Although our modern world is very different in many ways to the Buddha’s world, I think the basic ethical principles apply just as much.
One big difference is that we have all these different pressure groups and isms, that is fuelled by books, the internet, social media, TV etc
For example we see how these media channels are used to spread radical violent beliefs about jihad. They also spread fantasies that make us aspire to some fictitious Hollywood ideal based on massive consumption.
Similarly such channels spread ideas and emotions promoting left wing and green political activism.
Just as jihad ideas try and justify themselves using ideas from the Koran. So do so many rent a mob leftie groups try and justify themselves through using Buddhist ideas.
Of course big business and other organisations also use Buddhist concepts to promote themselves. I saw an advert on the tube the other day saying “achieve peace of mind, submit your tax return on time”, and it had pictures of people meditating. Also many spas have Buddha images. There is also a coffeeshop in Amsterdam called the “Buddha’s joint paradise”. I cannot confirm or deny whether I have visited it, although it does contain some beautiful rupas.
My point is that it is easy to be seduced from the true Buddhist vision by these modern ideologies, as they often have a lot of emotion and group pressure backing them up.
For me, these ideologies miss the point, as they turn the world into a black and white “us against them” game:
• Labour versus Conservatives
• The man in the street versus Big Business
• Good guys versus Bad guys
• Us against them
• Buddhists versus non Buddhists
This contrasts with the true Buddhist approach which starts from a vision of universal metta.
I think this danger is recognised by the author of the study material as the first paragraph states that “We will look at the challenges in studying material of this kind and suggest how to work with these challenges particularly in relation to our tendency to over identify with views and polarise around opinion”.
Unfortunately I do think too much air time was given in the study material to polarised opinion which I shall refer to as pseudo Buddhism.
This true Buddhist view is evoked well by a beautiful poem by Thich Nhat Hahn which I shall now read in full:
Call Me by My True Names
Do not say that I’ll depart tomorrow
because even today I still arrive.
Look deeply: I arrive in every second
to be a bud on a spring branch,
to be a tiny bird, with wings still fragile,
learning to sing in my new nest,
to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower,
to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.
I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry,
in order to fear and to hope.
The rhythm of my heart is the birth and
death of all that are alive.
I am the mayfly metamorphosing on the surface of the river,
and I am the bird which, when spring comes, arrives in time
to eat the mayfly.
I am the frog swimming happily in the clear pond,
and I am also the grass-snake who, approaching in silence,
feeds itself on the frog.
I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,
my legs as thin as bamboo sticks,
and I am the arms merchant, selling deadly weapons to
Uganda.
I am the twelve-year-old girl, refugee on a small boat,
who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea
pirate,
and I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and
loving.
I am a member of the politburo, with plenty of power in my
hands,
and I am the man who has to pay his “debt of blood” to, my
people,
dying slowly in a forced labor camp.
My joy is like spring, so warm it makes flowers bloom in all
walks of life.
My pain is like a river of tears, so full it fills the four oceans.
Please call me by my true names,
so I can hear all my cries and laughs at once,
so I can see that my joy and pain are one.
Please call me by my true names,
so I can wake up,
and so the door of my heart can be left open,
the door of compassion.
I will now talk about environmentalism and compare and contrast what I see as the true Buddhist view, and a pseudo Buddhist view.
Of course, environmentalism is a real issue. We are facing climate change caused by a massive increase in the use of fossil fuels, destruction of the rain forest, and increasing consumption in consumer goods by an increasing and more affluent population of the planet.
That is undeniable.
The issues are:
a) What is the optimal way to respond to this issue?
b) Is this response particularly Buddhist?
c) Is it even appropriate to bring up Buddhist versus non Buddhist labels in this case?
I do think the inevitability of climate change is clear.
In 1960 there were 3 billion people on the planet. Now there are 7 billion.
And the forecast is for there to be 10 billion by 2083
Not only that, the third world is becoming industrialised, and pretty much everyone is consuming more.
