Structural violence and spirituality: socially engaged Buddhist
perspectives. (Thailand) (interview with Sulak Sivaraksa, social critic, proponent of
socially engaged Buddhism, and Santikaro Bhikkhu, Buddhist monk)(Responding to
Violence)(Interview)
Rothberg, Donald
ReVision (Fall 1997)
Vol.20 No.2
pp.38-42
COPYRIGHT 1997 Helen Dwight Reid Educational Foundation
Donald Rothberg: In a talk at the conference "Towards a Dhammic
Society," held in Thailand in February 1995, you maintained that an
understanding of structural violence is at the core of engaged
Buddhism.
Sulak Sivaraksa: Before talking about structural violence, let me
give some background about Buddhism and traditional Buddhist
societies in Southeast Asia. Buddhism teaches the elimination of
violence entirely, both intrapsychically and interpersonally.
Violence is connected with what Buddhists call the "Three Poisons":
greed, hatred, and delusion. Buddhist practice to transform those
poisons occurs in the context of the sangha (the spiritual
community), set up to make possible the elimination of violence.
Members of monastic communities, for example, attempt to live a
harmonious life with the other monks and nuns, with the lay people,
with the animals, and with the environment. Even lay people avoid
professions that are linked to violence, such as trading in arms,
intoxicants, slaves, or animals; or being a soldier. Lay people also
practice the Five Ethical Precepts (refraining from killing,
stealing, harmful speech, sexual misconduct, and misuse of drugs)
and try to avoid violence as much as possible.
In simple agrarian societies, the issue of structural violence
arises infrequently, although clearly hierarchies according to
wealth, power, and gender exist. For example, my wife's grandmother
is regarded as a very rich lady in her province in Thailand, but her
lifestyle is almost exactly the same as everyone around her. Her
mother had to tend the fields just like any of the poorer people.
With the wealth she accumulated, she built a traditional temple to
help develop the sangha.
The weakness of Buddhism in Southeast Asia is that Buddhists do not
deal with the power structure, which, even in Buddhist kingdoms, has
always been guided by Hindu values. That arrangement is based on the
theory of the chariot that needs "two wheels"; the wheel of
righteousness is represented by the monastic sangha, the wheel of
power by the king.
Monks would talk to the rulers, but refrained from holding power.
They gave consolation to soldiers and went on military expeditions,
although the Buddha limited such trips by the monks to one week. The
Buddha generally saw the state as being like a poisonous snake. One
does not kill it; that would be violence. One deals with it through
"skillful means"--being kind, but remembering that it Is a poisonous
snake! Unfortunately, in the last 100 years this critical view of
the state has not been stressed in Thailand.
The weakness in the separation of the "two wheels" is that a person
who avoids power does not understand much about it. The sangha tries
to influence the state to be less violent. But at least in the
Southern school of Buddhism, the attempt to eliminate violence is
entirely on the personal level, occurring ideally through the career
of the monk or nun. There is a minimal understanding of structural
violence.
In the last fifty years, the Western model of "development" has
largely transformed the traditional rural way of life, centered in
the village and temple, and structural violence has greatly
increased. In this period, Buddhist alternatives to development have
been largely limited to small communities of forest monks who try to
have nothing to do with the values and violence of mainstream
society. That approach presupposes that violence does not reach the
forest, that the forest will be protected. But who nowaday's can
protect the forest? In the old days, the righteous ruler had to
protect the animals and the forest as well as the villages.
Nowadays, violence, spread by the greed of capitalism and empire,
has become the norm; there is nowhere to go. Even many Buddhists
accept this norm. The present Secretary-General of the National
Economic Development Board that runs Thailand is a practicing
Buddhist! He is a very nice man and close to the king; he may
meditate and act generously. But he has no choice but to go along
with the international economic order; he must accept capitalism and
structural violence. "Of course," he might say, "it's not ideal, and
there is some greed. But it is the norm. We cannot use Buddhism to
stop greed or war. War is the normal way of the world. Buddhism
never stopped war in the past."
