Joining Heaven and Earth
A
discussion of Buddhism and the "art of the possible," with Oakland Mayor
Jerry Brown, Roshi Bernie Glassman, and Art of War expert James Gimian.
Shambhala
Sun: Perhaps the best place to begin this conversation is to offer a fundamental
definition of "politics," which is a word with many levels of meaning.
Mayor
Jerry Brown: The political is about the collectivity-the nation, the state, the
city, the community. It refers not to personal choice-I want to do this or I want
to do that-but to working with other people to arrive at some operating agreement
about an issue that are important.
Politics is different from contemplation;
it's different from personal friendship, although the political implies like-minded
people sharing certain beliefs and certain understandings of what the good is
and what the bad is. Politics is about working through divisive issues, because
by definition, in a democratic society there is lots of disagreement. Politics
refers to a process of struggle, of competition, of discussion, and ultimately
of agreeing on certain actions by certain methods. Politics requires people listening
to each other and finding some accommodation that will allow them to live peacefully
in the same place.
Roshi Bernie Glassman: A lot of people talk about three
sectors in society: the government, the major corporations, and the nongovernmental
organizations and religious groups, which is the sector our organization, the
Peacemaker Circle, is working in. The politics within each of these sectors may
look very different. And among these three it's hard to know who's really in control.
James
Gimian: When you ask for a fundamental definition of politics, my mind goes to
the basic experience of duality. From a Buddhist point of view, duality arises
whenever you experience separation from the so-called external world. In society,
that means that whenever you relate to another person, they will have needs or
desires or aspirations that will not necessarily coincide with your own. And the
process of working that out so you can both occupy the same space is essentially
politics.
It is helpful to start from that point of view because for Buddhists
the question is, How does working in the political realm become an extension of
my practice? Mayor Brown said that politics is different from contemplation. I
would say that if politics is about resolving issues arising from duality-which
essentially means contention and conflict-then anybody who undertakes a deep contemplative
process to overcome the false belief in ego is doing deeply political work. That's
because they are addressing the root cause of the basic duality, which is what
leads to conflict and gives rise to the need for politics. Now, that may seem
theoretical, but I think it's the basis of the political work that Mayor Brown
and Roshi Glassman are deeply involved in and are very articulate about.
The
involvement of religion in politics can have a positive effect or, as we are seeing
in many parts of the world, it can have terribly negative consequences. What can
make the entrance of spiritual principles into politics helpful as opposed to
destructive?
Glassman: In our work we have three basic tenets that come right
out of Buddhist training. First, when we enter into the political world, we enter
from a standpoint of not knowing. We don't enter with a solution in mind; we enter
with a deep listening and an open space. The second tenet is bearing witness,
fully knowing the situation we are in. And the third tenet is creating actions.
We are not just contemplating what is going on; we put a lot of energy into creating
actions, but based on not knowing and bearing witness. This is quite different
from coming into a situation and saying, "I've got the answer, this is the
way it has to be." To me, this makes it a spiritual approach.
Brown: Certainly,
starting from a position of not knowing is open, whereas starting from a position
of conviction leaves less space for any listening or learning from people who
are different from you. So not knowing and openness are very important principles.
Of course, in politics one is not easily received as a "not knower."
People expect the people they elect to know where they are going, even if they
don't, even if they have a lot of doubts. But as a general principle, I think
not knowing would be a good starting point.
I think what religion and spirituality
should bring to politics is a rootedness in perennial wisdom, as it is called
in some quarters-a rootedness in the traditions people have. Based on where people
live and what their upbringing is, there are principles that are passed on from
one generation to the next, and these are the bedrock of who people are.
At
the heart of these traditions are understandings about the way we need to treat
each other and the way we need to live. These understandings are more fundamental
than campaign principles, which are tactical ideas, and economic principles, which
are based on limited premises like scarcity and maximizing utility. Economics
dominates politics, but I believe the direct spiritual experience and the basic
axioms of religious tradition are a more inclusive and fundamental set of reference
points. That's what is needed today because the cost-benefit analysis-the reduction
to efficiency-becomes inhuman, hostile and destructive of the environment when
taken beyond a certain point. I see our direct spiritual experience and the traditional
wisdom people have been brought up with as a counterpoint to the hegemony of economic
thinking.
Which is a fundamental nihilism really, a mechanistic view of human
relations.
Brown: I thought it was significant that when the chicken pox vaccine
was being introduced, the analysis went like this: mothers in the workforce lose
x numbers of days a year because their children have chicken pox, and that costs
y amount of money. The vaccine costs considerably less, so we should introduce
it. There was no real commentary on the reduction in suffering, or the human dimension,
but only the very abstract proposition of its impact on the gross national product.
That is what I am talking about.
