6 thoughts on “Democratizing “Engaged Buddhism””

1. The category of “engaged Buddhism” has often been subject to a great deal of conceptual confusion: is it a descriptive category or a normative one? If the latter, what are the grounds of that normativity: if we call the fourteenth Dalai Lama and not Wirathu an engaged Buddhist, what are our reasons for making that distinction beyond the fact that we agree with the former and not the latter? Donna Brown makes a helpful intervention into the discussion by taking a second-order survey of existing scholarship on engaged Buddhism and noting the historical changes in the field, pointing out that there has been a long “consensus” that “engaged Buddhism” needs to name something good, and that that consensus is breaking down. This article is a valuable review of the territory for anyone who takes “engaged Buddhism” as a category of analysis.

2. I appreciate Dr. Lele underlining a core issue in the study of Buddhists’ social engagement: the potential conflict between normative and descriptive (and explanatory) approaches. I would like to further stress one aspect of that issue. The problem with the consensus is not purely that it is normative. Scholars are not barred from normative work. The problem is that, in order to sustain a normative narrative, the consensus excludes large numbers of Buddhists who run schools, clinics, services for elders, and so on–ordinary, helpful activities–implicitly or explicitly designating these Buddhists as either not Buddhist or not engaged. To maintain its narrative, it sacrifices inclusion and thus accuracy. If all Buddhists who undertook socially oriented activities to benefit others in material ways were included in analyses, a more complex and sophisticated picture of Buddhists’ social engagement would emerge. Indeed, it is already emerging because, as Dr. Lele notes, the consensus has already begun to break down.

3. As to step or point 3 and 7 at the end of the paper, perhaps movements such as described in Charismatic Monks of Lanna Buddhism (edited by Paul Cohen) and its bibliography could be a good challenge, since they defy easy categorization in terms of “engaged Buddhism.”

   As for the critique of the choice of the term itself, in this article and others quoted, who thinks that the word “engaged Buddhism” needs to be defined through intrinsic identifiability?

   More generally, I wonder, should terms that are subject to debate, polemics, oppositions, contradictions, revisions and so forth, be abandoned, wouldn’t academics soon be unemployed ? More seriously, could not this debate be led through the use of emic understandings of language and “definitions”? (Madhyamikas, Pramānavādins, etc.)

   This is just my opinion, not being an academic, but the more I read recent contemporary authors on “Buddhism” (another term to be abandoned ? I would vote “yes,” but right there, I use it again), the more I find etic and emic perspectives entangled in … a tangle.

4. Greetings,

   Thanks for this stimulating piece of scholarship. I think it has excellent points–particularly the last section on “Dissent and Critique”–and it’s really great to see the responses and conversation it is spurring on here. There is a lot to discuss about it but here I will have to limit myself to one issue: the misrepresentation of my scholarship, namely my survey on engaged Buddhism for Oxford University Press.

   I have three objections:

   (1) you claim that I represent and forward “the consensus” on engaged Buddhism. For instance,

   Gleig (2021) and Garfield (2022) illustrate this practice. Gleig applies engagement terms only to activities that she considers accord with the ethical stance expressed in this narrative. She suggests that applying engagement terms to other socially oriented activities may undermine the terms’ utility, which implies that the terms’ most important referent is the narrative rather than the activities (Gleig).

   This is a complete misrepresentation of my Oxford article on engaged Buddhism. This article was a survey, the aim of which was to offer a broad overview and appraisal of the field. In this overview, I note correctly that there has been a scholarly consensus on engaged Buddhism–what I refer to as “normative engaged Buddhism”–but then also go on to highlight the areas in which this consensus is being undermined. These areas include:

   (1) the inclusion of humanistic Buddhists prior to Hanh, who is often credited as the originator;
   (2) the inclusion of service-orientated Buddhists that do not align with a progressive agenda;
   (3) noting the multiple debates around what counts as engaged Buddhism;
   (4) critiques of normative assumptions of Queen and King; and
   (5) a three-page section on “New Directions in Engaged Buddhism” that highlights the work of Main and Lai and Paul Fuller as applying pressure on the normative category of engaged Buddhism.

   See below for specific quotes of each of the above points.

   • (1) While scholars disagree on whether Chinese Buddhist modernizers such as Taixu, Daxing (1900–1950), and Fafang (1904–1951) are best labeled “humanistic Buddhists,” “engaged Buddhists,” or “activist Buddhists,” the close historical and structural relationships between them and normative engaged Buddhists such as Hanh requires attention (p.7).

