What is Engaged Buddhism?

Engaged Buddhism applies to the relationship of inner work and outer work. Inner work is the more traditional Buddhist practice of awakening, most typically through meditation practice. Outer work is how we seek to address the suffering of the world.

• Self-realization. Fundamental to Buddhist practice is the process, primarily through meditation, of learning to know oneself, for instance, to become mindful one's motivations, of one's thought processes, and of the consequences of one's actions in the world. Through the same process one develops the strength, compassion and equanimity, without anger or self-centeredness.
• Sincerity. One of the most difficult elements of waking up is that of facing and being present with suffering. Through profound intimacy ignorance is resolved.
• Compassion.
• Nonattachment.
• Interbeing. All things are intimately interdependent, nothing exists or happens in isolation, everything has complex conditions extending ever further. This realization implies an appreciation for the depth of the consequences of one's decisions and actions and thereby a deep sense of universal responsibility.
• Not knowing. In waking up one learns not to get caught up in fixed ideas. Free from preconceptions and dogma, the mind can see beyond the alternative viewpoints to a purer appreciation of what is really important.

In addition, it is recognized that the world has become an excedingly complex place with the development of economic, political and social institutions and their interdependence within the larger environment. Understanding these structures is a lifelong intellectual endeavor critical to much action in the world.

Compassionate action in the world takes many forms, including social service, teaching meditation, more responsible consumption, responsible livelihood and evironmental activism, among many other things. Buddhist engagement in these areas tends to involve the following aspects;

• Nonviolence. Action in the world from the position of self-realization comes from compassion rather than anger. Compassion extends to the oppressor as well as to the oppressed. Social problems are seen as a tears in the social fabric whose causes do not abide in a single persons or groups of people but rather extends ultimately to everyone everywhere
• Bearing Witness. Typical in Western Engaged Buddhism is the method borrowed from the Quakers of bearing public witness to the suffering of the world in any of its forms. [interbeing]
• Nondogmatism. [not knowing bearing witness comprehension] Always dialog, and
• Equanimity. Engaged Buddhism comes from a state of equanimity and compassion. It is important to do what one can without being attached to results lest one suffer from burnout or one's frustration turn to anger.
• Universal Responsibility.
• Alternative to Consumerism.