The Path of Compassion: Writings on Socially Engaged Buddhism, by Fred Eppsteiner

Reviewed by Katy Butler

Whole Earth Review

No.76 (Fall 1992)

Pp.98

COPYRIGHT POINT 1992

            Many of the first Zen teachers in America taught not only Buddhism, 
            but disengagement from activist politics. (Many Japanese monasteries 
            historically enjoyed the sponsorship of emperors) But in the last 
            ten years, American students hove become less imitative and are 
            finding their own voices, This anthology includes contributions from 
            the Dalai Lama, Jack Kornfield, Thich Nhat Hanh, Joanna Macy, Robert 
            Aitkin, a woman who was roped after a sesshin, and a British monk 
            who ran for Parliament. Contributors argue that there is nothing 
            inherently Buddhist about social passivity. It introduced me to 
            traditional Buddhists, especially in the Theravadan traditions of 
            Sri Lanka and Burma, who integrate religion and politics much as 
            Gandhi did. --Katy Butler 
            * Although Mahayana Buddhism has a grand vision of universal 
            salvation, the actual achievement of Buddhism has been the 
            development of practical systems of meditation toward the end of 
            liberating a few dedicated individuals from psychological hangups 
            and cultural conditionings. Institutional Buddhism has been 
            conspicuously ready to accept or ignore the inequalities and 
            tyrannies of whatever political system it found itself under. This 
            can be death to Buddhism, because it is death to any meaningful 
            function of compassion. Wisdom without compassion feels no pain. 
            No one today can afford to be innocent, or to indulge themselves in 
            ignorance of the nature of contemporary governments, politics, and 
            social orders. The national polities of the modern world are 
            "states" which maintain their existence by deliberately fostered 
            craving and fear: monstrous protection rackets. The "free world" has 
            become economically dependent on a fantastic system of stimulation 
            of greed which cannot be fulfilled, sexual desire which cannot be 
            satiated, and hatred which has no outlet except against oneself, the 
            persons one is supposed to love, or the revolutionary aspirations of 
            pitiful, poverty-stricken marginal societies. The conditions of the 
            Cold War have turned most modern societies -- both Soviet and 
            capitalist -- into vicious distorters of true human potential. They 
            try to create populations of preta -- hungry ghosts, with giant 
            appetites and throats no bigger than needles. The soil, the forests, 
            and all animal life are being consumed by these cancerous 
            collectivities; the air and water of the planet is being fouled by 
            them. 
            There is nothing in human nature or the requirements of human social 
            organization which intrinsically requires that a society be 
            contradictory, repressive, and productive of violent and frustrated 
            personalities. Findings in anthropology and psychology make this 
            more and more evident. One can prove it for oneself by taking a good 
            look at Original Nature through meditation. Once a person has this 
            much faith and insight, one will be led to a deep concern with the 
            need for radical social change through a variety of nonviolent 
            means. 
            The joyous and voluntary poverty of Buddhism becomes a positive 
            force. The traditional harmlessness and avoidance of taking life in 
            any form has nation-shaking implications. The practice of 
            meditation, for which one needs only "the ground beneath one's 
            feet," wipes out mountains of junk being pumped into the mind by the 
            mass media and supermarket universities.