Gimian: One way to approach this question
is to distinguish between religion and spirituality. If by religion you mean some
established organization or belief system that a person uses to substantiate their
existence, then they are just using it to create more territory. That makes it
difficult to work effectively in politics, because if you are trying to solidify
your sense of personal identity that creates more duality and conflict, as opposed
to what we could call spirituality, which tries to create openness. You are willing
to look for a solution that transcends your own objectives and includes the goals
of all sides. Then the resolution can go beyond what you may have thought possible.
There is an interesting dynamic between the initial open space and the first
moment you begin creating action. While openness and not knowing are fundamental
to creating a ground where you can resolve conflict, you also do that with some
kind of basic direction or vision. But as soon as you take some action, people
start sorting themselves out in relationship to that and asking, "What's
their agenda?" So how do you present a vision and have openness at the same
time?
Glassman: I use the metaphor of a carpenter. The carpenter has a bag
of tools that he has accumulated over his lifetime. Somebody calls and says there
is something wrong with their door. Coming in from a standpoint of knowing would
be like having your hand stuck to a particular tool. Maybe it's stuck to the hammer,
so you come and start banging away at the door. The not-knowing stance is that
you come with all these tools, and you bear witness to this door. Where is it
sticking, what is the problem? Then you pull out the right tool.
It is very
important to have lots of tools-to have the vision and ideas you talk about-but
not to the point where you are stuck on anything in particular as you approach
the situation. You are coming with deep listening, with deep openness, and then
you use the right tools.
Gimian: Doesn't conflict arise if you are not willing
to fix the door the way the owner wants you to? If you have a basic difference,
are you then willing to repair that door however the homeowner wants it, whether
or not that's the best way to fix it?
Glassman: First of all, I don't believe
in a utopia of non-conflict. Whatever you do is going to create conflict in some
ways and peace in other ways. We are looking at the overall reduction of suffering,
but there is no way that what you do will not cause conflict somewhere. You can't
come from the position of saying you will eliminate all conflict. I think the
approach of not knowing and the bearing witness is the most effective way to reduce
suffering. But as soon as you take action, you create all kinds of conflict. Whatever
action you take is going to create some conflict-with your spouse, with your community,
with your whatever.
Brown: Oliver Wendell Holmes, in his great book on the
common law, said, "Men must act and whenever they act, there are consequences."
But I do think there are some reference points we can use. One is the well-being
of each individual. There is a certain level of material well-being and intellectual
and imaginative possibilities that each child brings with them into the world,
and that's a reference point we can use to measure how our communities or our
country or our world is doing. Second, we have the environment-the oceans, the
rivers, the soil, the air, these interconnected systems that are being disrupted
to a greater or lesser degree. The environment can be a reference point for what
we should be doing about manufacturing, about jobs, about how we move around and
how we collect things. So there are two reference points we can use to judge our
actions: their impact on each individual and their impact on other forms of life
and the larger ecology.
Here is one of the most difficult problems of political
action, from a spiritual point of view. Politics is an inherently conflictual,
dualistic arena and to act politically you have to take some sort of position.
But how do you do that without contributing to the conflict and division that
lies at the heart of the problem? How do you take sides without taking sides?
Glassman:
In my book, Instructions to the Cook, based on Dogen's classic work, the main
theme is that we have to see the ingredients as clearly as possible and then make
the best meal with those ingredients-not with the ingredients we don't have but
with the ingredients we have. We make the best meal we can and then offer it.
It may be yucky or it may be good. We don't know that beforehand, and that's not
our role.
I can't wait until I have the right ingredients, whether it is money
or enlightenment or a chef's knowledge or any of that. I have to work with the
ingredients I have, knowing that some people are going to hate that meal and some
are going to love it. My job is to take those ingredients and do the best I can
and offer it. I don't have any sense of a utopia, or waiting around for a nondual
world, or an enlightened world, or for me to be fully enlightened, or any of those
things. During each moment stuff is coming up and I have to do the best I can.
Gimian:
Sun Tzu's Art of War talks about the idea of "taking whole." Whenever
you are faced with a conflictual situation, you have to accept the responsibility
of the central seat-you are the center of your world; it is you who has to take
the actions that are required. If you are looking to win in the lowest possible
sense, then it's just you over the other. Taking whole means finding a resolution
to the conflict that includes the deepest hopes and wishes of the other side.
What connects personal practice to this question of how to work in the world
without perpetuating the basic confusion of duality is including yourself in the
process. You have to be working on yourself, as opposed to thinking you are just
working on an external reality. When we talk about the bodhisattva vow and putting
other people before ourselves, that's based on an experience of emptiness. You
realize that these actions you take are not to fulfill your own grasping and fixation.
At the same time, you realize you are working to help the bigger situation. If
those two understandings go hand in hand, then you don't have to wait for some
perfect situation. You start right where you are.
Mayor Brown, you are the
one person in this discussion who is a clearly identified member of a political
party. You are known to represent a certain pole in the political spectrum, a
certain territory or position. Why do you feel that is the best way to act politically?
