Strain.txt Page:1 JOURNAL OF BUDDHIST ETHICS ONLINE CONFERENCE ON BUDDHISM AND HUMAN RIGHTS 1-14 October 1995 SOCIALLY ENGAGED BUDDHISM'S CONTRIBUTION TO THE TRANSFORMATION OF CATHOLIC SOCIAL TEACHINGS ON HUMAN RIGHTS CHARLES R. STRAIN Professor of Religious Studies DePaul University 2320 N. Kenmore, Ave. Chicago, IL 60614 cstrain@wppost.depaul.edu Publication date: 18 September 1995 Copyright (C) 1995 Charles R. Strain COPYRIGHT NOTICE Digital copies of this work may be made and distributed provided no charge is made and no alteration is made to the content. Reproduction in any other format with the exception of a single copy for private study requires the written permission of the editors. All enquiries to JBE-ED@PSU.EDU. ABSTRACT Challenges to human rights theories have come from communitarian philosophers who criticize the roots of these theories in the worldview of Western individualism and from cultural relativists who deny the universality of moral claims made by human rights advocates. My thesis is that religious traditions advocating human rights provide an important corrective to Western liberal interpretations of human rights by situating rights within a larger understanding of the common good and of ultimate purpose. Secondly, religious traditions by forging alliances across religious and cultural divides using such "bridge concepts" as human rights are the key to meeting the challenges of cultural relativists. We seek not an abstract but a dialectical universality arising out of the mutual transformation of religious reflections on human rights. I will discuss this thesis concretely by showing how the approaches to human rights by contemporary socially engaged Buddhist, with specific attention to their formulation of the teaching of dependent coarising, can lead Catholic thinkers and activists to reconsider and reformulate a series of central principles underlying Catholic social teachings on human rights. TEXT Strain.txt Page:2 The morning's paper in late August, 1995 brings the news that the Chinese American human rights activist Harry Wu has been released from a Chinese prison, that Hillary Rodham Clinton will lead the American delegation to the United Nations Women's Conference in Beijing this September despite objections that the very site of the conference undermines its potential to promote the rights of women across the globe, that the Vatican has appointed Mary Ann Glendon, a Harvard law professor who is severely critical of "rights talk" as the sole currency of contemporary public ethical discourse, to head its delegation to Beijing, and that Catholics for a Free Choice, a Washington based advocacy group, has decried this choice as inconsistent with the goals of the conference. What are we to make of the controversies that these news items herald? Is "rights talk," as in the African American folktale, a tar baby to which and with which we are stuck in a blind struggle for power? Step back just two years. Today's controversies reflect a turning point that was reached at the United Nations Conference on Human Rights held in Vienna in June, 1993. Vienna witnessed the coming to prominence of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) as the vocal leaders in the global struggle for human rights. Their leadership contrasted sharply with the visible stalemate among nation states as they jockeyed to define the outcome of the conference in ways which would reinforce their respective status quos. Particularly dangerous to the moral claims of human rights advocates was the cooptation at the Vienna conference of the arguments of moral and cultural relativists by a number of nations with poor records in the area of civil liberties. The reality of cultural diversity and the particularity of traditions shaping the worldviews and values of peoples became the rationale for denying the universality of human rights. According to an official Chinese representative to the conference, "The concept of human rights is a product of historical development ... One should not and cannot think of the human rights standards and model of certain countries as the only proper ones and demand all other countries comply with them." [1] Particularly pernicious in this argument was the confinement of the boundaries of moral discourse to the borders of nation states. Standing serenely at the heart of the controversy was the world's foremost Buddhist leader, the Dalai Lama. The Chinese delegations argued vociferously against allowing the exiled leader of Tibet to enter the conference site. His words to a gathering of NGOs transcended political debates and offered a direct challenge not only to those who assert the supremacy of the nation state but also to those of us whose commitment to religious and cultural diversity turns moral relativism into a dangerously attractive option. "Recently some Asian governments," the Dalai Lama argued, have contended that human rights ... cannot be applied to Asia and other parts of the Third World because of differences in culture and in social and economic development ... I do not share this view and I am convinced that the majority of Asian people do not share this view either ... Diversity and Strain.txt Page:3 traditions can never justify the violation of human rights The deeper human nature needs to breathe the precious air of liberty ... [2] This unqualified affirmation of the universality of human rights by an Asian Buddhist is one of the signs of our times. Like the concept of liberation, the language of rights, despite its Western origins, is a "bridge concept" linking religious traditions in a common cause that is central to their separate identities. But what sort of universality are we speaking of? Do our diverse traditions -- rich in mythical and metaphysical descriptions of human persons, unique in the skillful means they employ to transform them -- add nothing to our understanding of human rights? In our own society a new coalition of moral philosophers who decry radically individualistic interpretations of rights has added a new twist to arguments about human rights. The problem with Western liberalism's interpretation of human rights, argues Amitai Etzioni, is that it couples "a strong sense of entitlement ... with a rather weak sense of obligation to the local and national community." The balance between the claims of the individual and the sense of social responsibility has been lost. In this context rights language is increasingly used to defend an escalating litany of wants which ignore the need to provide for the common good. Increasingly, also, rights language polarizes public debate in ways that make any form of political compromise appear to be morally corrupt. Offering a "communitarian agenda" to right the balance, Etzioni and others have called for a "moratorium on the minting of most ... new rights" during which we could restore a sense of social