   • (2) The Tzu Chi Foundation leads emergency relief efforts across the world and funds national and international projects focused on free medical care, providing education, and environment. Tzu Chi has been careful not to align with an explicit political agenda, and Venerable Cheng Yen has presented her work as an expression of traditional Buddhist values and traditional feminine gender roles of self-sacrifice and nurturing (p.7).

   • (3) Another area of debate is what counts as “engaged” action. Some suggest a widely inclusive understanding of engagement that includes mindful actions in all areas of life. Others push for a more specific definition of actions marked by systemic analysis and social engagement (p.16).

   • (4) While Sallie King turns to a close reading of the Pali suttas to show that right speech does not always involve being gentle and can include sharp rebuke, Edwin Ng draws on critical race theory to deliver a much more provocative reading of how right speech is weaponized to shut down conversations about white privilege and racism in Buddhist communities and beyond (p.14).

   • (5) As noted, there have been debates within normative engaged Buddhist studies on what engagement signifies—with some scholars emphasizing “soft” and others “hard” engagement; however, these new studies go much further by undermining two core characteristics: nonviolence and critical distance from the nation-state. In interrogating core assumptions of what constitutes engaged Buddhism, the work of these scholars not only expands the historical and ideological parameters of the field of engaged Buddhism but also raises serious questions about the utility of the category itself. What kind of modifiers are needed to delineate between the structurally similar but radically different agendas of Buddhist radicals and Buddhist conservatives, nationalistic Buddhists and cosmopolitan Buddhists? Should one, for instance, discriminate between “progressive” engaged Buddhism and “ethnocentric” engaged Buddhism? Or do the radically different agendas and activities of these forms render the category itself limited and in need of replacement? (p.17-18)

   • (5) New definitions proposed by Main and Lai and by Fuller, however, reopen the question of who can be considered an engaged Buddhist. Their respective broader definitions of engaged Buddhism open the door to a whole new cast of engaged Buddhist figures and concerns including those whose overt agendas stand in direct opposition to normative engaged Buddhism. Whether one thinks engaged Buddhism is a legitimate signifier for these movements will depend upon what definition of engaged Buddhism is accepted.

   Nowhere in the article do I argue that engaged Buddhism applies only to a progressive ethical stance as advocated by King and Queen. I actually highlight a range of activities that undermine the normative definition because they exceed the normative definition by either including service actions (such as Tzu Chi) that are not progressively aligned or that they include nationalistic activities (as expressed by Fuller).

   You completely ignore my use of the term normative engaged Buddhism and instead write as though I am critiquing Fuller or am critiquing the inclusion of non-progressive engaged Buddhism. Nowhere do I do this. In fact, I am a big fan of the work of both Main and Lai and Fuller who challenge the ethical narrative of normative engaged Buddhism. However, I cheerlead them because the genre of a survey is not to cheerlead but to illuminate and map.

   (2) You say I “downplay” service:

   Gleig appears to downplay service, given her descriptions of engagement as “social and political activism” and her greater focus on activism; nevertheless, she also includes some examples of service (Gleig). Most factors Gleig presents are found in early works by Queen and King, although Gleig updates her survey with more recent concepts and activities. Features of engagement Gleig identifies can be compared with those proposed by King (1996).

   Not only do I include several examples of service Buddhism, I also note that there are debates on what counts as engaged Buddhism:

   Buddhist monastic and political leader Bakula Rinpoche (1917–2003) set the stage by promoting a “social work ethos” as a key part of Buddhist practice. Bhikku Sanghasena, an internationally renowned Ladakhi monk within the Theravada Buddhist tradition, founded the Mahabodhi International Meditation Centre (MIMC), which runs a number of educational, health, and service programs under the mantra “Compassion in action. Meditation in action” (p.6).

   “Since Taiwan’s democratization there has been a remarkable growth in humanistic Buddhist groups, with six major organizations emerging: the Buddhist Compassion Relief Tzu Chi Foundation, Fo Guang Shan, Dharma Drum Mountain, Chung Tai Chan Tzu, Ling Jiou Shan, and Fu-chih. While each group differs in its approach and services, common to all is the commitment to the concept of renjian fojiao and establishing a Pure Land on earth through social improvement.” (p.7)

   “Another area of debate is what counts as “engaged” action. Some suggest a widely inclusive understanding of engagement that includes mindful actions in all areas of life. Others push for a more specific definition of actions marked by systemic analysis and social engagement. Ken Jones offers the categories of “soft” engagement for those Buddhists primarily committed to practicing “mindfulness in daily life,” who tend to be more interested in personal practice, and “hard” engagement for those committed to social analysis and institutional transformation.”

