Many Buddhists are quite prepared to say that Buddhism is ‘not a religion’, because it includes no conception of a ‘Creator’, but, in contrast, do claim that Buddhism provides access to ‘transcendental’ dimensions of reality. So the concept of ‘Secular Buddhism’ poses a particularly interesting challenge in thinking about (let us say) ‘engaged’ Buddhism. In particular, can ‘the transcendental’ be distinguished clearly from ‘the mystical’ and ‘the supernatural’ in such a way that it can be included in ‘the secular’? Or does ‘secular’ Buddhism necessarily exclude ‘the transcendental’, interpreting ‘Enlightenment’ and the ‘Vision’ inspiring the Eight-fold Path (for example) as ideas that provide us with a direction for our efforts without assuming that in their ideal form they can actually be achieved?
Stephen Batchelor’s book Buddhism Without Beliefs provides us with a powerful clarification here, emphasising that the Buddha is proposing a series of practices and a way of life founded essentially on the acceptance of a radical un-certainty concerning the reality we experience. He also emphasises that the form of Buddhist ‘awakening’ entails an opposition to the political and economic structures of contemporary society (p.112).
My interpretation of ‘secular Buddhism’ involves a development of two ideas from Stephen’s book. Firstly, concerning ‘mysticism’. Many writers intending to evoke the radicalism of the Buddha’s thinking make statements concerning, for example, ‘Enlightenment’, ‘Unconditioned Being’ or ‘Buddha Mind’ which seem (perhaps accidentally) to make claims to know and to describe precisely states of being which in principle (and even according to the Buddha’s own comments) cannot be known or described precisely. In contrast I find it helpful to focus on the mysterious but (by now) quite intelligible processes of ‘the unconscious’, and how, through meditation practices, we can increase our access to that region of our mental and emotional being. And, at the same time, we can accept the reality of forms of sensitivity and receptivity (e.g. ‘telepathy’) that are currently only describable anecdotally but which we could conceivably come to understand more precisely and systematically. In this sense, then, ‘the transcendental’ may be included within a ‘secular Buddhism’ as meaning, forms of awareness that ‘transcend’ our current ‘normal’ experience. Both lines of thought may be helpful in rescuing the radicalism of the Buddhist ‘vision’ from some of its ‘mystical’ tendencies.
Secondly, concerning political engagement. The concept of a secular Buddhism seems to embody my particular interest in combining the teachings of the Dharma specifically with analysing and contesting the political dimensions of ‘delusion’. The delusions fostered by our spontaneous ego-based experience of the world and our selves are continually magnified by a culture that systematically attempts to distort our understanding of ‘reality’ for commercial purposes, converting all phenomena into ‘commodities’ whose value is determined by market forces rather than human needs and values. From this point of view, the Dharma has, for me, the very direct secular purpose: of providing a practical method for supporting our efforts as citizens to create a space in which we can ‘liberate’ ourselves from the malign efforts of capitalism as well as from the Dharmic ‘poisons’ of greed, aversion and ignorance. (‘Just as the ocean has one taste, the taste of salt, this Dharama and Discipline has one taste, the taste of liberation’, The Udana, Trans. John Ireland, p. 74.)
I’d be interested to know how far these observations fit in with the understandings and priorities of other SBUK members.
Richard Winter
Author of : “Power, Freedom, Compassion“.
30 comments on “The Concept of Secular Buddhism”
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Hi Richard
With regard to the accepting of un-certainty in relation to the contexts you mentioned, are you saying that you feel more comfortable using words like ” transcend” in the sense of “to pass” beyond the limits of human power to understand rather than expressions like “ embrace the mystery” in the sense of accepting what is simply beyond the limits of human power to understand? Alternatively, is it because you see the future possibility of “passing” beyond the human power to understand the reason for your proposed use of this term, given your examples of research into the unconscious and the topic of telepathy?
Hi, Barry:
Thanks. I like the link you make between Stephen Batchelor’s emhpasis on general existential uncertainty and my wish to preserve a notion of transcendence. Yes, my point is that we are able to pass beyond the limits of our habtitual understandings (by contacting aspects of our unconscious during meditation, for example), and I want to hold to that interpretation rather than embracing ideas of ‘absolute’ transcendence (such as ‘The Unconditioned’), which seem to come perilously close to what I called ‘mysticism’.
Best wishes, and thanks for your comment.