cooperation and the need for social virtues. [3] This diagnosis of the malaise of the Western rights tradition grounded in liberal individualism is yet another sign of the times. But how do we square it with the Dalai Lama and the international network of human rights NGOs' affirmation of the universality of human rights and with their uncompromising insistence on the centrality of rights guarantees for the protection of individuals and peoples against the overwhelming power of nation states? I believe that many religious traditions provide both frameworks for comprehending these signs of the times and practical ways for moving beyond the impasse that these controversies produce. Religious traditions provide an important corrective to the Western liberal interpretation of human rights by situating rights within a larger understanding of the common good and of ultimate purpose. They supplement rights language with other forms of moral discourse that express their more comprehensive worldviews. They, like the communitarian philosophers, question unbridled individualism but they have carved out a middle path between that individualism and various forms of collective control. More importantly, they provide communal matrices that can sustain human rights advocacy over a very long haul. In turning to religious traditions, however, I presuppose a) that dialogue among religious traditions can and must lead to mutual Strain.txt Page:4 transformation, b) that, at the level of moral discourse, mutual transformation means the creation of a //dialectical universality// in our understanding of human rights which can persuasively answer the challenge of moral relativists and c) that dialectical solidarity among religious traditions in advocating human rights is essential to human survival. Rather than pursuing these questions in the abstract, I will examine the specific understanding of human rights in Catholic social teachings and in socially engaged Buddhism. My aim is to see how engaged Buddhism might transform Catholic social teachings in ways that would strengthen Catholicism's recent advocacy of human rights. Before addressing the specific issue of human rights from the perspectives of these two traditions, let me clarify my presuppositions. Like John Cobb, I see mutual transformation as the goal of genuine religious dialogue. [4] In dark times, the call for mutual transformation takes on added urgency. To struggle for human rights at all is to acknowledge the radical insufficiency of the skillful means we employ to embody the truths that we teach. Indeed, if our teachings themselves are skillful means, our inadequacies at the level of praxis commit us to a dialectical transformation at the level of theory. Stated more positively, the commitment which we share to liberate those who suffer encourages us to draw upon the distinctive strengths of our several traditions without worrying overly much about maintaining doctrinal purity. Mutual transformation will occur, I have intimated, with the aid of certain "bridge concepts" -- even, as in the case of human rights, concepts which were initially alien to both of the traditions undergoing transformation. The bridge concepts that I have in mind are ones that have de facto become the focii of engagement for multiple religious and cultural traditions. Such concepts by no means constitute a "political Esperanto." [5] Rather, a concept becomes a bridge concept when it is translated into and grounded in the idioms of particular traditions and only then arcs towards a potential unification of meaning and purpose In her discussion of Buddhism and feminism, Rita Gross argues persuasively that the impetus to translate a potential bridge concept into one's own idiom derives from an inescapable commitment to two forms of practice. [6] In the case that we are examining, millions of Buddhists and Christians as Buddhists and as Christians cannot but struggle for human rights. All of my reflections derive from that fact. As we struggle together perhaps we will realize that the arc of our efforts is grounded in the visions of others as well as in that of our own. In this fashion we may move towards what David Hollenbach calls a "dialogically universalist ethic." [7] A. CATHOLIC SOCIAL TEACHINGS AND HUMAN RIGHTS From its inception in the writings of Leo XIII, particularly //Rerum Novarum// to its latest expression in John Paul II's 1991 commemorative encyclical //Centesimus Annus//, Catholic social teachings have developed into a complex tradition which altered an initial opposition to the very concept of rights as an expression of an alien liberal individualism to an unequivocal support of the Strain.txt Page:5 universality of human rights. The Catholic theory of human rights is grounded, first, in the principle of human dignity. Human beings, created in the image and likeness of God, are the bearers of an intrinsic, indissoluble and sacred worth. "Any human society," argued John XXIII in //Pacem in Terris//, if it is to be well ordered and productive, must lay down as a foundation this principle, namely, that every human being is a person, that is, his nature is endowed with intelligence and free will. Indeed, precisely because he is a person he has rights and obligations flowing directly and simultaneously from his very nature. And as these rights are universal and inviolable so they cannot in any way be surrendered. [8] From their beginnings Catholic social teachings have also stressed that the human person exists only in community with others. While the concept of dignity resists any reduction of the person to a mere product of society, determined by its relative customs, values and norms, Catholicism's sacramental conception of human life has led to its affirmation of human solidarity. "[H]uman dignity is internally conditioned by human interdependence," argues David Hollenbach. "The rights which protect human dignity, therefore, are the rights of persons //in// community." [9] Human rights are also conditioned by social, structural realities. The actualization of intrinsic rights depends upon the communal creation of social conditions which enable individual persons to flourish. [10] So, dignity and solidarity are the twin perceptions that have guided the evolution of Catholic social teachings and enabled this tradition to follow a middle path between the radically individualistic assumptions of laissez faire capitalist societies and "collectivist" interpretations of the human person grounded in the utopian speculations of social theorists. Following this middle path has entailed developing a set of human rights that exist in complex tension with one another. From Leo XIII forward, Catholic social teachings have insisted not only that civil rights but rights to secure one's life or so-called "basic rights" are inalienable. "It is a strict duty of justice and truth," insists John Paul