[MUSIC PLAYING] Welcome, everyone, to the
Buddhist Ministry Initiative spring speaker. Our speaker tonight
is David Loy. David is a Zen teacher, a
lecturer, and an author. He was the Besl Family Chair of
Ethics in Religion and Society at Xavier University
in Cincinnati, Ohio from 2006 to 2011. Before that, he served as
a Professor of Philosophy at Bunkyo University in
Chigasaki, Japan from 1991 through 2005. And in 1971, he
began practicing Zen with Robert
Aitken-roshi in Hawaii, and is an authorized teacher
in the Sanbo Kyodan lineage of Zen Buddhism, where he
completed formal koan training under Zen master
Yamada Koun-roshi. David lectures--
did I do that right? Koun-roshi? How do-- Koh-on. Koun-roshi. OK. David lectures nationally
and internationally on various topics,
focusing primarily on the encounter between
Buddhism and modernity-- what each can learn
from the other. He's especially concerned about
social and ecological issues. And I first met David
actually at the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies. And I drove out there
just to have tea with him, because I had read some
of his writings online and in his books,
and was inspired to hear a Buddhist teacher
talk about the environment and Buddhism so eloquently. And then later,
when we sponsored an Eco-Dharma conference
in 2012 at a retreat center that I'm affiliated with,
Wonderwell Mountain Refuge, David came and he spoke
again very eloquently about the need for the
Buddhist community to step up and to be vocal on the issue
of the environment and ethics and sustainability. So please join me in welcoming
David to talk tonight about why Buddhism and the
modern world need each other. [APPLAUSE] Thank you very much,
Professor Miller, for the kind, warm,
generous introduction. I'm very pleased to be here-- not so pleased to be
behind this podium. I find there's something
kind of dualistic about it, but I was informed this
is where the mic is, and so I'll make the best of it. Maybe it's a metaphor for
institutional constraints-- something like that. Although I do notice
there is another mic here. Well, we'll see. We'll see how it goes. Well, because of the
recording, too, so-- I'll start out here and
see if I start to wander. About 50 years ago, the
Zen poet Gary Snyder published an essay on
Buddhist anarchism that included these words, quote-- "The mercy of the West has
been social revolution. The mercy of the
East has been insight into the basic self/void. We need both." Unquote. Another way to
say that, I think, is that the highest ideal
of the Western tradition has been social justice-- the idea that we
can restructure, reconstruct our societies to
make them more socially just-- more equitable. And I emphasize the
word "ideal" because I think probably all
of us in this room are very aware of
the shortcomings. And in some ways,
we seem to be moving in the opposite direction when
you think about the growing gap between rich and poor. But nonetheless, I think
it's really important for us to acknowledge and
keep in mind what has been accomplished in
the modern era in just a few hundred years, right? You think of
political revolutions, the establishment of
democracies, bills of rights, anti-slavery campaigns-- more recently, women's rights,
civil rights movements, gay rights, even
animal rights now. So again, a lot to
appreciate there. On the other side
though, looking at the Buddhist tradition,
the Buddhist tradition as it has developed
in Asia really hasn't had a lot to say
about social justice. That hasn't been
a primary concern. Rather the concern, we can
say if the concern of the West has been social
transformation, the emphasis of the Buddhist tradition
is personal or individual transformation-- that
we can realize something about ourselves,
about the world, about our relationship with the
world, that transforms how we personally live in the world. And when Gary Snyder says, "we
need both," I think he's right. Not just because those
two go well together, but I think we're
in a time now where we can see that those
two projects actually need each other if they're going
to be as successful as we need them to be. So that's really what I'm
going to try to persuade you-- that right now at this
globalization moment when East and West are
certainly coming together, we're learning so much
about other traditions, one of the important
things we need to do is see how these two ideals-- or let's even call
them projects-- can work together. And I think not too
soon, given the kind of ecological, economic, social
crises that we face today, too. So I want to start out by
contrasting the spiritual roots of the West-- that is to say,
the Judeo-Christian tradition on the one side with
the Buddhist tradition in terms of their different
attitudes toward morality. And here, I'm not so much
concerned about the content of their moral systems, but
more about the difference in their function. I mean, as we would expect, if
you compare the 10 Commandments with the Five Buddhist Precepts,
there are some similarities and there are some differences. That's not what I'm
so interested in. Rather, I'm concerned about
the role that morality plays within the Abrahamic
traditions, Judeo-Christianity in particular, and in Buddhism. Because it seems to me,
to start the comparison, that the duality between good
and evil is very central. It's the central axis
or the central duality of the Abrahamic traditions. It's like, what's God's main
way of communicating or relating to us? Well, in a way, He
tells us how to live. Or He/She/It tells
us how to live. And likewise, our main
responsibility to God is living according
to what God has to say, with the implication
that if we do that, somehow He will reward us, take care of
us, and if we don't, we're going to get into trouble. In fact, we can see this
duality between good and evil-- I mean, for many rather
conservative Judeo-Christians, they would see this world as a
battleground between the forces of good and the forces of evil,
and the really important issue is our will. Where do we stand? On which side are we allied? I think this goes
all the way back to the very beginnings of the
Judeo-Christian tradition-- back to the Garden of Eden
and the story of Adam and Eve. That's a fascinating
myth, and it can be interpreted in a
lot of different ways. For me, what stands
out is it seems to be some kind of statement
about the development of self-consciousness, right? You remember that when they
eat the forbidden fruit, they become aware that they're
naked, and they get fig leaves and hide from the face of God. It's almost as if that's a
metaphor for the development of the self-consciousness,
which is also the development of a sense of separation-- a sense of distance. Insofar as I become
self-conscious, I become aware of
that which I am not, and there's more of a
problematic relationship that comes out of that. But that's not the way
the story is told to us. That's not what's
emphasized, anyway. What's emphasized
is that it's a sin-- that they disobeyed God. That they did something that
God didn't want us to do. It's a fascinating story. There's lots else we could look
at, but just skimming right through the Judeo-Christian
tradition, Moses-- no, not Moses-- Noah's ark. Again, why did God decide
to drown almost all animals and human beings? Because we weren't living in
the way that he wanted us to. Bit of an overreaction, I think. For example-- and
I wonder, too-- you know, only two animals? Only two examples, right? Were all the other
animals so evil? And especially what
about the evil fish? They got away easy,
it seems to me, right? Right? So I'm not sure how
it works as a story, but clearly the point is made. God wasn't happy. And then going on to Moses-- the heart of the Jewish
tradition, in a way. God gives us the
10 Commandments, and there's a Covenant
created in relationship, where our accepting them and
agreeing to live with them, He will take care
of us in some way. Actually, this is a
little peripheral, but some years ago, I
was at the Institute for Advanced Study in
Jerusalem for a little while. And it was very
interesting hanging out with a bunch of
archaeologists there who told me some
parts of the story that you may not have heard
about the story of Moses when he came down from the
mountain the second time. He gathered the
Israelites together and he said, "I've got
good news and bad news. The good news is, I've
got them down to 10. The bad news is,
adultery is still in." It was actually fun
chatting with these guys and going around with them,
because they also informed me that there there's absolutely
no archaeological evidence for the existence of Moses. As far as they're