   You seem to be conflating my summary of King’s work and normative engaged Buddhist histories with my own views on socially engaged Buddhism. What I tried to do in the article was to give a broad overview of the scholarship–established and emergent–on engaged Buddhism without inserting too much of myself into it, as I believe a good survey should do.

   In terms of whether there was more focus on normative engaged Buddhist figures and organizations, likely yes, as the majority of secondary scholarship is in this area so that was what I had to work with for the survey. However, I think I give a good overview of the work being done to press against this normative definition. For some reason, you seem to have gone out of your way to focus on the normative inclusion and downplay the pressing against the normative.

   (3) You say that I undermine the work of Main and Lai and Fuller.You say:

   Gleig notes how controversial supporters of the consensus find their proposals. Designating early twentieth-century state-involved East Asian figures “engaged,” as Main and Lai do, she contends, will “undermine core ethical characteristics” of engaged Buddhism “because they were nationalistic and not pacifist.” And calling today’s ethno-nationalist Buddhists “engaged” is even more problematic (Gleig). Gleig’s approach preserves the co-extensiveness in scholarship—jeopardized by Main and Lai—of the ethics-based narrative of engaged Buddhism and Buddhists’ engaged activities.

   You seem to think that me correctly stating that King and Queen are against the inclusion of nationalist Buddhists in the category of engaged Buddhism is me preserving an ethics-based narrative of engaged Buddhism. This is absolutely bizarre. I am literally reporting that fact—normative engagement Buddhists find ethnocentric inclusion problematic. You basically slip again between my summarizing and my own personal view. Can you please point to one sentence in which I myself say including them is problematic? In fact, I actually promote not jeopardize the work of Main and Lai-noting that “they open the door to a whole new cast of engaged Buddhist figures”

   New definitions proposed by Main and Lai and by Fuller, however, reopen the question of who can be considered an engaged Buddhist. Their respective broader definitions of engaged Buddhism open the door to a whole new cast of engaged Buddhist figures and concerns including those whose overt agendas stand in direct opposition to normative engaged Buddhism. Whether one thinks engaged Buddhism is a legitimate signifier for these movements will depend upon what definition of engaged Buddhism is accepted.

   My last sentence here notes correctly that whether one accepts these figures as engaged Buddhists depends on what definition is accepted. It DOES NOT say that their definition is wrong!!! And for what it is worth I actually do accept them as engaged Buddhists (see my work with Brenna Grace Artinger on conservative Buddhist responses to racial justice for my general approach to who and what counts as Buddhist) but I don’t insert my view here because it’s a survey which is supposed to map and illuminate how scholars have thought about engaged Buddhism, not determine myself what is and isn’t engaged Buddhism.

   Summing up, I am all for critique that extends my work. If you look at Alex Hsu’s Journal of Global Buddhism piece that you rightly commend you will see that he opens by acknowledging that his article began as a private email exchange between the two of us which I encouraged him to develop and publish as an article. Hsu’s article is a model of how to critique and extend on previous scholarship, and I would like to think the exchange between Hsu and I is a model of how to treat other scholars and scholarship. What Hsu does really well, I think, is to show the ways in which even in my article’s undermining of normative engaged Buddhism , I still reproduce elements of normativity and “hegemony.” I wholeheartedly agree with him and am grateful for him pushing my work forward.

   What I am not for are selective misrepresentation of my work, so can you please start reading and representing my work correctly?

   Thanks, Ann

5. What a wonderful conversation this is. I feel privileged to be a small part of the reinvigoration of the academic discussion about engaged Buddhism.

   Christopher Queen and Sallie B. King have been pioneers in the study of engaged Buddhism. Their contribution to the scholarship on engaged Buddhism is monumental.

   However, the discussion is moving on and Donna Brown’s thoughtful and often brilliant article is, in my opinion, pioneering in widening the discussion about the nature of engaged Buddhism.

   I would like to set the record straight very briefly on a point which I feel is important. This is that Ann Gleig has been a long-term supporter of my own ideas about engaged Buddhism. In her monumental OUP article (“Engaged Buddhism” in Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion), she did not undermine my ideas. Indeed, she has always done quite the opposite in her generous support of my work, my ideas, and my perspective on what constitutes engaged Buddhism. She has always been profoundly generous with her time.

