The essay looks at the Buddhist Association of China (BAC), which the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has promoted as an influential actor in Buddhist circles on the global stage, via one of its key instruments for influence in Chinese societies and abroad, the United Front Work Department (UFWD). This chapter argues that Buddhist actors who seek to shape the legal-political framework of their societies according to their values are facing increasing competition from a fellow influential Buddhist association that conveys the positions of its political mentor rather than shared religious values.

Gives a good history of the CCP’s relationship with Buddhism—from antagonism to co-option—and gives some thoughts about the relationship between Buddhism and the state across Asia.

Whatever happened to “Engaged Buddhism”? Twenty years after a flurry of publication placing this global movement firmly on the map, enthusiasm for the term itself appears to have evaporated. I attempt to reconstruct what happened: scholars turned away from the concept for its reproducing colonialist understandings of traditional Buddhism as essentially world-rejecting, and they developed alternate discourses for describing Buddhist actors’ multifarious social and political engagements, especially in contemporary Asia.

I describe the specific rise and fall of the term in Anglophone scholarship, in order for scholars to better grasp the evolution of contemporary Western, Anglophone Buddhisms, to better understand what Buddhists in Asia are in fact doing with the term, and to better think through what it might mean politically for us as scholars to deploy the term at all. In particular, I identify “Academic Engaged Buddhism” (1988–2009) as one hegemonic form of Engaged Buddhism, a Western Buddhist practitioner-facing anthological project of Euro-American scholars with potentially powerful but unevenly distributed effects on Buddhist thought and practice around the world.

Situated amidst a rural hinterland comprising non-Buddhist populations, the Lumbini Sacred Garden master plan covers an area of about 4.5 km². It has a special “monastic zone” for the construction of 39 international monasteries of which 13 have been built (notable are the Thai, Japanese, Burmese, Sri Lankan, Chinese, Bhutanese, Korean, and European monasteries). […In] practical terms, it is perceived as “imported Buddhism” [and] the limited opportunities for interpretation of this co-created heritage reinforces a sense of alienation for the local community, and poses challenges for the sustainability of tourism and the vitality of Lumbini as a Heritage Site.

Today you have to understand charity if you want to understand Buddhism.

[Charities in the event-network style] emphasize not staying to talk… so you’re not creating more karmic entanglement… whereas the Cherish Children Fund… created long-term sustained relationships… as a form of collective karma.

People are doing very different types of projects for very different reasons… [But] feelings of care, feelings of selflessness were key ways that people demonstrated themselves as good people… ensuring that they were making merit.

While often associated with a liberal demographic, the increasing online visibility of rhetoric such as “snowflakes,” “politically correct,” “postmodern identity politics,” and “cultural Marxism” demonstrates the presence of right-wing sentiments and populations in American convert Buddhism.

We chart this backlash across a broad right-wing spectrum that spans from “reactionary centrism” to the “alt-right.” We illuminate the ways in which participants both de-legitimate “Diversity Equity and Inclusion” as political rather than Buddhist and naturalize their own position as Buddhist rather than political. We show how American convert Buddhist lineages have become a site of the “culture wars”…

These universities provide education in liberal arts and professional fields, while employing the time-tested methods of traditional Buddhist pedagogy. Because these universities are generally unknown to the public, I have provided information about their history, academic programs, and the educational success created on their campuses.

In each country to which it historically spread, Buddhism created schools, universities, and various centers for learning, meditation, and moral practicea. In the USA, a great variety of Buddhist-based institutions of learning were created during the last half of the 20th century. These include, but are not limited to kindergartens, elementary and secondary schools, institutes for vocational training, and universities granting professional degrees. In this article, we will investigate one particular type of Buddhist educational institution, which we refer to as a “Buddhist University.”

Taking as its focus twentieth- and twenty-first-century semiautobiographical writings by black American Buddhists, this article explores how black American Buddhists engage with Buddhist teachings to understand themselves as racialized subjects on local, national, and transnational levels.

