Sulak Sivaraksa, a Thai activist-economist-philosopher who has been practicing socially engaged Buddhism for the past 40 years, is Thailand’s most prominent social critic. He’s also a Buddhist scholar.
Thich Nhat Hanh is a major influence, and like the Vietnamese Zen teacher, he discusses Buddhism in a simple and direct manner. Sivaraksa says, “Spirituality is not merely personal contemplation, not only meditation, that you feel peaceful and then you feel ‘I’m alright, Jack.’ I think that’s is dangerous. It’s escapism. In fact, meditation only helps you to be peaceful. But you must also confront social suffering as well as your own personal suffering . . .”
Sivaraksa believes that we should be less concerned with ritual, myth and culture, and focus more on ways to make Buddhism relevant to the contemporary world. This is an important message, but one that can also be taken to unnecessary extremes. I much prefer Sivarakas’s notion of “Buddhism with a small ‘b’” to “Buddhism Without Beliefs” in which we demystify dharma to the point that we have stripped away many of the core principles. Some folks are quick to point out that karma and rebirth are “cosmic laws” that belong to the realm of the supernatural, and while that has some merit, I don’t believe too many of us have such a high attainment and deep understanding that we can be absolutely sure about it either way. So, as the old saying goes, why throw the baby out with the bathwater?
A few weeks ago I posted an excerpt from the chapter “Buddhism with a Small ‘b’ found in Seeds of Peace: A Buddhist Vision for Renewing Society (1992). Today, a longer one:
Buddhist liberation, nirvana, requires neither the mastery of an arcane doctrine nor an elaborate regimen of asceticism. In fact, the Buddha condemned extreme austerity, as well as intellectual learning that does not directly address the urgent questions of life and death.
The Buddha advocated the middle path between the extremes of hedonism and asceticism. He promised immediate release, saying that there is no need to work one’s way through a sequence of karmic stages to some remote level where release is feasible . . .
The first step in the teaching of the Buddha is awareness. Recognition of what is going on is enlightenment. Recognition of the fact of suffering is the first step towards its mitigation. The most difficult thing for someone who is sick or addicted is to acknowledge his or her illness. Only when this occurs can there be progress.
The Buddha also pointed out that when we realize suffering is universal, we can relieve a certain amount of anxiety already. When an adolescent realizes that his sufferings are the sufferings of all young people, he is taking a significant step towards their mitigation. It is a question of perspective.
