Buddhist Ethics & Action Network

In our time of the “polycrisis,” with interrelated multiple crises related to the intensifying climate emergency; and in the US (and elsewhere) of growing authoritarianism and threats to democracy, economic inequality, and increases in racism, homophobia, patriarchal tendencies, and imperialism leading to wars, it is crucial for contemporary Western Buddhist practitioners to expand the common sense of Buddhist practice as primarily focused on meditation and return to grounding as well in the ethical dimension of practice (sīla). We are proposing what we call the “Buddhist Ethics & Action Network,” in which we both highlight ethical practice, understood both individually and socially, as a crucial dimension of our overall practice, and suggest a number of ways to understand how ethical practice might manifest in our contemporary world.

The Noble Eightfold Path outlines the training of our path of awakening, leading to the end of dukkha. There are three inter-related modes of training: Training in wisdom (pañña), represented by two of the eight factors, related to view (or understanding) and intentions; ethical practice (sīla), represented by three of the eight factors, related to livelihood, speech, following ethical guidelines in our behavior and actions in our world; and meditation (samādhi), represented by a further three factors, including cultivation of concentration, mindfulness, and skillful effort to develop the positive and work through the negative. In the Tibetan tradition, practice is commonly seen in a similar way, as involving view (the wisdom aspect), meditation, and conduct (the ethical aspect). Similarly, in mainstream forms of contemporary Western Zen, following the sixteen bodhisattva ethical precepts complements the teachings and meditation practice.

Most of us know the five basic ethical precepts at the heart of ethical practice as taught by the Buddha: (1) not killing (sometimes interpreted more broadly as not harming); (2) not taking that which is not given, i.e., not stealing; (3) bringing care to sexuality (including, for some, celibacy); (4) skillful speech and communication; and (5) bringing care to substances which shift consciousness (including, for some, abstinence).

In the teachings of the Buddha, ethical practice both in the context of communities and the larger society was central. Spiritual practice guided by the Buddha took place within a monastic community (in which caste divisions had been abolished—an important ethical foundation). The ethical precepts were intended most basically to guide personal practice for those in the monastic community and also for lay people in the larger society. The precepts, however, were also intended to help bring the care and compassion at the heart of ethical practice to a larger community and social context. (One colleague, Nathan Glyde, in fact prefers to use “care” rather than “ethical practice,” particularly if people see “ethics” as primarily about following rules.)

For example, in the Sutta Nipata, the Buddha gave guidance on the precept on killing that had an explicitly individual and social understanding of the precept: “Let one not destroy life nor cause others to destroy life and, also, not approve of others’ killing” (italics added). Thich Nhat Hanh would later give a similar social reading of the precept on killing in the Tiep Hien Precepts: “Do not kill. Do not let others kill. Find whatever means possible to protect life and prevent war.”

Further, the Buddha counseled his practitioners to care for and benefit others beyond the monastic community, urging practitioners: “Wander forth . . . for the welfare of the multitude, for the happiness of the multitude, out of compassion for the world” (SN 4.5.2). In a parallel way, the Buddha taught metta (lovingkindness) and the other heart practices of compassion, joy, and equanimity as practices to help us bring the awakened heart to all beings:

So with a boundless heart
Should one cherish all living beings:
Radiating kindness over the entire world

Other meditation practices were understood as also connected with ethical practice. For example, “wrong mindfulness” (micchā-sati) is mindfulness disconnected from ethical practice; a burglar could be very mindful, but such mindfulness would be “wrong mindfulness” (as described, for example, in MN 117)!

Some 200 to 250 years after the death of the Buddha, according to scholars, Ashoka became Emperor of much of what is now India, ruling from 268 to 232 BCE. After several years as the Emperor, Ashoka became a follower of the Buddha, and developed a society based in many ways on the Buddha’s core ethical teachings.

John Strong, a scholar of the life of Ashoka, speaks of how Ashoka developed “a moral polity of active social concern, religious tolerance, ecological awareness, the observance of common ethical precepts, and the renunciation of war” (Strong, 1989). Ashoka abolished the death penalty, provided medical facilities for both humans and non-human animals, organized help for the welfare of the poor and aged, and restricted killing non-human animals for food in the imperial kitchen. This occurred some 2300 years ago!

