Thank you.... YES. We have to be able to name and confront harm that is being done whether it is at a personal, institutional, or societal level. Confusion about this is not just a thing in Buddhist practices...it is also in Christianity. In my understanding from my own background. Love requires us to name wrongs and confront problems....even if it hurts someone else's feelings--or might hurt their social standing. How we do that ...is another matter..and it does matter..and it is contextual and often a deeply personal decision because there are many different situations people are facing...and some of those situations make them so vulnerable that speaking could cost their life or make it impossible for them to feed their children.
It has always seemed to me the easiest way to clarify this confusion is to distinguish inner and outer.
To take a non Buddhist example;
In the Gita, Krishna both:
(1) encourages Arjuna to live in absolute equanimity, non attachment, kindness,, compassion, love, etc
and
(2) to kill, without hesitation, the bad guys.
People hear about the first and think 'Boy, that Arjuna, he must sure be some spiritual bypassing irresponsible, uncaring wimp!"
Krishna is not telling Arjuna to bypass his feelings of anger, hatred, resentment, etc. (there's several chapters later in the Gita where Krishna gives detailed instructions regarding the fundamental importance of fulling acknowledging - and NOT repressing - greed, hatred, anger, craving, envy, jealousy, depression, fear, etc).
He is simply directing Arjuna's attention to That in him which is fundamentally equal, non attached, and to kill while rooted in That.
I suspect the problem may be that given our unconscious religion of scientistic physicalism, we don't really accept the reality of what Krishna is pointing to. That's a problem of cultish indoctrination in the universal belief system/religion of modernity and I suspect, is really the root of the problem here.
I just watched this Lama Rod Owens video before reading your Substack. I believe he would have a word or two to say about not speaking up and playing it safe, basically as a form of spiritual bypassing.
Can anybody explain why "engaged Buddhism" seems to be so much scarcer a commodity than, say, "engaged Lutheranism"? I am genuinely perplexed by the apparent difference. Is it merely the much older and more secure social position that Christianity has in the West, which makes it feel "safer" for it's clerical and organizational leadership to take some risks?
I'm chalking it up to the difference of still being a "minority religion", in a country with an ugly history of white (Christian) nationalism, as well as a big deficit in general political education, even in nominally "progressive minded" places.
Come to think of it, I'm also going to venture that it's not just an issue with leadership. I happen to know someone in the leadership of a sister Sangha in my town (who was formerly a monastic at my own Sangha), and I know she is not at all shy about being an activist (we even got arrested together at an act of mass civil disobedience a few years ago!) And yet I hear that, in her own organization, she has had to noticeably tiptoe around some of these discussions. So I am guessing that there are a lot of "rank-and-file" folks who, while not overtly hostile, are simply clinging to a certain comfort derived from the Three Refuges functioning for them as a kind of stereotypical "spiritual bypassing", and who are put off by anything that smacks of "politics".
There's a lot about this society day-to-day that's enormously distressing. So who can exactly blame anybody for wanting to "escape" it all in some measure? Of course, as you point out, a lot of us who find ourselves in the wrong socioeconomic, racial, and other categories, may not have that luxury at all, no matter how much time we put in on the cushion.
Do you think that Buddhism in the West tends to disproportionately attract certain socioeconomic strata that correspond to distinctly higher incomes and/or educational attainment, and maybe that accounts for this? In which case, is there anything we can do to become more inclusive?
I think that Buddhism was brought to the West by a certain strata of society and continues to attract their “peers” and it deeply affects the cultivation of the dharma in our specific conditions. A lot of folks have a lot of thoughts about this, but I think making our sanghas more democratically run and making practice as accessible as possible are two things. The other thing is being willing to receive feedback on how our karma makes our sanghas either unsafe or just inaccessible is important. Being able to receive feedback in general even if it disrupts the status quo, and I am not sure our leadership can do that. They haven’t shown that they can.
The donor class gets a dharma that does not disturb them. The most vulnerable in the sangha get told to regulate their nervous systems.
This is the sentence I keep coming back to, and I think it is doing more diagnostic work than anything else in contemporary Buddhist self-critique. The substitution of regulation for liberation is the move the entire retreat economy quietly depends on. Naming it costs a lot. Thank you for naming it.
The Ambedkar reading is the other thing this piece does that most Western Buddhist writing will not. The class break at the origin is the part that cannot be folded back into wellness without losing what it was.
I agree with this perspective and appreciate it greatly! I think it is necessary and valuable though I also think placing liberation within social transformation is a bit misleading. I mean, I sort of don’t care because I think it’s important, but because of this, the piece reads as being very “Western” in similar ways you are criticizing Western Buddhism.
The point about nonviolence being confrontational rather than comfortable speaks to this, though, and I don’t want to lose that in what I’m saying.
I find myself thinking that this piece doesn’t sit with the nuance and complexity of karma and cetanā. Even if we feel our rage is justified, there is an intention coming from aversion that creates negative karma. I think liberation and social transformation definitely overlap but I also wonder if this needs to be justified by Buddhism? Can we just hold that some of our beliefs and actions may not be consistent with Abhidhamma teaching and not have to be perfect? You aren’t saying this, but the injustices and corruption we see in America sickens me, and I want to destroy the billionaire class altogether, but I also don’t know if that is justified by the dharma and have a hunch that it isn’t. Just some thoughts.
