Exploring how Buddhism can guide in promoting right livelihood, and a model of development based on the principles of non-violence, environmental awareness and sustainability.

GLOBAL BUDDHIST CONGREGATION 2011

COMMUNIQUE

Environment & the Natural World: A Buddhist Response

A declaration on the urgent need to apply compassion, ethics and wisdom to the environmental crisis

The human population now stands at seven billion and human beings are placing increasingly unrealistic demands on the earth’s resources. We are witnessing extreme weather events, dramatic changes in climate, rising sea levels, retreating glaciers and depleting ice at the poles. Still, we continue to pump greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. The great forests of the world are being destroyed more quickly than they can be replaced, coral reefs are dying, and species are disappearing at an alarming rate due to habitat loss and changes in temperatures and water supply. With the current rate of extinction, it is likely that very many species will become extinct before we are even aware of their existence. Many people view this as the sixth mass extinction, but this one is different in that it is not caused by an unavoidable catastrophe, but primarily by our actions.

Scientific research is revealing evidence of animals’ intelligence and emotions. This new understanding of animal sentience has huge implications for the way we treat them and the policies and laws we adopt. By addressing the needs of other sentient beings, we stand to safeguard the well-being of the Earth’s environment and ecosystems it supports. This eventually benefits all life forms including our own kind.

2,600 years ago, when the Buddha attained enlightenment under the Bodhi tree, he touched the ground to signify that the earth was witness to that moment. Today, the earth is witnessing a collective ignorance that endangers the future of all species and the future of our children. As entire ecosystems and habitats disappear, the Buddha’s teachings on interdependence are more evident than ever before. The Karma of our actions haunts the present and stands to threaten the future of all.

We as followers of the Buddha’s teaching make a commitment to:

1.      Act with the knowledge that the warming planet and species loss presents a moral issue of the highest order.

2.      Become more educated about environmental issues, seek to educate others regarding the interdependence of all life forms and take right action to minimize our negative impacts on the Earth.

3.      Within the Buddhist community, bring our collective wisdom to bear on environmental issues and address them with compassion and insight based on the skilful means of sound ethics and scientific research. 

4.      Recognizing that animals are fellow sentient beings who feel pain and fear and take right action to reduce the suffering they endure as a result of human behaviour.

5.      Apply our commitment to have compassion to sentient beings in interactions with them and address the indirect harm caused to them by our consumption of resources, use of land and climate change.

6.      Be a mindful consumer by avoiding waste and refusing to buy products created from the suffering of other beings.  

7. Seek to change societal, consumer and political frameworks so that they see animals as kin and not merely resources or commodities that can be utilized by humans without regard to their welfare. 

8.      Apply Buddhist principles and teaching to overcome the denial of the situation we face and seek co-operation with other communities as we move towards true ecological sustainability.

PRESERVATION & DEVELOPMENT OF BUDDHISM

Preservation and development means that we have to be concerned with the past and the future at the same time. Both dimensions are available to us in the present only, so we have to be aware of cultivating awareness for collecting data, objects, information, texts and resources with which our ancestors have endowed us. We have to look for support, both spiritual and financial, to preserve Buddhist architecture and documents of Buddhist life in India, make it available to the public and create excitement about engaging in pilgrimages to the sites of the origins of Buddhist culture. Some projects of Buddhist text editions and archives are underway on the internet. Websites for applying Buddhists principles in daily life (private counseling, sustainable development, wholesome governments) are underway. We need to be aware of it, share these resources with others and raise support for it. Simultaneously, Buddhist needs to be developed in correspondence to changing societies worldwide. All structures and institutions are impermanent. And we need to apply a creative intelligence to the central principle of upaya in our times so that the primordial Buddhist truths and insights concerning the human condition and possibilities for enhancing the moral and spiritual life as well as steps to enlightenment may be made available also in unconventional ways to the younger generations. Each one of us, and each group is responsible for their own way, and should be supported by all Buddhist sisters and brothers.

BUDDHISM & SCIENCE

Science runs on experiments to collect data and to discover relationships, which will be understood in theories. Those theories are to be tested by new data and their interpretation so as to falsify theories in order to get a deeper understanding of the world. Buddhism has a similar approach towards the investigation of the mental realm. It can be useful in both the collection of data concerning mental events and forming notions and theories to interpret them. We note that all theories are mental projection. Sense experience is often illusory. It depends on the mental framework. Other states of consciousness such as dream states or meditative states (the jhnanas) are as valid for exploration as our waking states. The mind-body relationship is mapped out differently in Indian traditions (samkhya) as in Greek Aristolelian world views. All mental states, psychic events, emotions, etc are part of the changing world (prakrite) with no permament or independent soul. It is only pure awareness (purusha) that is formless and beyond space-time. This can be experienced. We need to develop relational non-dualistic view in order to understand the bottom-up causality (body influencing mind) as well as rigorous up-bottom causality (mind influencing body). Steps towards such a non-dualistic view have been made. Suggestions have been elaborated in our discussions. Those non-dualistic framings (based on the oneness of form and formlessness) as the Heart Sutra expresses it may be able to explain the non-substantial reality of the world better than substantialistic theories. First, there is the potentiality space of relationships. Second, there is the realm of particles, waves, etc. Such a view is of relevance to our self-understanding and action in the world.