concerned, he never existed. But that's another story. Let's go on. So Adam and Eve, Noah's
ark, Moses, Jesus. You all know a lot more
about Jesus than I do. But again, although he has a
more intimate relationship, I think, with God,
the Father, Abba, and with some help from Paul,
he emphasizes love more than in the earlier tradition,
as far as I understand. But still he's an
apocalyptic Jewish prophet who's emphasizing "the
last days are coming and we really better
behave ourselves." So anyway, that's my
argument about the centrality of the duality of good and evil. That's the central issue for
the Judeo-Christian tradition. And you may wonder,
why am I going on about this in a talk that's
supposed to be about Buddhism? Here's the point. Even in the modern world-- the secular world
where many of us do not believe in that
kind of God anymore-- nonetheless, that duality
between good and evil remains our favorite story. It's like that's the spectacles
through which we still prefer to see the world. And if you just think about it
a moment, think about stories-- literally think about films. I grew up with James Bond. Every James Bond movie-- think what's going on there. But every major
series since then-- Star Wars, Harry Potter,
Lord of the Rings. What am I leaving out? I'm sure you can think
of a few others here. And of course, not just films. Our favorite detective
stories, TV series-- the good guys up
against the bad guys. We love that story. And it's a fun story
in lots of ways. But the problem from a Buddhist
perspective is that this spectacles-- this way of
looking at the world-- although it is
wonderful in some ways, it's also very problematical
in some others. Or if I want to be cute,
I could say something like, the duality
between good and evil is itself both good and evil. So I want to spend a few
minutes unpacking that, starting with the
problematical side. As I think you know,
Buddhism has a lot to say about how our ways of
thinking confuse or delude us. As my favorite bumper
sticker has it, "Don't believe
everything you think." And one of the ways
in which thinking problematizes the world for
us is dualistic thinking. That is to say, thinking
in bipolar categories. And by that, I'm thinking
of things like hot/cold, big/small, white/black. The problem with this dualism is
both logical and psychological in that we think that there
are two concepts involved here. But actually, they're two
sides of the same concept. For example, if you don't know
what the word "hot" means, you don't really understand
what the word "cold" means. They're really two sides
of the same concept, right? And in many, maybe most cases,
this is fairly innocuous. It's not problematical,
but there are some cases where
it is, because we want one rather than the other. And it's the nature
of that bipolarity that you can't have
one without the other. You've got to have both. And the example
that I would give is-- the first example would be
something like purity/impurity. If it's important for
you to live a pure life-- and again, that can mean
anything you want it to. In a way, it doesn't matter. But if it's important for
you to live a pure life, what that means is that you will
be preoccupied with impurity. That is to say, with
avoiding impurity. You can't simply be impure. You've got to discriminate
situations and say, is this a pure action? Is this a pure response or not? You have this constant decision. So you can't have one
lens without the other, is the point. Which is why one of the
great Chan masters-- I think it was Huihai
said, "True purity is to live beyond the duality
of purity and impurity." But the most problematical
duality or bipolarity of all, I think, is the bipolarity
between good and evil. And in this case,
the way it works is that their
non-duality really means that we don't know what is
good until we know what's evil, and we can't feel that
we are good-- if we want to feel that we are good,
what does it mean to be good? It means that you're
fighting against the evil. I think this helps to
explain the role of Satan. How can you have a
perfectly good God-- you know, all-good, all-knowing,
all-loving-- but how do you explain all the problems? So you postulate a Satan, and
although he is in some sense subordinate to God,
God is all-powerful, you still need a kind
of duality there. Doesn't really actually
work very well theoretically or theologically, but you
need something like that. Let's go back to the
example of James Bond. I remember when the first
James Bond movies came out, they were quite
distinctive, because he wasn't the classic-type hero. He had some bad,
self-indulgent habits, right? You remember? I mean, he likes to drink a lot. He likes to gamble. He has casual relations with
a lot of woman, most of whom seem to die somewhere along
the line in the film, right? So how do we know
he's a good guy? There's one main reason-- because he is fighting
against the bad guys. That's what makes
him a good guy. And this, I think, is really
important in terms of the way we understand things. I think we can apply it, for
example, to the War on Terror. What was the difference between
Osama bin Laden and President George W. Bush? I think they were both engaged
in the same Holy War of good against evil. Of course, the
valence is reversed. What the one thinks is good,
the other thinks is evil, but they're still thinking
of themselves as good, and it's the mark of
their good that they are working to destroy
what they see as evil. And that's part of
the complication, or that's parts of
what's dangerous. Once you've successfully
labeled something as evil-- once you've decided
something is evil-- there's really no need to
understand it or relate to it, except to destroy it. That's the whole point. If something is evil, it
needs to be destroyed. I think that's the
way it tends to work. I think this gives
us a lot of insight into the history of the West-- into things like inquisitions,
heresy trials, witchcraft trials and so forth. But I don't think we
need to go so far back. I also think it gives
us insight into some of the horrendous events
of the 20th century. For example, what
was Hitler doing when he tried to eliminate
all the Jews in Europe? He wanted to kill them all, and
the Romani and the homosexuals. What was he trying to do? He was trying to purify
the earth by getting what he considered to be the-- destroying what he considered
to be the impure elements. Or we could say
he was eliminating what he thought was evil in
order to perfect this world, reminding me of one of
the great German poets. What was it, Holderlin
who said, "The attempt to make a heaven
on this earth is what has made it into a hell." Maybe that's part of the
logic there behind it. What's the basic point here? What am I getting at by looking
at this problematic side? Well, one way to sum it
up as a general principle is something like this-- one of the main causes
of evil in our world has been our attempts
to destroy evil, or what we think of as evil--
what we understand as evil. And it's not just Hitler. Think of Stalin with
the kulaks in the Soviet Union-- the slightly
wealthier peasants. Or Mao Tse-tung in China,
with the landlords. Or the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia
with anyone who was educated, anyone who had any-- anyone, basically,
who wasn't a peasant. Are you saying-- Please. --all these intentions
are for the best, and we are [INAUDIBLE]
international [INAUDIBLE]?? I'm trying to get my
head around what you're saying right now,
because it [INAUDIBLE] but bringing Hitler
into the issue? I mean, this is a
guy who just got his [INAUDIBLE] point of view? [INAUDIBLE] Oh, I'm not defending
Hitler in the least. I'm just talking about this
dualistic way of thinking. How it was that he himself
was acting out of it. He thought he was
doing something good by fighting against
what he believed to be evil. He's simply an example of that. And I see that as a general
principle that I think has been very important in the
history of the West generally, and has been the source of a
lot of suffering from a Buddhist perspective. So that to me is the
problematical side. Now let me go on and talk
about the positive side that will maybe hopefully
relieve some of your anxieties. And that brings us back
to the Old Testament or the Jewish Bible-- back to the prophets. What were the prophets doing? Well, one of the things
they were certainly doing is that they were
speaking to rulers. They were going up to
the kings and the rulers, and they were challenging them. They were saying, look,
you're not living in the way that God wants you to. You're not obeying his rules. You are taking