They portray the Buddha as a social reformer enlightened to the operation of racial, gender, and sexual inequalities. This portrayal of the Buddha allows black Buddhists to articulate a counter-narrative to hegemonic Western authority while paradoxically constructing their own romantic vision of Asia as the “Other” to the West.

Wars of the heart always take longer to cool than the barrel of a gun… we must heal through love… and we must go slowly, step by step…

A brief but touching biography of the Cambodian Saṅgharāja during and immediately after the Khmer Rouge era whose “peace walks” (Dhammayietra) helped to restore hope to his embattled people.

Templestay has become popular among Koreans struggling to cope with an ever more competitive and precarious social and economic environment.

Drawing on ethnographic research and an examination of the history, statistics, marketing, and program content of Templestay, this article challenges the polarized view that posits socially engaged Buddhism as the opposite of traditional monastic Buddhism and suggests that Templestay facilitates Buddhism’s engagement with the prevailing psychological predicament of society.

This article presents research on one traditionalist group, Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition (FPMT). It describes FPMT’s engagement, identifies its motivations, objectives, and activities, and examines the possibility that it represents a type of engagement that can be called “traditionalist.”

This article builds on Beyond Queen and King’s theoretical work by considering one such under-studied “traditionalist, engaged” Buddhist organization.

Why not
tend to your own horse

A poem in response to Auden’s poem about Bruegel’s painting about the fall of Icarus asking what it is that we owe one another and what is the correct response to the tragedy of craft.

This article will survey the issues and events surrounding three protests: the 2003 samboilbae, or ‘three-steps-one-bow’, march led by Venerable Sukyong against the Saemangeum Reclamation Project, Venerable Jiyul’s Anti-Mt. Chonsong tunnel hunger-strike campaign between 2002 and 2006, and lastly Venerable Munsu’s self-immolation protesting the Four Rivers Project in 2010.

Why should Buddhists have been considered socially inactive, either by themselves or by others? And what is new about today’s “engaged” Buddhism that has not been characteristic of Buddhism in the past?

This study focuses on the life and death of Uchiyama Gudō (1874–1911), a disrobed Sōtō Zen priest, who had his priestly status posthumously restored to him on April 13, 1993, eighty-two years after his execution by the Japanese government

One cannot arrive at a conception of good without “looking before and after”. It introduces the question of palliative or cure.

A Buddhist response to Western accusations of being insufficiently interested in social welfare.

… the belief that all engagement is Western-influenced seems to endure, so Buddhists who avoid doctrinal hybridization may be assumed to not engage. These assumptions persist because relatively few studies are done on Buddhists’ and especially traditionalists’ actual engagement; some studies mischaracterize engaged traditionalists as modernists; and little research on today’s traditionalists, engaged or not, is done because scholars of contemporary Buddhism gravitate toward modernists.

The article was followed up in the same journal with a practical example of such an organization: The FPMT.

It is possible to care without helping. It is also possible to help without caring. Given these two options, most people would choose the second, especially in difficult moments. Dear reader, this is an honest book.

Help requires the establishment of an interpretive context or system of meaning — a relationship, in several senses — in which help does not threaten the creativity, autonomy, or personhood of the helpee and in which, instead, help facilitates development and strengthens the self. This is a creative act.

An accused who was able to flee to the nearest monastery would be protected from such mob justice. Sanctuary would give the person an opportunity to explain himself and allow his accusers to calm down so the facts could be examined more objectively.

The Pali terms equivalent to sanctuary would be abhayatthana or pujjatthana. Sanctuary in Buddhist monasteries had a long history in Sri Lanka lasting for at least 1,000 years.

What does it mean to meditate on anger?

How Buddhism engages with modern, Western social critique.

You are my children, my sons, born from my mouth, born of the Dhamma…

The Buddha compares himself and his disciples to the Brahmins, and encourages his community to be as open-handed with the Dhamma as he was.

When you understand the world that you are in and you are in that place of mental fortitude, then you’re not looking for anything “out there.” But maybe you have something to offer people who are caught up in their fears.

In this heartfelt dhamma talk, Venerable Panyavati explains how the mind creates problems such as fear and insecurities, but once it is cultivated by the Buddhist path, it becomes peaceful and able to give peace to others.

