Summary of conference presentations by Hilary Richards
I would like to bow to you all and to thank everyone for attending. All the speakers have told us how they planned their talks. My plan for summing up was to take some key points from each of the talks and the odd quotation or two, note them down and tell you about them again now. But this plan is not going to work as everything we have heard since yesterday morning has been key. It is going to take us all several days, maybe the rest of our lives, to digest it. We have heard about paradox, we have heard about prayer, we have heard about inner paths, inner work, outer paths, social justice, social change, challenging institutions, merging the East with the West, Asian philosophy versus Western philosophy, all encompassed in this huge and complex subject of Engaged Buddhism.
Our title is “Western Buddhism: Engaged Buddhism?” I think we can remove the question mark, as each one of us engages. There are a lot of us here. In one sense we are all one, but in another sense we are not. We each have our own particular skills, attitudes and backgrounds that make whatever is easiest for us, best for us and valid for us to do a personal starting point. We have not been given many solutions, but we have ideas. Can we, individually and collectively, remove some of the obstacles along the way to help transform the current situation of the world crisis in which we find ourselves, using our inner path work to transform the outer world? We all know that each of us has a part to play.
The questions we need to ask ourselves are “Where do I stand? What can I do? Who and how can I help?” As Simon said in the first talk, “Is my heart open? Is my mind open? Am I raising questions about myself and my engagement?” Jake gave us a tour de force on the problems the world is facing. I do not think any one of us is oblivious to the vast and catastrophic suffering that afflicts most of the world. We are overwhelmed by the problem and by what we should do about it. But we should and we can do something. Some little thing we can do may well turn in to something big, as with the Occupy Movement. We have been reminded in all the talks that for each of us what we may do is the kind of Buddhism that we do all the time. Awareness.
Awareness as we go along was the theme of Fiona’s session. You are not in a cave under a railway station; you are taking a bus holiday, the whole time. Noticing how you react, noticing the judgement, the greed, the hatred, the ignorance, the whole shooting match and your reaction to it. Gradually with this inner work we can transform ourselves. But as Jan said, we will never find ourselves ready enough to start. We have to transform ourselves and take on the outer path; take on the outer work together with the inner work, now. If we do not start now, we never will. What better time to start than tonight, tomorrow, after this conference, even if you do not think you can?
Ken came up with the suggestion that we should form Amity Groups. There is one already in London. These are groups of like minded people who are on an inner path, such as Buddhists, Quakers, Humanists, psychotherapists, those who are looking in to find out who they are and what their own personal shadow might be in relation to our world and our situation. Groups of like minded people meet together in open discussion to debate with an open heart about how we can all work together to move forward to some kind of solution for our outer problems. If you would like to join an Amity Group then please email Karen.
If you do not know how to meditate then I would strongly advise you to have a go. If you are a meditator, then continue your practice. That may be the only thing you can do. You may not be up a mountain but continued practice is continuing to observe your reaction to whatever is going on. By a drip, drip, drip effect gradually you can transform your self concerns, your anger, your hatred and greed into something more positive leading towards compassion and wisdom.
Jake listed some principles of Engaged Buddhism for us: Compassionate action, not dogma, theory or precedent; Not knowing (“I do not have the answer;”) Self examination; Non violence; Openness to suffering; Interconnectedness; Transforming anger; Moment to moment awareness; Ethical and personal behaviour, not forgetting care for one’s self.
Jan gave an honest talk about her background and upbringing in America at the time of the Civil Rights movement, comparing Martin Luther King to the Buddha. The Buddha did not stay blissed out. He went out in to the world to do something. Martin Luther King certainly did something. The whole Civil Rights movement, the abolition of segregation in America owes a lot to him. He was a Black Baptist and his most famous speech was “I have a dream.” Do we have a dream? Our dream needs to a Buddhist type change to the social fabric of our world and a Buddhist challenge to our institutions as brilliantly suggested by David Loy.
Jan talked about “Checking up.” This is a really useful tip, check up. What’s going on now? Where am I now? It is easy, we can do it any time, but we must not allow that checking up to increase anxiety and hesitancy, we must let the “Check up” adjust our way of being.
Ubuntu is another useful word. It means interbeing, generous compassion. We belong in a bundle of life, we belong to a greater whole, we share with each other and we are responsible to each other. This is what we do with our families. Can we do this a bit further out with friends, colleagues, neighbours, further out in our local organisations, local communities, or further out still, internationally?
We have heard quotes from the Dhammapada. This is verse 183: “In all this do not do any evil. Undertake what is good to purify your own mind. This is the Teaching of the Buddha.”
We were given a flavour of the challenge of purifying our own minds in the exercise Jan led yesterday afternoon - taking a step to cross the line in answer to those straightforward but difficult questions. I do not suppose there was one of us who was not moved. I noticed tears in many eyes. That is emotional awareness. It is recognising your pain. In the words that Jan said after each step across the line: “Recognising your pain, we send you our love and give deep bows.” We must allow ourselves to feel and we must not deny our own way of being. We must not deny our feelings and emotions because if we do we will lose our intuition, we will lose our humanity in the world and we will not have a hope in hell of being fully engaged in the “right” sort of way.