Structural Violence, Ethics, and Power
DR: In using the term "structural violence," we identify phenomena
as violent that are not usually seen as violent. For example,
Western economic domination of the world is usually not seen as
violent, at least by most Westerners. Buddhists may also not link a
response to structural violence with their more personal conception
of following the ethical guidelines (sila). They may not consider
cutting down the forests, or allowing many women to become
prostitutes, or using pesticides, to be violations of the ethical
precepts.
SS: Again, in the old days of the temple and rural community,
questions of structural violence were not so relevant. One could
follow the Five Precepts fairly easily. Killing is bad, and the idea
of killing is also bad, because hatred arises. Stealing is bad
because greed arises. Sexual misconduct is typically rooted in lust;
unskillful speech (such as lying) is based in delusion, and so on.
But now hatred, greed, lust, and lying pervade our whole culture,
through various institutions and the media. We accept them as part
of our lives!
I have learned that many Thai monks love to watch a Taiwanese soap
opera about the Chief Justice of China in the Sung period, even
though this man chops off people's heads every night! The stories
teach a Confucian sense of justice, in which it is okay that someone
has to be killed. Or we accept it when Mr. Kissinger says, "Two
million Cambodians must die in order to save the world." Or when Mr.
Truman drops the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Of course, we are
not among those people in Nagasaki.
DR: Your last examples point to another aspect of structural
violence. Some structural violence may be invisible or not seen as
violence. But your last examples would be seen as examples of
violence that are acceptable for the working of the system. That is
related to the idea that some people's suffering matters and some
people's suffering is acceptable or even does not matter. At the
moment in the United States, the violence of street crime, which
makes middle-class people fearful, is often seen as unacceptable. It
is not acceptable to have the streets be unsafe for some people, but
it is acceptable to kill 200,000 Iraqis in the Gulf War!
Santikaro Bhikkhu: I'd like to relate structural violence to our own
conceptions of power and human nature, and to inner selfishness. I
have learned from Theravada Buddhism in general, as well as from my
teacher, Ajahn Buddhadasa, and from meditation, that there are two
kinds of power. One kind, of power is the power of one person or
group over and against another person or group (or the environment).
A second kind of power is more akin to "authority." One may have
great influence over people, but without force and without going
against their wills. For example, many people would be willing to do
what my teacher asked, not because he has any direct coercive power
over them, but because of his moral or spiritual authority. This is
an ideal that lies behind the old Buddhist models of the king, who
is supposed to possess the "Ten Virtues." That sometimes is
forgotten under the influence of Hindu concepts.
The first kind of coercive power fits well with notions of the state
held by Western philosophers such as Hobbes and Locke; human beings
are basically selfish and need to be controlled. In the Buddhist
ideal, however, human beings are able to develop spiritually, to
lessen their selfishness. That latter view leads to a different
sense of power or authority, more of a moral one that is grounded in
meditative experience. The first kind of power is the power of ego
that a despotic ruler (whether a king, a dictator, the directors of
multinational corporations, the International Monetary Fund (IMF),
U.S..Agency for International Development (AID), or the World Bank)
can project into structural violence. Such power controls huge
numbers of people without their consent, without even asking them.
If we look deeply into our own urges and habits of using power over
others, which we can observe fairly easily, it comes down to a
desire to control. That desire comes from a sense of a self that
wants something from others. Out of that wanting, we project and
create self, and that self is an inner tool for control. Buddhist
practice has as its aim to move out of this desire for control; it
leads to a different model of society, with much less coercion. But
viewing human nature as inherently selfish, and in need of coercion
to ensure the good, results in another model. Structural violence
has its roots in this attempt to control--individually,
interpersonally, in groups such as families, and in larger social
structures.