advantage-- exploiting the widows, the orphans,
the poor, and so forth. And then they would run back
into the hills, usually. Got to get away from the kings
after you've been challenging them like that. And this was the beginning of
something really important-- the notion that this whole
concern for good and evil isn't something that
rulers are immune from. That rulers too are subject
to the same good demands, the same ethical
demands for justice, and this therefore applies
not just to their subjects, but applies to the state. It applies to the government. And this becomes
very important when we combine this Judeo-Christian
concern for social justice with what the Greeks realized. And by no accident,
of course, the Greeks are the other source of
the Western tradition. Because the Greeks realized
that the way we live together-- the kind of social
organization-- is not natural in the way
that our ecosystems are. That if we don't like the way
our society is structured, we can restructure it. And they were the ones
who started to do that. They are the ones who
created democracy-- not a very good democracy
by our standards-- but nonetheless, they
showed us something. So what happens in the
modern world, it seems to me, is you have this realization--
we can transform our society with the Judeo-Christian
concern for social justice, and we get the kind of
institutional reforms that I was alluding to at the
very beginning of my talk, and it's been very important. This is that social justice
idea that we can restructure how we live together in order
to make it more equitable-- more just. And because of that, we now live
in a perfect society, right? Right? Well, not quite. Not quite. The ideal is wonderful
and important, but we're not quite there
yet, if we ever will be. And here's the interesting
question-- why not? Is there something
holding us back? What's the limitation? Or maybe I can try
to put it this way. Supposing all of us
were living in the most perfect possible society-- the best political
and economic system, whatever that would mean. If, however, you
and I individually were still motivated by what
Buddhism calls the Three Poisons-- greed, ill will,
and delusion-- if our minds were
still full of that, would that society work well? Or wouldn't it be the case
that somehow, sooner or later-- probably sooner-- subversive things would happen? People would find ways to
take advantage of that system, and in certain ways
it would break down. And I wonder, is that a parable
for what's been happening? Or to put it
another way, suppose that you are a
revolutionary leader who has overthrown some
really nasty dictator, and so now you have
complete power. But if you haven't
worked on your own greed, it's going to be
rather difficult overcoming this tendency
to take advantage of your new situation. If you haven't worked
on your own ill will, you're likely going
to look at people who have other ideas about
how things should be done-- how society should
be structured. The tendency will be to see
them as somehow enemies that need to be neutralized
one way or the other. And if you haven't worked
on your own delusion, your own ego, that I'm-- you're the wise one and
that the solution to all of society's ills
is simply imposing your vision onto
society, because you have the wisdom, right? Is that really going
to be a solution? What's going to happen to that
new revolutionary society? How well is that going to work? And does that help us
understand why so often revolutions simply lead
to one gang of thugs being replaced by another? I think you can see where
I'm going with this. The ideal of social
justice is wonderful. The ideal of structural
transformation-- passing laws, reform movements--
is essential-- fantastic. But the limitation there
is individual people. Just to change the
institutional structure-- how we actually live together-- won't be, and I
would argue, can't be enough unless there's
also some realization and emphasis on personal
individual transformation as well. Which brings me to the
second part of my talk-- the Buddhist tradition. I started out by
wanting to contrast the perspective of the Abrahamic
tradition toward morality with the Buddhist tradition. So let's look at
that for the moment. Obviously ethics--
social morality is very important
in Buddhism too, and it definitely provides
a foundation there. Nonetheless, it seems
to me that it's not central in the same way
that good versus evil is for the Abrahamic traditions. If you're looking for
something that's comparable, I think it works better
to talk about the polarity between delusion and wisdom,
or ignorance and awakening. That is the foundational. That is the core duality
within the Buddhist tradition. There is a need for morality
as kind of a foundation, but it seems to me, the
precepts become something like the training
wheels on a bicycle-- very helpful when
you're learning to ride, but sooner or
later, you can take them off. And in principle
at least, that's the attitude in Buddhism. That if one really develops--
if one really awakens-- then you don't have
to follow the precepts as some formal rules,
because the transformation-- the awakening that
you've experienced-- means that you will
not be inclined to want to live in ways that
would disobey or break those precepts. It's simply, that's
not something that you would want
to naturally do, so you don't have to worry about
them as something external. Those guidelines are built into
what it means to be awakened-- in principle. Interesting to look at
why it doesn't always work out that way, but that's
a discussion for another time. So what corresponds
to the concern, if we have this Western
concern for social justice? What's the Buddhist equivalent? Is it karma? In a way, you might
think so, right? I mean, karma is kind of-- it's not really, strictly
speaking, good and evil, but it's sort of moral
cause/effect-- that what you do comes back to you
sooner or later. The problem with
that, however, is that when you look at the
way that karma has actually been functioning in
Asian Buddhist societies, because it's a principle
of the universe, it's not something that you
and I have to worry about. It's like everyone will
receive the rewards-- well, again, "rewards" is
not quite the right word, but as you act at,
you will be treated. That's built into the way
the cosmos is working, so you and I don't
have to worry about it. That's going to
take care of itself, and it already is
taking care of itself right now, because in principle,
we are reborn and experiencing the consequences of our
actions in previous lifetimes. What this means is in effect,
the whole karma teaching has actually encouraged a
certain kind of passivity in most of the Asian
Buddhist traditions, where they haven't been
inclined to develop this in a social justice way. If we want to find a
term that corresponds to the term for
social justice, I don't think there's anything
better in Buddhist tradition than the most important
term of all in Buddhism. Anybody want to
venture or give a guess or give your opinion on that? What's the single
most important term in the whole of Buddhist--
especially the early Buddhist tradition? What's the central concept? We have some
monastics in the room. Don't mean to put you on
the spot, but anybody? [INAUDIBLE]? That's great, because
for me that's number two, but it's not number one. Cause and effect? Sorry? Cause and effect. Cause and effect? It's not what-- these
are all essential, but they're not what
I'm looking for. Freedom from suffering? Sorry? Freedom from suffering? Dukkha, right? So I mean, if you think
about the Four Noble Truths, they're all about dukkha. Does everyone here
know the term dukkha? It's the word usually
translated as suffering, but actually that
translation really only works if you understand it
in the broadest possible way. Not just physical, mental
pain but dissatisfaction, anxiety, dis-ease, right? It refers to the fact that the
way our minds usually work, it's their nature to be
bothered by something, really. And so the Buddhist way
of looking at the world is not in terms of justice,
but more in terms of suffering. How do we-- it's not
about moral justice, individual or social justice. It's about
understanding suffering and where that comes from,
and how we can alleviate that. But here's the
interesting question. In fact, to me, this is
a foundational question. What did the Buddha really have
in mind when he was talking about the end of suffering? Because some people--
some scholars-- I'm thinking of people
especially like Trevor Ling and a few others, [? Nayland ?]