In the later development of Buddhism, the figure of the bodhisattva (literally “the awakening being”), also present in early Buddhism, was a central feature of the Mahayana and also was developed further in the Theravada tradition. The bodhisattva aspires both to awakening and to helping others, and is in large part motivated to address and end harm, and to bring about care and ethically grounded action. Shantideva, author of A Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life, writes:

May I be a guard for those who are protectorless,
A guide for those who journey on the road;
For those who wish to go across the water,
May I be a boat, a raft, a bridge.
May I be an isle for those who yearn for landfall,
And a lamp for those who long for light;
For those who need a resting place, a bed . . .
Thus, for every single thing that lives,
In number like the boundless reaches of the sky,
May I be their sustenance and nourishment
Until they pass beyond the bounds of dukkha.

A fifth century Theravada text by Acariya Dhammapala includes this passage on “the great aspiration”:

“Crossed I would cross [others], freed I would free [others], tamed I would tame [others], calmed I would calm [others], comforted I would comfort [others], attained to Nibbana I would lead [others] to Nibbana, purified I would purify [others], enlightened I would enlighten [others] . . . Oh, may I awaken to supreme perfect enlightenment, and bring well-being and happiness to all beings!”

For a number of reasons, the development of Insight Meditation in the West has unfortunately marginalized ethical practice. The primary emphasis has been on meditation (with some emphasis on wisdom). We even call many of our Buddhist centers “meditation centers.” This is the case with two of my home centers in Northern California, the “Spirit Rock Meditation Center” and the “East Bay Meditation Center.” Interestingly, as a group of us were developing plans to start the East Bay center with a strong socially engaged perspective, we decided to abandon the original name, the East Bay Dharma Center (which suggested the broader view of Buddhist practice outlined above), in large part because we didn’t think that many in the public would know the term, “dharma,” but they would know “meditation” and be drawn to come to the center. (Even with the name change, however, the emphasis on socially engaged practice was central.)

Similarly, Western Insight practitioners might ask another, “How’s your practice going?” A common response might be something like, “Pretty good. I do a half hour a day.” The implicit meaning is that practice is about formal meditation. In a parallel way, retreats are often called “meditation retreats,” and involve a discussion at the beginning of most retreats of the five lay ethical precepts and a brief ritual in which retreatants commit to the precepts (in my experience the discussion and ritual usually take about ten minutes total). Sometimes we similarly briefly remember the ethical precepts at the end of retreats.

To be sure, some teachers and practitioners do emphasize the different dimensions of ethical practice, making commitments, for example, to the five basic ethical precepts. However, the nature of ethical practice is typically understood in terms of personal face-to-face interactions. The earlier social dimensions of ethical practice have largely not been present in Western Insight Meditation.

We can understand some of the historical reasons for the centrality of meditation and the marginalization of ethical practice in Insight Meditation. As Erik Braun in The Birth of Insight outlines, Ledi Sayadaw pioneered offering 10-day meditation retreats for lay people at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, originally as part of a strategy to preserve Buddhism in Burma in the face of British colonialism. Later others, including Mahasi Sayadaw and S.N. Goenka, further developed such retreats, which were then experienced in Asia by those who brought Insight Meditation to the West, including Joseph Goldstein, Sharon Salzberg, Jack Kornfield (who also experienced monastic life in Thailand), Jacqueline Schwartz, and others.

In such retreats, which I attended at the Insight Meditation Society (IMS) starting in 1977 (a year after the founding of IMS by the four persons just named), the focus was on formal meditation, with some attention to wisdom teachings, but with minimal attention to ethical practice (and to most aspects of daily life practice as well). For myself and for many others, the emphasis on meditation and developing one’s inner spiritual life was a powerful draw, in part for some related to how the contemplative and mystical dimensions of Western religions had been largely unavailable for many centuries, and no doubt in part related for many to previous experiences with psychedelics.

I had been active in addressing social issues since my teens, but as I began meditation in my early and mid-twenties, I loved attending these retreats and opening to the wonders and challenges of our minds, hearts, and bodies, even as I sometimes wondered about the connection of meditation to ethical and social concerns.

Over the next years, though, I was increasingly drawn to a vision of integrating deep meditative development with daily life practice grounded in ethical practice and the related social engagement. While staying connected with Spirit Rock, which was founded in the mid-1980s, I found a home starting in the late 1980s and going through the 1990s in the emerging movement often called “Socially Engaged Buddhism,” linked with the Buddhist Peace Fellowship and the International Network of Engaged Buddhists. With Diana Winston and Maylie Scott, I helped to develop within BPF a series of training programs under the rubric of BASE (the Buddhist Alliance for Social Engagement) for those integrating training in wisdom and meditation with social service and social action.

