The
Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek famously claimed that Western Buddhism may
serve as the “perfect ideological supplement” to the capitalist system.[1]
Whilst I think Žižek’s conclusion is based on a hazy understanding of the
practices of Buddhism, it is worth taking seriously the claim that Western
Buddhism actually supports rather than undermines the capitalist system. The
assumption amongst many Western Buddhists seems to be that the dharma’s basic
message is directly opposed to the values of materialistic capitalism, and as
such, Buddhism is incorruptible.
Buddhism is different?
In the West,
Buddhism has a reputation for peacefulness unparalleled by any other major
world religion. A basic message of peace and love is also at the heart of
Islam, Hinduism and Christianity. But in the Western consciousness all three
have been sullied by violence and complicity in unjust systems. Whilst the
Crusades, the caste system and Jihadist terrorism loom large in people’s minds,
few could name an instance of Buddhist violence. Of course, Buddhists have
plenty of blood on their hands.
It is
claimed that the ancient Buddhist emperor Asoka ordered several thousand Jains
killed[2],
whilst a canonical Mahayana text depicts the Buddha in a past life murdering
Brahmins for insulting Buddhist scriptures.[3]
Although these historical and scriptural claims are questionable, what is without
doubt is that Buddhist majority populations are currently inflicting horrific
and sustained violence against Muslim minorities in South Asia. In Burma,
Muslim businesses and mosques have been attacked by gangs of Buddhists,
including monks[4],
whilst far-right Buddhist groups have demanded the government strip voting
rights from the Muslim Rohingya community.[5]
Buddhists in Sri Lanka have attacked Muslim neighbourhoods, ransacking family
homes[6]
in hostilities stoked by Therevadin monks.[7]
The truth
is: rather than being a uniquely peaceful faith which excels all others,
Buddhism is as corruptible as any other religion. Buddhism can be, and often
has been, co-opted and manipulated to serve a harmful agenda.
The question
is: how does this happen?
Girō Seno’o
Girō Seno’o
(1809-1961) wanted to answer just that question. Seno’o was a member of the
Nichiren sect, which vehemently supported the right wing Japanese government
during the brutal occupation of Manchuria in the 1930s, during which thousands
of Chinese civilians were killed. He wondered how a religion of peace could be
twisted to support violent imperialism. He concluded the problem was
institutional:
I
came to question the whole religious establishment itself. I found myself with
no other possibility than to oppose it.[8]
What Seno’o
realised was that, so long as religious institutions fail to actively oppose
the established order, they will become tools of that order. He saw that
Buddhism and the capitalist system were incompatible because “the capitalist
system generates suffering and, thus, violates the spirit of Buddhism.”[9]
In short, a Buddhism that is complicit in capitalism is a Buddhism that fails
to be truly compassionate. Some may question whether it should be called
Buddhism at all.
Seno’o
established the Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism, a Marxist-influenced
network aimed at opposing Japanese imperialism and promoting internationalism.
In 1936 he was arrested for treason. After a five-month interrogation process
he confessed to his ‘crimes’, pledged allegiance to the Emperor and was
released from prison. He may not be well known today, but Seno’o’s simple
realisation – that institutions which fail to oppose capitalism actually become
tools of the system – is a crucial lesson for modern Western Buddhists.
Maladjusted Buddhism
But how does
it work? How do institutions originally established to follow a path of
compassion end up being complicit with a system which generates mass suffering?
In an
article entitled ‘Maladjusted Buddhism’[10],
American Zen practitioner Nathan Thompson builds on Martin Luther King’s
critique of the psychological concept of ‘adjustment’ to argue that Western
convert Buddhists have become well-adjusted to the violence inherent in capitalism.
In an address to the American Psychological Association in September 1967, Dr.
King said:
There are certain technical words in every academic discipline
which soon become stereotypes and even clichés. Every academic discipline has
its technical nomenclature. You who are in the field of psychology have given
us a great word. It is the word maladjusted. This word is probably used more
than any other word in psychology. It is a good word; certainly it is good that
in dealing with what the word implies you are declaring that destructive
maladjustment should be destroyed. You are saying that all must seek the
well-adjusted life in order to avoid neurotic and schizophrenic personalities.