DR: The vision of liberal democracy as it developed with Locke and
with the architects of the American Revolution is of a society in
which individuals, at least in theory, are able to follow their own
desires, which purportedly lead to their own happiness. The role of
the state is to make it possible for people to follow their desires
without being oppressed or coerced by the state, by other major
institutions, or by each other. But what has happened, presumably
from the beginning in the United States, because democracy was very
incomplete (most of the population could not vote), is that some
individuals, following their desires, have in sometimes complicated
ways (often through institutions) prevented others from following
their desires. The result often translates into violence and
suffering.
SB: What you just said helps point out some of the inherent
weaknesses of liberal democracy; whatever its merits, it is
primarily designed to give freedom to individual desires. From a
Buddhist perspective, that is hopeless. Individual desires are bound
to collide with each other; the emphasis should also be on
communities, not just on individuals. By taking the individual out
of the context of relationships in families, communities, and
culture generally, we do not see the whole being.
SS: Of course, many people directing development, whether in Japan
or the World Bank, have wonderful intentions. They are not
necessarily selfish, unenlightened, or power hungry, but their
thinking is compartmentalized and thereby serves to legitimize
structural violence. For example, they may reflect, "Okay, we have
choices A, B, and C, and we'll choose C. It's not ideal, but we have
to do it this way. We have to sacrifice one thing in order to do
another." Sometimes they are aware of the consequences of their
actions; they know that some people will suffer from development
policies. These people are not foolish, but they say, "Once we
become an economy like Taiwan or South Korea, there will be less
suffering." However, they don't want their daughters to be
prostitutes!
DR: Why is the suffering connected with development not seen as
violence? Why is it seen as acceptable?
SS: A basic problem is that development is seen only as having to do
with the economic, technological, and social dimensions of life,
rather than with moral and spiritual dimensions as well. Most of
what we get from the West, in fact, only treats the externals of
life. Think, for example, of mainstream Western medicine, which only
deals with the body and not with the mind and spirit.
DR: Structural violence is commonly linked with a limited conception
of human beings, such that we may neglect our ethical, intellectual,
and spiritual lives.
SS: Precisely. This is where we must link the question of structural
violence to sila, to ethics. The roots of structural violence are in
the ways in which we are not harmonious with ourselves and each
other. As that lack of harmony builds up, it becomes structural
violence.
Responding to Structural Violence
DR: How do people become aware that what we call "structural
violence" contains violence just as real as interpersonal violence?
It is not particularly a focus of newspapers.
SS: From a Buddhist perspective, the starting point is to become
self-aware, to become aware of one's own violence. Many
activists--for example, the Greens, the socialists, or the
communists--may speak out clearly about many forms of "external
violence" but they may not be very aware of their own internal
violence, and how they act with the people around them. For this
reason nonviolence is an important foundation. If one is violent
toward one's self and with others, then the violence tends to become
more and more structural.
The Buddhist teaching about "dependent origination" (paticca
samuppada), the "inter-being" of all things, is helpful for seeing
structural violence. For example, think of the Gulf War in terms of
the many different interrelationships. The Gulf War occurred because
Americans had to have cheap oil. They did not care how many Iraqis
died. Furthermore, getting oil requires big oil companies whose
board members are most interested in continued production and high
profits. They also need people to continue driving cars. So more
roads are needed, and there is less public transportation: fewer
railroads, fewer bicycles, fewer trees. And where does the oil come
from? It comes from the Middle East, so the Middle East must be
under U.S. control. If countries there are not under American
control, they must be enemies of the United States--so Mr. Saddam
Hussein is presented as a second Hitler.
DR: So we must have armies, research on military technologies, and
large sums set aside in our budgets to help us control the oil. We
try to control the Iraqis, to have the right leader, and we don't
care what they do to their own people.
SB: There also has to be control over the U.S. population,
especially through the large multinational corporations, the
government bureaucracies, the education systems, and so on.