The eight eligible studies comprised two mindfulness studies, four vipassana meditation studies, and two studies utilizing other Buddhist-Derived Interventions. Intervention participants demonstrated significant improvements across five key criminogenic variables: (i) negative affect, (ii) substance use (and related attitudes), (iii) anger and hostility, (iv) relaxation capacity, and (v) self-esteem and optimism. There were, however, a number of major quality issues. It is concluded that BDIs may be feasible and effective rehabilitative interventions for incarcerated populations. However, if the potential suitability and efficacy of BDIs for prisoner populations is to be evaluated in earnest, it is essential that methodological rigor is substantially improved.

Bhikkhus, one who is engaged is unliberated.

The reasons for banning the Asoke group and using legislation to outlaw it have more to do with Thai politics than with Buddhist concerns.

An ethnography of the controversial group of vegetarian monks and nuns founded by Bhikkhu Bodhiraksa in Thailand in 1975 along with a few words on the reasons behind their persecution in the late ‘80s.

This exploratory study examined the influence of a personal practice of Zen Buddhist meditation on the professional work of clinical social workers.

Despite the title, this book is not a standard primer and instead takes a more critical stance. For a more standard introduction, see King, 2009.

The authors recommend public education, particularly about invasive species, as a way to reduce the unintended harm to the environment caused by these practices.

Unlike cadaver donation in the West, which has to a large degree maintained the anonymity of the body used to teach medical students, the Taiwanese Tzu Chi Buddhist Silent Mentor programme at the centre of this article foregrounds the identity of the training cadaver as an essential element of medical pedagogy

What was the response of Soto Buddhist priests to the social situation facing Japan at the beginning of the twentieth century? What influence did their religious background have on their responses to the modernization of Japan? This article examines the lives and thought of two Japanese Soto Buddhist priests-Takeda Hanshi and Uchiyama Gudo-both with the same religious training and tradition, yet who chose diametrically opposite responses.

Takeda Hanshi supported Japan’s foreign policies, especially in Korea; Uchiyama opposed Japanese nationalism and militarism, and was executed for treason. What led them to such opposite responses, and what conclusions can be drawn concerning the influence of religious traditions on specific individual choices and activities?

… two Buddhist responses to rising nationalism and the restriction of freedom of religion and thought

… for all of its rhetoric about not relying on words and letters and functioning compassionately as a politically detached, iconoclastic religion, Zen has generally failed to criticize ideologies–and specific social and political conditions–that stand in tension with core Buddhist values.

Yet a close examination of Zen theory and praxis indicates that the tradition does possess resources for resisting dominant ideologies and engaging in critique.

Victoria is probably right in asserting that Makiguchi was not exactly the anti-war zealot described by the Soka Gakkai today, but Victoria misreads and misinterprets Makiguchi’s writing in his mistaken portrait of him as a pro-militarist figure.

Despite their shared goal of spreading the Dharma to bring about world peace, Japanese and American Buddhist youth groups largely accommodated imperialism, while those in British colonies became fiercely anti-imperialist.

More than 200 000 monks and some 30 000 temples across the country became an integral part of the so-called “Folk Doctor” movement in the 1980s.

What is of interest here is why Buddhist authors are keen on bringing out this particular aspect of the monk’s active participation in society and what their arguments are for doing so.

… his 1962–1966 memoirs and 1963 poem “Butterflies over the Golden Mustard Fields” set out what we call his ecological humanism: his paradoxical overcoming of self-alienation through a close rapport with relatively wild nature.

… multiple ethical systems are vying for recognition regarding the self-immolations, and a certain Buddhist ambivalence around extreme acts of devotion complicate any easy designations of the act

In the early decades of the twentieth century, as Japanese society became engulfed in war and increasing nationalism, the majority of Buddhist leaders and institutions capitulated to the status quo. One notable exception to this trend, however, was the Shinko Bukkyo Seinen Domei (Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism), founded on 5 April 1931.