Richard
Hi Richard
Can I ask you to expand a bit more on:
a) what you mean by contacting aspects of our unconscious during meditation?
b) why you feel it is useful to use the word transcend given its arguably conceptual looseness/mystical baggage?
a) During meditation we can experience i) unexpected insights and ii) moments of spaciousness and joy. I think that Freud and Jung have given us suggestive thoughts about where this might come from but they are only a starting point. For example, I also think that Rigdzin Shikpo’s book ‘Openness, Clarity, Sensitivity’ provides futher suggestive thoughts on the issue.
b) ‘Transcendence’, for me, suggests the reality and importance of human spirituality, which, hepfully, serves to distinguish secular Buddhism froim secular humanism
I don’t think those insights come from the unconscious so much as they come from the brain when its in a different state. I mean since some of the insights and experiences that occur in meditation also occur during altered states from drug use, I am highly inclined to think that the activity of meditation causes changes in brain chemicals and neuronal activity that is similar.
This is quite different to what i think about the subconscious. So i am not convinced that this stuff comes from the unconscious, whatever that is anyway. Times have moved on from Freud and Jung. Brain science has moved on. I am not positive but i think they’ve left the idea of the unconscious behind. Something i have to look into further.
Hi Richard
I found some information about Rigdzin Shikpo and his foundation at. http://www.longchenfoundation.org/aboutFounder.html. Here are some extracts:
“The truth has to be perceived directly”.
From reading his book, do you know what “truth” he is referring to and is it related to your idea of transcendence? Do you think we should be seeking this “truth”?
“In 1993 Rigdzin Shikpo completed a three year solitary retreat in Oxford under the direction of Khenpo Tsultrim Gyamtso Rinpoche. One unusual feature of this retreat was that it took place in an otherwise ordinary semi-detached house, in an urban setting.”
Do you know if he gained access to this truth in this way? Do you think it is good practice to seemingly privilege meditation over other aspects of the Eight fold path like this?
“In recognition of his realisation, Khenpo Rinpoche gave him the title Rigdzin Shikpo and encouraged him to teach according to his inspiration in response to the needs of western students.”
Does “recognition of his realisation” mean that he is considered to be “enlightened” in some way? If that’s the case, do you think so too?
The notions of transcendence that you discussed with Andrew seem plausible, namely as a “letting go” or when the ordinary comes to feel extraordinary. However, my thoughts on this subject pretty much mirror Andrea’s when she wrote:
“When you want to use a word that is widely known as belonging to a religious and mystical meaning and change its usage to one that has a secular meaning you are just going to generate heaps of confusion and misunderstanding when you get secular and non secular people talking together. You will never be able to use that word without providing an in brackets definition of what you mean. “
I also feel that “spiritual” is a term that is often associated with metaphysical claims and therefore again one that I prefer to treat with caution. Like you I find material reductionism an extreme view. However, If by spirituality you mean the sense of mystery one feels when contemplating such things as birth and death, the fact that we are here at all, or aesthetic/sublime experiences then words like wonder, awe or perplexity for me express those feelings far more appropriately.
When you want to use a word that is widely known as belonging to a religous and mystical meaning and change its usage to one that has a secular meaning you are just going to generate heaps of confusion and misunderstanding when you get secular and non secular people talking together. You will never be able to use that word without providing an in brackets definition of what you mean. This is a problem one sees over and over again in buddhism. Hence one of the reaons to ditch the word karma for good.
The only good reason for keeping on with karma is if you believe that the buddha never meant what nearly everyone else thought he meant by it. and for an example of such a person, you can see what LInda Blanchard has to say about it on the secular buddhist association website if you are interested.
So for my part, you’ll never get me to subscribe to a usage of transcendence in a religious context but with a secular meaning. Unusual experiences in meditation also occur outside of meditation. And what do you mean by unconscious. Some people don’t believe that there’s any such thing but rather that is just a useful construct. I am inclined to think that these altered states are not so much our unconscious but just hiccups in the brain caused by for example, prolonged concentration. I’ve experienced a few brain hiccups myself. In and out of meditation. I find them interesting but what they really tell us about the state of reality is an interesting topic. I think they just tell us something about what the brain is capable of.
Because its late and i’m about to head off to bed, i shall limit myself to one small comment at this time.
I defy anyone to be able to read my mind. I cannot accept there is any truth in telepathy. There is perceptivity so that one person or animal can read what another person is thinking. We use our sensitivities to tone of voice, facial expression, visible signs of bodily movement.
Also a knowledge of human nature can help one person know somewhat what is going on in another person’s mind. Eg one might be able to tell that someone else is lying. But this is not telepathy.
