Engaged Buddhism ― When used in reference to a MetaPhysical Orientation as to Tradition, Culture or Preferred Flavour, is primarily defined, usually selfdefined by it's members and/or adherents as such, and holding the teachings of Siddhartha Gautama Buddha, and/or interpolations thereon as a primary or critical parameter of their Spiritual Paradigm. (also see: the complete entry on Buddhism.) "We called it engaged Buddhism. Mindfulness must be engaged. Once there is seeing, there must be acting. Otherwise, what is the sense of seeing?" is a helpful quotation from Thich Nhat Hanh as far as delineating Engaged Buddhism. Some postulate that there is no monolithic Buddhism as such, but that there are Buddhisms such as Sinhala Buddhism or more precisely Sinhala Theravada Buddhism, Siam or Thai Buddhism, Myanmar or Amarapura Buddhism and so forth. In the Engaged Tradition of Buddhism it may be said that, "Contrary to the stated goal of some other currently popular eastern religions and practices, the Dhamma is not concerned with the attainment of a state of "non-dualism," a condition in which the barriers between "self" and "other," or samsara and nibbana, finally dissolve". Nor do the teachings espouse "dualism" -- or, for that matter, any ism whatsoever. Rather, the teachings concern only suffering, its cause, its cessation, and the path leading to its cessation. Some popular interpretations of Buddhism espouse the notion that our highest goal should be to expand our capacity to open ourselves to the full range of life's joys and sorrows, to shed our self-centered preferences, and merge at last with the unity of all beings and all things. Despite its pleasing sound, this teaching is far removed from Buddhism's real message of genuine freedom. Thich Nhat Hanh in his excellent book on everyday practice ,"Peace Is Every Step", has a small chapter called "Mindfulness Must Be Engaged". He says, "When I was in Vietnam, so many of our villages were being bombed. Along with my monastic brothers and sisters, I had to decide what to do. Should we continue to practice in our monasteries or should we leave the meditation halls in order to help the people who were suffering under the bombs? After careful reflection, we decided to do both-to go out and help people and to do so in mindfulness. We called it engaged Buddhism. Mindfulness must be engaged. Once there is seeing, there must be acting. Otherwise, what is the sense of seeing?" American Zen Master Joko Beck wrote in her book, "Everyday Zen", "Aside from our formal sitting, there is no way that is superior to relationships in helping us see where we're stuck and what we're holding on to. As long as our buttons are pushed, we have a great chance to learn and grow. So a relationship is a great gift, not because it makes us happy-it often doesn't-but because any intimate relationship, if we view it as practice, is the clearest mirror we can find." To me, being an engaged Buddhist doesn't necessarily lead to distraction. Being engaged does mean being "caught up in the world". I think most of us are 'in the world'. At least, I know I am very much a part of this world that I live in. Retreat sounds nice in theory. But it would be easy to practice well when one is in retreat. No distractions. The question is can you practice with your everyday, normal life? Can you practice with your child screaming in your ear? Can you practice when you are driving to work in bumper to bumper traffic and someone cuts you off? Can you practice when someone at your job does something hurtful to you? Can you practice when your girlfriend dumps you? Can you practice with your life as it is, right here, right now? That is the point of practice, the point of engaged Buddhism, the point of life? Retreat would be nice. It would be peaceful and non-distracting. But is it practical for us everyday people? And, if we are in this world, with all its distractions, then we need to make it the best world we can. Can we find stillness within while gangs shoot up our neighborhoods, the earth is raped and made into an uninhabitable desert, and the poor starve a few blocks from where the wealthy feast? That is the true challenge. Turning our backs on the world is not the answer. Doing whatever we can do, no matter how little that might be, is one path to choose. When Gautama attained enlightenment did he turn away from the world and go into retreat? No. He stayed in the world and helped others find the path. Is it not in our buddha-nature to do the same (though certainly not in the same way as he, being the unenlightened individuals that we are)? Paradoxically, by stationing you firmly in the present, in the mundane here-and-now, the Vietnamese Buddhist master Thich Nhat Hanh can help you glimpse the end of all frontiers in a breath technique called mindfulness meditation He is one of the few Buddhist masters to make the world's most individualistic religion accessible, particularly to the average, cautiously adventurous westerners. Mindfulness is one of the eight principles in the path charted by the Buddha himself. It calls for the student to be aware of every breath he takes, which in turn enables him to be aware of being alive which is the greatest miracle of all. This method of meditation is hardly the stuff of esoteric, the increasingly popular vipassana itself is a large part of mindfulness meditation. All this breathtaking success begs