engaged buddhism and political activism

On my way to New York yesterday for the People's climate march I fell into a very productive facebook hole that led me to an article someone had posted about Thich Nhat Hanh's perspective on climate change 


'The 86-year-old Vietnamese monk, who has hundreds of thousands of followers around the world, believes the reason most people are not responding to the threat of global warming, despite overwhelming scientific evidence, is that they are unable to save themselves from their own personal suffering, never mind worry about the plight of Mother Earth.'

The timing was perfect.  I was going to the march because I believe that we need to change the way we live on this planet, to protect our trees, our air and our water. Yet I had become a little jaded about the effect of protests and petitions against the seemingly all-powerful corporate monoliths who continue to treat the planet with a disrespect and disregard that I can't comprehend. And honestly, I had become increasingly frustrated and angry with the corporate and political structures that continued to operate in ways that harm the planet or obstruct efforts to protect it. 

This article helped me recognize that my compassion for the planet, my feeling of connection to it, was causing me to take a side in a way that was actually NOT compassionate because it fostered an 'us versus them' attitude. My compassion was very focused, to the point where it lost sight of the basic principle of compassion - that we are all connected. And if we are all connected, then we are all connected to the people who are harming the planet. 

There are many elements of Buddhist philosophy to study and meditate on but I always come back to compassion. It is a mirror and a teacher in so many ways. 
It's a struggle to feel compassion for someone who we feel is acting violently against us and those we feel connected to. 



In the past six months or so, I had begun to feel very overwhelmed by violence in the world. Violence on a global level, violence against the planet, as well as violence at home.
On a local level, two gay men were savagely beaten in Philadelphia while walking to get pizza. The people who beat them up, a group of young men and women, did so simply because they were gay. In the week after the attack, the city's citizens used social media as an outlet for their anger against this group of attackers as well as a means to help the police identify them. In the midst of facebook posts calling for these people to be locked up forever,tarred and feathered, etc., my roommate and I sat in our kitchen and talked about it. As a gay man, he had personally never experienced anything like this attack and he struggled to understand the mindset of these people who would do such a thing. Yet neither of us felt this sense of violence in response to the attackers that was peppering our facebook feeds, just a profound confusion and sadness.

With these events weighing heavily on my heart and a growing uncertainty about how my buddhist perspective could be acted upon in these situations, this reminder about compassion again comes in handy. It also reminds me of one of my favorite quotes by Bob Dylan. When offered a peace prize in the 60s, his acceptance speech was met with boos and later, a request that he return the award. The reason for this was that he tried to express a sentiment that was very unpopular with the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee who had given him the award. In a poetic sorry/not sorry letter, he explained his point of view -

"yes  if there's violence in the times then
there must be violence in me
I am not a perfect mute.
I hear the thunder an I cant avoid hearin it
once this is straight between us, it's then an
only then that we can say "we" an really mean
it... an go on from there t do something about
it"
-Bob Dylan

This is the tricky thing to remember. That if there's violence in the times, there's violence in me. And only if my 'we' includes everyone, can something really change. Only if my 'we' includes everyone am I really acting from compassion. 

What makes me hopeful about the planet is that 400,000 people marched in New York yesterday and did so with an affirmative sense of connection to the earth and to those around them and to everyone on the planet who would be affected by climate change. 

What makes me hopeful about Philadelphia is that so many people of all sexual orientations spoke out in defense of those two men. Local politicians are making efforts to change the state law to categorize attacks like this as a hate crime and a rally is scheduled this week that is titled 'love over hate.' 

From a buddhist point of view, I see these events overall as being steps toward connection over disconnection. We can only do violence to something or someone that we are disconnected from. When we see the planet and others as connected to ourselves, we  act with compassion.  Their problems are our problems, their suffering our suffering. 

The struggle is to keep expanding who we include in our 'we' - Which leads me again to a piece of writing by Thich Nhat Hanh -

Call Me by My True Names
Do not say that I'll depart tomorrow
because even today I still arrive.
Look deeply: I arrive in every second
to be a bud on a spring branch,
to be a tiny bird, with wings still fragile,
learning to sing in my new nest,
to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower,
to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.
I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry,
in order to fear and to hope.
The rhythm of my heart is the birth and
death of all that are alive.

I am the mayfly metamorphosing on the surface of the river,
and I am the bird which, when spring comes, arrives in time
to eat the mayfly.
I am the frog swimming happily in the clear pond,
and I am also the grass-snake who, approaching in silence,
feeds itself on the frog.
I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,
my legs as thin as bamboo sticks,
and I am the arms merchant, selling deadly weapons to
Uganda.
I am the twelve-year-old girl, refugee on a small boat,
who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea
pirate,
and I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and
loving.
I am a member of the politburo, with plenty of power in my
hands,
and I am the man who has to pay his "debt of blood" to, my
people,
dying slowly in a forced labor camp.
My joy is like spring, so warm it makes flowers bloom in all
walks of life.
My pain if like a river of tears, so full it fills the four oceans.
Please call me by my true names,
so I can hear all my cries and laughs at once,
so I can see that my joy and pain are one.
Please call me by my true names,
so I can wake up,
and so the door of my heart can be left open,
the door of compassion.
Thich Nhat Hanh