But on the other hand, I am sure that we will recognize that there
are some things in our society, some things in our world, to which we should
never be adjusted. There are some things concerning which we must always be
maladjusted if we are to be people of good will. We must never adjust ourselves
to racial discrimination and racial segregation. We must never adjust ourselves
to religious bigotry. We must never adjust ourselves to economic conditions
that take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few. We must never
adjust ourselves to the madness of militarism, and the self-defeating effects
of physical violence.[11]
Thompson recognises
this trend in Western Buddhists sanghas:
The
majority of convert Buddhist sanghas have adjusted to the economic norms of
global capitalism. They traffic in various forms of marketing and “selling” the
dharma. They structure themselves in ways that diminish the concept of dana to
monetary gifts. And they rarely, if ever, participate in opposing, advocate in
favor of opposing, or even speak about opposing economic injustices, poverty,
or the like. Taking any sort of deliberate stance on these issues is usually
seen as “political,” or not in the realm of practice. […]
In
my view, the very ways in which global capitalism structure society and our
individual lives by default, reinforce all of these issues with convert sanghas
and their practitioners. Keeping the doors open requires money […] And speaking
out or opposing economic injustice and poverty in deliberate, tangible ways can
– and often does – cause a hell of lot of discomfort. It might disrupt the
perceived harmony of the sangha. Furthermore, it can and sometimes does bring
certain social penalties, including “negative” press and perhaps lost revenue
from individuals or organizations tied to corporate interests. I think
Buddhists in general throughout history have leaned towards being a more quiet
presence in whatever society they’re living in.
We can see
how this functions on the sangha level. Our Buddhist centres need to keep the
lights on, so they need to make money. They do this by marketing the dharma –
meditation classes and the like, as well as selling gifts and books. Just like
any other business entity, they must avoid anything which may alienate customers,
including criticising the powerful.
This process
played out in my own sangha in February 2015. Our Engaged Buddhism group, of
which I am part, organised a screening of a film about the Israeli occupation
of the Palestinian territories. The event was supported by the Buddhist Centre
staff and trustees. However, members of the local pro-Israel lobby found out
and began to put pressure on the Buddhist Centre to cancel the screening. After
initially resolving to go ahead, the Centre’s trustees folded when a pro-Israel
paper threatened to run a smear piece and there was talk of protests outside
the building. The trustees couldn’t accept how bad publicity and protests would
affect the normal functioning of the Centre.
Our Buddhist
Centre is necessarily embedded in a market system which operates within a
normative framework. By highlighting the violence of the Israeli occupation, by
challenging power, we transgressed those norms. The system did what the system
does: it slapped us down. The trustees have now learned not to venture outside
of those norms again. Our Buddhist Centre, a religious institution, is back to
functioning as a conforming part of the capitalist system. A system which, if
we remember the words of Girō Seno’o, “generates suffering and, thus, violates
the spirit of Buddhism.”
Compassion is not enough
One Buddhist
response to these critiques I’ve heard is: what about mettā? What about karuṇā?
If the capitalist order relies on division, competition and hatred, surely
cultivating loving-kindness and compassion will undermine that. So we don’t
need to kick up a fuss about injustice and economic systems. We don’t need to
fight capitalism, we just need to spread the dharma and the rest will take care
of itself.
The problem
is, if our sanghas are too cowed to challenge systems of power, our
compassionate acts will be on a purely charitable level. We will work with the
suffering that is a symptom of the capitalist system but we will fail to
address the system itself. That’s fine if you think that our compassion will
ultimately transform the world. But as we’ve already seen, it is often the
world that transforms Buddhism rather than the other way around. And, argues
the economist Charles Eisenstein, working on a purely charitable level may in
fact support the capitalist system rather than undermine it.
Eisenstein
identifies four ways in which acts of charity perpetuate the system:
(1)
By
ameliorating some of its worst consequences, they make capitalism all the more
palatable.