Led by Nichiren Buddhist layman Seno’o Giro and made up of young social activists who were critical of capitalism, internationalist in outlook, and committed to a pan-sectarian and humanist form of Buddhism that would work for social justice and world peace, the league’s motto was “carry the Buddha on your backs and go out into the streets”

Dharma principles are manifested in the social construction of norms and beliefs and in the ways macro-level social structures and change are founded on micro-level social interactions embedded in mundane moments

These are the five gifts of a bad person.

Good and bad ways of offering gifts.

One day, I saw several monks who were very thirsty and had fallen to the ground. I got up quickly and offered them water to drink.

A deva explains the merit accumulated when she offered water to a monk who had fallen.

In what way, Bhante, is one a lay follower?

Questioned by his relative Mahānāma, the Buddha explains what makes someone a Buddhist lay follower, a virtuous lay follower, and a lay follower practicing for the welfare of all.

The people I love the best
jump into work

Maureen and Sonam had an instinct that there must be a connection between the common gastric pain that Tibetans call Phowa and Helicobacter Pylori. With the backing of a specialist medical team in Australia, they’re here now to test that theory.

While [Engaged Buddhists] constantly imply that social activists would do well to adopt meditation, mindfulness, compassion, nonviolence and other Buddhist qualities, they rarely acknowledge that they themselves might have anything to learn from non-Buddhists

I wanted to take it home, but in order to do so I’d have to carry the globe.

One is in the center of the market engaged in all kinds of work and yet he stays on top of the solitary peak, gazing at the sky.

A word on the importance of balancing the relative and absolute, engagement and renunciation on the Bodhisattva path.

Today, thanks to a Canadian passport, I’m entering my father’s homeland for the first time.

A documentary about Tibetans and the struggle to preserve their culture under Chinese occupation.

… the discontinuity [with premodern forms of Buddhism] that the modernists emphasize is just that, an emphasis—it is less an observation than it is an ideologically motivated construction

An important note about how and why Western scholarship is reshaping the Buddhism it claims to study.

When we adopt a Buddhist perspective on the wounds that afflict our world today, we soon realize that these wounds are symptomatic: a warning signal that something is fundamentally awry with the way we lead our lives.

You can also listen to this book on Pariyatti’s website.

The most important question becomes, “What can I do for you?”

The true success of Tzu-chi – not just growth in numbers but modern cultivation of the virtues of compassion – would have important implications for ecumenical engagement with the crises of modernity.

He legitimised the secularisation of the modern Sangha and its interpretation of Buddhism as exclusively Sinhala

Watanabe did not envision a radical position for Buddhists on the issue of the ‘labour question’; rather, he imagined Buddhism as a harmonizing influence that could help avoid the pitfalls of unrestrained capitalism, on the one hand, and revolutionary socialism, on the other.

An early example of an “engaged Buddhist” reformer in early 20th century Japan.

One of the toughest interviews I’ve ever had.

Bhikkhu Bodhi responds to ethical questions posed by Buddhists in Burma facing extraordinary violence from their military junta.

For Bhikkhu Bodhi’s return to the podcast a year later see episode 104.

If there isn’t a sense of voluntary commitment, […] it wouldn’t have the connection with the training of emotion and the training of wisdom which is necessary for it to be a “Buddhist” morality.

A talk on the seven skills of a wise person.

Feeling comfortable with one’s balance of harmful and helpful actions is qualitatively different from reducing harm in the first place.

Ultimately I think we have to come down to the realization: it’s to help us respond appropriately

Buddhists in Asia and the West who adapted Buddhism to a range of nonviolent social activist projects

A lengthy encyclopedia article introducing “Engaged Buddhism.”

… the sudden wealth generated during Taiwan’s period of rapid economic development created a need to give that wealth meaning […] Ciji provided a way of adapting traditional Buddhist rhetoric and imagery to facilitate the move from traditional “almsgiving” to “modern scientific charity.”