[? Swaras-- ?] some of these people believe that the Buddha
actually wasn't just trying to create a religion in the
modern sense of the word, and that we should be very
careful about anachronistically projecting our rather innervated
weakened sense of what a religion is back
onto the Buddha. In the modern world, we have
a particular understanding of religion. Let's be careful. Maybe that wasn't what
the Buddha was at. Some of these scholars
think that the Buddha may have had a much broader
vision-- that he was trying to start a movement that
would transform society more basically. And in fact, there
are two things that make me wonder if
they are right, and in fact if the Buddha might have
had a broader vision. The first is his
attitude toward women, and the second is his
attitude toward caste. So let me just say a little
bit about those two things. Regarding women, remember that
in his time, in Vedic religion, women were really-- I mean if we think
women are oppressed, they were really oppressed. They couldn't do anything,
especially in terms of anything spiritual or religious. They weren't allowed
to chant the Vedas. I think they could have
their tongue cut out if they did something
like that, so it was a pretty nasty
situation for women. And then the Buddha comes
along and basically, he says that women have the same
potential to awaken as men. He starts a bhikkhuni-sangha
for the women, and we have all these wonderful
songs in the Pali Canon talking about how indeed women did wake
up and how wonderful it was. So again, something we
take for granted today, but in the context of 2,400
years ago, that was huge-- huge, you know? There's something very-- I don't know if any of you are
familiar with the story of how the Buddha decided
to admit women, but let me just say a
little bit about it. Basically, the
Buddha is beseeched by his foster mother who
wants to join the order and pursue the
path to awakening. And he says no, and she
chases after him weeping. No. Finally Ananda, the
Buddha's attendant, says-- well, he doesn't
use these words, but he says, in
effect, "Look, Buddha." Or actually, it's sort
of "world-honored one" or something like that. "Don't women have
the same Buddha nature or the same
potential to awaken as men?" And the Buddha said, "Yes. Yes, I've said that. It's true." And so Ananda says,
"Well, why don't you create an order for them? Why don't you allow
them into the sangha?" And the Buddha says, "Hmm. OK." And then he adds some
conditions to it. He says, "Well,
just by accident, these conditions always
make the women forever subordinate to men." And he also says,
"Well, because of this, my dharma is going to
disappear much more quickly." That's the story
that's come down to us, and it's really important
to recognize that it's been totally distorted. There's all kinds of
evidence within that story. For example, I used to
appreciate the fact that, wasn't it neat that
the Buddha would allow himself to be persuaded
by Ananda, his young attendant? And then I realized,
David, you're not thinking. In the Pali Canon, there's all
kinds of stories about Ananda, and they're all designed
to show him in a bad light. The redactors, the people
who put it together-- they really had
it in for Ananda. Clearly, if there was a
power struggle and Kashyapa, the guy who basically took
over after the Buddha's death-- he and Ananda-- he really
didn't like Ananda. I'm not sure why. Maybe because Ananda was
too close to the Buddha or something. So the fact that
Ananda is the one who talks the Buddha into
making the woman's order-- that's a way of blaming
Ananda for doing it, you see? And there's other problems too. For example, in the story-- this incident is
believed to have occurred quite early in the
Buddha's teaching career-- seven, eight, nine years--
something like that. But Ananda didn't become his
attendant until late in life, so that part doesn't
work very well. And there's some other
problems as well. Some people think
the rules that women are supposed to follow that
subordinate them to men-- there's some evidence
they were added later, so all this kind of stuff. It's just a way of pointing out
that as wonderful as the Pali Canon is, and
especially the sutras, we have to be a little bit
careful in the way we interpret it. The other issue is caste, which
at the time of the Buddha, evidently wasn't as
strong as it became. But still, that was a that
was still a big issue. And one of the really important
things about the Buddha's sangha is that when you join
the sangha, when you became a monastic, you lost caste. There was no caste
in the sangha. Kind of interesting, you know? There were no
differentiations of caste within the spiritual institution
that the Buddha created, which has sometimes been called
the first democracy in history. And this reminds me of one of my
all-time favorite stories from the Pali Canon, where once
there were some high caste Khachaturia men-- Khachaturia were the
princely-- the warrior caste like the Buddha,
and they decided that they wanted to join
the order-- that they wanted to become monastics. And so they turned to their
attendant, Upali, not only their servant, but to be
honest, probably something more like their slave. And they said,
"Look, we're going to take off all our rich
silk clothes and jewelry, and we want you to bring
this back to our families, because we're not going to need
them anymore as monastics." And Upali said, "No way. If somebody finds me with
these clothes and jewelry, what do you think
they're going to think? They're going to think I
stole them or killed you, so I'm not going to do it. Instead, I'll join
the order too." So they all go together. I think it's a total
of five or six of them. They all go to the
Buddha, and the Buddha does something
really interesting, and you have to interpret it. It's not totally
clear what's going on, but when they all present
themselves to the Buddha and say that they want to
become monastics, the Buddha-- he takes the high caste guys
and he puts them on a retreat. I think it's like a two-week
retreat, and I'm not sure why, but I think he wants
to check them out. I think he wants to
see, do they really have what it takes to be monastics? You know, they're kind of
spoiled, young rich guys, so let's check them out. But while they're
on this retreat, he does something
quite fascinating. He ordains Upali. He ordains Upali. What I forgot to
mention earlier is that within the sangha,
although it's democratic and there's no caste, there
is one measure of preeminence. That is to say, when
you are ordained. Because the person who
is ordained earlier-- if for example,
they're moving around and they decide where to
rest or when to start eating, the person who is the oldest in
the sangha has priority always. That's just a way
to differentiate-- decide who sits down first. What this means in effect
is that Upali, their slave, will forever be their senior-- their superior in the sangha. And again, think of
it in that context of a caste-ridden society. Think what that means. But what happened to the
sangha after the Buddha died? Maybe, and it's very
hard to say-- maybe the Buddha had this
broader vision. But what in fact happened
was after he was gone, well first of all,
the women's sangha didn't last for very long. Maybe it had something
to do with the fact that the men had
control, and my guess is the men didn't
like the competition. Curiously, after a
couple of hundred years, the women's sanghas
tend to disappear. Serious problem there, so-- And in fact, every
Asian Buddhist society is strongly patriarchal,
in a way that I don't think the Buddha was. Maybe Taiwan a bit
less than some, because they have so many
nuns there, but all very patriarchal. And what about caste? Well, the early sangha
was to some extent dependent on royal support
as well as royal toleration. We have stories of kings
giving land and also providing financial support
to the early sangha, which needed it. It's still fragile. It's early days. So in addition to that, you're
in a tricky relationship with the kings, because
if the kings don't like what you're doing, they
can squash you very easily. And that was the
tricky situation, so Buddhism did not as
far as I know, develop this prophetic dimension
of challenging the kings. In fact, it came to a
quid pro quo in the sense that if you want to be
supported by the powers that be, you'd better support
the powers that be, and that's the way it developed
historically, in other words. And you also have a teaching
within the tradition that enables you to
do this very nicely-- the teaching of rebirth. So somebody is born
a king, or a prince and becomes a king-- well,
you must have very good karma from your past lifetime. We should obey you because