If i am thinking about a church i once visited in norway and someone else can tell me that is what i am thinking about without having any physical clues, then i would accept that person is telepathic. As far as i know there nothing else is telepathic.
There wouldn’t be any guess work or perceptivity in telepathy.
Hi, Andrea:
Thanks for this comment (and for your other comment, which elaborates it.) I agree that ‘transcendence’ is a difficult term to use when one is wanting to avoid religious and mystical connotations. In my book I have tried to use it as little possible. My reason for wanting not to avoid it completely is that I think there is a point in trying to preserve some notion of ‘spirituality’ while distinguishing it from ‘religion’. Religion involves, according to the dictionary, the idea of an external creator Being, whereas, ‘spirituality’, for me, refers to a dimension of human experience that occurs, for example, in aesthetic experiences. If we avoid referring to the human capacity for spiritual experience, we risk limiting ourselves to what one might call a secular humanism (rather than a secular Buddhism) which then suggests a materialist conception of reality that I find, in the end, reductionist. So I prefer to preserve a sense of uncertainty in this area, and seeing where that leads, rather than assuming that I already know the answer.
The same sort of argument applies to my desire to keep open the possibilities implicit in ‘telepathy’, or the widely used term ‘sixth sense’. I think that there is a form of sensitivity to others which varies both between individuals and which also varies according to our own state of mind. It links, I think, with the Buddhist term ‘receptivity’, which varies in the same way and which has the same ambiguity as to what it is and where / how / why it occurs. The current state of our knowledge about this is, as with our knowledge of everything else, incomplete. So, again, I’d like to keep open the possibilities that are implicit in the term.
Thanks again for your comments: I find it helpful to keep trying to tease out these limits and possibilities, even though I suspect that you may still find my position one that you would wish to disagreee with.
Best wishes
Richard
Before we go any further, could you please approve for publication my other comment which at the moment only you and i can read. It is awaiting moderation from you.
With regards to your reply above. We are on different sides of the fence. I don’t hold with these things as you do. I am perfectly comfortable with an idea of a materialistic understanding of the universe and i find it unnecessary to hold the door open. AT the same time, i’m not standing against the door with my back against it. If any evidence turns up to disprove my belief, then i’m ready to change my view but i’m not holding my breath.
In essence, i’m a lot further along the spectrum of of belief v disbelief. I am almost at the far end of disbelief. I know we can’t know and that’s as far as my agnositicism is going to go.
I personally don’t find any value in the word spirituality. It is pretty meaningless to me in terms of it being useful in my life. I have other words for aesthetic moments. I can recognise what other people call religious or spiritual feeling as say one would in a beautiful church with light pouring through the stained glass windows or in listening to a heavenly choir.Yep its aesthetic and i can see the appeal in religious terms. There’s a great deal of beauty in such situations to be experienced. I just think in using the word spiritual to describe such an experience, one is suggesting that there is something else out there involved. For me there is nothing else going on. Its all just about the brilliance of the artist who constructed a building to capture some of natures dazzle or the briliance of a composer with the beauty of childrens’ voices and the acoustics of a building. Just because i see it in those terms doesn’t mean i am any less awed by the beauty of these experiences.
The distinction i make between religion and spirituality is that one is more established and organised. All the people i’ve known who consider themselves spiritual believe in something, it may not be god. Its usually something quite vague and daffy. But there is a crossover with what i believe about the world in a materialistic way.
That is i believe we are all fundamentally interconnected, regardless of the buddhas quite radical interpretation of that word.( I would call the buddha’s view radical interdependence. My view doesn’t really involve issues about self. )
I feel totally fine about that and have no intention of altering my view to be agreeable.
Telepathy i can’t come at at all. These sensitive people are just perceptive without being extra perceptive as far as i’m concerned, otherwise as someone recently pointed out on the US facebook page, why aren’t more of these people winning the lotto.
Hi, Andrea:
Yes, I wasn’t clear enough about ‘materialism’. I would suscribe to the sort of materialism that led Marx to insist on turning Hegel ‘the right way up’. And my comments on the unconscious and ‘telepathy’ are an attempt to assimilate them into the sort of broad outlook (common, I think, to Marxism and Buddhism) which takes as central the problem of systematic delusion and the possibility of achieving a grasp of reality through liberation and critique. I like your notion of a spectrum (rather than your earlier image of a ‘fence’) and when you say that you accept a ‘crossover’ I think we are not all that far apart.
