In current American Buddhist life and culture, we are witnessing significant discomfort, if not outright condemnation, regarding the “right speech” of taking political stances. While the genocide in Gaza and violence in the West Bank have foregrounded this dynamic, such criticism against political speech among Buddhists is not new. For nearly two decades now there has been a growing critique of the resistance of dharma communities and leaders to critically engaging structural political violence, while in the last two years frustration with this silence has deepened to the point of practitioners abandoning their sanghas.
The Buddhists who support political speech critique the Buddhist community, especially its leadership, for equating a refusal to take explicit stances with an inclusive, nondual insight or an adherence to right speech — their political silence resulting from a transcendent and privileged spirituality. The critics of those Buddhists who speak out often argue that political stances too often reduce complex socially shared karmic conditions to a singular causal actor or group — their strong political speech resulting from an oversimplified, dualistic confusion. Here I am not interested in making claims for or against these or other positions. Instead, I hope to address the confusion and fracturing this political moment is causing within our communities and the potential lack of theoretical resources we may have to address these issues.
Too often both sides of a given political issue do not have the tools needed to navigate the difficulty of having political conversations. Because of this, we have responses that range from astonishingly neglectful silence to destructive, self-righteous infighting. Sadly, both result in splitting our communities and diminishing the buddhadharma. We seem to be at a pivotal moment for some sectors of Buddhism in North America with respect to whether and how we step into the broader world of national and international political engagement.
Borrowing From Christian Theology
While it is true that some of what we face reflects broader trends in the nation, I am often left wondering if we as Buddhists simply do not have the theological tools to understand how to engage in public political discourse. It may be as simple as we don’t know how to talk about what we don’t know how to talk about.
I have found two of the conceptual frameworks that Christians have employed useful for sorting through this tension. While these are on their own probably not sufficient for Buddhists, they do point us in a direction that may be helpful when talking about politics.
To open space for this conversation between Christianity and Buddhism, I need to address the term “theology.” While Buddhists often cringe at this term (the Greek root, theos, means God), the actual practice of theology has long extended beyond simple debates about divinity and included broader discussion concerning right living. Theology has also included direct reflection on how communities and individuals bring together their deepest held convictions about spiritual life with their daily wrestling with the nature of their collective political life. For example, modern Christian thinkers have devoted significant attention to exploring how people are impacted by myriad political realities: power structures, economic systems, environmental destruction, racial equity, gender and sexuality, technology, embodiment, trauma and issues related to knowledge production. Fundamental to Christian engagement with these issues is the insight that no aspect of human experience falls outside the realm of theological reflection.
This important insight has led Buddhist thinkers like John Makransky, Roger Jackson, and others to claim the term “theology” for Buddhism. For comparative convenience, I will do the same here. To reflect theologically is to simply “reflect” on the shape and character of lived experience (including political life) from the perspective of the Buddhist tradition.
In contemporary Christian theological discourse faith reflection on the political has fallen into roughly two categories: Public Theology and Liberation Theology. While these two certainly overlap, each emerge from different traditions and foci, proffering different criticisms and limitations. My goal here is not to dive into the intricacies of an inter-Christian conversation about these categories, but to explain the two and then explore what Buddhism might have to learn from these legacies.
Public Theology: Engaging the Civic Sphere
Let’s start with “Public Theology,” a term that arose in the United States in the late 20th century as a way of bridging religious and secular public discourse. The term’s popularization is usually attributed to Martin Marcy’s 1974 paper on the subject, though the practice has its roots in earlier forms of theological engagement — Reinhold Niebuhr being one of its most prominent theologians. Public Theology asserts that religious communities must engage in public political dialogue with the broader civic world by bringing the unique knowledge of the Christian faith to bear on all manner of issues related to our shared existence and public life. This includes sharing faith perspectives on critical issues such as health care, immigration policy, and the environmental crisis, etc. — all of which intersect with Christian theological views about what constitutes human and planetary flourishing.
Liberation Theology: A Preferential Option for the Poor
Another Christian school of thought on how faith and political life interact is referred to as Liberation Theology. The term originated in the Medellín Conference organized in response to Vatican II’s Gaudium et Spes and was further articulated and made popular by the pioneering work of Gustavo Gutierrez, A Theology of Liberation (1971). It interprets the Gospel as a call to politically liberate communities from oppressive social, political, and economic structures through Christian actions that seek social justice. Liberation Theology stresses that because of Jesus’s own commitment to the poor, Christian theology must listen to the experience of the poor and oppressed and likewise take this as a starting point for analyzing how faith engages the world “from the margins.” It argues for a social/structural understanding of sin, rather than a strictly personal one. It also insists that faith must be manifest not just in ideas but in actions that result in concrete, real-world liberation. This is summed up in the claim that Christianity should always adopt, as Jesus did, a preferential option for the poor.
Like Public Theology, which is often criticized for having policy positions but never taking meaningful action in solidarity with the politically harmed, liberation theology also has its critics. It is considered by some to be too political — a view held by Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI, who claimed liberation theology was nothing but Marxist thought in Christian disguise. Public theologians also have critiqued liberation theology for an incessantly confrontational posture toward the established institutions of society and lack of strategic thinking on engaging democratic frameworks. Despite the criticisms, however, it is hard to overestimate the degree to which liberation theology has impacted a wide range of Christian approaches to understanding the relationship between theology, power, justice, and social transformation.
