Here is an example from some possible background reading about the views of Joanna Macy on engaged Buddhism and deep ecology (Theme 4C). There are three accounts from three resources. Some of the material overlaps. In summarising, the example summary has reduced the words from 666 to around 300 words. Read the three extracts and then click on each to see how the final summary has been arrived at.

Here are more resources - this time there are four edited extracts (but two are from the same book) and it is a more specific focus on the issue of social action and human rights in relation to socially engaged Buddhism (also Theme 4C). Try to make a summary yourself. Compare with others in the class to see how you have differed and discuss why that is and whether the differences are important.

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  • 1. Scholars have often assumed that there could be no place for human rights in Buddhism; the very concept of "rights " seems to presuppose individualism and self-assertion, values incompatible with Buddhism. Nevertheless, contemporary Engaged Buddhists readily use "human rights " language. The conceptual world which Buddhist "human rights" language inhabits, however, differs from dominant Western concepts in important ways. (1) In practice , Buddhist human rights are usually evoked on behalf of whole communities and less often (though sometimes) on behalf of individuals; (2) Buddhist human rights language avoids a rhetoric of self-assertion and speaks instead of the protection of the weak and the compassionate care of others; (3) Buddhist ethics are fundamentally non-adversarial and do not permit the trade-off of one person's " good" with harm to another; (4) while in Buddhism a person is not an "individual" in the Western sense, she nonetheless possesses great value as one who may attain Buddhahood; (5) Buddhist understanding of interconnectedness in the modem world yields an understanding of the importance of many social and political factors that support the possibility of spiritual liberation; (6) human " good" cannot justify harm to non-human beings or the matrix of life.

    (Extract edited from ‘Human Rights in Contemporary Engaged Buddhism’ by Sallie B. King in Buddhist Theology, Curzon 2000)

    2. It is simply a fact that those Buddhist leaders who have dealt most extensively with the international community (I am thinking in particular of the Dalai Lama, Thich Nhat Hanh and Sulak Sivaraksa) show no hesitation whatsoever in speaking of human rights; their speeches and writings frequently draw on this language. These men are spiritual leaders first, social-political leaders second. They clearly do not find "rights " language unusable. They have voted with their tongues and pens: Buddhists can find a way to work with the notion of human rights. From a Buddhist perspective, since society and the human person are interactive, it is fundamentally wrong to conceive them as adversarial. Things that are not separate cannot be opposed. Similarly, since society and the individual are deeply interactive, the value of one cannot be finally separated from the value of the other. This being the case, it is quite futile to attempt to see either the human person or society as bearing relatively greater importance in Buddhism than the other. Both society and the individual are equally answerable to, should serve and contribute to, these values.

    (Extract edited from ‘Human Rights in Contemporary Engaged Buddhism’ by Sallie B. King in Buddhist Theology, Curzon 2000)

    3. There have also been modern style movements, such as the international ‘Engaged Buddhism’ promoted by the Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh, developed initially out of an attempt to provide a modern Buddhist way for seeking reconciliation, peace and social justice in the polarised and devastating circumstances of 1960s Vietnam. Another example is Santi Asoke, a new Buddhist movement in Thailand which was required to separate itself from the established Sangha, and which has mixed communities of monastics and lay people living together. With a reformist message, it promotes a simple anti-materialistic lifestyle in line with Buddhist morality, including vegetarianism, together with socially useful work.

    (Extract edited from Cathy Cantwell, Buddhism: The Basics, Routledge 2010)

    4. From the perspective of social concerns, Macy argues that Buddhism has never been ‘other-worldly’ and cites the example of the Emperor Ashoka ‘who in his devotion to Dharma built hospitals and public wells and tree-lined roads for the welfare of all beings’. Here, Macy regards the Sarvodaya movement as illustrative of what SEB can be in terms of combining the Dharma with social development. For example, the movement has adopted the four abodes of the Buddha as fundamental to its philosophy: metta (loving kindness), karuna (compassion), mudhita (joy of living from making others happy) and upekkha (equanimity). These are translated into daily behaviour and approaches to life in the village. In this way the focus can be on suffering and an end to suffering in both the psycho-spiritual plane and the socio-economic pane. Macy writes: ‘you are not diluting or distorting the noble truths by applying them to conditions of physical misery or social conflict. Their truth lies in the contingent nature of suffering, however you view it. Because it has a cause, it can cease. Because it co-dependently arises, it can be overcome’.

    (Edited extract from Buddhism by Nick Heap, Paula Webber-Davies and Richard Gray)

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