So what does engaged mean to you? Can you remember where your score was on the measuring stick? Can you still act on what would take your score a little higher? Devan told us with charming humility about Angulimala, a concrete example of being engaged. Work in prisons is not for all of us. It is a tricky and difficult job. Remember Devan’s story of how the Buddha came to Angulimala and there was a chase, the Buddha rushing off into the distance and Angulimala catching up with him. The Buddha said: “I have stopped Angulimala, it is you that has not stopped.” Every so often maybe we should stop. Turn our attention back and see what is going on. You can just stop for a couple of moments, stop your mind when you are on the bus or when you are on your way to work. Or you can stop for longer and go on a retreat. Or you can attend a meditation group or you can join the Network of Engaged Buddhists.
To be engaging, to engage the pathway is about full emotional awareness of yourself, and from that full emotional awareness there comes a sort of power that enables you to do things you may not have thought you had the capacity for. As with Ken, his closely argued presentation was brilliant but impossible to summarise or even to abstract significant bits from his argument about alternatives to ideology, open theory and social wisdom. But I remember his two blessings, the blessing given to him by his Communist Party card and the blessing when he took refuge in the Buddha. The outer path of the Communist Party was a vow to undertake the greatest project one can, which is the liberation of mankind. With his inner inquiry into his own being, into his own self, his existential Buddhist inquiry, he vowed to liberate all beings. In his talk he did say he was going to tell us how he put these two vows together. I didn’t hear an answer, though there must be an answer, which is likely to be through hard work and personal engagement with the inner and the outer. I trust that with age, with experience and with wisdom the inner and outer paths can come together. Similarly movements for social justice, movements for peace, gender equality, ecology, civil rights, can come together with traditions of contemplative inner work. There is a little verse that may help us, from the Art Gallery in Aberystwyth.
“I am the no hope canary
Singing in the deepest gallery
Below the vaults of borrowed money.”
Fiona’s first words were “Relax and listen.” If we are going to be engaged, those are pretty good tips. We relaxed and listened to a wonderful talk ending with: “Practice is not separable from life. Engaged Buddhism is life. Life is practice. Practice is engaged in work and everyday life. Know what is going on and do not lose your authenticity.” Can you understand your own authentic self? Meditation certainly helps. Fiona’s sound bite was to build a “Big Bodhisattva Society,” which would certainly help David Cameron, wouldn’t it? So try out new ways of being, have a go, knowing that you will make mistakes. You need your friends alongside you, you need to discuss things with them and accept your mistakes.
We have heard about and have several different words for Western Buddhism; Socially Engaged Buddhism; Engaged Buddhism; Applied Buddhism; Active Buddhism. These are all slightly different, but I think in our Western Buddhism: Engaged Buddhism context we can choose which one might be right for us.
This afternoon David Loy gave us a brilliant lecture. He talked about Western dualism in the Abrahamic tradition, good and evil, the Greeks, Western civilisation, social change and justice. From our knowledge of Asian Buddhist inner work, our knowledge of karma and our understanding of wisdom versus ignorance which is the duality one is working to overcome, from our knowledge of awakening, can we in our lives bring all this together? If we understand the greed, hatred and ignorance of the second noble truth and keep working at it we can transform our motivations, the way we go about things. David put this in to an institutional corporate framework by saying: “Our economic system institutionalises the greed of the second noble truth. Our military system institutionalises the hatred of the second noble truth. Our media system institutionalises the ignorance of the second noble truth.” We need radical change because these poisons are nurtured both individually and institutionally by the attitude of never having enough. This David calls our “sense of lack.” We think we need all these things, all this stuff, fame, beauty, money, sex, war and karma to fill our sense of lack.
Each speaker has told you a little about themselves. I will tell you about my son. He worked for Lehman Brothers and he went on training courses in Wall Street before Lehman Brothers collapsed. I love my son, I do not like what he is doing, but he is not all of that and I do not see it in him. Jan had a quote from Martin Luther King. If you see evil, it is only a part of that person now. It is not that full whole person – so look beyond. Be careful how you look. Look beyond that evil and see what else is there because there is surely a huge amount to be positive about.
We will now meditate together for fifteen minutes. This is fundamentally what we need to do because it is our base. It is not our escape. We will start the meditation by saying together a Tibetan prayer:
In my heart I turn to the three jewels of refuge
May I save suffering beings and place them in bliss
May the compassionate spirit of love grow within me
So that I may complete the enlightening path.
We will conclude the conference by saying together the Bodhisattva vows:
I vow to deliver innumerable sentient beings
I vow to cut off endless vexations
I vow to master limitless approaches to dharma
I vow to attain supreme Buddhahood.
