Customer Reviews

Engaged Buddhist Reader

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In this excellent, 1996 compilation of 42 essays and poems, one contributor writes: "Anyone who looks at this world and society and sees its tremendous suffering, injustice, and danger will agree on the necessity to do something, to act in order to change, in order to liberate people" (p. 77). This sense of responsibility is the "touchstone" (p. 66) of Buddhist engagement. "Everything is interdependent and mutually conditioning," Joanna Macy observes, "each thought, word, and act, and all beings, too, in the web of life."

Although not a criticism of this book, I have read many of these selections before. Still, they are worth reading again. And again. Kotler's collection is organized into six parts, "Being Peace," "Touching Peace," "Compassion in Action," "The Greening of the Self," "Community," and "For a Future to be Possible," and includes the writings of H. H. the Dalai Lama ("Compassion, love, and forgiveness, however, are not luxuries. They are fundamental for our survival," p. 4), Thich Nhat Hanh, Jack Kornfield, Robert Aitken, Shunryu Suzuki, Gary Snyder, Peter Matthiesson and Stephen Batchelor, among others. Although all of the contributions here are memorable, I connected with Kenneth Kraft's "Engaged Buddhism" (pp. 64-69) and Robert Thurman's "Nagarjuna's Guidelines for Buddhist Social Action" (pp. 79-90) in particular. Joanna Macy's selections included here are so revelatory, I now want to read all of her books.

I encourage others to experience the collected insights found in this accessible book. Although it is written from a Buddhist perspective, it is not necessary to be Buddhist to appreciate the book's message: We can only save ourselves when all humanity recognizes that every problem on earth is our own personal responsibility" (p. 77). Highly recommended!

G. Merritt

This volume collects brief essays on "Engaged Buddhism", the tradition of personal work and social action rooted in Buddhist ethical precepts.

The term Engaged Buddhism was coined by Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh in the 1950s as a corrective to Buddhists who limited their conception of their practice to the internal work of meditation and ethics defined individually. Hanh's work during the conflicts in Vietnam and his teachings since have inspired many followers and disciples, and the writings in this book, with a few exceptions, follow his conception, a conception which seems to me inadequate to face up to the gravely mounting threats to life and happiness in the world.

The vision of Engaged Buddhism presented in most of the essays is individualist, metaphysical, naively pacifist, and bereft of class analysis. So it offers inadequate insight into the forms and approaches of collective action that we will need to avert global catastrophe.

A few examples of the kind of crippled thinking I'm talking about: "We always deserve our government." (p.106); "If the leaders of all nations had all the information about the consequences of their actions, they would desist from the foolish policies they espouse."(p.89); "The success of nonviolent struggle can be measured only in terms of the love and non-violence attained, not whether political victory was achieved."(p.63) These sorts of blindnesses to the structural and institutional nature of oppression and violence in our world would preclude effective social engagement, in the mechanincal sense of the word, and replace it with spinning wheels. Real engagement will mean a meshing and monkeywrenching with the hard gears and cogs of a system that increasingly resembles a runaway train.

Gary Snyder, whose political views and spiritual practices were formed independently of Hanh, offers in his contribution the most important corrective to this worldview: "The mercy of the West has been social revolution; the mercy of the East has been individual insight into the basic self/void. We need both."

The other essays that I found most useful were Hanh's and Laity's discussions of the Six Concords of the sangha, as they have applied them to life in their community of Plum Village.

For a more thorough, constructive critique of the Engaged Buddhist tradition from an anarchist perspective, I highly recommend seeking out Ken Knabb's pamphlet "Strong lessons for Engaged Buddhists" on the web.

This book's messages will stop your hurried mind and draw you into deep contemplation, beginning with the teaching of the Dalai Lama on compassion and love on the very first page. Some essays have appeared before in various works, but combined here with their neighbors, their power is amplified. Not only the big names in Engaged Buddhism but also underappreciated authors like Maha Ghosananda and A.T. Ariyaratne appear here, giving tales from real life of how they engage with difficult situations and change people's lives for the better.

Even the millennia of Buddhist stories from the past, often forgotten by Western authors exubriant at the discovery of this rich world of knowledge, are starting to come to light in these pages. I especially like the story of Prince Vessantara, a parable of the welfare state. Vessantara gave freely to the people, and they became wealthy and happy, but they began to fear that the prince would take away their new wealth, so they banished him. Robert A.F. Thurman recognizes that the situation in the United States is very much the same today. "Hoarding creates poverty. Giving away creates wealth. Imagination of scarcity is thus the cause of loss." (88)

Today, our collective understanding remains very limited, but the power we have created for ourselves is very great. Even if you only take your gun out of its holster to shoot wolves, do you really know what impact those deaths will have on the environment? (181) We entrust ourselves with life and death situations all the time, but we do not have this knowing. The way we drive our cars, the way we eat our food, all of this will determine the direction our civilization will take. As the Dalai Lama concludes, the blueprint for our society is in our mind. (250) But how much time do we take to think about these things every day?

This book summarizes roughly the first decade of Engaged Buddhist writing, 1986-1996. In terms of political change, I do not know how we might quantify the work of this movement: the number of Vietnam veterans who came to peace with their past? The number of Sri Lankans who abandoned violence? But in terms of a change of heart, this is a testimony to worlds that have been changed, and deserves an engaged read by all who work for peace.

Mr. Kotler's lucid analysis of Buddhism is superb reading for the West. Noticeably absent in recent years from Thich Nhat Hanh's books (and his books show it), Kotler will hopefully share more material on his own that better communicate the "meat of Buddhism" for modern Westerners.