From the 1920s, Vietnamese Buddhist reformers revitalized their religion, inspired in great part by the Chinese monk Taixu’s blueprint to modernize and systematize sangha education and temple administration, and by his idea of rénjiān fójiào, “Buddhism for this world”

On the transnational origins of “Engaged Buddhism”

Just as a river is geographically conditioned to flow in a certain direction, [compassionate] efforts are predetermined to move toward success (as sentient beings are endowed with Buddha nature). But just as a river will never dry up, their project will never end.

A lengthy summary of Tan Sitong’s 仁學 (Rénxué), which outlined his eclectic Buddhist defense of non-discriminating compassion’s agency in the unfolding of history, this paper shows how one Chinese philosopher grappled with the challenges of modernity emerging at his time and how his themes continue in the work of Buddhists such as Thich Nhat Hanh.

… the role of Buddhist temples in providing aid and taking care of survivors in the wake of the disaster, including the indispensable function of Buddhist monks to conduct funerals and other ceremonies, and their vital responsibility for helping the survivors overcome their suffering.

Besides being a prominent motivation for the delivery of a teaching, compassion regularly features in descriptions of meditation practice in the early discourses

To deal with social dukkha, habitual tendencies rooted in the Three Poisons have to be identified and redressed in the constitutive social, cultural, and political environments too. In other words, Buddhist social theory recognizes that the manifestations of the Three Poisons are as much a matter of institutionalized, normative knowledge-practices as they are private, personal tendencies.

Practices like yoga and meditation were woven throughout Occupy [Wall Street], and were integral to its endurance and impact; they were not a sideshow.

From suffering arises desire to end suffering. The secular humanistic activist sets himself the endless task of satisfying that desire, and perhaps hopes to end social suffering by constructing utopias. The Buddhist, on the other hand, is concerned ultimately with the transformation of desire.

Capitalist industrial society has created conditions of extreme impermanence, and the struggle with a conflict-creating mood of dissatisfaction and frustration. It would be difficult to imagine any social order for which Buddhism is more relevant and needed.

… it may be America’s destiny not to make Buddhism perfect but to make it banal

I allow you, monks, to turn the bowl upside down

How the Burmese saṅgha used the allowance in AN 8.87 to protest injustice.

When you build a spiritual, kind community, wherever you are in this world, that is what we rely on

Engaged Buddhism is a contemporary form of Buddhism that engages actively yet nonviolently with the social, economic, political, social [sic], and ecological problems of society. At its best, this engagement is not separate from Buddhist spirituality, but is very much an expression of it.

To formulate a viable, systematic Buddhist environmental ethic, they must clarify on Buddhist grounds what an optimal world might be

… it’s easy to get out of balance

… anything that offers success in our unjust society without trying to change it is not revolutionary—it just helps people cope.

We are committed to living simply and sharing our time, energy, and material resources with those in need.

Is it an “applied” Buddhism that is a recent development within Buddhism proper, or is it perhaps a dimension of traditional Buddhism that has always belonged properly to it?

… the most important sources of suffering are not something that activism can fix

If you’d like to share your, or read other people’s, thoughts on this, be sure to check out the lively discussion on SuttaCentral about this article.

… neither of those positions equipped anyone to address concrete social, political, or any other kind of human problem

… we always speak about Buddhism as a religion of compassion, but then I saw the way Buddhism is developing in the US, especially (I have to say) amongst the White, upper-middle class, convert Buddhists… I don’t want to paint an overly-grim picture, but why aren’t there more Buddhist organizations acting to relieve the suffering in the world?

… both works typify a style of writing in Buddhist Studies that seems to blur the line between religious writing and academic analysis

… a history of the future of the Maitreya Project 2.0, a non-existent statue that nonetheless has touched many lives around the world, for better and for worse

One does not obtain sīla, let alone the Dhamma, from the historical process.

Through mindfulness based interventions, the author, a psychologist with humanitarian experience, aims to foster a culture of ‘learning and care’ among aid workers and their agencies.

You can find all the interviews on SoundCloud at the following links:

1. Sharon Salzberg
2. Shelly Tygielski
3. Michael Kink
4. Daisy Hernández
5. Arian Moayed

… building spectacular ecumenical leisure sites often runs into problems

A clear-eyed but sympathetic analysis of the pervasive construction of Buddhist tourist attractions in Asia, what they accomplish and don’t.