This consumption is being fuelled by greed, desire, and the keeping up with the Joneses, that drives almost all of us.
Assuming North Korea does not manage to take over the rest of the planet, or most of humanity gets wiped out by bird flu, there is actually not much we can do, but watch the scenario unfold.
Raw materials and energy prices will continue to get more expensive, and people in the UK will be poorer.
The world order will change. China will sell its investments in the US and Europe, and our currencies will collapse, meaning everything will get more expensive here and there will be social unrest.
In many ways it is analogous to my aging body and organs. Every year or two I get an eye test, and I usually find that my prescription has changed and my eyesight has deteriorated a bit more. Of course, the same applies to all my other organs. At the same time, my physical appearance is aging, and it memory of youth becomes more and more distant. The best I can pass for these days is middle aged as opposed to old.
It is like being the captain of a sinking ship, or on a one way train to death and decay.
So my optimal response is to just do what I can to delay this without being an extremist about it. I try to go for regular cycle rides to exercise my heart. I find this actually has an amazing positive effect on my energy levels. I also try to keep an eye on my diet from time to time.
But I do not make slowing down of aging the centre of my life. I still enjoy myself, and indulge in unhealthy practices, like eating magnums.
All things in moderation.
So I keep a calm equanimous awareness in my consciousness of my inevitable decay, and do moderate things to delay it, without panic, grasping or polarisation.
I do think this could be labelled a Buddhist response. And I do think the same applies to our response to changes on our planet.
I would say appropriate responses which achieve solid positive resuts would leverage other many other people and would include things like:
• Al Gore making that film “The Inconvenient Truth”,
• Bill Gates setting up his foundation, and spending $38b dollars on worthwhile causes
• The Koyoto agreement and similar treaties
• High taxes on consumption of fossil fuels
All the above are highly recommended
On the other hand, it is also possible for activists to get excited about gestures which give them a feeling of moral superiority and allow them to vent their anger, and would include things like treehugging, eco warriors, going on demos, going on about how much morally superior they are to people who have a larger carbon footprint. This behaviour fuels their egos, and makes them feel good, but also creates division and polarity, whereas the goal should be the universality of metta, just like Thich Nhat Hanh expresses it in his poem.
I think this is a particularly emotional issue for me, because when I was a student, I used to identify strongly with this rentamob mentality.
It was before anyone mentioned environmentalism and ecology. We spoke out against fascism, capitalism, conservatism etc. It was a lot of fun, and a great way to vent our anger and hatred, and to impress our peer group about how hard line and extreme we were.
Over the years, I grew out of this immature state, and gained a more expansive and inclusive perspective.
What I find particularly offensive is when people start off with this partisan position, and then try and clothe it in the language and concepts of Buddhism. This is just spin. Or dressing a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
One example of this that springs to mind is the use of the term “great turning” by Joanna Macy and others to a diverse network of hippy communities. And I quote from the study material.
Yes it could bring about an epochal shift. But there again it may not.
And I don’t think it will matter more than anything else we do.
As I explained above our planet is on a sinking ship. There is not going to be any epochal shift.
The sorts of things that will have some effect are the leveraged types of action like I highlighted above – international treaties, films, incredibly rich and powerful people giving to charity.
The sorts of things that will have no effect except to annoy others and create a backlash are things like “forest activists sitting in trees”.
This type of social action normally brings with it a lot of anger and polarisation. I should know. I used to do it.
The Cambridge Buddhist Centre is next to the Grafton Shopping Centre. Before the Grafton Centre was built, there were some Victorian houses on the site, in an area known locally as “The Kite” including a lovely pancake and waffles restaurant called “Waffles”. In my rent a mob student days, I joined an occupation to try and prevent the bulldozing of Waffles.
I stood in the restaurant with a load of other hippies and students. My mother actually joined in as well, as she hates to see things being pulled down.
The bulldozer was smashing against the building and tiles and bricks were flying everywhere.
