Buddhist Wisdom for Healing the Earth

Abstract

This new book by David Loy could have also been given the title Buddhism for a Post-Axial Age, with a subtitle like Enlightenment and Earthly Engagement. Loy, Buddhist philosopher and Zen master, suggests that recent Buddhist encounters with the West—and vice versa—have opened up new horizons and possibilities that are profoundly transformative for both cultures. A New Buddhist Path charts out some of these directions, outlining key features of a contemporary Buddhism that is both “faithful to its most important traditional teachings and also compatible with modernity.”Like other religions that arose during the Axial Age, Buddhism envisioned ultimate human destiny as involving a passage to a realm beyond this one, in a heaven, paradise, pure land, or some ideally conceived realm of the afterlife. These religions thus exhibit world-denying characteristics and tend to deemphasize the value of efforts to make this world a better one, unless this endeavor is tied up with attaining a reward in the afterlife. (Christianity and Islam, though formed historically after the Axial Age according to Karl Jaspers’s reckoning, exhibit similar characteristics and thus, broadly speaking, can be included among the “Axial Age religions.”)The cosmological dualism that posits a transcendent realm as a “higher order” over and above this worldly realm comes with other problematic features found in Axial Age religions. The dualism inherent in privileging the transcendent over the worldly realm is reflected in patriarchal attitudes and social structures based on a view of the superiority of the male over the female of the human species. The elevation of the human above the rest of the nonhuman realm of sentient beings and above the natural world is another concomitant feature of this dualistic view. Issues of gender equity and of eco-social justice are among the challenges posed by modernity and postmodernity to the traditions established by Axial religions. Assessing the impact of the Axial religions on human civilization as a whole, Loy himself suggests that “although Axial-type transcendence has been historically invaluable, it is no longer adequate for what we know today … we need to be liberated from their dualisms, which have outlived their role.”Partly as a backlash to the one-sidedly transcendent emphasis associated with the Buddhist message, there are those, especially in the West, who espouse a view of the Buddhist path that conveniently fits within or adapts itself to a postmodern worldview that rejects cosmological dualism.There are also those who take Buddhism to be a psychotherapeutic program that allows individuals to cope with life in a competitive, consumeristic society. Loy notes that philosopher Slavoj Žižek unmasks this truncated and totally inadequate understanding of the Buddhist message in the latter’s critique of a therapeutic “Western Buddhism” focused on emotional and stress management, a Buddhism adapted to “the hegemonic ideology of global capitalism” in that “its meditative stance is arguably the most efficient way for us to fully participate in capitalist dynamics while retaining the appearance of mental sanity.”Grounded in his own Zen Buddhist meditative practice as well as in years of reading and reflection and writing on the implications of the Buddhist message for our time, Loy describes for us, as the title suggests, “a new Buddhist path” that overcomes the cosmological dualism of the Axial religions without capitulating to the value systems of global, market-centered, capitalistic consumerism. He lays out a nondual path based on the fundamental Buddhist insight into “things as they really are,” a wisdom that sees everything as intimately interconnected and that leads naturally to the dynamic activity of compassion.Examining the history of Buddhism, one might point out that Loy’s is not really a “new” Buddhist path. Rather, it recalls the basic themes of the Mahāyāna movement that occurred in India in the early centuries of the common era. Second-century Buddhist philosopher Nāgārjuna’s affirmation that “nirvāṇa is no other than saṃsāra, saṃsāra no other than nirvāṇa” is a formulation of this nondual understanding of ultimate reality that cuts through the polarity of transcendence and immanence. And as Sallie King, Christopher Queen, and other scholars have demonstrated, Buddhists in different sociopolitical contexts and in various epochs of history have been engaged in tasks of social transformation empowered by their religious experience and vision.Although Loy’s Buddhist path may not be totally “new,” he offers a profoundly insightful and newly convincing contemporary interpretation of Buddhist thought. Loy forges a middle way between a “transcendentalist” view that looks to Buddhism for an escape from the toils and troubles of this world and an “immanentist” view that regards Buddhism as a source of empowerment for the frail, vulnerable, and psychologically challenged beings we call humans. This middle way is none other than the path of awakening embodied by the Buddha himself, a path of realization, that is, one that acknowledges the fact that “I” am not separate from the world. This nondual understanding of reality is what grounds the intimate link between