II, "not to allow fundamental needs to remain unsatisfied and not to allow those burdened by such needs to perish." [11] The tradition's insistence on a right to work and a right to a living wage can be seen as steering a middle path between an acknowledgement of human autonomy and the right to private property on the one hand and on the other hand an acknowledgement of fundamental needs and the right to participate within the social structures designed to meet them. In an earlier article I suggested a number of principles which lie at the heart of Catholic social teachings, which provide a framework for developing its understanding of human rights, and which represent a //possible// basis for consensus and elaboration with other Christian traditions. [12] Here I will briefly summarize //four// of those principles. First, Catholic social teachings consist of a number of layers. Strain.txt Page:6 It taken has a full century of evolution to reach this point of awareness which is articulated most strikingly in the pastoral letters of the American bishops on nuclear war and on economic justice. By recognizing that at each layer of social teaching the degree of moral certitude varies, the tradition has managed to transcend ethical absolutism although this has occurred only in fits and starts. On the first layer, composed of moral principles flowing from its theological vision, Catholicism speaks out of its core identity. Lest the principles remain abstract, religious social teaching must analyze at a second layer the historical and social context, relying upon empirical data and critical theories of society. This effort to read "the signs of the times" is clearly fallible. Still more fallible are the efforts at a third layer to suggest public policies for transforming social conditions. Here John Paul II, clearly breaking with ethical absolutism, affirms that alternative social models cannot be deduced simply from the religious vision articulated at the first layer. "[M]odels that are real and truly effective can only arise within the framework of different historical situations through the efforts of all those who responsibly confront concrete problems in all their social, economic, political and cultural aspects as these interact with one another." [13] Ultimately Catholic social teachings arise out of the practical engagement of countless committed Christians. As applied to the issue of human rights, the multilayered character of Catholic social teaching represents an important contribution to the contemporary debate. It is possible to affirm the universal //reality// of human rights while developing a variety of strategies for securing them within different social contexts. The reality of human rights is not a meaningless abstraction to which societies may pay pious deference while acting as they please. Human dignity and solidarity give rise to specific //inherent// rights which lay claims upon societies to invent the social conditions and instrumentalities for actualizing them. So, a right to the securing of one's basic needs is an inherent right while the right to a living wage is an instrumental right. [14] The former is universal in scope, while the latter is relative to those societies whose economies make wage work the principal means for securing a livelihood. In this paper I wish to suggest that even at the first layer where theological vision generates moral principles Catholic social teachings can and should remain open to transformation by other traditions which in their own ways affirm the twin principles of dignity and solidarity. Second, Catholic social teachings operate with a concept of the kingdom of God that is critical of every social order. John Paul II states this principle categorically: "[N]o political society ... can ever be confused with the kingdom of God." [15] This "sacred discontent" with every social order can be an important resource for religious communities which involve themselves in the human rights movement. It chastens the arrogance and triumphalism often characteristic of Western liberal societies that all too often assume that they have already secured basic human rights for their citizens. If religions are to gather in common cause to support human rights, we need to share with one another the different visions which each provide a locus of communal identity that transcends the Strain.txt Page:7 nation state. For Western Christians the kingdom of God is such a vision. Third, Catholic social teachings have consistently rejected social contract theories which juxtapose the individual to the state. These theories present neither empirically accurate nor normatively sound understandings of human community. Solidarity, rather, expresses itself through a welter of "intermediary groups." That power should be decentralized through the full range of these groups is the intent of the //principle of subsidiarity//. "A community of a higher order should not interfere in the internal life of a community of a lower order, depriving the latter of its functions, but rather should support it in case of need and help to coordinate its activity with the activities of the rest of society ..." [16] Catholic social teachings about subsidiarity have, I believe, gradually evolved into what I call a theory of //expanded federalism//. In this reading the principle of subsidiarity seeks to create checks and balances, a system of countervailing powers, within the social order as a whole and not merely within the political order. The strengthening of intermediate communities is the means to prevent individuals from being "suffocated between two poles represented by the state and the marketplace." [17] Understood in this fashion, the principle represents the consistent application //to all social institutions// of a theory of limited power implicit in Catholic social teachings' understanding of the kingdom of God. It replaces a sentimental and utopian understanding of solidarity with a more realistic sense of both the possibilities and limits of group loyalties. It gives us a more complex understanding of the instrumentalities through which basic rights are to be secured than theories which rely only upon the judicial system. Paradoxically the power to effect change is not always directly proportional to the size of the community. All too often when nation states pay deference to the claims of other nation states to the sovereign control of their subjects, it is the NGOs, including religious communities, that provide a countervailing thrust by rejecting the principle of national sovereignty as the practical criterion for defining human rights. Fourth and finally, under pressure from Catholics engaged in the struggle for social justice in the Third World, Catholic social teachings about human rights have come to terms with what has been called the "preferential option for the poor." If rights