Richard
Hi, Andrea:
I have the feeling that your comment that I am referring to in my reply above has somehow got lost. Sorry about that: I am still learning how the SBUK site works and also I have had a lot of problems with my own on-line connections recently. I hope that what I say makes some kind of sense nevertheless.
Hi, Richard. Understanding that there are many different approaches we can take and still fit into the big tent of “secular Buddhism”, I am in agreement with Andrea. I am a materialist, quite openly, and have yet to see any valid criticism of the drawbacks of such a stance. Still human, still open minded, still filled with wonder and fascination for things mysterious. I simply expect, based on experience, that our experiences have natural world explanations, and when we look to the supernatural, we stop looking for other answers. To me, that is being closed minded.
Being transcendent then is as Andrew decribed quite eloquently in his Comment. It does not have to mean we somehow escape from the natural world, but that we are no longer as constrained due to our ignorance, and we are able to make better choices about our responses to life rather than letting the tsunami of thoughts and feelings take charge.
Of course, I’m perfectly fine with the word “spiritual”, and it would be nice to reclaim that from use in an exclusively non-material sense. To me, this is a reference to what we find personally uplifting and of value, and inspires and invigorates our practice.
Thanks for starting this thread, Richard, and I look forward to our Skype conversation!
Hi, Ted:
I agree with what you say here. My reply to Andrea dated 24/06 also had your comments in mind. Somehow, things got out of order – I’m not quite sure how!
Richard
Richard,
It depends on what one means by ‘transcendental’. You are not following Kant’s usage, to refer to categories existing prior to experience, and not following the usage of the19th century American transcendentalists, implying that nature is in some way divine. As you say,a Buddhist definition of transcendental experience might just be ‘letting go’ of or ‘going beyond’ the self-imposed limitations of greed, hatred and delusion. I suspect that without such psychological limitations, experience is more meaningful and more wonderful, but still retains the commonplace features of relationship to the world. So perhaps the closest we can come to a transcendental awareness is when the ordinary comes to feel extraordinary. The outcome of any process of psychological change, conscious or unconscious, is bound to be unpredictable and hard to characterise; Secular Buddhists may wish to avoid the expectation-inflation that is so typical of nascent religious groups, and which could creep in under the guise of loose terms like ‘transcendence’.
On political engagement, I don’t see why not. If something is wrong, persons of good will, not having ordained as renouncers of this world, should respond appropriately and compassionately. In other words, should act politically by fulfilling their responsibility as part of the polity of persons who make up the social world. In ‘On Belief’, Stefan Zizek argues that western Buddhists adopt a head-in-the-sand ‘meditative stance’ in order to hide from themselves from their guilty share in the ‘capitalist dynamic’. To avoid politics altogether is to concede his point. Perhaps we should imitate the example of Aung San Suu Kyi , who doesn’t oppose capitalism outright, but advocates that corporations investing in Burma should operate according to strict ethical guidelines.
What sort of collective political engagement should Secular Buddhists engage in? I think that question must hang in the air for a while, since it depends on the fortunes of this quasi-religious concept as it negotiates the turn into a social organisation. It is not yet clear what sort of social organisation it will become.
I am in agreement
Hi, Andrew:
Many thanks for this, which I think I fully agree with.
As regards a secular Buddhist political engagement, I find considerable satisfaction in teaching meditation, together with the Buddhist lines of thought that provide a ‘theoretical’ justification for it, i.e. why it not only feels as though it is beneficial but also why we should expect it to be beneficial. If we can increase the range of people who habitually engage in meditation, we might expect an ‘improvement’ in the relationships (and thus even in the end the institutions) that make up our social and political reality. The generally enthusiastic response I experience to introductory sessions
makes me feel quite optimistic about this, although the time scale involved is, of course, enormous.
This is why my book ends with a focus on education as the place where our efforts might best be concentrated. This was also, after all, the social practice that Buddha decised to engage in, after at first doubting whether he would be able to make it work!
Best wishes
Richard
Andrew:
Thanks for this, as a result of which I feel I need to do some more systematic work on ‘transcendental’! For example, Kant’s suggestion that transcendental categories are ‘prior’ to experience-based categories (rather than ‘independent of’ them) seems slightly misleading.