Thank you for your feedback! I am sure that there is no way for me to wiggle out of the “Western” lens I am critiquing since it is the water in which I was born and raised. There are insights and blindspots to be sure when speaking from inside the belly of the beast. And yes, I feel the same way. I didn’t speak to that in this piece because I was speaking to one specific thesis: nonviolence is not nonconfrontational. But truth be told, I want the Epstein class to be torn apart by wild dogs on live television and there’s no way to shoe horn that into dharma. I also practice witchcraft/animism and that is where I tend to dig into the energies that Buddhism can’t help me hold as well without tension. Kali Ma, Artemis, The Morrigaine, these are sacred energetic fields, too. Whether or not the dharma would agree.
I appreciate this piece and especially this comment.
For me, having one spiritual framework to get through the complexities of being alive rn feels inadequate. I was born to Muslims, and raised as one in Karachi. This meant that I can see the syncretic s Asian nature of that Islam, I can identify threads of Buddhism in that. Which is why when I sat my first retreat, everything made sense. Like you, I also draw from outside Buddhism - from the emphasis on adl, justice in Islam, and my responsibilities towards others
Alexandra, have you read the interview with H.H The Dalai Lama, titled The Justifiably Angry Marxist I think.? In it His Holiness is clear about the need to confront capitalism, to confront corporate greed, the right wing in the US, the forces repressing ordinary people who are not wealthy, those forces that are destroying our world and environment. That it is healthy and in accord with the Dharma to be angry witnessing injustice and so to act, but not be driven by anger. The last being a difficult thing many times.
Exquisitely written. And equally true of any real map of development that takes into account both growing up and waking up. And the maps that walk us through both are the only ones of real value in a world as chaotic as the one we’re in. Waking up can’t exclude growing up emotionally or we can’t embody any of the principles these paths teach. We’ll be in bypass.
If we never begin to feel things like disgust and rage for the dehumanization happening around us and that’s been programmed into us, we’re missing something in our growth. I’m realizing more and more that I can’t be in integrity with myself if I don’t speak up vociferously and clearly and act on what I see, even when I risk my own belonging. Actually, especially when I risk my own belonging.
It’s a profoundly uncomfortable place to be both internally and externally. A place where the world at large feels like it can no longer hold the way I am experiencing it. I don’t know if this tension ever resolves itself or if we just learn to walk with it as we become who we are becoming.
It’s been a steep learning curve on both for me the last three years as I created human life while watching so much precious human life being snuffed out so cavalierly.
Here's a question: how do those of us NOT in clerical or leadership roles in our own sanghas, but who agree with you that an attachment to personal comfort in a sick society is an obstacle to enlightenment and liberation, best respond? How do we figure out whether we are "rocking the boat" in ways that are genuinely helpful, vs just creating gratuitous internal friction and strife for reasons of our own egos and negative karma (the inevitable accusation we are bound to provoke)?
I have to confess to mostly deliberately choosing not to "rock the boat", because it has always felt like running into a wall whenever I tried to broach this subject. But more recently, a small group of us started meeting to discuss this subject. (Our Sangha calls these somewhat informal groups "cohorts", and tolerates such discussions without any fuss, so long as we stay pretty low profile. But everybody in the group senses that we had better never raise our heads too far above the parapets, or such tolerance will get revoked awfully quick.)
Yes that was my experience, too. I left, not just because of that, but it was the driving force behind it after a final straw. I am not sure what the right answer is. i think maybe we stay but practice with our fear of rocking the boat and learn how to navigate the difference for ourselves instead of letting them telling us when we are and are not doing that. It is delicate but I also think speaking the truth is going to feel risky whether we are doing it right or wrong, so we just have to do it and commit to making amends when we mess up but never staying silent.
If one is engaged with Dzogchen, or Zen, Chan, Soen, Koan work especially with a clear teacher, there is seeing that we do not need a hierarchy, or authority figure, to see and to act clearly and appropriately. I am sure in other traditions also, but cannot speak to that personally so much. Just as human beings who are not sociopaths, there is an imperative to act, even if it be small ways and means, as one can.
i really appreciate you addressing the pressures to abdicate for what makes donors comfortable. and the hints of internal conflict practitioners in the west may be contending with. these are definitely obstacles for organizations and individuals in finding ways to participate in the world that includes their practice.
i haven't leaned much into your work here so perhaps this redundant but i would appreciate reading your perspective on just what one is to do in this context once coming into an understanding of it.
the reality of wanting to maintain ones personal ethical discipline and facing realities that may or may not be asking for our intervention based on those ethics is not necessarily natural/simple to discern. especially considering the contemporary westerner's societal conditioning and general human tendency to follow authority for reason of personal safety. these are frameworks that take a lot of time and attention to unravel and navigate.
i'm under the impression that there is training to be done on an internal level before one is really in a place to flower into what we are calling engaged buddhism. rather than encouraging whomever to go out and blast up the world with their personal take on buddhadharma and its ethics of compassionate engagement are in the the name of buddhism.
my take is that buddhadharma is only accessible by taking a participatory role in one life and particular disposition. it is in a sense "designed" to lead the practitioner through their karmic load in order that capacity to actually benefit others through both direct and indirect action is available.
so like what are some examples/advice you can utilize and provide to support that flowering process in readers who feel resonance with your writings?
again im not really familiar with your work so if you feel that already exists, please feel free to link it in a reply:)
Thank you for your thoughts. The question of what one is actually to do once we come into this understanding is one I’ve written about from a few different angles.
