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A talk
by Ajahn Pasanno to a lay Buddhist group in Caspar, California
in 1998.
The term 'social action' commonly implies large-scale efforts
to improve the material aspects of society. The Buddha
however, stressed the importance of the mind. So, from a
Buddhist perspective, even small-scale activity that involves
other people that is based on skilful motives is also part of
social action: how you relate to others, to the world around
you, to individuals who are close to you, to family,
neighbours and society at large.
To understand what social action is, we must realise that it
is not a case of 'me with society around me' as if the two
were self-sufficient things; the two are interrelated. What we
bring to the society around us is our quality of mind, our
quality of heart, our quality of being; so inner spiritual
training and social action cannot be separated. They are
interrelated and interdependent. The training that we apply to
ourselves is as important as anything we do outside, because
inner training is the core. The ability we have to help others
or affect others depends on our inner clarity, good intentions
and the integrity with which we have looked after ourselves.
The two are inseparable. Even the practice of keeping precepts
- of not harming others, not being dishonest in the way we
deal with others - is part of social action because the
actions that we do or refrain from doing inevitably have an
effect on others.
Sometimes we can get all enthused about social responsibility,
social obligations and even social activism but forget to ask:
How do we deal with our families? How do we deal with people
we are most close to? How do I pick up the phone and answer
it? What do I put into the universe when somebody phones and
I'm not really prepared to talk to them, or I get irritated
with them? We should remember that these interactions are also
social action! So even everyday action and speech - dealing
with the circle of people around us, the people we live with
and have responsibilities for - this is part of social action.
It is not separate. When we talk about the 'interdependent
nature of things,' we are not merely referring to a lovely
philosophical theory, but to something of living importance in
our day-to-day lives. As it expands, this day-to-day
interaction becomes social action in the usual sense. This
broader type of social action is something I have also been
much involved in.
An important principle underlying social action, is that in
solving social problems, you can't afford to exclude anyone or
anything. This is a principle that I have applied over and
over again in projects with which I have been involved in
Thailand, particularly in protecting the forests. Forest
preservation is something that I was drawn into; it wasn't
something I deliberately set out to do. I was the abbot at Wat
Nanachat, the International Monastery in Northeast Thailand.
The monastery had many resident monks, novices, lay men and
laywomen practising and training there, with a large lay
community living around it. I thought it would be good as a
balance to this to have a more remote branch monastery. So I
found a remote area called Poo Jom Gom and went ahead and
started to set it up. Shortly after we set it up, the Thai
Government designated the monastery and the area around it as
a National Park. This might make you think 'Wow, wonderful. A
National Park!' but it was just a designation on a map, and it
didn't come without considerable problems. It was one of the
last forests remaining in Northeast Thailand. It was right
along the Mekong River. On the other side of the Mekong, you
could look into Laos and see these incredible hills and
forests; but on the Thai side, there were all these stumps.
So, this National Park had been thoroughly logged; it was a
serious problem.
In trying to solve the problem, I had to find a way to include
people in the solution. How could I get people to cooperate
when they were the people doing the logging? I couldn't simply
stop them cutting, even though we were in a National Park and
even though the law prohibited it. I had to find a way to
include them. But how do you do this? How do you include the
merchants who are paying them? How do you include the civil
servants who are taking the bribes to allow it? You can't just
say 'These are awful nasty people. If they weren't on the
planet it would be a much better place!' They are there; they
are people just like us; they are trying to look after
families and children just like us; they are trying to get
ahead in the world.
The Buddhist perspective is that problems arise from people
not understanding how they create suffering for themselves and
suffering for others. Problems and suffering come from desire
and attachment; you can't just wish problems away. You have to
consider people's suffering and try to help them, for instance
by bringing them health and education. You need to ask, 'Why
are they felling trees? Why are they destroying the forests?
What do they want out of it?' Of course they want to live
comfortably; they want to look after their families. So you
have to find ways to provide for this. If you don't, it is
like trying to build a wall against a huge tide. You might
think you could put a wall up to stop it. Well, good luck. The
sea will find a way in. You must think clearly and find ways
that address people's needs. You need to include them. You
need to help provide solutions for them.
