And, as traditions from different nationalities meet and cross-fertilize in the West, there's increasing engagement of Buddhists in contemporary social and political issues, most commonly environmental. David Loy's piece, "Why Buddhism Needs the West," is a sharp case in point. The title draws upon a trope from American Buddhist ecopoet Gary Snyder, from forty years ago: "The mercy of the West has been social revolution; the mercy of the East has been individual insight into the basic self/void. We need both."
Naturally, for Buddhism to take root in America, it must accommodate ethnic and class diversity, women taking an active role, gays, vigils, marches, writing elected officials, environmentalism, and so on. One way Buddhism uniquely informs political engagement and social justice is in applying its critique of self on larger degrees of scale (corporation, political entity, etc.), as equally liable to, and capable of liberation from, the same suffering as so-called individual self. Work on self and work on the world are one.
Allen Ginsberg once wrote: "While I'm here, I'll do the work. What's the work? To ease the pain of living. Everything else, drunken dumb show." The Best Buddhist Writing encourages the work. The real work, timely in any season.
This article was first published at American Book Review, and is reprinted with permission.
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