are trump, as some social philosophers have suggested, not all trump cards carry the same value. Rights frequently conflict with one another. The preferential option for the poor as a principle of social justice enables Catholic social teaching to adjudicate conflicts among various moral claims cast in the language of rights. According to David Hollenbach, "three strategic moral priorities" enable us to resolve such conflicts: 1) The needs of the poor take priority over the wants of the rich. 2) The freedom of the dominated takes priority over the liberty of the powerful. Strain.txt Page:8 3) The participation of marginalized groups takes priority over the preservation of an order which excludes them. [18] In this communitarian vision, dignity does not rest upon the abstract equality of individuals and solidarity is impossible without social transformation. Rights are not so many chess pieces which individuals play over against all other individuals; they define the minimal conditions for mutual liberation. In Hollenbach's formulation of ethical criteria we can see a dialectic internal to Catholic social teachings at work. Latin American liberation theology's concept of solidarity with the oppressed and Catholic social teachings' understanding of human rights have met and fused. [19] Dialectic, both within and among traditions, is central to a "dialogically universalist ethic." So, having glimpsed a dialectic internal to Catholic social teachings, let me consider the possibilities for transforming Catholic social teachings via an encounter with socially engaged Buddhism. B. SOCIALLY ENGAGED BUDDHISM AND THE RIGHTS OF SENTIENT BEINGS Socially engaged Buddhism's stance toward the concept of human rights and toward the human rights movement is paradoxical. The Dalai Lama's declaration in Vienna exemplifies the unequivocal commitment of engaged Buddhists to the practice of securing human rights. Yet Buddhist scholars find the concept troublesome and appropriate it only with some difficulty. These same religious thinkers, however, recognize the urgency of the task of recasting human rights language within a Buddhist idiom so that the commitments of socially engaged Buddhists can be ideologically undergirded. [20] Among the concerns expressed by these Buddhist thinkers are, first and foremost, the anthropocentric quality of the exclusive attention to //human// rights. Second, lurking within this anthropocentric view is an understanding of human rights as entitlements which is a form of egocentrism that is more virulent precisely because it is disguised by its commitment to a higher law or universal moral principle. [21] In contrast, the doctrine of dependent coarising (//pa.ticca-samuppaada//) and its corollary teaching of the not-self (//anatta//) are designed to break all egocentric self-enclosures, and "to open up the individual locus of existence so as to involve other loci of existence ... In this way we are able to appreciate the greater extensive realm of existence in which we ... live and thrive." [22] Third, the human rights tradition is frequently seen by these Buddhist thinkers as part of the "adversarial legacy of the West" and as such contrasts sharply with the consensual models of society that prevailed in premodern society influenced by classic Buddhism. These consensual models emphasize duty and gratitude as the essential social virtues. Indeed, discussion of rights produces a certain anxiety among engaged Buddhists and "quickly passes over into talk of responsibilities." [23] Yet these same thinkers recognize that, Strain.txt Page:9 despite Buddhism's unequivocal sense of human equality and its basic thrust toward liberation, it did not fundamentally challenge the hierarchical structures of the societies in which it was embedded in premodern times. Contemporary engaged Buddhists like Rita Gross speak powerfully about Buddhists needing to assume a prophetic voice. That prophetic voice, they insist, must be directed toward the structural transformation of human institutions including Buddhist institutions. [24] The combination of criticism directed toward the worldview underlying the language of human rights and whole hearted commitment to the human rights movement, and, secondly the fusion of the desire to appropriate Buddhist understandings as an alternative to the Western interpretation of rights and self criticism of Buddhism's historical accommodation to hierarchical structures of authority represent powerful dialectics internal to engaged Buddhism. Let me state forthrightly that there is something profoundly healthy about these dialectics of thought and action. Those of us who root ourselves in Catholic social teachings find common ground with engaged Buddhists in a fundamental distrust of the individualistic assumptions underlying the Western, liberal tradition which spawned the struggle for human rights. Both groups share an instinctive sense, however, that the human rights tradition resonates with something absolutely fundamental in our religious commitments, something, moreover, that remained buried and, perhaps, even betrayed over long periods of our respective histories. Yet, both communities can also point to courageous examples from within our own ranks of commitment to the human rights struggle. Finally, both of us acknowledge with increasing frankness that our commitment to human rights is a litmus test of the ethical viability of our communities. We know with chilling certitude that failure to defend human rights would be proof positive that our salt has lost its savor. So, each of us tries to recast human rights discourse within our own idiom. True to the meaning of their tradition, engaged Buddhists will seek a middle path between Western social models built on greed, insatiable desire and hatred and the repressive models of State socialism. Likewise, each of us creates distinctive forms of practice for engaging in the struggle for human rights. For engaged Buddhists, following a middle path to secure basic rights will require a mindful awareness that resists the inclination to find solutions either in social engineering or in individual conversion. Mindfulness, in fact, is at the core of a "socially engaged spirituality" which sets us "free to do just what the situation demands of us." [25] We could explore each of these forms of commonality at length but I am particularly interested in what Catholics can learn from the ways in which engaged Buddhists are situating the concept of human rights within their own framework and thereby recasting it. For a Westerner like myself (or , I might add, John Paul II) there are dozens of ways to get off to a false start in grasping Buddhism's distinctive contribution to an understanding of human rights. The question, "how can a tradition that preaches the doctrine of the not-self or of Buddha nature have any concept of human rights at all," I