As the basis of individual practice, the Buddha taught the
Four Noble Truths: there is suffering, there is a cause of
suffering, there is a cessation to suffering and a path
leading to the cessation of suffering. Well, the same
principle applies to social problems. You've got suffering;
you've got a problem. Then you ask: What is the cause of the
problem? Where is the cessation? And what is the path leading
to its cessation? You have to realise that you can't simply
wish the problem away. You must contemplate it quite clearly:
What are the different causes? What sort of goal are we
looking for? Where is the end of the problem? If we haven't
understood the problem, we won't be able to see the causes. If
we are not clear what end we are moving towards, we won't know
what path to develop.
So the structure of the Four Noble Truths can be applied to
social action as well as to our own practice, and the more
practised we are in applying principles of Dhamma to
ourselves, the more likely we are to be able to apply them to
the social situations involving our friends, family, work, or
whatever. That is the heart of social action: applying
principles of Dhamma to problems within our communities, and
asking ourselves, 'How can we work together to solve this?
So, with this branch monastery at Poo Jom Gom, there was a big
problem of the forest being illegally felled. I had to find a
way to draw people into this project who might be interested
to help. The monastery, like all monasteries, was a web of
interaction. People would come to offer help and support; they
would come to listen to talks on the Observance Days; they
would come for advice; they would come when they were in major
transitions in life - marriage, birth, death; they would come
to ask questions; they would come for consultation. So a web
of interaction was established. So, when we had this problem
in the community, the problem with the forest, I already
realised who might be interested to help. I began inviting
people into the project one by one: that is how I started. At
first there were only volunteers, but as the workload
increased we had to hire people. Then we started drawing in
the police.
Police in Thailand are not...it's not a particularly
respectable position, but it is lucrative. Also, in that area,
the police had a lot of power, especially when it came to
controlling the removal of logs. Rather than getting into a
confrontation with them, I had to find a way to work with
them. How could we draw them in? As it turned out, solving
this was easy, because one of the supporters of the monastery
and one of the first volunteers to help was the police Deputy
Superintendent. He was regarded as rather unusual because
about five or six years beforehand he had transformed his
life. He had stopped drinking, and started keeping the eight
precepts, eating only one meal a day. He was very successful
in drawing in other honest police officers, encouraging them
to involve further police officers and getting them also on
our side.
When working on such a project, it takes time to gain the
trust of people, for them to see that you have included
everybody's best interests. It takes time, it takes patience
and it takes clarity. If you operate in a confrontational way,
it makes it difficult to succeed. You need to recognise that
everybody has their own suffering. They fear that helping you
will prevent them improving their lives; therefore you need to
consider their best interests. With that in mind, you need to
find a way to draw them in so that they are able to help. As
the project grew, we managed to draw in the military.
In Thailand the military is very, very powerful, and as an
institution it is generally highly respected. However, in
1992/93, there was an uprising against the military
dictatorship in power at the time, and a lot of lives were
lost. The military was disgraced within the society. Because
of their resources, one of the things that they saw that they
could do to make amends was help protect the forests. In this
way we were able to draw in the military. Normally you
couldn't do that, but circumstances at the time were such that
it was possible. I found it important to recognize unusual
opportunities, to find and use what was available. I
discovered that sometimes you get allied with people in
circumstances that you would never dream could happen.
It is very helpful in social action to have a strong focus on
personal practice and integrity. I have found that if we have
pure-hearted intentions, we start to connect in a mysterious
way with other people. It is like a magnet. Good intentions
seem to draw other good people towards us. So for social
action, it is important to sustain pure heartedness and clear
integrity because firstly it is for our own benefit - we feel
so much better - and secondly it draws other good people to
us. The more good people we draw, the more we can do, so good
intentions gather their own momentum.
During one of the last elections in Thailand I saw a
handwritten sign on a building that said: 'The forces of
corruption are more powerful still, when good people retreat.'