“Equanimity Is Not Neutrality” is probably the most direct address of the internal/external question with the argument there being that the tradition doesn’t ask us to wait until we’re fully cooked before we act, but it does ask us to be honest about what’s driving the action. Is it clarity, or is it our own unprocessed reactivity dressed up as righteousness?
“Death Death to the Causes and Conditions of the IOF” talks about how we are working with our inner state of violence as we work with collective harm so that we see we are not separate from it, which helps us generate karuna and wisdom. This directly speaks to the teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh.
“Right View: A Response to Zionist…” takes up what it looks like to apply that discernment in a specific live context where the stakes are high and the social pressure to stay quiet is significant.
I think you’re pointing at something real when you say this takes time to unravel. The conditioning you’re describing, in this case I’d say deference to authority, the instinct to stay safe, are not a character flaw. Resmaa Menakem would call them body-level inheritance, the kind of thing that doesn’t yield to intellectual understanding alone. It yields to practice, and practice takes time.
So I don’t think the answer is to tell people to hold off on engagement until they’ve achieved some threshold of inner clarity, because that bar conveniently never arrives. But I do think the work of noticing why you’re acting, what fear is underneath the action, what need for approval, what avoidance, that’s not separate from the engagement. It’s part of it.
What I’d say practically is to start where the suffering is already close to you. Not abstract global suffering, but the suffering you can actually see and touch. Your sangha, your neighborhood, your workplace. The Sigālovāda Sutta is basically a field manual for this, it’s the Buddha talking about ordinary relational and civic obligations, not peak experiences. That’s where practice actually comes alive imho.
I have been feeling this for some time, which is why I decided to go to Washington, DC last weekend and stand with my fellow veterans in an act of civil disobedience to disrupt those that take us to war.
Excellent article! My spiritual practice is Hindu in origin, but the same sentiment is also present, which is so frustrating to me. It feels like a way of defanging dharma and seeing it as only a passive force, to be honest.
I understand my spiritual organization’s principle of not wanting to get involved in politics and remain neutral, but at the same time, I’ve been deeply disappointed when I brought up a serious local concern and was met with “we’re aware and we’re praying about it”, and that was all.
I’m not awakened so I’ll let you know if that changes and I get a new perspective, but I do not think that awakening includes ignoring the cries of the world. Jesus didn’t say that. Buddha didn’t say that. I am only cursorily familiar with Hinduism but I’m pretty sure Hinduism didn’t say that. People are afraid so they are using religion as their cover to not be courageous.
I’m right there with you. People often gloss over how political and disruptive Jesus’ actions were *because* love for God and neighbor was foundational to his teachings. Quan Yin’s story of refusing to rise to the highest levels of illumination to stay back on earth to help those who cry out in their suffering. The Hindu “gods” (in quotation marks because they’re not many, they’re really just different personalities of the One) come to the aid of the devotees all the time, in various forms. Idk if you’ve heard of Valarie Kaur, she’s an activist and author whose philosophy is “revolutionary love is the call of our times”, and she draws that principle from her Sikh background of courage and resistance and the archetype of the Sage Warrior, who is filled with love, courage, and wisdom, and chooses to see even enemies through eyes of spiritual love (while also stopping them when it’s needed) while fighting for justice. It’s a very beautiful and profound practice, that speaks exactly of drawing courage from our spiritual convictions to then act from that space within.
It’s a prayer I say every time I’m afraid of doing something I know is important, “let dharma be my spine”. It’s a powerful one. Learned it from a Krishna devotee 💙
There definitely is nuance here. The question becomes how does "nonviolence" get interpreted in ones mind. It's a specific personal image that gets created, but overtime, morphs into a foundational understanding. If at first it shows up as withdrawal and is still withdrawal after 5, 10, 15 years, then it would seem that clinging to this image of nonviolence for some sake is evident.
Before I began practicing, my efforts were scattered. I engaged, but it felt fruitless. I became angry and despondent. Why keep trying, if nothing seems to get better? This is obviously wrong action wrong wrong view at play. Enter the three jewels. I retreated. Spent time "not engaged". Eventually, I found how I could be of service.
It looks like:
Don't take the bait of media and demagogues. It will just fan the flames. Discard phones and find personal connection with all whom you encounter. Show love even when it's difficult. I stopped two fights this year because I hated seeing these people hurt each other. And none of this is something I "set out to do", it's what feels right. And it's important to start small because it will change. And grow.
Political action is kind of low hanging fruit. It feels like "here's something I can do", but can easily get become overwhelming. Kind like building a second story of a house with out the first.
Engaging in political action is important, but effort in the right places. Slowdown. Build up. Engage by helping a neighbor who doesn't share your political views. Drop the illusion that we are different. Make the attempt to improve someone's day with a smile or a wave. These small shifts will build up. This becomes part of the greater good and allows for larger action to take place.
