Go to the longer, full report on the meeting

From February 4th to 9th, Think Sangha held its third international meeting in Chiang Mai, Thailand on the topic of Buddhist Responses to Modern Violence. This was our first meeting in Thailand since our inaugural Dhammic Society Meeting in 1996 which predated the formation of Think Sangha. After meetings in Japan and Hawaii, Thailand was a significant choice of venue, because it marked a shifting emphasis in Think Sangha to more actively nurture the grassroots activist, or compassion in action, aspect of our identity. For the last few years, our theoretical analysis, or wisdom in action, identity has been dominant. This analytical emphasis has meant that most of our writings and work have emerged from a more deductive approach; that is we have generally started with a deep understanding of various Buddhist conceptual tools (like not-self or dependent origination) and worked outwards, applying these tools to social issues to create a Buddhist form of social analysis. While this approach has its merits, all good Buddhists know that wisdom and compassion form an indivisible pair which mutually enrich eachother. In this way, inductive approaches to confronting social issues from a Buddhist perspective are needed; that is to begin with our daily struggles as Buddhists to confront suffering and work inward towards developing principles and practices which have arisen from these struggles. In this third Think Sangha meeting, we were for the first time in large majority Asian, coming from grassroots experiences in the South. As such, it was natural that the group took a more inductive approach to confront the issue of violence.

In this way, the group began with their own personal experiences of Buddhist practice in relation to violence and worked outward over the next five days to include gender and family violence, religious and ethnic violence, and national and global violence. After exploring our basic Buddhist identities, we broke into small groups to share a violent event (experienced or witnessed) which had a direct impact on us. We were asked to share how our understanding and practice of Buddhism helped to respond or cope with the experience. Finally, we were instructed to record any principles that were revealed by these stories to report back to the main group. Not surprisingly, one set of principals that emerged was compassion (karuna), love and forgiveness in confronting the perpetrators of violence. However, these principles immediately led to deeper contentious issues concerning the boundary between forgiving and forgetting, and questions about what a Buddhist concept of justice might be. Buddhism is often stereotyped as being socially passive towards social injustice. While this may be positive in that Buddhism has rarely if ever created holy wars, according to Gandhi's understanding of non-violence, such passivity can be equally as damaging when it allows, and thereby supports, the violent actions of others. Buddhists often think that it is better to do nothing than to act our of anger or be forced into violent action through engagement, which creates more bad karma. However, as Bhikkhuni Dhammananda from Thailand noted, if one is in a situation to help another and doesn't, then one transgresses one's own precepts. Karma is not only what one has done but also includes what one hasn't done and what one can do as intentional, moral action. This initial discussion exposed a deep, common theme for the following days concerning the difference between passivity and equanimity (upekkha) and the interpretation of the doctrine of karma as a kind of retributive justice.

Concerning gender and family issues, we learned from our host Ouyporn Khuankaew of the International Women's Partnership (IWP) about the popular teaching of karma which perpetuates an inferiority complex among women toward not only their spiritual capabilities but also their worth in daily society. In her conference paper, Ouyporn noted that if a woman seeks out a monk for advice concerning physical beatings by her husband, she will usually be told that this violence is caused by karma and that "she cannot do much except be patient and kind to her husband so that one day the karmic force will cease and everything will be fine". In this way, women are dissuaded from ever leaving abusive husbands. Ouyporn spoke of this situation as a kind of "structural karma" in that prevailing attitudes about women, their power and their worth build a structure (or more precisely a culture) into which both women and men are inculcated.

Concerning ethnic and religious violence, we learned from Khuensai Jaiyen of the Shan Herald Agency for News how the doctrine of karma is used to instill passivity towards violent oppression. In Shan State of Northern Burma where the Shan people share a common Buddhist heritage with the majority Burmans who dominate the military government, Khuensai noted that most monks in the region are Burmese and have links to the military. They tend to emphasize patience or equanimity (upekkha) towards the trouble in this region, and also teach karma as the reason for present sufferings. There is a prevalent view among the Shan people inculcated by Buddhism that to recruit soldiers to resist the Burmese military is evil, because it means taking part in killing and the creation of more bad karma in the future. In turn, they have developed a sense of fatalism that their suffering is due to bad karma from a past life. Khuensai said the idea of past karma has been used to make the people submissive, so they are waiting for a savior, unable to liberate themselves. He also commented that non-violence has been interpreted here as passivity, so instead of fighting for their rights, the people choose to flee.