you deserve to be king. Somebody else is born
poor, maybe very disabled? Well, I'm sorry, but
don't blame anybody else. You must have done something
bad in your past lifetime. And you are a woman. Well, I'm really sorry. You must have done
something really bad in your past lifetime, but
if you do what we men say, if you obey us, then
you have a good chance to be reborn as a man
in your next lifetime, and then you can
become a Buddhist monk and that sort of thing. I'm making a joke, but as
I understand the history, it's not so far from
what actually happened. So in other words
Buddhism did not develop in a way that
challenged the social order. It found a place for itself. It became institutionalized. It survived and
thrived because it was accommodated within the
institutional structures without challenging them. So kings often took upon
themselves the roles of-- they looked upon themselves
as Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, and the sangha would
tend to tolerate that. If the king calls
himself a Buddha, as for example the Chinese
emperor sometimes did, you've got to be pretty brave
to contradict him, right? So this is the way
things developed. The good result of that is that
because Buddhism focused only on individual karma,
individual suffering, my own individual mind, it
created and has been utilizing the greatest collection
of contemplative practices that we've ever had. I think Buddhism has by far the
greatest collection of those when you put all the different
Buddhist traditions together. But again, the way that we've
understood dukkha in Buddhism is it's very personal. It's very individual. Your dukkha is from your own
karma and your own delusion, and it's individual. It's like the causal
stream is just you, and that's what you
work on-- understanding how your own mind works. Liberation is freeing yourself
from your own individual suffering, but there hasn't
been sufficient looking at the larger issue
of what we could talk about as institutionalized
dukkha-- dukkha caused by problematical institutions,
such as institutions ridden with caste and patriarchy. The Buddhist tradition has
not developed in that way, at least up to this point. That has not been the priority. But now today, we're
in a new situation, and every time Buddhism
has gone to a new culture, every time Buddhism
is spread, it has interacted with
the local culture and created something new. So we know in Tibet, the
tantric Mahayana Buddhism that came interacted
with the native Bon, and something new was created-- Tibetan Buddhism. China-- Mahayana interacted
with Chinese culture, especially Daoism-- created Chan
or Zen, the tradition that I practice in. So now Buddhism faces
its greatest challenge and its greatest potential ever. It comes to the West. Or you can't even say the West--
it comes to the modern world, because the West isn't
just the West anymore. It comes to a modernizing,
globalizing world, and it interacts
with Christianity, it interacts with
modern psychology, and it interacts with
the Western concern for social justice. And our insights into the fact
that a lot of suffering that occurs in the world isn't
just because of our own ways of thinking, or our own karma. There's also suffering due to
the way institutions function. I can sum this up by saying
that I once heard a teacher say, and I won't say any
more about who he was, but he was talking
about oh, how sad. How terrible all the
Jews in Nazi Germany. How terrible their
karma must have been for them to be born at
that time, in that place. And I remember
thinking, oh my god. That kind of thinking--
that's simply intolerable. We can't blame the
victims in that way. We've really got
to get beyond that. So we're in a situation now
where the Buddhist concern to understand and
alleviate dukkha-- it can start to engage with
these larger questions, and it's not just
a matter of taking on board the Judeo-Christian
concern for social justice. It's also Buddhism has
its own perspective that can help us to understand
why suffering occurs. For example, one of the things
that I've sometimes argued is that in the
modern world, we've institutionalized
the Three Poisons. Institutionalized in
the sense that they've taken on a life of their
own, so our economic system is institutionalized greed. You never have enough. Not only consumers. Corporations never profitable
enough, GNP never big enough. I think our militarism
and our attitude toward inmates in prison is
institutionalizing ill will. Interesting, we are by far
the most militarized society in history if you look
at the amount of money that we put into it. And the tragedy
there, of course, is when you spend so much
money on your military, you've got to keep
finding wars all the time. You've got to find enemies. How else do you
rationalize all that money? That's why the end
of the Cold War was a terrible problem
for the Pentagon. But of course it
solved the problem. Now we have the War on Terror,
which can go on-- it's already the the longest war in history. It could go on forever. Maybe it'll never end. How would we know? And likewise, I think we've
institutionalized delusion with our media, which as
mega-corporations, aren't concerned about educating
or informing us. They're about finding
ways to grab our eyeballs and sell them to
the highest bidder. So they normalize consumerism. They don't really
encourage us to ask the really vital questions. They keep us in a
certain mindset. So no time here to go
into that at any length, but let me just conclude
by what I really think I've been talking
about is the importance of bringing together
two types of freedom. Maybe they're not
two types at all. Maybe they're two sides
of the same freedom. Think for a minute. Suppose you are the richest
person in the United States. Maybe you're J. Paul Getty
or any really, really, wealthy person. But if your mind is still
filled and motivated by greed, ill will,
delusion, would we Buddhists want to say that you are free? In some important
sense, you are not. But one can turn
that around as well and look at, say,
look at Burma-- Myanmar. Maybe a little bit earlier. Maybe a generation
ago, although I'm not sure how much better
things are now, really. But if you go back a little bit
and you have a military junta, which exploits everything
for its own benefit, where people can't speak
freely, a lot of people find it very hard to
get enough food to eat-- are you really free there, even
if you're an awakened Buddhist monk living in that kind
of terrible situation where you can't speak freely? Where your family is
oppressed and so forth? Can't we see today
that we really need to work on both
types of freedom? And in the modern world
where globalization means that we know so much
more about other traditions and we can see what they-- we can learn from their
ideals, their projects, but we can also bring them
together with other projects. And as I said earlier,
none too soon. I think we're in some
pretty critical times now, and I think we can use
all the help we can get-- all the insights from
all of these traditions. So that's why I think that
Buddhism and the modern world need each other. Thank you. [APPLAUSE] Thank you so much,
David, for your talk. So what I hear you saying is
that the reason that Buddhism and the modern world need each
other, or the ideal marriage is a marriage between social
justice and interiority. Or some kind of-- you could say an external
societal awakening, and an internal awakening-- that
the ideal for a modern practice of Buddhism would be that. So my question is this. Both of those projects for
just the average individual-- let's just say an
average individual-- the project to become
awakened on the inside, and the project
to be an activist on the outside with a concern
for issues of equality and social justice-- both of those projects
could take a lot of energy. Either one of them could
take a lot of energy on the part of one individual. I'd hope so. Yeah. So I guess my question is--
and it's a question that comes up again and again. Someone asked the Karmapa
this question a few days ago-- maybe not worded
in exactly the same way. How does an individual who
cares about both of those things balance that? How can we do both well? [INAUDIBLE] Or should I go back there, or-- No, stay here. Wonderful question. Thank you. The first thing that
comes to mind for me is this wonderful
quotation from Nisargadatta that I like rather too much. I think I use it too often. But in effect, what
he says is, "When I look inside and see that
I am nothing, that's wisdom. When I look outside and see that
I am everything, that's love. Between these two,
my life turns." Let me say it
again, because what I think he's really articulating
is what Buddhism sometimes calls the Bodhisattva