Sometimes we might say 'I just don't want to deal with
society. I'm fed up with it. The system is hopeless.' But the
system has more momentum when good people retreat. This is
important to remember. However, the more that good people
don't retreat, then the more that goodness will gather
momentum. This might sound like foolish nonsense, but it's
true. From my own experience I've seen it happen. I've seen
people springing up to help, almost out of nowhere.
Another forest I've been involved in preserving lies in the
west of Thailand along the Thai-Burmese border - an area
called Dtao Dum. The problems there were much more difficult
because of the degree of official collusion and the amount of
money involved. The forest is pristine. There are still
elephants, tigers and rhinoceros. These animals are considered
almost extinct in Thailand, but in this forest, they still
exist. It's the last spot in this huge area that hasn't been
touched. For many animals and species of birds, this is the
last island. So I've put a lot of effort into trying to
protect it, and am still involved with it. We've got another
monastery there.
That part of Thailand is very different from Northeast
Thailand. In Northeast Thailand there's a fundamental faith
and respect for Buddhism, for monasteries and for monastics.
On the western side of the country, the people are wilder,
rougher, coarser. There's not so much ingrained respect, and
the level of violence is much higher.
My first visit to this forest was about twenty years ago. I
went there to spend five months on solitary retreat. At that
time, the area was untouched from the main highway all the way
to the Burmese border, a distance of about seventy kilometres.
When I went back eight or nine years later, it was
disheartening to see the extent of destruction. How quickly
the forest had disappeared!
In that eight or nine years of my absence there hadn't been
any other monk there. On this second visit, I had come with a
group of monks to do a retreat. The forest was a tin mining
area. There used to be several tin mines, but on my second
visit there was only one left. The villagers were very happy
to see us. Because there hadn't been any monks around, no
proper funeral rites had been performed for their deceased
relatives. So one of the first things they wanted was a
collective ceremony for all the people who had died in the
previous eight or nine years. We disinterred some of the
remains as part of a cremation ceremony. There had been only
two causes of death - one was malaria and the other was gun
shots. That was all. As I said, the area was rough.
So how do you work with a situation like that? I needed to
draw people in, recognizing that there were good people who
would be interested to help. I needed to look and ask, 'Who
would be interested to help with this? Who would see the value
of this?' and then get those people involved.
The forest was - and still is - a national park.
Unfortunately, one of the main people involved in the
destruction at that time was the director of the national park
himself. But there were others also deeply involved. The
people who controlled access into the region were the border
patrol police; the head of the border patrol police was
involved. The people with legal jurisdiction in the area were
the military; the head of the military was involved. So every
channel of help seemed blocked. If I was to succeed, I needed
to go above those people on the local level, and reach people
in the Department of Forestry, checking out who were the
honest officials and draw them into the project. And then, as
I said, fortuitous things sometimes happen.
There is a woman who used to visit regularly and practice
meditation at our main monastery, Wat Nanachat. It turned out
that her younger brother was the Deputy Head of the border
patrol police for the whole country. This gave me my
opportunity. He transferred one person out and sent in someone
honest. It seemed like a miracle, but it really happened.
The next person we managed to get involved was a member of the
Royal Family, one of the princesses. She was already
interested and active in forest preservation. As it turned
out, one of the monks at our monastery had an aunt who worked
for this princess. So I got a letter to the princess and she
agreed to help. When she realised how big it was, she said she
could do only so much, but told us maybe we should get the
Queen involved. So, suddenly we had all these people involved,
all starting from the simple intention to do something good.
So, for social action you have to be patient, you have to be
discerning, you have to be equanimous and you have to be
willing to fail. You have to be willing to recognize that
sometimes things will work and sometimes they won't. Sometimes
they will work, but in a way that you could never have
imagined. The foundation for success however, lies in one's
own practice: keeping of precepts, and developing clarity,
tranquillity, reflective investigation and wisdom. These are
the foundations we build for ourselves that affect the choices
we make and the direction in which we apply our energy.
Anyway, these are a few reflections for now. I'll end the talk
here.
Forest
Sangha Newsletter: October 2004, Number 70 |