Turning Now to Engaged Buddhism
Against the backdrop of these two forms of Christian theological reflection on political engagement, I will now turn to “engaged Buddhism,” and explore how similar arguments have played out across the Buddhist landscape. In my estimation, most politically-minded Buddhists are in fact engaging in Public Theology insofar as they are asking the question: how do we bring the dharma to bear on a general notion of suffering in society? When engaged Buddhism is framed this way, it usually ends up focusing on liberal versions of social reform and avoids analyzing deeper power structures that would force an analysis revealing uneven, systemic violence. In this regard, they fail to name the materially specific causes and conditions of the suffering of oppressed and marginalized people. Rather, they tend to use broad categories like structural greed, hatred, and delusion as the source of their social critique without explicitly naming victims, perpetrators, or structures of violence in their particularities. At times, they even claim that naming particular actors is just another form of dualistic thinking that reifies relative reality and refuses universal compassion.
For all these reasons, I believe it is important to recognize that these two camps are doing different things. Public theologians are trying to influence the dialogue of the whole of society, attempting to make it more dharmic, and so they scaffold their arguments to include everyone on a kind of equal footing regarding dukkha. Liberation theologians, on the other hand, focus on those who are suffering the most, and thus choose — what was first coined by Father Pedro Arrupe in a general letter to Latin American Jesuits — a preferential option for the poor. Unfortunately, this difference is too quickly and wrongly reduced to a dharmic argument where the former is condemned for being caught up in the absolute while the latter is overly attached to the delusional dualisms of the relative.
From my perspective, these critiques both miss the point, making it difficult to have a dialogue at all. Both theological strategies must include the absolute and relative perspectives to be effective and accurate. Buddhist teachers, communities, and media need to see the value of both approaches so they do not fall prey to a fixed position when attempting to meaningfully reduce suffering. Having an understanding of different modes of political engagement might allow them to skillfully move between frames depending on what is being addressed. Like Public Theologians, we need to be flexible and broadminded about how social change occurs and like Liberation Theologians, we need to be pointed in our social critiques and always willing to take action rather than just formulating broad-sweeping social analysis.
For example, while I certainly lean toward Liberation Theology as an Engaged Buddhist, I have no problem sitting down, as a Public Theologian, and talking about how the dharma might serve as an underpinning for organizing a political party, forming a policy position, or talking about gender, racial and sexual justice. Looking at all sides of these issues with equanimity is critical in this work. Moreover, this kind of public thinking and work is useful and necessary for democracies to effectively function.
That said, the genocide in Gaza, for example, is not a reality that Public Theology has effectively engaged, nor is Public Theology equipped to take on topics like ethnic cleansing in Myanmar and Ethiopia, cartel and gang violence in Mexico and Haiti, the wars in Sudan and DRC, or the invasion of Ukraine. I would add that the race, sexuality and gender work, when addressed as “public theology issues,” remain broadly upper middle class in orientation with little if any attention to the intersection of material poverty and lived political marginalization. Might the reason for privileging Public Theology in many cases be that Liberation Theology’s preferential option for the poor directly challenges the middle-class biases, privileges, and structures of Buddhist convert communities and in doing so, avoids naming power relations, addressing root causes, and including the class analysis so often needed to understand capitalist society? No matter how difficult these topics are to navigate, there are moments when critiques from the perspective of Liberation Theology are appropriate in our broader dharmic community.
To put a point on this, both of these frameworks are necessary. As public theologians, dharma practitioners need to engage in broad dialogues about the current state of public affairs and the common good. The rise of authoritarianism, human rights abuses against immigrants, destruction of protections for the marginalized, dismantling of voting rights, etc. all require the full force of our voices as public theologians who assert that the dharma offers a particular view on our social reality that is critical if we are to care for all beings. “All” is the operative word here.
Addressing Suffering
As liberation theologians, however, the starting point is the poor and the marginal, not a general “we.” By adopting this more specific standpoint, liberationists are not committing some metaphysical crime of dualism in defending a preferential option for the poor any more than a doctor who has a preferential option for treating someone with a severed leg over someone with a cold. When a dharma practitioner, impassioned around addressing the concrete suffering of the poor and marginalized, raises this up as deserving greater attention than the spiritual, non-economic suffering of those not materially impoverished or politically marginalized, this is not some dualistic confusion about the dharma. Rather, it is skillful means. This pointed attention is born of direct understanding that triaging suffering — and therefore attending first to material misery — is a requirement for a bodhisattva focused on ending dukkha in the world. In fact, I would argue that to relativize suffering in the name of nondualism is itself a profound expression of delusion in that it holds the absolute as separate from relative expressions of suffering.