Bodhisattvas who genuinely take the bodhisattva vow of ethical discipline do nothing but act for the benefit of beings, either directly or indirectly, but unless one is skilful in benefiting these beings, no matter how much one does, it might not benefit beings, but could actually be a direct or indirect cause of harm.

An excellent summary of what to take into account in ethical decisions: useful for any serious practitioner.

… a historically and contextually sensitive understanding of elite lay Buddhist women in Sri Lanka, bringing a “critical yet empathetic look” at their participation in ethno-nationalist Sinhala Buddhist hegemony

Aside from the Buddhist lessons, it teaches a standard curriculum of Burmese, English, math, and science. Recently, monastic schools have become an officially recognized part of the Myanmar’s education system, and students can move from them to state schools.

Nearly incontrovertible in its conclusion, the book inspired a revolution in charity in the West and encouraged many (me included) to donate more to charity than they ever had before.

The tenth anniversary edition is available for free online.

Look at the Dalai Lama. For fifty years he’s been cracking jokes about his torturers.

A long-time activist on what it takes to be a long-term activist.

‘I smiled at the guards standing at my cell,’ he writes. ‘Being thrown in the Hole was worth the pleasure of seeing them still alive.’

A review of Jarvis Masters’ spiritual memoir Finding Freedom analyzing the work as a critque of toxicity in an American prison and the presentation of an alternate “Bodhisattva” masculinity possible even among killers.

Set aside all the social norms we have, the expectations we have about who animals are or what is appropriate to do for animals and just ask: What would you do—what do you think the right thing to do is—if you saw an animal suffering?

A long and emotional interview with the founder of Direct Action Everywhere on why he cares so much about animal suffering and what drove him to risk so much fighting it.

When I first heard her story, I found myself wondering how on earth I could help a mother to overcome the grief of the loss of a son. Nothing gave Laila hope

A therapist successfully uses secularized Buddhist meditation techniques to help Palestinians living with severe trauma.

The key is to focus on two distinctions: systems as distinct from individuals, and having privilege as independent of choosing how to engage with it.

The gift of fearlessness, if extended beyond its classical scope to include the challenges of xenophobia and terrorism threats, is a capacious framework through which to probe the moral contours of contemporary refugee policy and the security concerns of states.

For at least the Pāli Buddhist tradition, the cessation of suffering is the sole intrinsic good.

There are a few English translations of this classic of world literature. Steven Bachelor has a free translation (linked above), but I strongly prefer the Padmakara translation published by Shambhala in 1999 for its unparalleled accuracy and force.

… critics have highlighted a number of weak points in Buddhist arguments thus far about environmental issues. Nevertheless, Buddhism does provide resources for constructing an environmental ethic.

Such cultivation of mindfulness provides the foundation by establishing the balance within oneself that then enables helping others.

On how mindfulness can help us face climate change productively.

… this is the nature of a person accomplished in view. Though they might manage a diverse spectrum of duties for their spiritual companions, they still feel a keen regard for the training in higher ethics, higher mind, and higher wisdom.

The Buddha taught the reluctant, quarrelling monks of Kosambi to develop themselves in love and harmony, reminding them of the higher aspirations for which they ordained.

In general, we humans are a self-interpreting species for whom the practice of recollecting and redescribing ourselves is a crucial necessity. For us the reconstruction of identity is a continuous process wherein the past is selectively crafted into a history. It is a creative and self-constitutive exercise. We come to know each other and ourselves not by exchanging resumes (mere inventories of events), but by telling our stories. And our stories change as we do; they reflect what actually happened and what we think is worth remembering, they reflect who we were, who we are, and who we would like to become.

An impassioned defense of asking big questions, especially in the context of our postmodern search for meaning.

“Why, exactly, do you teach some people thoroughly and others less thoroughly?”

The chief Asibandhakaputta asks the Buddha why, if he has equal compassion for all, he teaches some more than others. The Buddha answers with a simile of a field: a farmer knows to put most of their effort into the fertile land.