have learned, represents one such false start. Particularly helpful to me are those Strain.txt Page:10 thinkers who restore the teaching of the not-self to its pragmatic, soteriological context. The truth of the not-self is a skillful means for healing what ails our very lives rather than an absolute metaphysical category to which we might cling. As a soteriological concept in the Theravaada tradition, //anatta// charts a middle path between the roles of avidity and despair generated by eternalist and nihilist concepts of the self. In the Mahaayaana tradition Buddha Nature functions equally as a soteriological concept referring to the radical capacity for liberation and simultaneously the inner reality of and the basic thrust to self realization. [26] Am I wrong in glimpsing in these interpretations a connection between a Buddhist concept of truth as //upaaya// and a modern Western understanding of praxis? I would very much like to hear Buddhist thinkers comment on this relationship for it seems to me to represent a crucial epistemological component in a search for a "dialogically universalist ethic" of human rights. Just as Christian teaching situates all ethical discourse about the self within the broader understanding of the kingdom of God, so many engaged Buddhists resort to the teaching of dependent coarising as providing the broadest context within which ethical issues can be framed. As I understand the matter, while engaged Buddhists acknowledge the power of the concept of dependent coarising to take apart our substantialist notions of the self, they are more apt to stress the interdependence, utter relationality and co-implication of all events, including those events to which I attach the label of self. More precisely, the awareness of the coarising and coceasing of all phenomena removes blinders which substantialist notions of self impose and enables me to glimpse a greater reality in which I and all other sentient beings are not circumscribed doers but interactive doings. "Within [this] perception of reality, one is not an autonomous being nor are the institutions of society. They are mutable and they mirror our greed . ...Co-arising with our actions, they, like we, can be changed by our actions." [27] "Indra's Net" in which each node is a multifaceted jewel reflecting the infinite whole is one metaphor (both descriptive and prescriptive) for this fluctuating relational reality. Each node is fully itself, a unique instance of the whole which is nonetheless co-implicated with the whole and empty of any "own being." This suchness of all sentient beings more than expresses, it //is// their infinite worth. [28] Kenneth Inada suggests that genuine relationality manifests itself with the ideal traits of mutuality, holism and emptiness. [29] The last trait is particularly important because it precludes a quasi-substantialist interpretation of the whole which, it seems to me, leads to the foggiest of ethical reflections. To an outsider the appeal by engaged Buddhists and scholars alike to the concept of dependent coarising as a framework for a Buddhist social ethic appears as something more than an analytic move. It manifests itself as a rallying cry in ways that are analogous to how the Christian social gospel has appealed to the concept of the kingdom of God. I hasten to add that not all engaged Buddhists make this appeal. Sulak Sivaraksa in _Seeds of Peace_, for example, relies much more heavily upon an application of Buddhist notions of the Strain.txt Page:11 "three poisons" and of Buddhist precepts to the critique of a capitalist global economy. Damien Keown's recent critique of this approach for developing a Buddhist understanding of human rights deserves serious consideration. According to Keown, [T]he source of human dignity should be sought not in the analysis of the human condition provided by the first and second noble truths. .. but in the evaluation of human good provided by the third and fourth. Human rights cannot be derived from any factual non-evaluative analysis of human nature, whether in terms of its psycho-physical constitution ... its biological nature ... or the deep structure of interdependency (//pa.ticca-samuppaada//). Instead, the most promising approach will be one which locates human rights and dignity within a comprehensive account of human goodness. ... This is because the source of human dignity in Buddhism lies nowhere else than in the literally infinite capacity of human nature for participation in goodness. [30] As an outsider, I await the reflections of engaged Buddhists and scholars on Keown's argument. It does seem to me that these thinkers have followed what Ernst Troeltsch earlier in the century delineated as the key steps of a critical hermeneutic. They have immersed themselves in the tradition using its fullness, including its present circumstances, to develop an "immanent critique" of its central teachings. Whatever the thrust of "classical" Buddhism, engaged Buddhists orient the meaning of dependent coarising away from a simple analysis of the human condition and towards an evocative presentation of the human good. In Troeltsch's understanding, such historically informed reformulations, geared towards praxis, represent the critical heart of a genuine hermeneutic. [31] Straining the limits of an outsider, I would mention that Catholicism in focusing upon human dignity and solidarity as the principles upon which to build its teachings about human rights deliberately chose terms that might work as bridge concepts to other communities rather than the more specifically theological concepts (e.g., //imago Dei//) that undergird its interpretation. My sense is that dependent coarising, despite its initial esoteric ring in the ears of outsiders, might work better as a bridge concept than concepts like Buddha Nature that resonate more exclusively within the Buddhist community itself. Masao Abe argues that such a concept of dependent coarising allows Buddhism to speak of human rights within a cosmological rather than an anthropocentric framework. Placing the doctrine of rights in this most expansive context removes the duality of self and other that infects the concept of rights as entitlements. It is within this context of the utter interfusion of all relative beings that the absolute worth and equality of all sentient beings and, therefore, the universal and inalienable character of rights can be affirmed. [32] Such an interpretation, argues Taitetsu Unno, also reinstates a dynamic relationship between rights and responsibilities. [R]espect for the individual and the recognition of rights is not a static but a dynamic fact which makes it imperative that as we Strain.txt Page:12 affirm our own individual rights we must also be willing to give up ourselves in order to affirm the rights of others. When, however, we affirm only our own rights at the expense of the rights