This paper is about two problems in human rights work from a Buddhist practitioner's perspective, one structural and one experiential. The structural conflict concerns the use of judicial and legal mechanisms to achieve human rights; I believe this acts as a barrier to successful human rights work in Buddhist environments. The experiential problem concerns the way in which much of standard human rights practice acts as a barrier to the development of compassion in the practitioner. Although these are far from the only problems, I believe they are important and illustrative. My own experience of these conflicts comes from almost 20 years as a human rights worker and even longer as a Zen practitioner.

In America we pay a lot of attention to personal problems; we spend months or years examining why a relationship has not worked, why our career path hasn't given us what we wanted, etc. But we tend not to give the same attention to problems at the international, political level. With regard to human rights, we export assumptions, strategies, and practices based deeply in the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition and fail to examine why they don't work. If we are actually to be of compassionate assistance in real suffering, we must move beyond the idea that because we have good intentions we already know what is best...

I came to Cambodia in 1996 expecting that living in a Buddhist environment would provide deep support for the integration of human rights work and spiritual practice. I found this not to be the case. Initially I blamed this on human rights work having been imported into Cambodia as part of an international agenda focusing on voter education and civil and political rights, without consultation as to what was important to the Cambodians themselves. While there was certainly political conflict, it seemed very far from people's most pressing concerns, from the social disintegration, disease, and destitution everywhere apparent...

Excerpted from Turning Wheel, Summer 2000