a question: what logic is it that makes breathing, by definition the least palpable of the body's involuntary functions, the focus of meditative attention? Mindfulness, Thay explains, is the heart of Buddhist meditation. It is the practice of taking care of the present moment. That is why when you practice mindfulness, you take care of life. The first function of conscious breathing is to let you stop thinking. The second is to allow you to be in touch with life. The third, to give you a chance to rest and resolve yourself. The principle is that when you breathe consciously, you become your breathing. If your breathing becomes peaceful, you become peaceful. It is very simple. Adds Thay's Principal assistant; Sister Chan Kong: The breath is the link between the body and the mind. The mind is distracted in many directions. When the mind and the body become one through awareness of the breath, it is then that you are at one with the universe. But there is a catch. Thay's warning Breathing is for the enjoyment of breathing it is not to be used to become a Buddha. Becoming a Buddha by breathing is only a byproduct of breathing. The same thing is true of walking. If you think walking is to arrive, then you sacrifice walking. Life is just walking. Life is not a destination, life is a way.Sister Chan Khong explains it simply and well:"The Buddha did not preach that you should sit in the forest and meditate. That is what Indian Buddhists took to doing. They made him a God, isolating him and putting him on a pedestal. And that is why", she continues, "Buddhism faded out in India. The Buddha's efforts, after all, had begun with the resolve to end suffering everywhere in himself, in his family and in the world. We are used to thinking that we have a separate self this is not true. We are co-responsible for all the suffering around us. I don't necessarily have to kill the sea pirates, but I have to develop a way to stop the sea pirate from raping and murdering."In recent decades a movement of "engaged Buddhists" has begun to sweep the globe. This movement is comprised of a wide range of individuals from diverse cultural backgrounds. Inspired by Buddhist values, they are united by a common drive to lessen the suffering of the world, in particular by "engaging" (as opposed to renouncing) the various social, political, economic, etc. institutions, structures, and systems in society. Such engagement can take many different forms (for example, voting, lobbying, peaceful protest, civil disobedience, and so forth), but it is always aimed at actively challenging and changing those institutions, etc. that are perceived as perpetuating suffering through various forms of oppression, injustice, and the like. The term "engaged Buddhism" appears originally to have been coined by Thich Nhat Hanh in 1963, and the expanded term, "socially engaged Buddhism," emerged during the 1980s. However, apart from the usage of these relatively new labels, scholars are divided as to when, where, and how a politically or socially "engaged" Buddhism actually first began. One group of scholars maintains that Buddhists have never accepted a dualistic split between "spiritual" and "social" domains. To engage in the spiritual life necessarily includes (though it cannot be reduced to) social engagement. Thus, for them, since the time of S'a-kyamuni, the Buddhadharma has always had a more-or-less fully articulated socio-political dimension in addition to its (supposedly "other-worldly") spiritual/soteriological dimension. Modern forms of Buddhism ("engaged Buddhism" or otherwise) are essentially contiguous with traditional forms in spite of any superficially apparent differences. Due to this emphasis upon continuity with Buddhism's traditional past, I will refer to members of this group as traditionists. A second group takes a very different approach and arrives at a decidedly different conclusion. While this group admits that there have been doctrines and practices with socio-political relevance latent in Buddhism since its inception, it insists that these "latencies" have always remained relatively "untapped," that they have not been (or often could not have been) fully realized until Buddhism encountered various Western elements unique to the modern era. Modern "engaged Buddhism" may share some essential features with traditional forms of Buddhism, but it also contains enough substantive differences to warrant calling it a relatively "new" form of Buddhism unique to the modern era. Thus, due to their emphasis upon discontinuity with the past, I will refer to members of this group as modernists. In addition, most members of these groups have tacitly considered their own position to be relatively natural or self-evident, and thus (until the last couple of years) neither group has taken the other's position very seriously-or at least they have given this impression by spending a minimum amount of time discounting the other group's position. Traditionists have charged that modernists simply do not understand the "essence" or "spirit" of Buddhism and that such modernists have thus been predisposed to miss the social theories and practices of Buddhists throughout the ages. Modernists, on the other hand, have dismissed traditionists as methodologically naïve and historically "reconstructive," insisting that traditionists peer unwittingly through a modern lens at ancient/traditional teachings.