personal transformation and socio-ecological transformation. After describing this nondual vision of the Buddhist path, Loy then presents a narrative enlightened by this vision, one that may allow for a sustainable and wholesome ecological future for all of us on this planet.Observing that our contemporary global community is in a dysfunctional state, facing a deep crisis that threatens our very survival on this planet, Loy claims we have been living out “the defective story we have been telling ourselves about who we are, what the world is, and our role in it.” It is the old story about a devalued and desacralized world where we humans, as “rational animals,” lord our superiority over the rest of the natural realm and exploit it in search of our own version of a materialistic and consumeristic kind of “happiness.”We can now see the urgent need to dislodge the faulty story that has held sway since the advent of “the age of reason” and “the age of science.” In its place, we need a new story that can help us recover the sacred in our midst and in nature. Empowered by this “new Buddhist story,” each one of us can thus give ourselves fully to actualizing it in our lives.Taking the “new Buddhist path” is nothing other than living the life of the new bodhisattva (bodhi = “awakening”; sattva = “being”), that is, a person treading a path of awakening motivated by compassion for all living beings. For such a person, one’s own personal awakening and the awakening of the entire society (toward its becoming more equitable, more just, more ecologically sustainable) are one and the same thing.The path of awakening taken by the “new” bodhisattva thus entails “deconstructing and reconstructing the sense of self, not to qualify for a blissful afterlife but rather [seeking] to live in a different way here and now” as much as it requires engagement in socio-ecological transformation. On this path, personal transformation and socio-ecological transformation go hand in glove and are understood as mutually reinforcing and complementing each other every step along the way.What is particularly insightful, thought provoking, and challenging in Loy’s work is his depiction of the traditional “three poisons” (greed; ill will, or aggression; and delusion, or ignorance), the root causes of human dissatisfaction and suffering (dukkha). The three poisons are not only characteristic of our individual, personal lives as unenlightened worldly beings, but also operative in our socio-politico-economic institutions. Since our individual and collective lives are inevitably and intricately entangled, the result is a state of affairs we can call our socio-ecological, or global, dukkha.Greed is rampant in the current global economic system of capitalist consumerism that dominates our world, and it is propelled by an inner sense of lack that drives acquisition. Loy gives one definition of greed as the view that things are “never enough” at any level of the social: “corporations are never large enough or profitable enough, the value of their shares is never high enough, our national GDP is never big enough…. It is built into these systems that they must keep growing, or else they tend to collapse.” Of course, such greed already forces billions of people to live in abject poverty and degrading conditions.The enduring effects of aggression and delusion on our contemporary global society are also discussed, though less extensively. (Loy analyzed the symptoms of these two poisons in greater detail in his previous books.) The poison of aggression, or ill will, is institutionalized in the military-industrial complex that continues to feed lethal weapons to the numerous armed groups in different parts of the world, who use them in waging their particular battles under varying political, ideological, religious, and other banners, wreaking untold destruction that takes its toll in countless human lives. Delusion, or ignorance, is institutionalized in the mass media and information technologies that portray mainly what is useful, profitable, and favorable to those in control to help maintain the status quo of an unjust and exploitative system, and which tend to shield the vast majority of us from realities that would disrupt our complacency or expose the horrific origins of our privilege and comfort.Traditional Buddhist practice is geared toward overcoming the three poisons of greed, aggression, and delusion. Loy’s new Buddhist path enhances our vision and broadens the field of Buddhist practice, enjoining us not only to uproot the three poisons in our own personal lives, but also to work wholeheartedly toward dismantling the institutional forms of greed, aggression, and delusion that together comprise the root causes of our contemporary global malaise.Loy claims it will take more than just some form of redistribution of wealth, and more than simply including social justice in Buddhist ethical teaching. He calls for “an alternative evaluation of our economic situation, which focuses on the consequences of individual and institutionalized delusion.” We must, Loy insists, address the roots of socio-ecological or global dukkha by overturning that sense of lack that fans our consumeristic lifestyles and empowers the institutions that feed on it.Along with this economic