(2)
They divert
altruistic energy toward relatively innocuous goals instead of toward
addressing the systemic foundations of injustice.
(3)
They appease
the conscience and make one’s own complicity more acceptable.
(4)
They
generate a codependent relationship with the needy, in which the charitable
enterprise depends for its survival on the very conditions it ostensibly seeks
to address.[12]
Point three
particularly reflects my experience of Western Buddhist sanghas. Once, in a
discussion about whether we should challenge structural suffering or just
perform acts of kindness, I was told that “it’s all merit in the end”. This is
a viewpoint I’ve come across many times: it doesn’t matter the nature of the
good deed, so long as you feel satisfied with yourself afterwards.
It’s worth
noting that Eisenstein also provides an inversion of each point to demonstrate
how challenging structural suffering without working on the charitable level is
also harmful. But if we accept Eisenstein’s critique it seems clear that our
compassion – limited because we are institutionally prohibited from challenging
structural suffering – may in fact fortify the system is purportedly seeks to
undermine.
Navayana - a new vehicle
The Mahayana
– or ‘Great Vehicle’ – emerged as a reform movement against what were
considered trends in early Buddhism which had moved away from the Buddha’s
basic message. By re-conceptualising elements of the dharma to shift the focus
back to compassion, the proponents of the Mahayana felt they were reaffirming
the essential meaning of the Buddha’s teaching for a new age. This is what we
must do in the West today.
The Buddha talked
about economics. For example, in the Kutadanta Sutta the Buddha implies that
social problems can be overcome by restructuring the economy[13].
But the Buddha certainly never spoke about capitalism. The modern global
economic system dictates aspects of our lives in a way that the Buddha could
never have foreseen and as such, we cannot simply look to the historical Buddha’s
teaching for ways to solve modern problems. What is surely undisputable is that
the Buddha would not have supported modern capitalism, with its focus on
material wealth and its reliance on violence.
As Buddhism
takes root in the West, we need to conceptualise the dharma in new ways to meet
our modern challenges. Like the Mahayanists, we need a ‘New Vehicle’ – a
Navayana.[14]
It must be a vehicle that takes in to account the realities of the modern
economic and political system, and learns from political critiques of
capitalism. Whilst keeping compassion as our core, we shouldn’t be afraid to
learn from Marxist, anarchists, feminists and other political thinkers, as well
as the liberation theologies of the Christian tradition. If not, we will
continue to acquiesce to the capitalist system, a system which “violates the
spirit of Buddhism.”
[1] http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/2/western.php
[2] https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Kp9uaQTQ8h8C&pg=PA232&hl=en#v=onepage&q&f=false
[3] http://www.loonwatch.com/2012/07/warrior-monks-the-untold-story-of-buddhist-violence-i/
[4] http://time.com/2956180/burma-mandalay-race-riots-sectarian-violence-buddhist-muslim/
[5] http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2015/2/myanmars-buddhist-terrorism-problem.html
[6] http://time.com/3090990/how-an-extremist-buddhist-network-is-sowing-hatred-across-asia/
[7] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-32929855
[8] http://enlight.lib.ntu.edu.tw/FULLTEXT/JR-MAG/mag29564.pdf
[9] https://web.archive.org/web/20131119194506/http://nirc.nanzan-u.ac.jp/nfile/4207
[10] I
would highly recommend reading the whole of Nathan’s article ‘Maladjusted
Buddhism’ to get a full understanding of his argument - http://www.patheos.com/blogs/americanbuddhist/2013/03/maladjusted-buddhism-a-guest-post-by-nathan-thompson.html
[11]
Ibid.
[12] http://charleseisenstein.net/a-neat-inversion/
[13]
DN5, The Kutadanta Sutta, translted
by Prof. T.W Rhys Davids - http://www.bps.lk/olib/wh/wh120-p.html
[14]
This term has been used by Dr. Ambedkar, leader of the Dalit conversion to
Buddhism in India in the 1950s
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