path that developed in Mahayana especially. And I think he also
is pointing to why. It's not simply that they
both take a lot of energy. They actually--
those two things-- those two projects that
you were talking about-- I also believe they
really need each other. Let me say it
again first though. "When I look inside and see that
I am nothing, that's wisdom. When I look outside and see that
I am everything, that's love. Between these two,
my life turns." As far as Buddhism
is concerned, why do we start Buddhist practice? Because for almost all of
us, there's some problem. There's some dukkha
in our own lives, even if it's only some
kind of existential "what's it all about?" There's some dissatisfaction
that brings us to making this inordinate
investment in time and energy and money and to practice. So that that's a
huge commitment, and we do it because there's
something wrong in our lives. Our lives aren't working as
well as we would like them to. But here's the
interesting thing-- as I understand awakening,
it's about seeing through the delusion
of separation. As Thich Nha said, "We're here
to see through the illusion of our separation." The idea that somehow I
am inside and all of you are outside, and
therefore my well-being is separate ultimately
from your well-being. So to start this
practice, we do it in order to resolve
our own issues, but as we get deeper
into the practice, if the practice is
going well, we're also starting to see through
this delusion of separation and realizing that my well-being
isn't separate from yours. So the irony is, if we still
continue to just face the wall and do our own
meditation, and we think, what's important is about
my own enlightenment. Leave me alone. Maybe when I'm
fully enlightened, then I'll go out
and help somebody. I think that misses
the point, actually. That attitude
becomes the problem, because it's still stuck in the
dualistic way of understanding that my well-being is
separate from the well-being of other people. And I think these
Nisargadatta points to that. "When I look outside and
realize that I am everything." And so the path of
the Bodhisattva, or in the modern world, the
path of social and ecological activism, isn't something
tagged on that we do when we're not practicing. It is, we realize,
part of our practice. It's an essential
part of our practice. We don't just do it because
we're being kind and generous. It's essential. And we can understand
it in another way, too. As we begin to
wake up, it doesn't mean that because I have
some insight into the fact that I'm not separate
from you, that doesn't mean that therefore all
of my old self-centered habits and preoccupations
automatically disappear. They're still there. So how do I begin to actualize
or build into my life this insight that I'm not
separate from other people? It's called learning to
live a life of compassion. It's definitely the
Bodhisattva path whereby the only way
I really do that is I learned to live in the
world in a non-egotistical, non-narcissistic
way, recognizing that the important question
in a situation is not, what's in this situation for me? How can I get what I want
out of this situation? That's the old dualistic
way of thinking. But if I'm really starting
to awaken and realize that I'm not
separate from others, then it's, I am this situation. I'm not separate. I'm interdependent
with all of you. What can I do to make this
situation better for everyone? This not only means
that I am out there working to make the
world a better place. It means this is my
own personal practice to overcome my own dualistic
self-centered habits which are my problem, you see? So in the important
sense, I think that just as I was saying
about East and West needing each other,
I really think these two projects of
personal transformation and our concern for social
transformation really, really also need each other. Otherwise we just become more
self-obsessed facing the wall, meditating. Or the activist without the
personal practice-- it's so easy to get burned out and
frustrated and disappointed. We need practitioners. We need people who, in
the process of meditating, they learn non-attachment-- develop non-attachment,
which we're going to need when we're dealing
with social and ecological challenges. So it's a very long
answer to your question, but there's so much
built into the question. Thank you. So maybe one more question,
and then we can open it up to the room for questions. So I wonder sometimes-- this
is just my own wondering. When I first
encountered Buddhism, I encountered it in
a Western context, and I believed for many
years that Buddhism was about personal transformation. And then I went to Nepal
and I spent a year living with Tibetans in their
context, and it completely changed my idea that this was
about personal transformation, just by seeing how Buddhism
was active in the society. That there was a consciousness. That this was a
transformative on a societal and an institutional level
within the monasteries. There was a kind of attempt to
create a compassionate society within just the walls
of one monastery. So now I wonder how much-- I guess is my question. Maybe you've probably
considered this-- how much the idea
that Buddhism is about personal transformation
mainly is not a Buddhist idea, but a Western Buddhist idea? I just wonder if you think
that, or if you think not. I think it's a
very good question. Part of the problem
is generalizing about Buddhism discipline. It's like, there's so many
different types of Buddhism, so many different threads
which have been developed in very different ways. If we go back to the earliest
text, the Pali Canon-- Yeah, would you talk into that? Thank you. My understanding of
the early texts, and I don't think it's simply
my understanding. I think it's built in there. There are tensions
within the early Canon, but what's the ultimate goal? If you think about it,
the ultimate goal is-- this world is [INAUDIBLE]
is a world of suffering, craving delusion and
so forth, and the idea is not to improve it or
transform it in some way. The idea is to transcend it or
escape it by not being reborn. So I think there is this-- I'm not saying this is the only
thing in Buddhism, but this-- [INAUDIBLE] Yeah, but that
that's very strong. Even then, that's controversial. There's-- you know, if we
wanted to spend the time, I think there's some things
that can cast some doubt upon-- or there seem to be different
ideals and goals going on there. Like the Bodhisattva ideal is to
keep coming back as long as you can or prolong it for the sake
of the suffering of the world. That's a different model. Right. That's usually associated with
the development of Mahayana. And again, it's a
Mahayana story-- why we're superior
to the other guys. But the way that's
normally explained is of course that
they distinguish between the Arhats,
the enlightened people, at the time of the Buddha who-- they were awakened, but they
were awakened for themselves, and they didn't have that
sense of responsibility. And the idea of the
Bodhisattva path to be reborn and to help other
people is predicated on following the
example of the Buddha. Like the Buddha,
he spent 45 years going all around trying
to help everybody. And so that is talked about
as what we should emulate. Within Japanese society-- OK, I spent 20 years in Japan. It wasn't in a
monastic situation, but in Japanese
Buddhism, in Zen, there is a lot of lip service paid
to the Bodhisattva path. We used to say every day
the four Bodhisattva vows, the first of which is "Living
beings are numberless. I vow to save them all." Well, lip service, but in
terms of how things actually function. First of all, not much was
done to live up to that. And also, it was understood
not in a social justice way. The Bodhisattva path
is usually understood as helping others wake up
so that they are waking up, rather than doing
something that might be transformative on
an institutional level. So again, without
prolonging the answer, I think there's a
lot of streams-- a lot of Buddhist
traditions, and it's dangerous for either one of
us to generalize about that. But of course, that's just
what I've done in my talk. [LAUGHTER] Why don't we open it up for the
group to ask questions of David if you would like to? Do we have a mic hopper? Anyone want to be a mic hopper? I really enjoyed
your talk, David. Can you talk a little bit
about what a broader language and grown-up language around-- a Western language around
dukkha-- conversation around dukkha that might
be very constructive on both levels in terms of
the social and the personal? Just because it just
seems to me part of the problem
with practice here is just this insane
application of Buddhism as a way of converging
with a consumerist idea that we can escape--
