Engaged Buddhism contribution to the climate change debate
by Vince Cavuoto
Is there a unique contribution that Engaged Buddhism can make to the climate change debate?
What goes under the rubric “Climate crisis”?
- Rising temperatures
- Unusual weather patterns
- Melting polar caps
- Disappearing of animal species
If we take a systems thinking view of things, we try to understand not the isolated incidence of the recurring floods and bush fires we come to the realisation that it is the relentless pursuit of economic growth and the industrial complex driving this economic growth.
There is a limit, however, in the understanding that a systems view of things can give us about the inner dynamics that fuels the economic drive that ultimately is pushing against the limits of the biosphere.
It is the Buddhist understanding of the human situation that can shed some light on the root problems our civilization faces and possibly give us some clues of how these problems might be tackled.
The Buddha’s teachings revolve around the 4 Noble Truths and the first comment we need to make is that they appear very easy to enunciate and so they may appear easy to understand when in fact they are rather difficult to penetrate.
The mental and physical suffering of people in pre-modern societies was enough for them to relate very easily to the first Noble Truth, that life is suffering. There would have been no requirement for a more sophisticated understanding of it. The first Noble Truth would have been indicative of a reality which for the majority of people would have been a daily experience.
Given the above, there would have been no need for the understanding of a uniquely Buddhist teaching, i.e. it is that the self that is dukkha and it is only in late modernity that this perspective on the Buddhist teachings makes not only more sense but it provides a key for the understanding of the issues that plague our industrial civilisation, for which the climate emergency is only one of the areas that are problematic. One other being the high suicide rate, an issue which will be part of a separate analysis.
In purely sociological terms the high modernity is characterised by what Anthony Giddens has called “the reflexive project of the self”, when everybody is involved in creative a narrative about the self. The unfortunate part in this process is that consumer capitalism exploits this psychological need by creating artificial needs that can only be satisfied by the promise of ownership of goods and services which cannot live up to the expectation. So a continuous cycle of dissatisfaction is created.
Buddhism points to the realisation that career and economic success cannot be the foundation of a fulfilling existence and the secular paradise capitalism promises is fundamentally flawed, it can never live up to the expectations. An existence based solely on material pursuits cannot provide lasting satisfaction and the Buddha’s teachings remind us of the hopeless task of looking to capitalism for answers that require a spiritual solution, that is they require an inner transformation or to use a Greek word, a “metanoia”. So why the self is a problem, according to Buddhism? It is a problem because it is a construct and as such it can never be grounded in anything and ad such it is always shadowed by a sense of lack, that there is something wrong with me. Because of that, it tries to ground itself in the external world by pursuing goals that for society are symbols (not realities) of achievement or symbols that can give the self a greater sense of reality that can never be acquired, like money, power, status, romantic love.
If the pursuit of the above objectives does not give the fulfilment promised, it can only be because there is not enough money or power or status etc. So looking at the modern world from a Buddhist perspective we notice that the greed for more of the above and the aggressiveness arising from anything threatening the achievement have become institutionalised and these institutions that form the essence of our capitalistic culture, have developed a life of their own.
They are out of control because they are based of a fiction of an infinite potential for growth on a planet that has reached the limits of sustainability of this growth.
After this brief overview it is appropriate that we try to give a response to the question inherent in the title of this article: What Engaged Buddhism can contribute to the climate emergency debate?
My answer is that we need to be realistic in the type of action that can be reasonably taken that might have effective results.
The fundamental response that Engaged Buddhism has to have in this debate is educational.
We need to distinguish ethnic Buddhist organisations which we suspect are blissfully unaware that climate change is occurring as a result of human activity. We need to make presentations to the various Buddhist groups to sensitise practitioners of the reality of climate change and the what a Buddhist response should be. Some creative thought should be put in the preparation of such a material.
The other group of people we should be targeting are the various meditation groups that exist around the country and the project here would be to create material that stresses the urgency of climate change and the role Buddhists should be playing in addressing these issues.
How we address the issue of hate, greed and ignorance that have been institutionalised should be the topic of conferences designed to understand how the economic system we live in, is not natural, but can be deconstructed and the wrong beliefs inherent in such a paradigm should be exposed.
The other area would be co-operation with other organisations that are concerned with climate emergency and participate in programs together, provided Buddhist principles of non-violence are adhered to.
One last point I would like to point out as a passing reference is the understanding of paradigm change. I personally believe that we are fast reaching the end of the usefulness of the paradigm at the core of our capitalistic consumer society and a new paradigm is emerging.
Engaging Buddhism should contribute to the formulation of this new paradigm and can play a major role in defining the spiritual framework for the rest of this century.