Having made this point, I need to acknowledge that the reverse dynamic can also become a hindrance to engaging suffering more broadly. When those aligned with Liberation Theology stances dismiss other “lesser” forms of dukkha as unimportant, the complexity of dukkha and its corresponding compassion have been severely curtailed. To believe that because someone has a severed leg means we should forego our compassion for another suffering with a cold — or even for the one who severed the leg out of their own spiritual pain –– is a failure of dharmic understanding as great as the one who is caught in the numbing cloud of a transcendent nondualism. If the leg is used to ignore a cold or a cold the leg, the dharma is lost.
As bodhisattvas, we can attend to the severed leg without losing empathy for the one with a cold. We can name catastrophic violence without exiling less severe forms of violence from our sense of concern. But the spiritual necessity of recognizing the latter should never lead us to negate acting to stop the enormous harm of the former. This is exactly where universal compassion is expressed as skillful means. Do I find this simple? Of course not. I am an impressively limited human being who regularly gets hung up by my own confusion around the myriad forms of harm. Am I confident this is the dharma? Without question. It is no small matter that while the Buddha never neglected the dukkha associated with a life of protected indulgence, it was the lived, material suffering of the poor beyond the palace walls that drove him into a life of seeking the dharma. The scriptures are clear that the bodhisattva path is one of responding to the whole of interconnected suffering, yet some forms because of their dire immediacy must move us more urgently.
Unfortunately, I’ve heard too many Buddhists dismiss the samsaric Saha world of human beings as undeserving of attention for those committed to true awakening, since samsara will always and forever cycle through suffering regardless of our efforts. For these practitioners, our work is to be liberated from this world, not caught up in its confusion. Here liberation from suffering is a spiritual event, even fantastical or unworldly. I am not claiming such liberation is not happening around us in ways we do not understand, but I personally cannot subscribe only to this notion. For me, and I believe for my Zen tradition, awakening allows the path back into samsara’s suffering, back into society, to metabolize and transform humanity’s lived misery. We are instead working to be liberated into the world of suffering in hopes of affecting its transformation.
If we’re Buddhists attending to lived suffering rather than suffering as abstracted dharmic concept, we need to turn first toward more extreme versions. Talking about greed, hate, and delusion in generalities won’t suffice — we must name the specific causes and conditions of material poverty without essentializing particular people as singular causes. That said, we can name ongoing violence without reproducing it through our own reactive and destructive behavior. This is both an insight error and practically ineffective, since hatefulness only deepens hatefulness, however righteous that hate may feel. I’m struck that Buddhists drawn to Liberation Theology understand that violence toward the cause of suffering is unskillful regarding their own hearts and karma, that these should be held with love. Yet we often don’t extend this position to social causes of violence, where enraged righteousness becomes common currency.
The Culture of Attack and Silence
Seeing this discrepancy is critical as we are so often silent out of fear of being attacked, cancelled, doxed, or otherwise publicly humiliated. These are real acts of violence and aggression that keep people from standing up for what they know in their hearts and bones is morally right. While it is each person’s choice to act from outrage — and many will without thought or empathy — I feel that attacking personally those who do not speak out in the way we hope is wrongheaded. Too often this happens even when they are otherwise allied around ending suffering in the world.
To attack someone who is experiencing fear of attack will only reinforce the culture of silence we are criticizing. While it may provide the temporary satisfaction of self-righteousness that calling out so often does, humiliating people into the open — like flushing birds from a bush to shoot them — has rarely proven to be a successful strategy for building long-term solidarity in social change movements. In response, the attacked may speak the words we want to hear to alleviate the immediate humiliation, but their hearts are forever wounded in relationship to the very cause their humiliators celebrate. So we should not be surprised when they eventually walk away from the struggle for liberation, whether that be social, political, or spiritual. Very few choose dehumanization for themselves, and few return from its public display, so taking it up as a political strategy merely aligns us with the agendas of violence we are working to end.
Moving Forward Together
In contrast, we must lovingly and unwaveringly encourage one another in our moral voices so we can trust and act in solidarity, so we can hope to become a spiritual movement that transforms our society into the world we wish to see. I realize that given all the historic pain of our nation and this world — especially that which has gone unrecognized–this is a huge ask. I certainly doubt I can personally live up to it every day. However, I do believe it is the request of the buddhadharma, which I feel must ultimately govern Buddhists in our collective struggle for freedom, for the material liberation of the poor and marginalized, and ultimately the spiritual liberation of all beings. Knowing that so many are engaged in resisting the current violences and attacks on democracy in our nation, my hope is that our Buddhist communities will continue to work to develop a place that encourages our political voices. When it comes to the excesses of political power and economic greed and exploitation, we can never underestimate the power of our disciplined, unwavering conviction as citizens and people of faith. Amid such widespread violence and suffering, we must devote ourselves fully to the buddhadharma. To do anything less risks allowing our precious human hearts to erode beneath the toxic logic of cynicism, dehumanization, and rationalized violence that has come to rule our current political culture. My sense is this is a path we all feel has been traveled long enough. Instead, we could all work together on the bodhisattva path that, yes, responds to all the suffering of all beings and — without any contradiction — names and uproots the causes of the most catastrophic harms before us.
See also Greg Snyder’s Lion’s Roar article, Seven Ways to Actualize Skillful Buddhist Political Speech.