I agree with all of that, except I’m not sure I would call political activism low-hanging fruit or “larger” action. I think that being able to show up to activism with our bodhisattva vows is an incredibly powerful starting point. And we cultivate those vows both internally and externally and as we do this they both change us. We don’t wait to be awakened to start trying, the trying is the doing.
Thank you for this article, it expresses something I was struggling to put into words.
When I found Zen buddhism, I had already been practicing meditation for a few years, first within a Yoga school, then alone. I was full on spiritual bypassing mode. In Zen I found an authenticity that I had never experienced before, and gradually I opened my eyes to my avoidance, my bypassing tendencies, and the reasons for it. Gradually, after years of zazen practice, I feel like my practice finally has that authenticity, it became a part of my day, and I can remain with what is, even when there is pain.
What has been a surprise as I continued with my practice is that that authenticity is not present in all long time teachers or Sanghas. So many Dharma talks are safe and comforting, so many are soothing and never really address the hard stuff, the most difficult stressful situations we may face. I was questioning myself, maybe I am too judgemental? maybe I expect them to address exactly what I am going through? maybe I will understand after I've practiced more years? And then the last election happened, and then everything else that has happened in the past 18 months happened, and I found more soothing advice, more comforting words, and not much else.
"The donor class gets a dharma that does not disturb them. The most vulnerable in the sangha get told to regulate their nervous systems."
This line speaks to me so directly, I am so fed up of regulating my nervous system in the face of fascism.
"Ambedkar also understood the material conditions of spiritual life. He knew that a person who cannot eat, who cannot own land, who cannot walk down a street without fear of violence, does not have a nervous system available for the kind of practice the retreat economy sells."
Exactly! and as someone who cannot afford to go on retreat (I'm a working mom, hopefully I'll get a chance to go on sesshin 15 years from now...?), I was feeling quite left out, as if the Dharma was for the wealthy who also get to somehow not notice what is going on.
So thank you for this article, and for everything you are sharing here on Substack, your words are letting me know I am not alone in expecting more from the teachers, and also I was not wrong in feeling like the Dharma is far more than a relaxation technique to cope and carry on.
You are definitely not alone, and while it isn’t the only reason to follow your authenticity, I believe it will bear more fruit than the path of bypassing. I was known in my sangha for saying “we need to be more messy” and this is what I was talking about. I’ve moved on from that sangha because of the reasons you name, not to say you should or shouldn’t, we all have to decide what to do for ourselves. But I couldn’t sit with them anymore.
Definitively, I'll never go back to bypassing, I was just very surprised to find so much bypassing everywhere, and how it feels like that is what the teachers are catering to, not teaching the Dharma, but coping mechanisms, "Dharma lite". I cannot sit with that anymore either, which tbh sucks because I don't want the isolation it brings, but cannot stand the hypocrisy...
As you said, Dharma practice is not meant to be safe and comfy.
I’m finding community online. I miss body-to-body practice but I find that in the rooms I am physically in with people. So if I am in a town meeting or an organizing meeting this is the sangha of my triple jewel. And then I do my sitting on my own. I miss hearing people breathe next to me, though. It can be hard.
As you note, the comfortable, palatable spirituality you describe is not liberation. It is the "handshake" - the performed, non-threatening version of practice that the room demands. It keeps donors happy, institutions stable, and the most vulnerable told to "regulate their nervous systems." That framing converts structural violence into a personal mindfulness problem. And that isn't a spiritual path. As you say, it's a sedative.
The Buddha did not leave the palace to find composure. He renounced the safety of the palace, walked into exposure, and dismantled the moral logic that justified hierarchy. The "handshake" of Western Buddhism- the careful tone, the fear of disruption, the attachment to reputation is not fidelity to the Dharma. It's a career structure. And when teaching becomes status, disruption becomes a threat not to life, but to position.
Ambedkar understood something else: that a person who cannot eat, cannot own land, cannot walk down a street without fear of violence, does not have a nervous system available for the kind of practice the retreat economy sells. The warehouse worker who lit the fire is not spiritually underdeveloped. They are responding rationally to conditions that have been made intolerable by design.
The question is not whether your practice feels safe. The question is whether it is worthy of this moment. Whether it can bear suffering without retreat. Whether it can confront power without becoming cruel. Whether it can renounce comfort when comfort is built on someone else's pain.
❝ Nonviolence is not a refusal of conflict. It is a refusal of dehumanization. It demands confrontation with harm while refusing to become what one opposes. ❞
Thank you.... YES. We have to be able to name and confront harm that is being done whether it is at a personal, institutional, or societal level. Confusion about this is not just a thing in Buddhist practices...it is also in Christianity. In my understanding from my own background. Love requires us to name wrongs and confront problems....even if it hurts someone else's feelings--or might hurt their social standing. How we do that ...is another matter..and it does matter..and it is contextual and often a deeply personal decision because there are many different situations people are facing...and some of those situations make them so vulnerable that speaking could cost their life or make it impossible for them to feed their children.
Yes!
Thank you, this speaks to something I have struggled to reconcile with Buddhism as I have received it in the US.
🙏🏼
It has always seemed to me the easiest way to clarify this confusion is to distinguish inner and outer.