challenge, the ecological challenge is undoubtedly the most pressing among those confronting our contemporary global society. Loy names our collective sense of estrangement from the natural world and identifies our “collective response to that alienation—attempting to ‘self-ground’ ourselves technologically and economically” (that is, our tendency to place undue reliance on technology to find solutions to our ecological problems) as symptoms of a deeper, spiritual crisis. Resolving this crisis requires us to overcome the delusion of considering the self as separate from the natural world.These arguments have of course been made separately from Buddhism. In her recent book This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate, Naomi Klein convincingly demonstrates that our deteriorating ecological situation is inseparably linked to the flawed economic system of a globalized capitalism that dominates the lives of all of us on this planet. Her book is alarming but also hopeful: the call to rescue our planet from ecological destruction is now being heard by more and more people across the globe and is leading increasing numbers of good-willed people to concerted action on many fronts, in ways that cannot but bring about an across-the-board transformation in our economic, social, and political institutions.For such a transformation to be truly effective and wide-ranging, it is crucial that people of good will heed the call and join forces with all those seeking change, doing their share, and participating in the various local, national, and international movements to address specific tasks. Loy’s A New Buddhist Path describes the spiritual contours of the enormous work involved in healing our wounded world (tikkun olam). The “new bodhisattvas” that Loy describes as the bearers of this vision and path of practice are not those who have simply taken care of their own need for psychological and personal healing and, having done so, are thereby now prepared to take on the task of healing the world. Rather, they have acknowledged and accepted their own brokenness as inseparably linked with the woundedness of our entire global society itself and are prepared to give themselves entirely to a practice that addresses both individual dukkha and our socio-ecological or global dukkha.The portrayal of a “Buddhism for a post-Axial Age” that Loy undertakes in this book may also mirror key themes reflected in an emerging Judaism, Christianity, or Islam (among others) for a post-Axial Age. Adherents of these religions, through the message of transcendence embedded in their respective traditions, are able to place their hearts’ allegiance in something beyond what this-worldly pursuits can offer: their religious faith enables them to overcome the allurements of this world, the pursuit of which only enmeshes us more deeply in the poisons of selfish greed, ill will, and ignorance. Religion can empower the faithful to selflessly work toward the greater well-being of the world, freed from any self-serving interests and worldly motivations. But this can happen if and only if the attraction of transcendence does not become a distraction and provide an escape into a dualistically conceived, otherworldly realm that entices them to cop out of their responsibilities in this world.For Judaism, this could mean the recovery of the prophetic impulse as a dynamic power capable of criticizing the unjust structures of the world order and of envisioning a more just and equitable society for all people. For Christianity, a recovery of Jesus’s message of the imminent coming of the reign of God can inspire Christians to take on the tasks of bringing “the Good News to the poor, proclaiming the liberation of captives, recovery of sight to the blind, and freedom for the oppressed” (Luke 4:18) rather than remain numbed to the tasks of this world by a dualistic belief system whose main component is the promise of a reward in the afterlife. For Islam, such transformation may require rereading core teachings in a way that inspires Muslims to work for justice and mercy in the world, empowered by their act of submission to the Just, the Merciful One.Inspired by and grounded in the spiritual teaching of their own respective traditions, adherents of the world’s religions can join hands and work with one another as well as with all those of good will who profess no religion but are no less committed to the work of socio-ecological transformation and healing. It is a sign of hope for our time that increasing numbers of people of faith are connecting and cooperating with others who hold differing beliefs to raise their voices and stem the tide of destruction from the effects of our global dukkha. Empowered by their specific faith traditions, people are creating more and more initiatives to form interfaith councils or interreligious networks on the municipal, regional, national, and international levels, which has provided opportunities for people of faith across traditions to encounter one another, pool resources, form alliances, and expand one another’s reach in addressing the various issues related to the sorry state of our contemporary global society. In ways resonant with what Loy’s book lays out for Buddhists, they offer us hope through conscious, compassionate action.