   Finally, I would suggest that Ann’s original, invigorating and comprehensive OUP article should be a starting point for any discussion of engaged Buddhism.

   As I began my brief comments, I’m so happy we are once again talking about engaged Buddhism, and I’m really enjoying the discussion.

6. I feel I should respond to Ann Gleig’s comments. Because Gleig’s 2021 OUP article is a useful contemporary description of the consensus, I relied on it to summarize the consensus. I agree with Paul Fuller’s advice, that Gleig’s article “should be a starting point for any discussion of engaged Buddhism,” and in fact followed it ex ante, making her article one foundation of my own. This reliance on Gleig’s article to summarize the consensus is not questioned by Fuller or Gleig, and this is my main usage—a proper one, I think—of her article.

   I would emphasize that my article is not a critique of hers. Possibly Gleig is suggesting that I should have presented her as a non-supporter of the consensus, but, as I discuss below, I did not see in her article the non-support that her comments express.

   Given that I had no intention of criticizing her article, quite the opposite, and that I cite her work wherever I use it, I was surprised to read her remarks. I will address them briefly here.

   Gleig claims in her comments that I misrepresent her views in three main areas.

   (1) On upholding the consensus. I agree with Gleig that my article suggests that her article broadly upholds the consensus. She suggests that I should have known that she herself does not support the consensus. On what grounds should I have known? Her suggested grounds are that she does not explicitly argue that “engaged Buddhism” applies only to those activities fitting the ethics-based narrative, and that she includes within “engaged Buddhism” some social service (such as by Tzu Chi) and some nationalistic activities (per Fuller). I address service and nationalism below, and here discuss only the reasons I perceive that her article upholds the consensus. They include:

   (a) Gleig’s words, in her article, suggest that she believes (or believed when she wrote it) that “engaged Buddhism” as a category cannot survive the inclusion of activities the consensus excludes; that including these would require new terms, not “engaged Buddhism” as it stands. If the utility of the category of “engaged Buddhism” is undermined, as Gleig claims, by including violent activities, those lacking critical distance from the state, those that precede World War II, or those that do not reflect the same ideology as the consensus, to me that sounds as if Gleig opposes calling such activities “engaged Buddhism.” This may be a matter of how the article communicates (or does not), but I went by what she wrote:

   As noted, there have been debates within normative engaged Buddhist studies on what engagement signifies—with some scholars emphasizing “soft” and others “hard” engagement; however, these new studies go much further by undermining two core characteristics: nonviolence and critical distance from the nation-state. In interrogating core assumptions of what constitutes engaged Buddhism, the work of these scholars not only expands the historical and ideological parameters of the field of engaged Buddhism but also raises serious questions about the utility of the category itself. What kind of modifiers are needed to delineate between the structurally similar but radically different agendas of Buddhist radicals and Buddhist conservatives, nationalistic Buddhists and cosmopolitan Buddhists? Should one, for instance, discriminate between “progressive” engaged Buddhism and “ethnocentric” engaged Buddhism? Or do the radically different agendas and activities of these forms render the category itself limited and in need of replacement?

   (b) In her article’s section on “Global Engaged Buddhism: Established and Emerging Figures and Communities”—describing movements around the globe and representing a good chunk of the article—Gleig mainly selects activities that the consensus includes. If she accepted a wide range of non-consensus-approved Buddhists and activities as socially engaged, would these not appear in this section along with consensus-approved ones? (The inclusion of Tzu Chi is not going against the consensus as her remarks suggest; consensus scholarship often includes Tzu Chi. That is one of its anomalies, as my article notes [25]). She leaves out not only militant ethno-nationalist activities, but also much engagement by other groups left out of the consensus. (She does follow Main and Lai to briefly mention some pre-World War II East Asian activities.) There is scholarship available on many left out groups, particularly those whose work is longstanding; both Alexander Hsu and I cite some. I think my comment, “Gleig applies engagement terms only to activities that she considers accord with the ethical stance expressed in this narrative” applies reasonably well to her way of describing “established and emerging figures and communities.”

   (c) Gleig’s article states in its opening summary that “there is a consensus in academic scholarship that engaged Buddhism is an expression of Buddhist modernism,” a comment repeated later on. She does not mention that this is a debatable view nor acknowledge that non-modernist Buddhists also engage socially; thus the article seems to uphold this aspect of the consensus.