To take a non Buddhist example;
In the Gita, Krishna both:
(1) encourages Arjuna to live in absolute equanimity, non attachment, kindness,, compassion, love, etc
and
(2) to kill, without hesitation, the bad guys.
People hear about the first and think 'Boy, that Arjuna, he must sure be some spiritual bypassing irresponsible, uncaring wimp!"
Krishna is not telling Arjuna to bypass his feelings of anger, hatred, resentment, etc. (there's several chapters later in the Gita where Krishna gives detailed instructions regarding the fundamental importance of fulling acknowledging - and NOT repressing - greed, hatred, anger, craving, envy, jealousy, depression, fear, etc).
He is simply directing Arjuna's attention to That in him which is fundamentally equal, non attached, and to kill while rooted in That.
I suspect the problem may be that given our unconscious religion of scientistic physicalism, we don't really accept the reality of what Krishna is pointing to. That's a problem of cultish indoctrination in the universal belief system/religion of modernity and I suspect, is really the root of the problem here.
Well said.
I just watched this Lama Rod Owens video before reading your Substack. I believe he would have a word or two to say about not speaking up and playing it safe, basically as a form of spiritual bypassing.
https://youtu.be/ixX4hfPJ55Y?si=GlOcH-UCxsKwtVzC
Love Lama Rod!
Can anybody explain why "engaged Buddhism" seems to be so much scarcer a commodity than, say, "engaged Lutheranism"? I am genuinely perplexed by the apparent difference. Is it merely the much older and more secure social position that Christianity has in the West, which makes it feel "safer" for it's clerical and organizational leadership to take some risks?
It’s a good question, and it deserves some thought and a longer answer, I’d have to think about it a bit. What do you think?
I'm chalking it up to the difference of still being a "minority religion", in a country with an ugly history of white (Christian) nationalism, as well as a big deficit in general political education, even in nominally "progressive minded" places.
That sounds about right to me.
Come to think of it, I'm also going to venture that it's not just an issue with leadership. I happen to know someone in the leadership of a sister Sangha in my town (who was formerly a monastic at my own Sangha), and I know she is not at all shy about being an activist (we even got arrested together at an act of mass civil disobedience a few years ago!) And yet I hear that, in her own organization, she has had to noticeably tiptoe around some of these discussions. So I am guessing that there are a lot of "rank-and-file" folks who, while not overtly hostile, are simply clinging to a certain comfort derived from the Three Refuges functioning for them as a kind of stereotypical "spiritual bypassing", and who are put off by anything that smacks of "politics".
There's a lot about this society day-to-day that's enormously distressing. So who can exactly blame anybody for wanting to "escape" it all in some measure? Of course, as you point out, a lot of us who find ourselves in the wrong socioeconomic, racial, and other categories, may not have that luxury at all, no matter how much time we put in on the cushion.
It is absolutely the rank and file, too.
Do you think that Buddhism in the West tends to disproportionately attract certain socioeconomic strata that correspond to distinctly higher incomes and/or educational attainment, and maybe that accounts for this? In which case, is there anything we can do to become more inclusive?
I think that Buddhism was brought to the West by a certain strata of society and continues to attract their “peers” and it deeply affects the cultivation of the dharma in our specific conditions. A lot of folks have a lot of thoughts about this, but I think making our sanghas more democratically run and making practice as accessible as possible are two things. The other thing is being willing to receive feedback on how our karma makes our sanghas either unsafe or just inaccessible is important. Being able to receive feedback in general even if it disrupts the status quo, and I am not sure our leadership can do that. They haven’t shown that they can.
The donor class gets a dharma that does not disturb them. The most vulnerable in the sangha get told to regulate their nervous systems.
This is the sentence I keep coming back to, and I think it is doing more diagnostic work than anything else in contemporary Buddhist self-critique. The substitution of regulation for liberation is the move the entire retreat economy quietly depends on. Naming it costs a lot. Thank you for naming it.
The Ambedkar reading is the other thing this piece does that most Western Buddhist writing will not. The class break at the origin is the part that cannot be folded back into wellness without losing what it was.
Yes. Thank you.
I agree with this perspective and appreciate it greatly! I think it is necessary and valuable though I also think placing liberation within social transformation is a bit misleading. I mean, I sort of don’t care because I think it’s important, but because of this, the piece reads as being very “Western” in similar ways you are criticizing Western Buddhism.
The point about nonviolence being confrontational rather than comfortable speaks to this, though, and I don’t want to lose that in what I’m saying.
I find myself thinking that this piece doesn’t sit with the nuance and complexity of karma and cetanā. Even if we feel our rage is justified, there is an intention coming from aversion that creates negative karma. I think liberation and social transformation definitely overlap but I also wonder if this needs to be justified by Buddhism? Can we just hold that some of our beliefs and actions may not be consistent with Abhidhamma teaching and not have to be perfect? You aren’t saying this, but the injustices and corruption we see in America sickens me, and I want to destroy the billionaire class altogether, but I also don’t know if that is justified by the dharma and have a hunch that it isn’t. Just some thoughts.