of other -- including the rights of humanity over nature, one nation or one race over another, one belief or view over others -- we became tyrannical and oppressive. The proper understanding of interdependence, as the elemental form of relationship, would exclude such self-righteousness and would create a truly global society of equals. [33] To state matters bluntly, it is not the illusion of autonomy that declarations of rights enshrine and protect but the coagency and codetermination of all sentient beings. Rights language acknowledges the necessity of structures and actions which preserve Indra's Net, and which simultaneously condition the flourishing of each of its individual nodes. To assert the universality of rights is one thing, to enable individuals and peoples to realize them is another. Again, like Catholicism, Buddhism seeks strategies beyond those of judicial authority to bring this about. Robert Thurman, for example, views the historical Sangha as having effectively created "a free space beyond role requirements and social obligations" where self realization within Indra's Net became possible. [34] Am I amiss in linking this understanding of the Buddhist community as "free space" to Catholic social teachings' insistence on the importance of intermediate communities, lest we, in John Paul II's terminology, be suffocated by the overwhelming power of the state //and// the market? Thich Nhat Hanh enlarged this concept of the engaged Buddhist community still further when he and other Vietnamese Buddhists during the Vietnam War founded a group of committed activists called the "Order of Interbeing." [35] Beyond functioning as a free space, the Order of Interbeing acts as a critical wedge inserting itself between conflicting ideologies, warring factions and all closed, oppositional systems that deny our interdependence. The fourteen precepts that all who join the Order of Interbeing vow to observe incorporate not only a commitment to positive action to create a free space but also a call to mindfully resist anything that destroys interbeing. This can be illustrated by the twelfth and thirteenth precepts in particular. Do not kill. Do not let others kill. Find whatever means possible to protect life and to prevent war. Possess nothing that should belong to others. Respect the property of others but prevent others from enriching themselves from human suffering or the suffering of other beings. [36] Social engagement is simultaneously a skillful means for becoming aware oneself and for bringing others to awareness. In its most extensive meaning the Order is comprised of all those who act mindfully on their awareness that "we inter-are." Mindful action, as Unno and Thich Nhat Hanh note, is never self-righteous. Those who act out of ignorance do not cease to be part of Indra's Net. Resistance Strain.txt Page:13 can and must be a form of mutual liberation. Above all, the Buddhist commitment to the rights of sentient beings flows from compassion. "Do not avoid contact with suffering or close your eyes before suffering," is the fourth precept of the Order of Interbeing. With alarming simplicity, we are brought back to the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism. "America," Thich Nhat Hanh suggests, "is somehow a closed society." Walled off from the sufferings of others, we lose our sense of reality. [37] In this light it is possible to understand how rights language becomes twisted into the language of entitlements. We need to resist the imposition of suffering on ourselves and others, but even "righteous, legitimate indignation is not enough." A vivid awareness of the coarising and coceasing of suffering is the condition for the compassionate protection of the rights of all sentient beings. [38] C. CATHOLIC SOCIAL TEACHINGS LEARNING FROM ENGAGED BUDDHISM I wish to return to Catholic social teachings and ask how they might be transformed in dialogue with engaged Buddhism. I will focus specifically on the //four// principles of Catholic social teachings previously discussed that enable it to flesh out its commitment to human dignity and solidarity, that is, Catholic social teachings are: 1) multilayered teachings which 2) operate within a specific understanding of the kingdom of God as the ultimate context of our endeavors and 3) employ the principle of subsidiarity to understand the complexities of the human community and 4) commit us to a preferential option for the poor to develop our social priorities. I have focused on the uppermost layer of Catholic social teachings on human rights for two reasons. First, I have yet to see engaged Buddhists (with the exception, perhaps, of Rita Gross in her work on Buddhism and feminism) work as carefully and thoroughly on the second and third layers as they have on the first. [39] More importantly, Catholicism needs dialectical transformation even on its first layer if it is to make its deepest contribution to a "dialogically universalist ethic" of rights. To begin with, I note that the first three precepts of the Order of Interbeing have to do with non-attachment to the truth that one perceives. "Do not think that the knowledge you presently possess is changeless, absolute truth ... All systems of thought are guiding means ... [T]hrough compassionate dialogue, help others renounce fanaticism and narrowness." [40] Catholics have a long way to go to begin to see our truth as //upaaya//. Likewise, the West has a sorry history of triumphalism to renounce when it comes to the issue of human rights. Specifically I would like to see the Buddhist notion of dependent coarising applied to the Catholic doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation which provide key struts of the traditional theological framework for Catholic social teachings. Conceiving God's trinitarian presence in the world in light of the dependent coarising's qualities of mutuality, holism and emptiness might lead to a fluid, relational sense of cosmic cocreation. Likewise, it is no longer radical to suggest that Catholicism's sacramental sense, coarising with its vision Strain.txt Page:14 of the Incarnation, has been ill served by its interpretation through the Western metaphysics of individual substances. More pragmatically, dependent coarising and the notion of suchness can only help Catholics to envision the mutual development of dignity and solidarity. The image of Indra's Net, I believe, is one that all Catholic Christians can affirm. Many Christian theologians have already insisted that the Christian tradition must leave behind anthropocentrism as a betrayal of its deepest understanding of divine creation and compassion. How this effort to reconstruct Christian self-understanding can be applied to the transformation of human rights into the rights of sentient beings is an important issue. The work of David Hollenbach, among others, in dealing with conflicting rights claims