Hi Richard
What you write certainly resonates with my ‘take’ on Buddhism – and I guess my priorities – although I struggle with how to express my wish to apply a Buddhist understanding of how embedded we all are in a world where greed, hatred and delusion have been given free rein – as Stephen Batchelor writes self-centred confusion and craving are embodied in the economic, military and political structures that influence the lives of the majority of people on earth (112). Given the ‘truth’ of conditioned arising and the obvious challenge of liberating ourselves from/undermining (or even transcending) our instinctive craving, fear, confusion which is constantly being promoted/stoked by the culture/world we live in, I’m finding it hard to be optimistic at the moment. I would like to be more politically engaged, but often find just staying steady and getting through the day takes up all my energy – recently read a very short book – ‘Be outraged!’ by Stephane Hessel – which is inspiring – but where to start? Maybe reading your book will help!
Hi, Nina:
Thanks for this. In my book I explicitly try to balance a sense of ‘outrage’ with a sense of optimism concerning our capacity for engaging subtly and ‘skilfully’ with others in finding directions for action.
So I hope you find it helpful!
Best wishes
Richard
Hi Richard – it’s good to find you here, to read your blog and comments. Your path and mine crossed some years back and I was the beneficiary then of your own optimistic, subtle and skilful support in finding direction for action, although I didn’t sustain the effort needed to follow through to anything of consequence, maybe because I didn’t properly ‘get it’ about collaborating with others in a spirit of equity and open enquiry, which is what you taught.
I’ve ordered your book and will read it when it comes.
Someone in academic circles once described my thinking as “unacceptably loose”, and I do find it hard to follow a line of reasoning to any kind of conclusion. But now I’ve got a bit more time on my hands there’s no reason why I shouldn’t try again.
I have a healthy regard for transcendental experience, and during my early nursing career I was much influenced by Dolores Krieger, an American nurse who taught holistic nursing and drew on her personal experience and study of transpersonal psychology to guide practice, as well as by the writings of Stanislav Grof and other ‘left-field’ psychologists and researchers.
Intuition and paraphenomena like telepathy have always fascinated me, and have figured in my own nursing practice. I’ve had powerfully persuasive experiences of a kind of telepathic resonance with brain-damaged individuals, with people with profound learning disability, schizophrenia, and with dementia patients. For several years I facilitated a transpersonal psychology interest and enquiry group for nurses, midwives and health visitors, with an enthusiastic and intelligent following.
I’ve found this SBUK site congenial enough, although it’s too Buddha-centric and concerned with ‘what the Buddha taught’ as if we’ll ever know. I’ve meditated using various approaches for getting on for thirty years, but my ‘practice’ is now neither systematic, rigorous nor regular and that troubles me not at all. I have learned somewhere along the way what it means to be open to the emergent: it’s a bit like riding a bike: once learned, the skill is always ‘there’, the difference being you don’t need the apparatus of wheels and pedals.
Best wishes
Hi, Peter:
Likewoise – lovely to meet up with you again, albeit in this virtua reality. What you say in your comment reminds me of why we got on so well all those years ago!
Very best wishes
Richard
Both Andrew and Nina have made reference to ‘political engagement’ (Andrew wrote of collective political engagement waiting on some clear social organisation to give it effect; Nina suggested that it might demand more energy of her than she had available from just getting through the day).
Me, I’m not sure what to understand by ‘political engagement’. What might it involve me in? In the past I’ve had work-based trade-union posts that involved me in, for example, organising and conducting branch meetings, listening to member’s work-based problems and representing them or advising them at meetings with managers to resolve issues, disputes or problems arising from work. Bread and butter stuff, but quite important in its own way. I think the point of it was demonstrating solidarity and resolve in the face of top-down power, exercised (sometimes or apparently) arbitrarily, caprciously, unfairly, or unwisely). Is this an example of political engagement? I once helped organise a “withdrawal of labour” as a protest against an unfair wage offer. Is that political engagement? I wasn’t a Buddhist at those times, but I still feel the same way about issues of exploitation, unfair treatment and capricious decision-making as I did then, and speak out about them where I’m able, although not from a professed Buddhist standpoint, as that would be irrelevant in most cases.
I suppose I’m asking if there is a specifically Buddhist expression of political engagement, and more pointedly does there need to be? Something tells me that standing on an explicitly Buddhist platform is unlikely to strengthen a case for or against any proposition, all other things being equal.
Maybe just being open to the way things are is an act of political engagement in itself.
What do you think?
Hi, Peter:
I think my main response here is that our Buddhist practice (e.g. of mindfulness) should help us to engage politically with more sensitivity, more open-ness ,and thus gtreater effectiveness!