Thank you for your feedback! I am sure that there is no way for me to wiggle out of the “Western” lens I am critiquing since it is the water in which I was born and raised. There are insights and blindspots to be sure when speaking from inside the belly of the beast. And yes, I feel the same way. I didn’t speak to that in this piece because I was speaking to one specific thesis: nonviolence is not nonconfrontational. But truth be told, I want the Epstein class to be torn apart by wild dogs on live television and there’s no way to shoe horn that into dharma. I also practice witchcraft/animism and that is where I tend to dig into the energies that Buddhism can’t help me hold as well without tension. Kali Ma, Artemis, The Morrigaine, these are sacred energetic fields, too. Whether or not the dharma would agree.
Great reply and couldn’t agree more. Thanks for all your sharing and insights 🙏
🙏🏼❤️🔥
I appreciate this piece and especially this comment.
For me, having one spiritual framework to get through the complexities of being alive rn feels inadequate. I was born to Muslims, and raised as one in Karachi. This meant that I can see the syncretic s Asian nature of that Islam, I can identify threads of Buddhism in that. Which is why when I sat my first retreat, everything made sense. Like you, I also draw from outside Buddhism - from the emphasis on adl, justice in Islam, and my responsibilities towards others
Alexandra, have you read the interview with H.H The Dalai Lama, titled The Justifiably Angry Marxist I think.? In it His Holiness is clear about the need to confront capitalism, to confront corporate greed, the right wing in the US, the forces repressing ordinary people who are not wealthy, those forces that are destroying our world and environment. That it is healthy and in accord with the Dharma to be angry witnessing injustice and so to act, but not be driven by anger. The last being a difficult thing many times.
To not be speaking out, confronting and protesting is not in accord with the Dharma. It's astonishing that this even a question now.
Exquisitely written. And equally true of any real map of development that takes into account both growing up and waking up. And the maps that walk us through both are the only ones of real value in a world as chaotic as the one we’re in. Waking up can’t exclude growing up emotionally or we can’t embody any of the principles these paths teach. We’ll be in bypass.
If we never begin to feel things like disgust and rage for the dehumanization happening around us and that’s been programmed into us, we’re missing something in our growth. I’m realizing more and more that I can’t be in integrity with myself if I don’t speak up vociferously and clearly and act on what I see, even when I risk my own belonging. Actually, especially when I risk my own belonging.
It’s a profoundly uncomfortable place to be both internally and externally. A place where the world at large feels like it can no longer hold the way I am experiencing it. I don’t know if this tension ever resolves itself or if we just learn to walk with it as we become who we are becoming.
Growing up and waking up. YES.
It’s been a steep learning curve on both for me the last three years as I created human life while watching so much precious human life being snuffed out so cavalierly.
Thank you for sharing this. Your writing communicates your inner experience very clearly.
🙏🏼
Here's a question: how do those of us NOT in clerical or leadership roles in our own sanghas, but who agree with you that an attachment to personal comfort in a sick society is an obstacle to enlightenment and liberation, best respond? How do we figure out whether we are "rocking the boat" in ways that are genuinely helpful, vs just creating gratuitous internal friction and strife for reasons of our own egos and negative karma (the inevitable accusation we are bound to provoke)?
I have to confess to mostly deliberately choosing not to "rock the boat", because it has always felt like running into a wall whenever I tried to broach this subject. But more recently, a small group of us started meeting to discuss this subject. (Our Sangha calls these somewhat informal groups "cohorts", and tolerates such discussions without any fuss, so long as we stay pretty low profile. But everybody in the group senses that we had better never raise our heads too far above the parapets, or such tolerance will get revoked awfully quick.)
Yes that was my experience, too. I left, not just because of that, but it was the driving force behind it after a final straw. I am not sure what the right answer is. i think maybe we stay but practice with our fear of rocking the boat and learn how to navigate the difference for ourselves instead of letting them telling us when we are and are not doing that. It is delicate but I also think speaking the truth is going to feel risky whether we are doing it right or wrong, so we just have to do it and commit to making amends when we mess up but never staying silent.
If one is engaged with Dzogchen, or Zen, Chan, Soen, Koan work especially with a clear teacher, there is seeing that we do not need a hierarchy, or authority figure, to see and to act clearly and appropriately. I am sure in other traditions also, but cannot speak to that personally so much. Just as human beings who are not sociopaths, there is an imperative to act, even if it be small ways and means, as one can.
i really appreciate you addressing the pressures to abdicate for what makes donors comfortable. and the hints of internal conflict practitioners in the west may be contending with. these are definitely obstacles for organizations and individuals in finding ways to participate in the world that includes their practice.
i haven't leaned much into your work here so perhaps this redundant but i would appreciate reading your perspective on just what one is to do in this context once coming into an understanding of it.
the reality of wanting to maintain ones personal ethical discipline and facing realities that may or may not be asking for our intervention based on those ethics is not necessarily natural/simple to discern. especially considering the contemporary westerner's societal conditioning and general human tendency to follow authority for reason of personal safety. these are frameworks that take a lot of time and attention to unravel and navigate.
i'm under the impression that there is training to be done on an internal level before one is really in a place to flower into what we are calling engaged buddhism. rather than encouraging whomever to go out and blast up the world with their personal take on buddhadharma and its ethics of compassionate engagement are in the the name of buddhism.
my take is that buddhadharma is only accessible by taking a participatory role in one life and particular disposition. it is in a sense "designed" to lead the practitioner through their karmic load in order that capacity to actually benefit others through both direct and indirect action is available.
so like what are some examples/advice you can utilize and provide to support that flowering process in readers who feel resonance with your writings?
again im not really familiar with your work so if you feel that already exists, please feel free to link it in a reply:)
wishing you all the blest
Thank you for your thoughts. The question of what one is actually to do once we come into this understanding is one I’ve written about from a few different angles.