and in developing criteria for setting priorities among those claims is a resource that Catholics and others can use in making this transition. Again, to resort to the image favored by legal philosophers, all trump cards do not have the same face value. We need to determine which rights carry more weight in different circumstances. This weighting of //instrumental// rights may strike Buddhists as overly adversarial. I see no way to avoid it. However, a compassionate sense of dependent coarising would encourage mindfulness of the relative inadequacy of our institutional arrangements for juggling seemingly conflicting rights. Such arrangements never adequately reflect the interdependency of //inherent// rights. Second, I see the Catholic model of a transcendent kingdom of God which creates a sacred discontent with all existing social institutions and the engaged Buddhist model of an immanent Order of Interbeing grounded in compassion as complementary models. I mean that in the strict sense that they are individually insufficient, equally necessary and mutually correcting. Both models, working in tandem, create religious loyalties which transcend the boundaries of the nation state and the limits of the human species. Catholic social teachings, I believe, must stick with the principle of subsidiarity. We have only begun to explore its possible non-hierarchical, non-authoritarian meanings. If we interpret it, as I have suggested, along the lines of an expanded federalism of countervailing communities which check and balance one another, we will develop a tough edged social theory which accords with our sense of social evil. It is mindfully realistic not cynical, for example, for me to suggest that in the area of human rights the NGOs, not the nation states, will make the theoretical and practical breakthroughs in the perilous times that lie ahead. Religious communities need to strengthen their partnerships with these international communities of resistance and advocacy. But Catholics can learn from Thurman's notion of the Sangha as a "free space" about the need to create havens where rights are acknowledged and protected and about the importance of celebrating human freedom and flourishing within our own communities. Although expressions of Catholic social teachings, like the American bishop's pastoral letter "Economic Justice for All," have stipulated in theory Strain.txt Page:15 this need for attention to our own institution as a first step, we have a long, long way to go in practice to even begin to address this issue. Is it even conceivable that American Catholic bishops floundering in their efforts to address the issue of sexual abuse within the Church, for example, would sit down to talk with Buddhist women and men who have had to struggle painfully with the same issue within the American Sangha? [41] Thich Nhat Hanh's Order of Interbeing seems to me to be a particularly productive communal embodiment of the principle of subsidiarity. Its communitarian agenda foresees neither one big happy family nor endless sectarian struggle. The Order is both a community of resistance and a community which holds itself open in compassion to those whom it resists. Here the acknowledgement that my presumed adversary's actions dependently coarise with my actions or inaction lays the groundwork for forms of resistance detached from the self righteousness that frequently infects human rights advocacy. [42] Finally, what can we learn from engaged Buddhists regarding the "preferential option for the poor?" That teaching has been condemned by some Christian theologians as implying that God loves some more than others, that God takes sides in our ideological (and real) battles. The teachings of engaged Buddhism can help correct this misimpression. It seems to me that a corollary to the fourth precept of the Order of Interbeing (Do not avoid contact with suffering ...) is the realization that while all life is suffering, not all suffer alike. Moreover, imposed suffering, oppression, is never equally distributed. If our task is to liberate all sentient beings, we must act mindfully, interceding directly for those most in need in ways proportioned to the need. The concept of dependent coarising can help Catholics in their attempt to act on David Hollenbach's "three strategic moral priorities" in the area of human rights. The trick is to discern when the protection of my rights fosters the coarising of the rights of others and when it fosters the coceasing of the rights of others. When do my wants, my liberty, my need for order dependently coarise with the impoverishment, the domination and the marginalization of others? It is, I believe, inaccurate and self-destructive to answer this question, "always." That would truly be a dog eat dog world. Buddhism offers instead the middle path in which mutual flourishing dependently coarises as the way between self-abnegation and the oppression of others. Hollenbach's moral priorities are criteria necessary to find that middle path as the preferential option for the poor is meant to blaze that same path. We have been reflecting all along at the first layer of a multilayered theory of human rights, the layer that presents a religious vision, ethical criteria and images of transformation. I hope that I have shown what might be entailed to move towards a "dialogically universalist ethic" at this level. Creating dialogical reformulations on the second layer of critical social analysis and the third layer of alternative social models and policy suggestions would be equally demanding. Whether they follow the path of the bodhisattva Strain.txt Page:16 or of the prophet, engaged Buddhists and Christians will surely move forward, juryrigging social theories and forms of engagement, forming coalitions and acting, with or without those of us who seek to clarify the bases for religious praxis. Given the religious urgency generated by the sufferings of humans and other sentient beings, these engaged persons cannot do otherwise. Given all that we have said about the problems of formulating the concept of human rights within both the Buddhist and the Catholic traditions, it still remains a major bridge concept linking many who struggle for a transformed global community. Both traditions have much to contribute to the design and construction of this bridge. We would do well to work together. NOTES [1]. Jonathan Kaufman, "UN Conference Highlights Human Rights Rift," _The Boston Globe_ 20 June 1993. Portions of this paper in an earlier version were presented at the Parliament of the World's Religions in Chicago, August, 1993. [2]. The Dalai Lama as cited in Jan Krcmar, "Dalai Lama Scores Small Triumph Over China at Rights Conference," _The Reuter Library Report_ 15 June 1993. [3]. Amitai Etzioni, _The Spirit of Community_ (New York: Crown Publishers, 1993): 3-7. [4]. John Cobb, _Beyond Dialogue: Toward a