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Definitions, Premisses, and Info Index by Letter

Capital A with ring aboveÅ   Capital A with macronĀ   Capital A with breveĂ   Capital A with diaeresisÄ   Capital A with circumflex   Capital A with dot aboveȦ   Capital A with inverted breveȂ   Capital A with tildeà   Capital A with ogonekĄ   Capital AE ligatureÆ   Capital AE ligature with tildeÆ̃   Capital Glottal Stop⦾   Capital Palatoalveolar Click⊛   Regular English AA   Script Capital Lℒ   Capital L with macron aboveL̅   Capital L with dot belowḶ   Capital L with stroke, Dark L Ł   Regular English LL   Capital WHω   Capital W with macron aboveW̅   Capital W with dot belowẈ   Regular English WW   Capital Slide H with reverse solidusℋ⃥   Capital H with macron aboveH̅   Capital H with dot belowḤ   Aspirate^○   Slight Pause⚫   Very Slight Pause⚬   Regular English HH   Capital S with macron aboveS̅   Capital S with dot aboveṠ   Capital SH sign∫   Capital SKΣ   Regular English SS   Hard and Deep Capital DД   High and Light Capital D∇   Regular English DD   Capital O with ring aboveO̊   Capital O with macronŌ   Capital O with breveŎ   Capital O with diaeresisÖ   Capital O with solidusØ   Capital OE ligatureŒ   Capital O with Cyrillic Round OmegaѺ   Capital OIꙔ   Capital O with ogonekǪ   Capital O with double oo topტ   Regular English OO   Capital EZJHʑ   Capital Z with macron belowẔ   Capital Z with dot aboveŻ   Regular English ZZ   Capital K with macron aboveК̅   Capital K with dot below К̣   Capital Hard KHχ   Capital KHƙ   Regular English KK   Capital V with macron aboveV̅   Capital V with dot belowṾ   Regular English VV   Capital G with macronḠ   Capital G with dot aboveĠ   Capital GNΓ   Capital GRЖ   Capital GW   Capital Uvular Voiced ImplosiveϘ   Regular English GG   Capital rolled R with macronЯ̅   Capital rolled R with dot aboveЯ̇   Capital R with macron aboveR̅   Capital R with dot above Ṙ   Capital R with ogonek R̨   Regular English RR   Capital C with cedillaÇ   Capital CHЧ   Regular English CC   Capital N with macron aboveN̅   Capital N with dot belowṆ   Capital N with tildeÑ   Capital NGŋ   Capital NG with macron aboveŋ̅   Regular English NN   Capital Y with macron above Ȳ   Capital Y with dot aboveẎ   Capital Y with yaw aboveЎ   Regular English YY   Capital J with macron aboveЈ̅   Capital J with dot belowЈ̣   Regular English JJ   Capital U with a ring aboveŮ   Capital U with macronŪ   Capital U with breveŬ   Capital U with circumflex aboveÛ   Capital U with diaeresisÜ   Regular English UU   Capital F with macron aboveF̅   Capital F with dot aboveḞ   Regular English FF   Capital Q with macron aboveQ̅   Capital Q with dot aboveQ̇   Regular English QQ   Capital B with macronB̅   Capital B with dot belowḄ   Trilled B   Regular English BB   Capital M with macronM̅   Capital M with dot belowṂ   Capital M with tilde M̃   Capital MB   Capital MGⱮ   Regular English MM   Capital X with macron aboveX̅   Capital X with dot aboveẊ   Regular English XX   Capital I with macronĪ   Capital I with breveĬ   Regular English II   Capital T with macron aboveT̅   Capital T with dot belowṬ   Capital TH voicedΘ   Capital TH voicelessÞ   Capital TSЦ   Capital TSCHЩ   Regular English TT   Capital E with macronĒ   Capital E with breveĔ   Capital E with circumflexÊ   Capital schwa Ə   Regular English EE   Capital P with macron aboveP̅   Capital P with dot aboveṖ   Capital pT   Regular English PP

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