SS: All the levels are interrelated. If a person does not know who
he or she is, then that person is controlled by greed, hatred, and
delusion. We think that we are somehow better than others; we as a
nation can guide the world economy better, or police the world more
effectively. There is dualism; we don't see that people on the other
side, other races or classes or nations, are just like us, perhaps
more clever or more stupid, but most basically just like us, ail
with the potentiality to become enlightened Buddhas, full of love
and wisdom.
DR: Few Buddhists, whether in the United States or apparently in
Thailand as well, have much understanding of structural violence;
they don't typically apply the teaching of "dependent origination,"
or other traditional teachings and practices to structural issues.
How can seeing one's own violence lead to seeing and acting on
structural violence?
SS: Actually, most so-called Buddhists do not even look very deeply
into themselves. But if someone has come to understand himself or
herself well, the next step is to confront suffering, that is, to
follow the first of the Buddha's Four Noble Truths. But how do we
find the cause of suffering when greed, hatred, and delusion are
institutionalized and structural? We have to understand and
transform the structures. We have to see how greed is present in
consumerism and capitalism; how hatred is linked with
centralization, state power, and the military; how delusion is
present in our education and media. Then we can change those
structures through the Buddha's Noble Eightfold Path. But without
personal transformation, social or structural transformation is not
possible. This is where Buddhists challenge Marxists. If Buddhists
can connect personal and social transformation, we can make a
contribution.
SB: One reason that meditation is not more concerned with structures
is a kind of arrogance that can creep into meditative practice.
Buddhist meditators may find important insights in their practices,
but sometimes they assume that everything else is not important:
"Meditation is the only way." A second reason is connected with a
more subtle form of arrogance. Often we think that the problems are
so big and that we are so small: "What can I do? I have to do
something." So we give up, saying, "Well, there's nothing I can do."
That is the arrogance of thinking that I can do something alone, a
terrible illusion that cripples many Buddhists. So I would add a
third step to the two that Sulak mentioned: we need to create truly
effective communities and organizations. But we tend to be very
individualistic. Until we look inside, confront suffering internally
and externally, and then build groups and communities, we have no
chance of dealing with social structures.
It is easy to sit alone in the forest, to be calm. People may go on
meditation retreats and be very happy and blissful. They think that
they are enlightened, that they have accomplished something. On
returning to their families, friends, and jobs, they are dismayed
when all the old, bad, painful conflicts return.
When one works with others, one's greed, anger, and delusion
surface, because of course other people do some things that one
likes and some that one dislikes. But the members of a supportive
community can share common values and understandings and generally
treat each other kindly. Within that context, it is easier to face
the defilements that arise when we rub up against each other. It is
easier to become aware of our sexist habits, or our patriarchal
structures and paternalistic behavior, or our attempts to manipulate
and control. Of course, those behaviors will not disappear
overnight. Nonetheless, a healthy community can help to connect
looking inside--getting to know ourselves--and looking outside at
what is going on in society. A community helps us to deal with the
social issues on a comprehensible and concrete level. If we can
transform behavior on that level, then maybe there is hope for doing
it on a larger level.
SS: We must see also the structural violence in ourselves, in our
lifestyles and relationships with others. If we do not confront
those issues in our own communities and with our friends, then we
compromise our commitment to ending structural violence. Of course,
we can speak humbly and positively so that our criticisms are not
harmful, but friendship must also have a critical dimension at
times. The Buddha said that friends become our "other voice."
Questioning Development and the Global Economy
SS: I am also hopeful about transforming structural violence in the
world because such violence, particularly the violence of
development, has recently become less and less legitimate from an
ethical perspective. People increasingly see through the lies of the
IMF and the big banks, through justifications of gender inequality,
and so on.
SB: One questionable aspect of "development" is its paternalistic
nature. Development on the global as well as national levels has
been something that one group does to another. It is topdown and
inherently violent when decisions are made in Washington or New York
or Rome, then conveyed to Bangkok or Kuala Lampur, then spread out
through the various bureaucracies. In some cases, the local culture
supports the paternalism. For example, many people in Southeast Asia
have grown up with paternalism. In Thailand, it is okay for the
elder brother and one's teachers to make decisions about one's life.