   (d) The critiques of the consensus her article addresses are the dating and ethno-nationalist issues raised by Main and Lai and Fuller. She seems to take the view that her way of discussing these two works means that her article is critical rather than supportive of the consensus. I understand why she would take this view, but it is not how I perceive critique versus support for the consensus—because I come from the perspective of a fundamental challenge to the consensus, not modest adjustments to it. In other words, Gleig and I have a different idea of what constitutes upholding or undermining the consensus. Accepting the suggestions of Main and Lai to include, as engaged Buddhism, pre-World War II movements in East Asia does not, from my perspective, undermine the consensus much. I discuss in my article why I view the critiques of Main and Lai, and some other scholars, as supporting rather than undermining the bulk of the consensus (40); accepting their proposed modifications has little effect on the consensus.

   On Fuller, to accept the full implications of his work would indeed show non-support for the consensus. This is because Fuller, unlike Main and Lai, discards the narrative of the consensus and limits—including discarding the idea that Western scholars should set limits. Gleig’s article, however, does not take up these broad implications. Overall, on Fuller, her comment about “utility” suggests hesitant, minimal, or non-support for including violent ethno-nationalist activities within “engaged Buddhism,” while her lack of mention of the broader, and in my mind more important, implications of his work means that she does not discuss the challenges to the consensus that are most fundamental. Overall, like some other scholars, she appears to suggest that opening to “ethno-nationalism” is the key question surrounding the consensus, and thus that mentioning it constitutes not supporting the consensus.

   I have a different view. My article explains why I see the flaws of the consensus as going well beyond the question of including or excluding ethno-nationalism and why, in fact, I see ethno-nationalism mainly as a red herring: focusing on it leads scholars to overlook or obscure more significant problems with the consensus. Hence, mentioning it does not, in my mind, equate to a lack of support for the consensus; the problems with the consensus persist even if ethno-nationalism is categorized as engaged Buddhism. Gleig’s comments show she has a different perspective. By my standards, her article upholds the consensus, but by her standards, it may not.

   In sum, it may not have been Gleig’s intent to uphold the consensus, but she follows it in important ways, and where she raises critiques of it, these discussions do not, in my mind, undermine it much or address what I see as its fundamental problems. Hence my view that her work upholds the consensus. I accept, however, that she disagrees with me on this point.

   (2) Downplaying Service. On the issue of social service as engagement, I do feel that Gleig downplays service—particularly given Queen’s (probably correct) view that service forms the bulk of Buddhists’ engagement today. I write that both she and Jay Garfield, in describing the consensus, “theorize engagement as activism even while citing service examples” (26) which I think is accurate. Her introductory summary and her section “Engaged Buddhist Hermeneutics” both stress activism, not service. I do not claim she gives no service examples, but her article gives service less attention than activism. Given that I list service as among the activities she deems engagement (“Including some social services” [14]), my article does not deny that she includes it. Listing, in her comments, examples of social service activities that her article mentions does not counter my view that it gives service less attention than activism or theorizes engagement as activism, as I am sure anyone reading her article can observe.

   (3) Fuller/Main and Lai. On Gleig’s view that I “write as though” she critiques and undermines Fuller and Main and Lai, I do not agree—I do not say she critiques or undermines them and I’m not sure what is meant by “write as though.” I say that, as in the quote from her article I cite above, she describes their placing of ethno-nationalist activities within “engaged Buddhism” as controversial and problematic. Gleig uses the term “controversial” herself, and the quote shows why I say “problematic”: she writes that their work “raises serious questions about the utility of the category itself.” I cite her article where I say this; it is, unfortunately, difficult to make citations precise because OUP does not supply page or paragraph numbering. My comment that she “suggests that applying engagement terms to other socially oriented activities may undermine the terms’ utility, which implies that the terms’ most important referent is the narrative rather than the activities” may misinterpret her intentions—that is what she claims—but the comment is based on her article’s actual words.

   In conclusion, I accept, obviously, Gleig’s clarification of her views. Still, given the above, I believe my reading of her article is reasonable. If she wishes the article to be read as not supporting the consensus, as stating that everything Buddhists do to help others in material ways, consensus-approved or not, belongs within the category of engaged Buddhism, or as fundamentally questioning the accuracy and usefulness of the consensus as a whole, it could be clarified to better show that.

   Finally, I would like to re-emphasize that my article is not “about” Gleig’s. It is a critique of the consensus established by Queen and King, and discusses a significant amount of scholarly work that dissents from, criticizes, or circumvents that consensus in ways that show it is no longer apt. This critique is the issue of substance on which I hope debate will focus.

   Donna Lynn Brown