“Equanimity Is Not Neutrality” is probably the most direct address of the internal/external question with the argument there being that the tradition doesn’t ask us to wait until we’re fully cooked before we act, but it does ask us to be honest about what’s driving the action. Is it clarity, or is it our own unprocessed reactivity dressed up as righteousness?
“Death Death to the Causes and Conditions of the IOF” talks about how we are working with our inner state of violence as we work with collective harm so that we see we are not separate from it, which helps us generate karuna and wisdom. This directly speaks to the teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh.
“Right View: A Response to Zionist…” takes up what it looks like to apply that discernment in a specific live context where the stakes are high and the social pressure to stay quiet is significant.
I think you’re pointing at something real when you say this takes time to unravel. The conditioning you’re describing, in this case I’d say deference to authority, the instinct to stay safe, are not a character flaw. Resmaa Menakem would call them body-level inheritance, the kind of thing that doesn’t yield to intellectual understanding alone. It yields to practice, and practice takes time.
So I don’t think the answer is to tell people to hold off on engagement until they’ve achieved some threshold of inner clarity, because that bar conveniently never arrives. But I do think the work of noticing why you’re acting, what fear is underneath the action, what need for approval, what avoidance, that’s not separate from the engagement. It’s part of it.
What I’d say practically is to start where the suffering is already close to you. Not abstract global suffering, but the suffering you can actually see and touch. Your sangha, your neighborhood, your workplace. The Sigālovāda Sutta is basically a field manual for this, it’s the Buddha talking about ordinary relational and civic obligations, not peak experiences. That’s where practice actually comes alive imho.
Warmly,
Alexandra
thanks for this thorough response:)
its bed time where i am now so i'll look into all of this and chew on it tomorrow during my tea break🙏🏼🪷🫖
Sleep well!
I have been feeling this for some time, which is why I decided to go to Washington, DC last weekend and stand with my fellow veterans in an act of civil disobedience to disrupt those that take us to war.
Thank you for doing that. It was an important protest.
Excellent article! My spiritual practice is Hindu in origin, but the same sentiment is also present, which is so frustrating to me. It feels like a way of defanging dharma and seeing it as only a passive force, to be honest.
I understand my spiritual organization’s principle of not wanting to get involved in politics and remain neutral, but at the same time, I’ve been deeply disappointed when I brought up a serious local concern and was met with “we’re aware and we’re praying about it”, and that was all.
I’m not awakened so I’ll let you know if that changes and I get a new perspective, but I do not think that awakening includes ignoring the cries of the world. Jesus didn’t say that. Buddha didn’t say that. I am only cursorily familiar with Hinduism but I’m pretty sure Hinduism didn’t say that. People are afraid so they are using religion as their cover to not be courageous.
I’m right there with you. People often gloss over how political and disruptive Jesus’ actions were *because* love for God and neighbor was foundational to his teachings. Quan Yin’s story of refusing to rise to the highest levels of illumination to stay back on earth to help those who cry out in their suffering. The Hindu “gods” (in quotation marks because they’re not many, they’re really just different personalities of the One) come to the aid of the devotees all the time, in various forms. Idk if you’ve heard of Valarie Kaur, she’s an activist and author whose philosophy is “revolutionary love is the call of our times”, and she draws that principle from her Sikh background of courage and resistance and the archetype of the Sage Warrior, who is filled with love, courage, and wisdom, and chooses to see even enemies through eyes of spiritual love (while also stopping them when it’s needed) while fighting for justice. It’s a very beautiful and profound practice, that speaks exactly of drawing courage from our spiritual convictions to then act from that space within.
May dharma be our spine 🙏🏻
“May dharma be our spine” is my new motto, thank you.
It’s a prayer I say every time I’m afraid of doing something I know is important, “let dharma be my spine”. It’s a powerful one. Learned it from a Krishna devotee 💙
❤️🔥
There definitely is nuance here. The question becomes how does "nonviolence" get interpreted in ones mind. It's a specific personal image that gets created, but overtime, morphs into a foundational understanding. If at first it shows up as withdrawal and is still withdrawal after 5, 10, 15 years, then it would seem that clinging to this image of nonviolence for some sake is evident.
Before I began practicing, my efforts were scattered. I engaged, but it felt fruitless. I became angry and despondent. Why keep trying, if nothing seems to get better? This is obviously wrong action wrong wrong view at play. Enter the three jewels. I retreated. Spent time "not engaged". Eventually, I found how I could be of service.
It looks like:
Don't take the bait of media and demagogues. It will just fan the flames. Discard phones and find personal connection with all whom you encounter. Show love even when it's difficult. I stopped two fights this year because I hated seeing these people hurt each other. And none of this is something I "set out to do", it's what feels right. And it's important to start small because it will change. And grow.