People now are realizing the extent to which paternalism is a cover,
in terms of development, for one group controlling and taking
advantage of another. The farmers in Thailand are starting to wake
up to the government rhetoric about development, which is supposed
to bring them a better standard of living. But this is not
happening. The price of rice is still not enough for farmers to make
a profit.
DR: I wonder how a vigorous questioning of the goals of development
in the West can help to de-legitimize such goals. Enrique Dussel, a
prominent liberation theologian living in Mexico City, once told me
that he thought it crucial for people in the United States to
develop their own liberation theology and practice. He thought that
an undermining from within, as it were, of the prevailing model of
middle-class, life and capitalist development could be very helpful.
SS: Of course, if middle-class Americans could change, it would help
the world. But in our country, I think what we need is bottom-up
development, which is now taking place. An increasing number of
voices, are saying, "No. The model of development from the
government is violent and rooted in greed, hate, and delusion. We
want to use the Buddha's approach of self-sufficiency,
self-sustainability, and, at the, same time personal development,
community development, and development with ecological balance." Of
course, we can link our movement with similar movements in the West.
SB: It would be wonderful if people in the United States were to
develop their own liberation theology, but the rest of the world
would be stupid to wait. Considering the high standard of consumer
living to which many Americans are addicted and their lack of a
sense of alternatives, how much capacity have Americans to change or
to think for themselves?
In places like Thailand, the majority of the population can still
remember a rural existence in which power was not used in such
blatant, ugly ways. In Bangkok, you can see everything that is wrong
with advanced capitalism in the United States. But still, many
people in Bangkok have grandparents or aunts and uncles in the
provinces who remember another way of life. In the West, for most of
us, that is three generations back.
SS: In the 1950s, when the idea of development spread over the
world, an American expert came to this country and said that
Buddhism was the main barrier to development. He said that the
Buddha teaches people to be content. If one is content, then a poor
man is as good as the richest man. The American said, "That is
dangerous!" The government accepted the views of the American expert
and asked the senior members of the monkhood to tell monks not to
teach on that issue! They put notices up everywhere in the late
1950s saying, "Work is money. Money is work. Both produce
happiness." It had a tremendous effect. For thirty years now, people
have believed that one works only for money, whether it is honest or
dishonest work, legal or illegal. Now we are paying the price of
such views.
We have imitated the West so dreadfully for the last thirty or forty
years that perhaps our consciousness of the negative aspects of
development has been quickened. Bangkok has become a horrible place
only in the last thirty years.
SS: The General Agreement on Tariff s and Trade (GATT) reflects, I
believe, a new and dangerous form of structural violence, promoting
greed at the international level and at the expense of the community
and national levels. Someone like me, running bookshops and small
publishing houses, may within five or ten years be out of a job,
because the Japanese will likely come in in a big way, even
publishing in Thai through their computers. GATT is designed to help
the most advanced and efficient sectors of the international
economy--a crowning achievement of structural violence.
I will give an example. I was running a bookshop in Bangkok. The
owners of my building threw us out and are now building a 20-story
high technology center--in the name of development. They also throw
out the nearby dentists, the noodle-sellers, the poor people who
came to sell things, and the middle-class people who came to buy
things. It was a wonderful community. We were helping each other.
But now, in the name of development and efficiency, the community
has been dispersed.