POLITICS & SOCIETY: BUDDHISM ENGAGING WITH THE WORLD

It is impossible to separate politics from religion, since politics is simply the totality of interrelationships in any particular area of life involving power, authority or influence. We need to understand that in every dharma community, monastery, nunnery, organization or institution, politics plays play a part. Any religious body or institution needs to have structures of leadership and to create and maintain policies within those structures. What we need to recognize are the dangers that exist in power that is exclusive and self-serving rather than power that seeks to benefit the community and the world at large. While we honour our own traditions and practices, we take an active stand against sectarianism and oligarchies and urge a more inclusive, democratic and universal vision of Buddhist leadership. Regarding society, we honour the work of engaged Buddhists around the world who are a source of hope and inspiration. And we commit ourselves to make engagement with the sick, the hungry, the miserable and the disenfranchised part of our daily practice.

WOMEN AND BUDDHISM: EQUALITY & EQUANIMITY

First of all, we realize the importance of accepting that Buddhist women do not enjoy the same status, power or influence as their dharma brothers. The status of women within the Buddhist tradition is out of touch with their abilities and contribution. We need to look at the attitudes that have led to this imbalance on both a personal and institutional level, and realize that this is vital to the future of the dharma. When we discriminate and marginalize women within Buddhist organizations and communities, we lose half of our effectiveness, half of our wisdom, and half of our resources. As it is acknowledged that throughout the world, most dharma centres are run by women and many of the dharma communities are made up of a female majority, if we exclude women, we exclude a crucial body of support. For Buddhism to thrive, women must be included at every level, from decision-making powers to leadership roles, so that this imbalance is adjusted and so that we can benefit even more from their participation.

ETHICS & VALUES

As the Buddha said, “morality is like the earth. It supports everything”. We as Buddhists determine to make ethical conduct and positive values the founding inspiration for all our actions of body, speech and mind. We understand that ethics and values are not the property of Buddhists alone, and that a religious belief is not necessary for a person to practice moral principles. We assert that moral principles do not exist outside in books and directives, but are simply the choices we make for how to act in the world, for the  least harm and the most benefit. With this in mind, we will also make efforts to make ethics and values part of the curriculum in schools and to make ethics and values part of the active principles of private enterprise and corporations, so that the generations to come can improve the collective karma of all humanity.

BUDDHISM & MENTAL HEALTH

The insight into the 3 poisons: ignorance, attachment and aversion is an excellent analystical tool to understand mental disorders. Though this refers to an on-going human problem, new disorders are developming due to the modern lifestyle such as up rootedness, loneliness etc. Buddhist practice of unconditional compassion is of great value here. We need to be aware that meditation practice requires a rather stable personality, so that depressive clients should not be encouraged to engage in meditation until their condition is alleviated by proper therapy. Often, empathic relationship to the troubled persons is an excellent way of expressing Buddhist values.

LIVELHOOD & DEVELOPMENT: BUDDHISM IN A FAST-CHANGING WORLD

Livelihood means to be able to stay alive and have the conducive conditions to be in the dharma. Though the world is changing at tremendous speed, the Buddha’s insights remain the same.  We have to discern the absolute from the relative and our interpretations of old behavioural patterns need to be looked at and judged from a fresh insight into the principle Buddhist values. In practice, we need to be flexible to adapt to modern means of livelihood bearing in mind that the happiness of human beings is our primordial condition where suffering is the conditioned state which can be alleviated and eradicated by application of the four noble truths. We need to teach ourselves and others delight in simplicity and generosity. What matters is the quality of life and not quantity of consumption. The modern consumerist way of the life is to be rejected because it is unwholesome and destructive for ourselves and all other sentient beings. But we have to start with ourselves giving living examples because people learn by imitation and experience. Here, the ordained sangha and lay sangha are both called to account. We need to develop a holistic understanding of mutuality of individual and social development. It is wise to start difference lifestyles based on these principles in small communities in local neighbourhoods in cooperative structures at the basis of our society.

CONFLICT & VIOLENCE: A BUDDHIST RESPONSE

As Buddhists, we determine to address the root causes of conflict and violence, whether between nations, cultures, peoples, organizations, creeds, sects, communities, families or individuals. We believe that conflict and violence begins in the mind with an artificial distinction between self and other and an exaggerated attachment to one position, idea or perspective. At the same time, we need to acknowledge the institutional violence that becomes deeply embedded in society to the point that people even cannot see it. When violence becomes a policy that is dictated by a single group or inspired by an individual, then we as Buddhists must address the immediate ramifications of conflict and do what we can to alleviate the suffering that entails. It is also our duty to develop effective systems of mediation between the conflicting parties.