Political action is kind of low hanging fruit. It feels like "here's something I can do", but can easily get become overwhelming. Kind like building a second story of a house with out the first.
Engaging in political action is important, but effort in the right places. Slowdown. Build up. Engage by helping a neighbor who doesn't share your political views. Drop the illusion that we are different. Make the attempt to improve someone's day with a smile or a wave. These small shifts will build up. This becomes part of the greater good and allows for larger action to take place.
I agree with all of that, except I’m not sure I would call political activism low-hanging fruit or “larger” action. I think that being able to show up to activism with our bodhisattva vows is an incredibly powerful starting point. And we cultivate those vows both internally and externally and as we do this they both change us. We don’t wait to be awakened to start trying, the trying is the doing.
Thank you for this article, it expresses something I was struggling to put into words.
When I found Zen buddhism, I had already been practicing meditation for a few years, first within a Yoga school, then alone. I was full on spiritual bypassing mode. In Zen I found an authenticity that I had never experienced before, and gradually I opened my eyes to my avoidance, my bypassing tendencies, and the reasons for it. Gradually, after years of zazen practice, I feel like my practice finally has that authenticity, it became a part of my day, and I can remain with what is, even when there is pain.
What has been a surprise as I continued with my practice is that that authenticity is not present in all long time teachers or Sanghas. So many Dharma talks are safe and comforting, so many are soothing and never really address the hard stuff, the most difficult stressful situations we may face. I was questioning myself, maybe I am too judgemental? maybe I expect them to address exactly what I am going through? maybe I will understand after I've practiced more years? And then the last election happened, and then everything else that has happened in the past 18 months happened, and I found more soothing advice, more comforting words, and not much else.
"The donor class gets a dharma that does not disturb them. The most vulnerable in the sangha get told to regulate their nervous systems."
This line speaks to me so directly, I am so fed up of regulating my nervous system in the face of fascism.
"Ambedkar also understood the material conditions of spiritual life. He knew that a person who cannot eat, who cannot own land, who cannot walk down a street without fear of violence, does not have a nervous system available for the kind of practice the retreat economy sells."
Exactly! and as someone who cannot afford to go on retreat (I'm a working mom, hopefully I'll get a chance to go on sesshin 15 years from now...?), I was feeling quite left out, as if the Dharma was for the wealthy who also get to somehow not notice what is going on.
So thank you for this article, and for everything you are sharing here on Substack, your words are letting me know I am not alone in expecting more from the teachers, and also I was not wrong in feeling like the Dharma is far more than a relaxation technique to cope and carry on.
You are definitely not alone, and while it isn’t the only reason to follow your authenticity, I believe it will bear more fruit than the path of bypassing. I was known in my sangha for saying “we need to be more messy” and this is what I was talking about. I’ve moved on from that sangha because of the reasons you name, not to say you should or shouldn’t, we all have to decide what to do for ourselves. But I couldn’t sit with them anymore.
Definitively, I'll never go back to bypassing, I was just very surprised to find so much bypassing everywhere, and how it feels like that is what the teachers are catering to, not teaching the Dharma, but coping mechanisms, "Dharma lite". I cannot sit with that anymore either, which tbh sucks because I don't want the isolation it brings, but cannot stand the hypocrisy...
As you said, Dharma practice is not meant to be safe and comfy.
I’m finding community online. I miss body-to-body practice but I find that in the rooms I am physically in with people. So if I am in a town meeting or an organizing meeting this is the sangha of my triple jewel. And then I do my sitting on my own. I miss hearing people breathe next to me, though. It can be hard.
As you note, the comfortable, palatable spirituality you describe is not liberation. It is the "handshake" - the performed, non-threatening version of practice that the room demands. It keeps donors happy, institutions stable, and the most vulnerable told to "regulate their nervous systems." That framing converts structural violence into a personal mindfulness problem. And that isn't a spiritual path. As you say, it's a sedative.
The Buddha did not leave the palace to find composure. He renounced the safety of the palace, walked into exposure, and dismantled the moral logic that justified hierarchy. The "handshake" of Western Buddhism- the careful tone, the fear of disruption, the attachment to reputation is not fidelity to the Dharma. It's a career structure. And when teaching becomes status, disruption becomes a threat not to life, but to position.
Ambedkar understood something else: that a person who cannot eat, cannot own land, cannot walk down a street without fear of violence, does not have a nervous system available for the kind of practice the retreat economy sells. The warehouse worker who lit the fire is not spiritually underdeveloped. They are responding rationally to conditions that have been made intolerable by design.
The question is not whether your practice feels safe. The question is whether it is worthy of this moment. Whether it can bear suffering without retreat. Whether it can confront power without becoming cruel. Whether it can renounce comfort when comfort is built on someone else's pain.
❝ Nonviolence is not a refusal of conflict. It is a refusal of dehumanization. It demands confrontation with harm while refusing to become what one opposes. ❞
https://substack.com/@leenadalal26/note/p-195492612?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=77j4p
You and I are singing the same song:
https://substack.com/@mereimputation/note/c-244940825?r=j68xh&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action
I love that for us and for the dharma. 🙏🏼