SB: I disagree with Sulak that GATT is a new form of violence. When
I hear about GATT, I first think about the opium war when, in the
name of free trade, the British forced the Chinese to accept British
opium from India. Similarly, a few years ago, in the name of free
trade, the American government put a lot of pressure on Thailand to
accept American tobacco. Before then, people smoked Thai tobacco. A
lot of farmers in the areas where I used to live grew their own
tobacco; there was a so very little advertising. Once, the big
American tobacco companies camp in, there was tobacco advertising
all over the place. These are just two examples of how, in the name
of free trade, something very immoral took place. To me, GATT is not
free trade. What is called "free trade" means that people, with the
military, political, and economic power can sell what they want,
wherever they want. It is free just for them, not for the rest.
Individualism and Resistance to Addressing Structural Issues
SB: The recent growth of interest in spirituality in the West does
not necessarily involve challenging the deeper social structures.
For example, all the people who arc battered and, beaten by the
middle-class lifestyle can go off and do a meditation retreat once a
year or go to a national park so that they can heal themselves a bit
and go back to work. But such spirituality supports the system,
unless it poses moral questions about the system. In a simpler
society, it may have been possible for a spiritually oriented person
to distance herself or himself and not participate in structural
violence. I do not think it is possible now. As, Sulak said, the
forests are getting mowed down. We may, try to help someone through
spiritual practices, but the person just goes home and is caught in
the same meat grinder.
DR: Some temples in northeast Thailand are in fact supported by
money from prostitution.
SS: If Buddhists are going to contribute anything in the modern
world, they most say clearly that violence is inherent in all
established societies. That is what it means to confront suffering
(Buddhism's First Noble Truth). To examine the causes of suffering
(the Second Noble Truth), one cannot talk in the abstract.
Consumerism materialism, and development policies have to be spelled
out.
DR: Many people in the West and, increasingly, in Thailand would
say, "I do my job, I try to make enough money to live on. I have
enough problems with my personal situation. Now you tell me I have,
to look at these social issues, these ecological issues, these
enormous issues. I do not want to listen to you!"
SS: But if they do, not want to listen to me, then they are also
part of the problem, part and parcel of the structural violence in
the system.
SB: We have to find ways to meet people in their own day-to-day
lives and communicate with them effectively. Over and over again,
those of us who raise issues about structural violence in Thailand
are criticized as being aggressive or violent in our speech even if
we use very polite words and do, not accuse anybody. But although
some self-interest may be involved in not wanting to look at
structural violence, there are also deep myths that people were
raised with, myths of how wonderful Buddhism is, of how wonderful
our country is, or of how good and innocent we are. To let go of
those myths is very difficult; to help people see through such myths
is one main way to begin to address structural violence.
NOTE
This conversation took place in Bangkok, Thailand, in March 1995.
Sulak Sivaraksa of Bangkok, Thailand, is probably that country's
most prominent social critic and activist and a major contemporary
proponent of socially engaged Buddhism. He has founded rural
development projects and many nongovernmental organizations
dedicated to exploring alternative models of development. He is the
co-founder of the International Network of Engaged Buddhists and the
author of many books, including Religion and Development (1986), A
Socially Engaged Buddhism, (1988), and Seeds of Peace (1992). He has
been twice, nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and in 1995 received
the Right Livelihood Award.
Santikaro Bhikkhu is an American who has been an ordained monk in
Thailand for twelve years. He studied at the Suan Mokkhabalarama
("Garden of Liberation") monastery under the late Buddhadasa
Bhikkhu, translating his talks and assisting with retreats. He has
been active in many social development workshops in Thailand, the
Philippines, India, Nepal, and the United States and is the
co-editor of Entering the Realm of Reality: Towards Dhammic
Societies (1997).
Donald Rothberg is on the faculty of the Saybrook Institute in San
Francisco. He has taught and written on socially engaged
spirituality, critical social theory, transpersonal studies, and
epistemology and mysticism, and is the co-editor of the forthcoming
Ken Wilber in Dialogue: Conversations with Leading Transpersonal
Thinkers (1998). He has served on the board of the Buddhist Peace
Fellowship and has helped to guide its BASE (Buddhist Alliance for
Social Engagement) training program, developing a spiritual and
group form for those working in social service and social action.