The bulldozer stopped that day. But what is the end result? The demo did not work and the council got its way. No more Waffles, and we now have the Grafton Centre.
I remember the hatred of the other protestors towards the conservative leader of the council who approved the development.
Looking back, I sometimes ask myself, what is the better use of the land? Houses or shops? As a society we need both. Ultimately that is why we have a council, and the ballot box to decide such issues. And we also have market forces which is another name for free agreements between autonomous individuals.
I just joined in the occupation because I wanted to prove to my peer group that I was one of them. I wanted to get their approval, and I enjoyed the adrenalin rush of being a freedom fighter.
So my point is that a lot of these activities that Joanna Macy refers to are not coming from a higher consciousness.
And to call it the “great turning” is just as much a misappropriation of sacred Buddhist concepts as the Buddha’s Joint Paradise in Amsterdam.
The three great turnings of the wheel of the dharma are the hinayana, Mahayana and the vajrayana. These have nothing to do with a load of angry self righteous hippies sitting in trees.
Ms Macy says it involves three related areas of activity:
Those three areas sound like worthy things to do, but like everything there are pros and cons
Yes we can prevent pollution. But if we do that completely we would have to outlaw cars, and shut down all the power stations. Every breath we take reduces oxygen in the atmosphere and increases CO2.
So rather than prevent pollution we can try and mitigate its effects. This is exactly what the government is doing.
We now have emissions testing on our cars, and variable rates of car taxation depending on the engine size.
In other words, the sorts of things she talks about are mostly good things, and our government is trying to implement them.
But there is also a whole load of forces going the other way. The forces of an increasing population to consume more and more.
The battle cannot be won, but it can be delayed a bit, and it can be played out a bit more consciously. Just like my own personal battle against aging, decay and eventual death.
Another example of this going for political correctness and sanctimoniousness is the construction of the new buildings at Vajrasana.
It is going to be built on extreme ecological principles. Despite the fact that this costs more, and it throws the LBC into more debt, and earns the consultants more money.
For example. Someone decided that there should be no refrigerant gases in the shrine room. Instead they are going to build a big trench and lay a long pipe outside. This has the effect of cooling the outside air a few degrees before it enters the shrine room.
This means that on a really hot day, it will still be unpleasantly hot in the shrine room.
One has to ask whether this is really necessary. Just about every house or flat in the UK has a fridge with refrigerant gases. We even have one in our mitra study room. If they are really that evil, let us do away with them completely.
It is true that many refrigerants are ozone depleting, but surely the whole point of a retreat centre is to create good conditions for meditation, and that includes temperature regulation. So, I would say the upside of refrigerants outweighs the downside, in this case.
I know this project has become a bit of a rant, but I am just trying to separate out what the pure Buddhist approach should be, compared with polarised political correctness, that has a tendency of creeping in, and disguises itself as Buddhism, and which people tend to go along with because it is easier to say nothing and not to knock the boat.
I would say the study material does occasionally lapse into this kind of polarisation, but to be fair it does warn against it. And I quote:
That does make the Buddhist response seem a bit more attractive. Certainly if we are connecting more deeply and richly with others, then that does imply we are on the right track. Unlike my occupation of the Waffles café 34 years ago.
Another paragraph from the study material is of interest:
I thinks this backs up what I am saying. It is not all about what material conditions we leave behind. Because material conditions are just material conditions, and humans have the capacity to thrive in just about any situation.
And I am assuming the connectedness with life is just another way of expressing metta.
So to conclude, I am not saying that there are not real issues concerning our environment. Of course there are. I am just saying that the way to tackle it is with constructive leveraged action such global treaties, taxation policies, laws against pollution, viral social media etc. The way not to tackle it is by empty gestures like sitting in a tree or forgoing AC units.
We do what we can, and what is appropriate, and we do it from a place, not of panic, reactivity, hatred, blame and helplessness, but from a place of universal metta and connectedness.
The end