eradicate suffering, and I just think it's a very
self-defeating and ultimately narcissistic aspiration. So I think we're here to-- I think suffering
is here for good. Thanks. OK. And the Buddha himself-- I mean, it's interesting. You go back to the
early texts, there's this interesting parable
about the two arrows or sometimes called "The Two
Darts," where the Buddha makes the point-- the first
dart of suffering-- maybe physical suffering. We're all going to
get old and die. We'll get old if we're lucky. As my dad used to
say, getting old isn't so bad when you
consider the alternative. So Buddhism doesn't
stop that, but it's the second arrow
of how we make pain into suffering by
becoming obsessed with it and worrying about it
and building it up. It's a very interesting
story when you think-- I think most of you are familiar
with the foundational myth about the Buddha's life--
that he was living in a palace and protected from
suffering until one day he went outside and saw
for the first time an old person, then an
ill person, and finally a dead person-- a corpse. And that's what motivated
him to go on a spiritual path and eventually become
awakened under the Bodhi Tree. It's like he felt he
had to do that in order to solve the problem of
illness, old age, and death. And yet there's a
kind of irony there. So the Buddha was in
principle fully awakened, so then he goes out and
he teaches for 45 years. What happens? Well, he gets old, he
gets sick, and he dies. So well, wait a minute. How did he solve the problem? Or another way to say that,
what is the real problem? Some people have said to me that
the word "suffering" doesn't really work very well,
because especially a lot of us in contemporary
American culture, we're very fortunate. We have great medical
care and good lives. And suffering-- but maybe
that's not the best translation, as I tried to allude
to at the beginning. The way that I try
to talk about it now is in terms of
a sense of lack, I explain that in
the following way. That I think we can understand
the Buddha's teaching about a [INAUDIBLE] self as
fitting into our contemporary understanding--
the sense of self as a psychological
and social construct. But the construction
of the sense of self is at the same time
the construction of that which is not self. It's like a sense of separation. It goes back to that
delusion of separation, and that, that there's
a fundamental discomfort or dis-ease built
into that situation. Or to say it another way, if the
sense of self is a construct, it's inherently insecure. It's inherently uncomfortable,
because there's no thing there. There's no substantiality to it. It's just patterns of
behavior-- processes that work together
in a certain way. But because it doesn't
have any reality, it's inevitably
going to be insecure. And I think the way that we
tend to experience that-- something we all have--
is a sense of lack. I think our sense of self
is haunted or shadowed by a sense of lack-- a feeling
that something is missing, something isn't quite right,
something is wrong with me. And I think that's one of
the great secrets of life. We all have this sense of
lack, but we don't realize that everyone else has it too. We think it's our own problem. And then we can look at the
way our society conditions us in response. And 1,000 years ago,
you had the church. They tell you what
your sense of lack is. It's sin, and they give
you a way to deal with it. Well, maybe in the
modern, secular world, we don't believe in
sin, but we've still got a sense of lack. Well, what are we going to do? Well, no problem. We're conditioned as Americans. We know what our problem is. We don't have
enough money, or we don't have enough consumer toys,
or we're not famous enough. Our society conditions us to
understand our sense of lack and to try to fill it up
by getting enough money, getting enough fame,
something like that. The tragedy being, of course,
that if that external looking is only a symptom of
the fundamental problem, this delusion of separate
self, then all of those games that we're encouraged to play
can't really make us happy. But I think if we
look at suffering-- if we look at the fundamental
Buddhist teaching of dukkha in this way, it starts to make a
lot more sense of our condition today. And it also gives us a
perspective on our society, you see. Because it's not simply that
you and I maybe are encouraged to become obsessed with money. But if you look at it
from the other side, we can see we have a
problematical society that is encouraging us to become
obsessed with money and fame and things like that. So you can also use that as a
way to understand and critique where our society is at. Does that help? Yeah, that seems like a
very constructive way. It also seems like a
very constructive way for Buddhists and the Abrahamic
practitioners to communicate, just because suffering
is such a loaded term from that perspective, too. So my understanding is
not that we should simply import a Judeo-Christian
concern for social justice. There's a place for that. But nonetheless, Buddhism
has its own analysis, as I've just tried to
offer a little bit. I mentioned earlier
the Three Poisons that we've
institutionalized that have taken on a life of their own. I think that's a
Buddhist-type contribution. Notice it doesn't
refer to morality. It's not an ethical. It's not talking about
distributive justice or anything like that. It's talking about the delusions
and the kind of suffering that misunderstandings cause. Again, this fits in with the
fundamental Buddhist approach, which is not dividing the
world into good and evil, but understanding how
you and I and all of us are parts of this
system of delusion that institutionalizes
suffering, and how important it is
for us to wake up to that. It's not-- today, awakening
can't simply be about waking up to my own-- it's not just simply a matter
of transforming my own greedy [INAUDIBLE] delusion. I think it's really
essential we have to see how they have
been institutionalized in our society, and
work for that as well. In fact, I would go further and
say that if that's the case, then we can see that
institutionalized greed, ill will, delusion are also a
collective spiritual crisis-- collective spiritual challenge. Thank you. Thank you very much. I appreciate the way
you were bringing out the limitations of the
aspect of good and evil from the Abrahamic
traditions, and I think you were inferring
when someone is awake that their moral compass becomes
more spontaneous in the way it arises. It's not like you have
to codify these rules. But we I also get a
little bit stumped when I think about the
institutionalization of our delusions and the
fact that we do still need to have some sort of
moral compass in the way we want to move forward. And I think as
Buddhism has moved into the West or
the modern world, it's been sort of
indoctrinated a lot with the aspect of a
postmodern cultural relativism where we have a very difficult
time making judgments around things, and we like
to see things all equal. And that seems like a dead
end too in a certain way, so-- And I think the solution to
that in one way is quite simple. That is just speaking in
terms of Buddhist institutions themselves, how important it
is for Buddhist institutions to focus on the precepts. In other words, if you get
fully, deeply enlightened, you don't need the
precepts anymore because you automatically
want to follow them. OK, but nonetheless,
the precepts are out there for all of us, and
if something happens and you're inclined to break
them, you're going to be held accountable--
that kind of thing. I think the precepts-- in the Zen tradition
for complicated reasons, we haven't emphasized
them enough, and I think that that
is really important. In the Theravada
tradition, I think they've done a much better job
about emphasizing and holding the monastics in principle
to those precepts. Now, how much that's the
complete answer to what you're calling for is another question,
but certainly that's a place we have to start. Hello, Professor David Loy. Nice to meet you again. Welcome. And thanks for the
wonderful talk. So my question is
actually it has two parts around the increasing
popularity of Buddhism in America. One part is the Hollywood
idealization of Buddhism, like so many Hollywood
superstars embracing Buddhism. And another one
is the popularity of mindfulness meditation, like
when Thich Nhat Hanh comes, World Bank invites him,
Google invites him, and Apple. So what do you think
are the implications of this actually to
Buddhism and also in general in American society? Thanks. Because there is this
element within Buddhism that does encourage us
to transcend this world, I think there's some