Concerning national and global issues, these issues of passivity and resignation were further encountered in stories from the North. Participants from the United States and Japan spoke of the deep fear and emotional paralysis that most citizens in these countries confront in their repressed awareness of complicity in environmental destruction and structural violence through economic development and militarism. Our responsibility for direct forms of violence is integrally related to our complicity with structural and cultural violence. This was something we learned on the first day of the meeting from Yeshua Moser, Director of the Southeast Asia Office for Non-Violence International in Bangkok. He provided us with our one theoretical model to reflect upon during our conversations - the triangle matrix of direct-structural-cultural violence developed by Norwegian sociologist Johan Galtung.

With direct violence as the apex of the iceberg poking out of the water, structural and cultural violence form its bases, usually hidden from sight beneath the water. In this way, to confront the roots of direct violence in their structural and cultural forms means also to confront one's own unconscious patterns of belief, thought and action in our daily lives. In his conference paper, Yeshua spoke of the Buddhist precepts (sila) in terms ofﾊexamining one's own personal connections with systems of killing and living in a way that removes complicity with them. As examples, he cited from his own personal experience having become vegetarian, not paying taxes which support government spending on military, and various kind of non-violent social activism.

Concerning the experience of fear and emotional paralysis in the face of violence, the group used some of the Buddhist teacher Joanna Macy's practices in her workshops dealing with despair and empowerment. Using the Buddhist insight of non-duality and interconnectedness, participants were asked on draws webs of interconnection between their own activities and partners, and further outward towards other like-minded groups to see the deep solidarity of peoples working for transformative awareness and social justice. At the same time, participants were instructed to fill in the other half of these webs with the groups who oppose the work of the participant's web of solidarity. Finally, we were asked to choose two or three of these "antagonists" and explore ways in which they could be transformed into allies. Drawing on the experiences of Arjuna Krishnaratne of Sarvodaya in Sri Lanka to overcome factionalization and distrust amidst Sri Lanka's ethnic war, we learned that we need to look at the resource potentials of every single actor in our sphere of action. If an antagonist cannot be transformed in some way into a resource, they at least need to be transformed into a neutral force in our work. In Sarvodaya's case, Krishna noted that if the government is opposed to you, provide a service that they don't or can't and then you can gain their respect and they have to deal with you.

In our short time together, it was certainly impossible to resolve all issues regarding violence. The discussion about how to confront the military regime in Burma represents an ongoing challenge for Buddhism as to how to respond to extreme violence while maintaining one of the deepest practices of non-harming. Phra Phaisan, who teaches non-violent methods to border police in Thailand, called on the group to perceive situations more widely, and not just as political struggles. Buddhism can work perhaps most effectively in these areas of structural and cultural violence. He said you may fight and kill, but you can't use Buddhism to legitimize it. It is essential to not make the Dhamma serve your own ends, but to use it to challenge yourself to grow.

Using the Dhamma to challenge ourselves to grow, I believe, is very much at the heart of the inductive approach we used at this meeting. Ironically, our one Christian participant, Gerhard Koberlin of Hamburg Universityﾊin Germany, best summed up this approach as "ecumenical learning". Ecumenical learning uses personal interaction and communication as the basis for transformation. This may sound simple, yet it has extremely significant ramifications. Such interaction and communication does not mean simply to "be present" with those people we meet. Rather, it is a more active engagement of reaching out to the suffering and the marginalized. This outreach to the marginalized means creating spaces for breaking the silence concerning the experiences of marginalization, because perhaps the greatest injustice that the marginalized experience is the fact that their histories go unrecorded and their voices go unheard. In our short meeting, we attempted to honor this spirit by giving each participant the stage for telling their story to the group. This act of speech is a first step in empowering various types of Buddhists to rearticulate the teachings in an historical and social context which meets their needs - rather than as decontextualized principles which engender resignation to karmic destinies.

In conclusion, the group has committed to various "ecumenical learning" activities through mutual visits in support of each other. Principally, this will involve visits by the Thai women and bhikkhuni in the group to Indonesia and an exposure trip for young Indonesia Buddhists to Sarvodaya in Sri Lanka. Most participants have also committed to recording their stories in written form. In addition, others have committed to more deductive, theoretical papers on Buddhist responses to violence. We are also developing a short declaration on the meaning of karma as intentional, moral action rather than retributive justice. Finally, many in the group have taken up the challenge to further reduce their complicity with forces of violence by engaging in direct, non-violent protests against the war in Iraq.