And there’s also teaching meditation, as I mentioned in an earlier comment.
Richard
Hi Richard,
I like what you are saying about uncertainty here, but am cautious about the possibility that you might be offering a Marxist and materialist appropriation of the dialectical process we need to deal positively with uncertainty. I think dialectic offers a good way to understand how we make progress and understand objectivity, both in the public and private spheres, but it needs to be an open process of provisional beliefs to work, not one based on metaphysical beliefs such as either materialism or idealism.
To relate this to Peter’s comments on political engagement, I was a bit disappointed with your response, which seems to limit Buddhism to a private practice which one then applies to public life, as though that public life was something separate. I would see a practice of the Buddha’s key insight (the Middle Way) as being political by implication as much as it is personal. Just as meditation can help to train us in provisional beliefs that do not identify with one fixed view or another, a developing political practice can experiment with different beliefs about how to organise our society, try them out and refine them, without being tied to a particular limiting political ideology.
For me Marxism is a strong example of a particularly limiting political ideology, deeply dogmatic and opposed to a genuine dialectical process either in politics or in personal practice. I can’t square what you have written so far with anything I would identify as Marxist – and I have studied some Marxism. As an ideology it also doesn’t exactly have a great track record. So why are you using the term? Doesn’t it just create a barrier? Or is there a more identifiable Marxist agenda that you haven’t revealed yet? Please explain.
Hi, Robert:
I wonder if my last reply to Peter might meet your concern that I am interpreting political engagement in too private a sense. I was suggesting that our Buddhist practice would enable us to engage politically with greater sensitivity and thus greater effectiveness.
As regards the ‘closed’ nature of concnetional Marxist ideology, I agree with you. And this is why in my book I attempt to present a re-interpretation of the Marxist critique of our society, one that is indeed more ‘open’ and more aligned to the Buddhist critique of ‘experience’.
Best wishes
Richard
Thanks for that reply, Richard.
As to the effectiveness of one’s efforts, I’m beginning to realise that it’s a good idea to stick to what one’s best at, rather than trying to engage with issues one has little or no experience of, or talent for. There are so many issues that could claim one’s attention. I was reading Ven Bikkhu Bodhi’s recent appeal on world hunger and the problem of my/our spiritual numbness, but I feel helpless and powerless to do anything much about it (other people’s hunger).
So I’ve narrowed my own efforts down to befriending people with severe and enduring mental illness, especially those who are locked up in secure psychiatric institutions or who have been detained in the past, and were scarred by it. There’s not much scope for teaching meditation or mindfulness in a structured or systematic way in such places or to such afflicted people, or if there is I haven’t met it yet. There seem to be a host of contra-indications to meditation in chronic psychotic states, although I’m not aware that many psychiatrists have personal experience of putting it to the test.
But there’s scope for a kind of communion in which quasi-meditative things can happen, or can seem to happen, and be acknowledged tacitly – and even ‘crazily’ – by those involved. I’ve been meeting with ‘psychotic’ men in a secure hospital for about a year now, at weekly meetings, attended also by an open-minded Christian priest and another member of staff. The meetings are very discursive and wholly ‘open to the emergent’ and the only constant is the time we spend together, one hour.
I’d be interested to hear from anyone else who has similar experience to share of approaches to ‘work’ in this ‘field’.
Further to my last comment I’ve come across an interesting blog http://moderndebtjubilee.blogspot.co.uk/ by jayarava who describes himself as a member of Triratna Order. It’s got a strong polemical flavour but it’s topical, thought-provoking and speaks to the question of pinning down political engagement, or at least it seems to me to do that quite well.
I find myself very much in agreement with the points you make about both mysticism and political engagement, Richard. I particularly liked what you wrote in reply to Andrea:
‘If we avoid referring to the human capacity for spiritual experience, we risk limiting ourselves to what one might call a secular humanism (rather than a secular Buddhism) which then suggests a materialist conception of reality that I find, in the end, reductionist. So I prefer to preserve a sense of uncertainty in this area, and seeing where that leads, rather than assuming that I already know the answer.’
Or to put it another way I don’t see why being a person without faith in the conventional sense should in any way limit the depth or mystery of what can arise in one’s practice. To think otherwise, to my mind, is to allow religion once again to enclose the common lands.
When it comes to relating Buddhism to our current political predicaments, I find the work of David Loy – or such of it as I have read – very interesting. Have you, or others, read his stuff?
John
Hi, John:
Thanks for this. Yes, I like very much David Loy’s work.
Richard