danger on the one hand of doing what I was
arguing against. Of seeing our own well-being,
our own awakening, our own salvation, as separate
from the salvation of others. That's one problem. The other extreme,
it seems to me, is understanding
Buddhism simply in terms of a kind of
mindfulness or simply in terms of
psychologically dealing with my own stuff
in my own head, and if I just get that cleared
away, then my life will be OK. What I'm trying to point to is
I think there are two extremes. On the one hand, an
extreme that sees the path about transcending this
world and everyone else. And on the other
hand, the extreme that thinks it's simply-- In a Western modern
way, Buddhism is simply about helping us
understand how our minds work. And if we simply understand
how our minds work, then we will fit
into society better, we'll play our
social roles better, and everything will be OK. What's interesting
about those two extremes is that neither
one of them really involves any engagement
with what's actually going on in this society. Both of them
disconnect themselves from the kinds of social
institutional dukkha that I was trying to refer to. That's why personally
I emphasize a way of understanding
the Buddhist path as about deconstructing
and reconstructing the sense of self. Or more precisely,
the relationship between myself and the world. And if we look on
it in that way, we can also say,
well, it's not simply that I need to be deconstructed
and reconstructed. But we can have a
society that needs to be reconstructed so that
it doesn't institutionalize dukkha. In most ways, I think
the mindfulness movement is something very positive. It's very beneficial
to a lot of people. But there's also
obviously dangers there if we think that somehow
we're taking out the essence-- the best part of
Buddhism-- and simply we can ignore all the rest of
that superstitious stuff. We're really missing
the point, and it's so easy for that
kind of mindfulness to be used to simply make us
more efficient workers, more profitable workers, and
fit into the system better. And missing the point that
the real Buddhist teachings, if we really know
what's going on, they imply some very
powerful critique, I think, of the dukkha that
our institutions are creating. We're getting low on time. Can we take a few
more questions? And then I'll try to
keep my answers shorter. [INAUDIBLE] Hello. Sure. So I think you brought up
some postmodern theoretical questions. It seems like with some
Western discourses now, there's been this
destabilization of the autonomous
subject that Buddhism has been pointing at for
a long time, like there's no concrete core to yourself. And a lot of people have
done social theoretical work around how the self is
constituted collectively. Are there any social theoretical
strands that you think could help translate Buddhist
practices, disciplines, perspectives into social
theoretical frameworks that can challenge institutional
forms of the Three Poisons? Because I feel like
in Western languages, this has been happening. Right. Looking at these things,
not through this self/other dichotomy, but in a
much more nuanced way. Well, I think there's already
a very rich discourse going on, and I'm sure you know-- I suspect you know more detail
about some of the people that are writing there. So the essential
point is what you say-- that Buddhism is claiming
that the self-- the subject-- has always been decentered. That it can never achieve the
kind of stability or security that it's searching for,
and that's a huge insight. I think what Buddhism
mainly has to contribute, of course, is the
contemplative practices. It's not enough just to
read French or Continental postmodern philosophy, although
that can certainly play a role, but that it's really important
to bring that into relationship with contemplative
practices that actually help to deconstruct
the sense of duality. And so I think that may be
the most important thing that Buddhism has
to offer there. [INAUDIBLE] another
language for that. We've got a language to
describe the ways in which it's institutionalized. It's hard to strategize
how to challenge that. It's like, where's the bridge? Great question. I don't see that Buddhism-- say, looking, for example,
at ecological issues. I don't see that
anywhere in Buddhist teachings that they give us
an answer specifically what we should do. Should I join 350.org? Or should I work for a
Citizens Climate Lobby? Well, I'm a member of 350.org. My Buddhist friend Grant works
with Citizens Climate Lobby for carbon. So I don't see that
Buddhism gives us those specific answers. Maybe it doesn't need
to, because there's so many organizations
working in that direction. The main thing Buddhism offers
is a lot of guidance in terms of not what, but how. In terms of
non-attachment, in terms of the importance of a
contemplation practice that helps us deal
in a non-attached way with the kind of frustrations
that are inevitable. Suzuki Shunryu, the founder
of San Francisco Zen Center, had this great
line for students. "You're all perfect
just as you are, but you all need little
improvement too." That's the two-sidedness
of the Bodhisattva path. We've got to keep going
back to that, "I'm perfect. The world is perfect
just as it is." That dimension. And yet not sitting
on our butts and just living there, but also
bringing that serenity, that emptiness, that
potency, that awakening into social engagement. And it's the
combination of the two that I think is
a very powerful-- did you want to follow up
on that one in particular? Because there's
other people, too. Yeah, just had a quick
question to follow up on that, and that would be is
interdependence perhaps one way of bridging the individual? When the Karmapa was
here a few days ago, he began by saying the real
essence of the Buddhist teachings is interdependence,
and that both addresses the way that we are not separate
in the way we think we're separate, but it also
emphasizes the interconnectivity and the way karma can actually
be a constructive concept for effectiveness. So in other words,
I think we need to reconceptualize karma as not
individual, but exactly that. But of course, talking
about interconnectedness is simply the other way
of talking about no self. Again, it's important, but it
doesn't give us easy answers to the old questions. Should I join 350.org or
should I work for carbon tax? So I think it's still there. There were two more people
who wanted to ask questions, and I didn't want the
two of you to be cut off, so we'll try to-- Hi, David. Thanks for being
here with us today. You've spoken a lot about
social transformation and how that relates
with Buddhism. I was hoping that you
would say a few more words about the
ecological crisis and what you view Buddhism's
role to be in addressing that. And in environmental justice,
what particular resources you think that
Buddhism has to offer, and what particular
challenges you also see in it. In 10 words or less, right? Yeah. Well, given the time, we
can chat a bit afterwards. There's a couple of things that
I would point you to reading. The latest Tricycle has a long
section on Eco-Dharma where my article tries
to speak to that, and there's a longer essay by
me called "Healing Ecology" where I try to focus on
the parallels between our individual predicament-- sense of separation
and our collective. So in a way, it tries to
a point in that direction. That doesn't deny the problem
that we just focused on. I think it gives
us a lot of insight from the Buddhist
perspective exactly where the source of the problem is. It doesn't necessarily
help us very particularly in terms of precisely, should
I do this or should I do that? One thing I think
we can say, though-- let's face it, folks. We're in a difficult
situation, OK? I think you know it. I don't think you need
me to tell you that. Ecologically and socially
and economically, the world is starting to
change dramatically, and we're going to
have some huge-- What I mean by that is I
think we're all in a situation now where we are being called
upon, or will be called upon, to become Bodhisattvas. It's like that's going to
become the only game in town-- maybe very quickly. So I think that's something-- it's like thinking of our
path as something marginal. I think in a way, this
may be the only thing that has any meaning
anymore as things really start to close down. Thank you. Yes, ma'am. I'm sorry I couldn't
answer your question. It's a wonderful question. It's just a very rich one. Thank you so much,
David, for joining us. And he also-- David leads
wilderness retreats, and I have some handouts
here, if you're interested, on a wilderness retreat he's
leading in August of this year. So thank you so much,
David, for coming. [APPLAUSE] [MUSIC PLAYING]