Mutual Transformation of Buddhism and Christianity_ (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1982). [5]. Cf. Mary Ann Glendon, _Rights Talk: The Impoverishment of Political Discourse_ (New York: the Free Press, 1991), xii. I am indebted to my colleague Frida Kerner Furman for the notion of a bridge concept. See Frida Kerner Furman, "The Prophetic Tradition and Social Transformation," _Prophetic Visions and Economic Realities: Protestants, Catholics and Jews Confront the Bishops' Letter on the Economy_ , ed. Charles R. Strain (Grand rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co): 103-104. [6]. Rita Gross, "Buddhism and Feminism: Toward Their Mutual Transformation, Part I," _Eastern Buddhist_ 19(1) (1986): 44; "Part II," _Eastern Buddhist_ 19.2 (1986): 74. [7]. David Hollenbach, _Claims in Conflict: Retrieving and Renewing the Catholic Human Rights Tradition_ (New York: Paulist Press, 1979): 131. [8]. John XXIII. _Pacem in Terris_, _Renewing the Earth: Catholic Documents on Peace, Justice and Liberation_ eds. David O'Brien and Thomas Shannon (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1977): #9 [9]. Hollenbach: 65. [10]. Hollenbach: 64. Strain.txt Page:17 [11]. John Paul II, _Centesimus Annus_, _Origins_ 21 (May 16, 1991): #34. On the concept of basic rights, see Henry Shue, _Basic Rights_ (Princeton,NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980). [12]. Charles R. Strain, "Concerning New Things and Old: A Reading of _Centesimus Annus_," _Word and World_ 12 (Fall, 1992): 360-69. [13]. John Paul II: #43. [14]. Hollenbach: 94-99. [15]. John Paul II: #25. [16]. John Paul II: #48. [17]. John Paul II: #49. [18]. Hollenbach: 204. [19]. See Alfred Hennelly, S. J., and John Langan, S. J, eds., _Human Rights in the Americas: The Struggle for Consensus_ (Washington, D. C.: Georgetown University Press, 1982). [20]. Masao Abe, "Religious Tolerance and Human Rights: A Buddhist Perspective," _Religious Liberty and Human Rights in Nations and Religions_, ed. Leonard Swidler (Philadelphia: Ecumenical Press, 1986): 193. For a history of socially engaged Buddhism, see Ken Jones, _The Social Face of Buddhism_ (London: Wisdom Publications, 1989). [21]. Abe: 202-204; Taitetsu Unno, "Personal Rights in Contemporary Buddhism," _Human Rights and the World's Religions_ ed. Leroy S. Rouner (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988): 143-45. [22]. Kenneth Inada, "The Buddhist Perspective on Human Rights," _Human Rights and Religious Traditions_ ed. Arlene Swidler (New York: The Pilgrim Press, 1982): 73; Unno: 143-45. [23]. Unno: 129; Robert A. F. Thurman, "Social and Cultural Rights in Buddhism," _Human Rights and The World's Religions_ ed. Leroy S. Rouner (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988): 153. Cf. James C. Hsiung, "Introduction," _Human Rights in East Asia_ ed. James C. Hsiung, (New York: Paragon House Publishers, 1985): 3-29. [24]. Thurman: 155-56; Rita Gross, _Buddhism After Patriarchy_ (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993): 134. [25]. Sulak Sivaraksa, "Human Rights in the Context of Global Problem Solving: A Buddhist Perspective," _The Ethics of World Religions and Human Rights_ eds. Hans Kung and Jurgen Moltman. (Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1990): 87-88. [26]. Steven Collins, _Selfless Persons_ (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982): 12, 34-35, 76, 104-105; Sallie King, _Buddha Nature_ (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1991): 32, Strain.txt Page:18 68, 84-85. [27]. Joanna Rogers Macy, "Dependent Co-Arising: The Distinctiveness of Buddhist Ethics," _Journal of Religious Ethics_ 7.1 (1979): 39, 42, 44, 49. [28]. Jones: 136-45; Unno: 138-39; Abe: 196-97. [29]. Kenneth Inada, "A Buddhist Response to the Nature of Human Rights," _Asian Perspectives on Human Rights_ eds. Claude E. Welch, Jr. and Virginia A. Leary (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1990): 98-102. [30]. Damien Keown, "Are There Human Rights' in Buddhism," _Journal of Buddhist Ethics_ (1995) 2:16. [31]. For a presentation of Troeltsch's critical hermeneutics specifically geared towards praxis, see Dennis P. McCann and Charles R. Strain, _Polity and Praxis: A Program for American Practical Theology_. (Minneapolis: Winston Press, 1985; Reprint Edition, Lanham,MD: University Press of America, 1990): 74-80. I am suggesting, I hope with the requisite diffidence of an outsider, that the reliance on the teaching of dependent coarising to begin the task of framing a social ethic does not strike me as a "conjuring trick" which elides the distinction of fact and value. Cf. Keown:14. In both Catholicism and Buddhism are we not in reality (//imago Dei// or Buddha Nature) what we are to become in practice? It is precisely the virtue of both traditions that by placing the concept of human rights within a more comprehensive understanding of the human good they also raise basic questions about the fact/value distinction as it is formulated in philosophical ethics. [32]. Abe: 202-205. [33]. Unno: 140. [34]. Thurman: 150. [35]. Thich Nhat Hanh, _Being Peace_ (Berkeley, CA: Parallax Press, 1987): 85-102. [36]. Nhat Hanh, _Being Peace_: 98-99. [37]. Nhat Hanh, _Being Peace_: 91-92. [38]. Thich Nhat Hanh, _Peace is Every Step_. (New York: Bantam Books, 1991): 120-21. [39]. It is clearly the case that engaged Buddhists use empirical data in attempting to read the "signs of the times." Sulak Sivaraksa's _Seeds of Peace_ (Berkeley, CA: Parallax Press, 1992) is a wonderful example of such astute interpretation and, in this sense, engaged Buddhists //are// working on level two. What I miss is the presence of some systemic and critical social theory which mediates between the "signs of the times" and the worldview and ethical principles that are Strain.txt Page:19 articulated on the first layer. Instead there frequently seems to be an unmediated application of Buddhists ideals and virtues to the social situation, implicitly reducing all problems of alienation or oppression to matters of personal morality and spiritual malaise. Joanna Macy argues for the affinity of Buddhist concepts of dependent coarising and general systems theory in developing a metaphysics of causality _Mutual Causality in Buddhism and General Systems theory_ (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991). What critical //social// theories would be equally compatible with this core teaching? On the interaction of religious worldviews and religiously grounded social ethics, see McCann and Strain Chapter 6. [40]. Nhat Hanh, _Being Peace_: 89-91. [41]. See "Economic Justice for All: Catholic Social Teaching and the U.S. Economy," _Origins_ 16 (27 November, 1986): #s 347-57; see also Sandy Boucher, _Turning the Wheel: American Women Creating the New Buddhism_ (Boston: Beacon Press, 1993): 210-56. [42] Nhat Hanh, _Being Peace_ :61-74.