Socially engaged Buddhism in the West, influenced initially by Asian organizers and teachers such as A.T. Ariyaratne, Thich Nhat Hanh, and Sulak Sivaraksa, and developed starting in the late 1970s, was for many decades on the margins of Western Buddhism, including Western Insight Meditation. However, in the last two decades, it has been integrated to some extent as an option for those interested in connecting wisdom, meditation, and ethical practice as they respond to community and social needs.

Socially engaged Buddhists such as Thich Nhat Hanh, Sulak Sivaraksa, Robert Atiken, and others have helped to articulate more fully social readings of the five ethical precepts. We follow the ethical precepts in recognizing, as citizens of a purportedly democratic society, how killing, harming, and stealing are done in our name, with our tax dollars and through many of our institutions; our ethical practice guides us to respond. We similarly recognize larger systemic concerns related to a lack of care and at times to abuse in terms of sexuality and intoxicants. And we recognize how widespread is unskillful speech that violates the guidelines for wise speech.

We thus come, as we find ourselves currently aware of the polycrisis. to a core question: What might a renewed commitment to ethical practice by Buddhist practitioners (including ethical practice linked to social issues) mean in our times?

As one response to this question, Diana Winston and I, with the support of Alex Loddengaard, are developing what we are calling The Buddhist Ethics & Action Network.

The core of the project is the intention to support millions of Buddhist practitioners especially in the West to shift their understanding of practice! Yes, it’s wonderful for practitioners to continue with their daily half hour of formal practice, informed by wisdom teachings. The shift in the sense of practice comes when such practitioners say to themselves, “I also want to commit weekly to 1-3 hours (or more) of ‘ethical practice,’ in the way that most calls to me.” Perhaps that person would be at times helping a neighbor or relative in need, or working on a community concern, or helping with broader social issues such as the climate crisis, growing authoritarianism, and the other issues mentioned above.

Each person would go through a process, perhaps in the context of community or working with a teacher, similar to the process one of my students went through, connecting ethical practice with responding to social concerns. She met with me and told me, “I want to be active and help address larger issues.” I asked, “What issue do you want to address?” She responded, “Climate issues.” Her commitment to the first precept of protecting life had led her to want to protect the earth and the beings of the earth.

I then asked, “How much time a week do you have?” She responded, “Five hours.” I then invited her to research several groups or organizations with which she might work, and meet with me in a week. She came back and was clear about the organization with which she would work, and committed to five hours a week! She stayed working with that organization regularly for several years until her ethical practice shifted to raising a child.

We want to support millions of people going through something like that simple yet profound process that my student experienced. On our website, we’ll identify perhaps twenty larger social and ecological concerns, as well as both organizations compatible with Buddhist practice, some Buddhist-based, and suggestions of multiple ways of being involved with a given issue, including ways to volunteer, donate, make calls, write letters, and act in other ways.

We’ll also give resources and identify supports for the different forms of ethical practice. We’ll point to ways of developing wise speech, a foundational capacity in ethical practice, and many resources (writings, recordings, upcoming trainings, etc.) in this area. We’ll suggest how to work meditatively with the ups and downs of engagement, including being skillful with difficult emotions, thoughts, and body states; staying in touch with joy, compassion, metta, and equanimity; and finding what helps with balance and perspective for the long haul.

We’ll also make available resources and supports to help us integrate training in wisdom with ethical practice and meditation, helping us to see how our practices addressing particular issues or concerns are supported by seeing the world with “wisdom eyes” (backed up by some knowledge of history). How is a particular issue in large part structured by a history of greed, hatred, and delusion (individual and institutional) in the world? How do we see how the ethical precepts are at times violated in our institutions and policies and by our leaders? Where in our society do we find groups, organizations, and institutions that support and are in accord with the ethical precepts? How do we maintain the deeper vision of awakening—both individual and collective—in our engagement, remembering, as is said in Proverbs 29:18, that “Where there is no vision, the people perish”? How do we stay in touch with a vision that help us to imagine successfully addressing a given problem or crisis and going beyond it to a transformed collective way of being?

My friend, mentor, and teacher Joanna Macy, who died last year at the age of 96, spoke of three aspects of what she called “The Great Turning” to a sustainable world. These three aspects integrate as well the three dimensions of Buddhist training—in wisdom, meditation, and ethical practice. The first is stopping further damage from occurring, which is guided by ethical practice, but requires the other two forms of training. The second is changing consciousness, which corresponds especially to training in meditation, on the basis of wisdom, and then bringing the changed consciousness out into our being in the world. The third is developing transformed institutions, especially guided by vision grounded in wisdom that directs creative ethical practice, supported by meditation.

Historian Howard Zinn tells us, “We don’t have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in progress and change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world.” This is the vision of the Buddhist Ethics & Action Network.