culturally engaged buddhism

The expression socially engaged Buddhism was coined by Thich Nhat Hanh and developed by Sulak Sivaraksa and has become a widely used term referring to the activism and social work performed by some Buddhists either indvidually or as a function of their sangha activity. The Amida sangha has become well known for its commitments in this type of activity as a co-ordinated and committed sangha at the levels of resisting oppression, assisting the afflicted and demonstrating an alternative, in arenas as varied as the Balkans, India, Africa and city centre areas of the UK. All well and good. However, it goes further than this. I would like to float and advance the term Culturally Engaged Buddhism as a relatively more apt description of what we are trying to do here. I understand cultural engagement as including everything that might fall under the rubric of SEB and more, and all of it with a subtle shift of emphasis. Amida-shu is culturally engaged in that we are not only engaged in socially useful or politically implicated actions; we are also engaged in the arts and letters and performance; we are concerned about the kind of values that underpin society, and especially that conduce to community; we are concerned to generate the conditions that give rise to creativity; we are interested in friendship, co-operation and synergism, and in unleashing the energy of people who have something to offer, helping them to become both true individuals and contributing members of 'rightly resolute groups'. We are not just into service delivery - in fact, we are hardly into that at all - we are more interested in how to help people to become creative and helping people to help other people. I want to invite our members to think about how we can generate the kind of matrix of conditions, both locally and internationally, that nurture creativity of many kinds and that build the flowering of community at a more sublime level. This can include supporting social causes but it is not limited to it and we need to think carefully just what the Buddhist cause in society is. We should not simply jump onto bandwagons that are only tangentially related to our true values; but nor should we flinch from actions that will bring out the potential in a wide range of people yearning for spiritual liberation in a wide variety of ways, not limited to orthodoxly religious ones. Amidism is well placed to bridge cultures and to help generate the meta-culture (and 'metta' culture) by which the future of our world may be enriched. Let's do it.

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