This talk was given to Kookaburra Sangha, Sydney, in March 2018.

Political Activism and Buddhism (east and west)

In a number of Buddhist traditions political activism is discouraged. Almost certainly this stance arises from their institutions’ heavy reliance on royal or other powerful patronage, which could be withdrawn if dharma practitioners translated their ethics into political convictions, let alone action. Typically, though, Buddhist hierarchs’ offering mass support for transgressive regimes – today’s Burma and Sri Lanka offer telling examples – has always been welcome.

The Buddhist rank and file’s engagement in critical political activism is typically condemned by the hierarchy in such countries as a form of egoism. ‘Back to your cushions! Turn your back on the world like a good arahant!’ goes the message.

In the west, we inherit a quite different tradition. Aristotle suggested that one wasn’t fully human if one wasn’t involved in civic and political affairs. You owe your involvement to the communities to which you belong and which underpin your way of life. Such involvement teaches you how the world works. To be politically active was a matter of coming of age, and civic virtue.

Aristotle contributed to a strand of (ancient and modern) political philosophy called civic republicanism. Nothing to do with being for or against monarchy, but everything to do with the idea that public affairs – res publica – should be transacted openly in public and by the public, that is, by the citizens. The polar opposite is tyranny; the (now much travestied) US constitution of 1787 rests on this foundation.

The Buddha’s own political community by birth – the Sakiyan republic – seems to have run on somewhat similar lines as the contemporaneous Greek city states, and evolved a similar doctrine of active civic virtue. (See the opening sections of the Parinibbana sutta, dealing with the Vajjians, to get a taste of it.)

To our modern democratic sensibilities, both the Sakiyan and Greek models fall short by making citizenship – the right and responsibility to participate in public life – so exclusive. Nonetheless they highlight the dignity and active responsibilities of citizens. The work of a citizen in ancient Athens was virtually a full-time job! And couch potatoes were considered contemptible know-nothings. The Greeks invented the word ‘idiot’ just for them.

The coming of universal suffrage in most western countries during the 20th century (Aotearoa New Zealand in the 19th) constituted the modern democratic revolution by simply spreading (at least in theory) that dignity and responsibility of citizenship.

So how do we stand in relation to the affairs of the political communities in which we’re enrolled as citizens at the federal, state and municipal levels? Virtually all political and policy questions raise ethical issues, not least ones to do with equity, justice, human rights, peace, environmental sustainability and climate change. As followers of an ethical path which must encompass these issues, we can’t remain passive and indifferent to them.

For those of us who’ve been exercising our democratic rights in Australia for a few years, this is a daunting thought. Let me give you two examples of where our democratically-elected government got completely out of line, ethically and legally, with ongoing devastating consequences: the 2003 invasion of Iraq; and the continuing, traumatising incarceration of asylum seekers (together with the racist dog-whistling and xenophobia that government ministers have used to legitimate this policy, and the gratuitously cruel way with which it’s actually implemented).

We belong to the political community that elected the governments that have perpetrated these transgressions in our name.

It’s a heavy ethical burden to bear. We hardly cover ourselves with glory by remaining couch potatoes in the face of such enormities.

Then there are the more insidious but equally destructive governmental transgressions for which we bear ultimate responsibility, such as the defunding of women’s and children’s refuges at a time when the mass media are making us acutely aware of the death and trauma caused by domestic violence. On average, each week in Australia a woman is murdered by her domestic partner. State and federal governments are defunding other vital services, such as child protection, in the face of the crying need for them.

Then there’s the way that the federal government has done its damnedest to protect the coal industry by hobbling the development of renewable sources of energy while hypocritically boasting its commitment to curbing global warming. We still live with the threat that the Adani coal mine will win government approval – and a billion-dollar donation in our name.

Politics matters

Finally, as dharmic citizens, we must note an important difference between the Buddha’s time and ours. In the Buddha’s time the main calamities that people faced were droughts, floods, other natural disasters, diseases, epidemics, and myriad medical conditions that today are preventable or curable. They also faced an intractably much higher risk of violent death at the hands of warlords and other ruffians.

The wisest and kindest ruler in this world could do little about all this calamity (though the Emperor Ashoka, a Buddhist convert, gave it a damned good shot in India, in the third century BCE). Politics didn’t matter all that much back then.

Today, the situation could hardly be more different. On one influential calculation, 200 million people were killed during the 20th century as a result of government orders – in wars, genocides and massacres (‘democide’). Add to that the millions of victims of contrived famines – in the Ukraine, India and China for starters. Yet more millions die of starvation and preventable diseases because of the systemic maldistribution of food, drinkable water, health services, and pharmaceuticals. (Let us not forget in this context that the current Australian government makes a virtue of cutting its foreign aid budget in the name of fiscal responsibility.)

And still more millions will shortly have to leave their home countries through intergovernmental failure to take action against global warming and the consequent rise in sea levels. Will we show the millions of climate refugees kindness and hospitality – not just out of compassion, but from a sense of our own responsibility for their plight?

Nowadays politics matters like never before! Really matters! So get real about what it means to tread an ethical path. Be a dharmic citizen, not a couch potato!