fallen terribly short of this commitment. Every year governments spend billions of dollars on weapons and wars, yet close to a billion people suffer from hunger and chronic malnutrition and two billion endure serious nutritional deficiencies.

A walks like this is a great source of merit and blessings and a collective expression of conscience on the part of us Buddhists.

While some of the walks have already taken place, there are more happening the rest of October. Here are the locations and dates:

Saturday, October 13
Ann Arbor / Metro Detroit, MI
Chicago IL
New York City, NY
San Francisco CA
Willington CT