Engaged Buddhism
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How should Buddhism respond to modern, social problems?

A small Guanyin statue at the Hallwyl Museum has many arms holding a variety of implements to symbolize the many ways she has to help sentient beings.
Table of Contents
- Articles (35)
- Audio/Video (21)
- Booklets (3)
- Canonical Works (7)
- Essays (14)
- Excerpts (3)
- Monographs (6)
- Papers (2)
Articles (35)
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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.
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I allow you, monks, to turn the bowl upside down
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To formulate a viable, systematic Buddhist environmental ethic, they must clarify on Buddhist grounds what an optimal world might be
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the most important sources of suffering are not something that activism can fix
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Buddhists in Asia and the West who adapted Buddhism to a range of nonviolent social activist projects
21 pages -
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both works typify a style of writing in Buddhist Studies that seems to blur the line between religious writing and academic analysis
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The most important question becomes, “What can I do for you?”
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anything that offers success in our unjust society without trying to change it is not revolutionary—it just helps people cope.
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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.
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One does not obtain sīla, let alone the Dhamma, from the historical process.
Audio/Video (21)
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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?
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How mindfulness took over the board room, and how the board room took over mindfulness.
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it’s easy to get out of balance
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neither of those positions equipped anyone to address concrete social, political, or any other kind of human problem
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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.
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A Nepalese nun talks about why she became a nun and how her love for her mother drives her prodigious charity work.
Booklets (3)
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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.
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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?
Canonical Works (7)
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These are the five gifts of a bad person.
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there are these two kinds of gifts: a gift of material things & a gift of the Dhamma
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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.
Essays (14)
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A tour of pre-modern, Buddhist bridges and a comment on the deeper roots of engaged Buddhism.
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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
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There is some sinister hysteria in the air out here tonight, some hint of the monstrous perversion to which any human idea can come.
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Practices like yoga and meditation were woven throughout Occupy [Wall Street], and were integral to its endurance and impact; they were not a sideshow.
Excerpts (3)
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We are committed to living simply and sharing our time, energy, and material resources with those in need.
Monographs (6)
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320 pages
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200 pages
Papers (2)
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the majority of philosophy is based on assumptions about the basic cognitive endowments of average individuals that totally disregard what is known about human development
37 pages