Brown:
Well, it is the best way because it happens to be what fits with the conditions
in America. Some 75% of the voters vote for one major party or the other. That
leaves only a small amount of space for an independent. The party is a frame that
simplifies issues, but neither party can serve as any major repository of truth.
Nietzsche said, "A thinking man is not a party man." I think that is
probably true. If you are a member of a political party, it gives some indication
of what you generally prefer. The Republicans tend to want to keep taxes down
and protect wealth and property. Democrats tend to try to equalize things through
the instrumentality of government. But both approaches have plenty of negative
consequences when pushed too far or pushed in the wrong way. So it's really a
collision of imperfect approximations.
Many of the things that are done in
politics are very small adjustments in the ongoing flow of economic and political
activity. It isn't like we can look into our toolbox and reshape the world. Human
beings can't be engineered and shouldn't be engineered in that way. In politics
we show up in a situation and make relatively limited choices.
So I would
say that we have to have a certain level of modesty about what is possible in
politics, and that the parties are not profoundly different. If you look at the
differences among people, the party is only one part of it. Ethnicity is another
part, geography is another part, and maybe gender is another part. We have all
these categories we find ourselves in, with a lot of collision among them. Even
though you have to be in a category-you are male, you are female, you are over
65 or under, you are a Democrat, you are a conservative-these are just approximations.
They say some important things, but being human transcends all of that. And that
is where we should be looking when we have to make the really important decisions.
The American Buddhist world, or at least its prominent adherents, is generally
skewed toward the liberal end of the spectrum. Is this a reflection of inherent
Buddhist values or simply of the type of Westerners who have been attracted to
Buddhism over recent decades?
Gimian: A lot of what we are seeing in North
America is because of the particular generation, what we might broadly call the
Boomers, who have largely populated and been leading the North American Buddhist
communities. Also, Buddhism is still a new and fringy phenomenon in the West.
It is not enfranchised in the society like it is in Asia. Perhaps in a couple
of generations, if it grows and survives, if it becomes propertied and enfranchised,
you might well see different values reflected in the Buddhist community, conservative
values having to do with maintaining a tradition. But right now, Buddhists are
generally people who reacted to a certain time in history and sought spiritual
solutions for problems which were deeply political, deeply societal.
Roshi
Glassman, do you feel Buddhist values call for any particular political position,
such as liberalism?
Glassman: It can't be that. If you look through history-Japanese
history, for instance-Buddhism did not play such a liberal role. I don't think
you could say about Buddhism in general what you said about Buddhism in the West.
In the 1960's, Buddhism attracted a certain kind of Westerner who was coming from
the liberal side. But I agree with Jim that with time, as it gets more vested,
Buddhism won't be just liberal anymore; it will include the whole spectrum of
people.
Brown: There are a lot of transitory arrangements and ideas in politics;
they are fashionable for a while and then they pass out of practice. I don't think
we can escape being positioned in some temporary arrangement-that's just part
of what it is to be human-but I can't see that Buddhism is going to align itself
with some category that will keep changing over time. It seems to me we have to
get beyond these things, although each way of being in the world-from Tibet to
Japan to Berkeley, California-will develop its own rituals and liturgies and folkways
to manifest the basic experience.
Glassman: Yeah, the difference between Texas
Buddhism and Berkeley Buddhism is going to be huge.
Beyond questions of policy,
there are profound problems with the political process-the parties practice a
take-no-prisoners partisanship and the voters feel a corrosive cynicism about
it all. What can we do to bring some dignity and civility and respectfulness to
the political process?
Brown: One reason why politics seems so disreputable
is that politicians, in order to stay in their profession, have to keep very divergent
interests somewhat mollified. People with very different opinions all have to
feel that they are being represented. Therefore, politicians can't always be totally
precise, so they get the reputation for speaking dishonestly. The people they
represent can't agree and yet they only have one representative, so that builds
into the process a certain footwork on the part of the politician that leads to
cynical interpretations.
I think the basics of nonviolence and treating people
and things with more care is a powerful idea that has to be brought to bear in
the hurly-burly of politics. The conflictual nature of political competition is
always in need of the corrective of interconnectedness, of nonviolence.
Glassman:
The practices of not knowing and deep listening have led me to try to bring all
of the voices to the table. This is not unique to Buddhism, but I think if you
are coming from a deep Buddhist viewpoint and you really acknowledge the interconnectedness
of life, you must listen to all the voices, all the aspects of yourself. That
changes the political process dramatically. When I built Greyston, I brought in
Democrats and Republicans. People told me, "Don't deal with the churches,
they're going to screw everything up." I brought in the churches. "Don't
deal with the government." I brought in the government. I tried to bring
every voice into the discussion. It's not always easy to do-to get people to sit
down at the same table-but it's something extremely helpful that Buddhism brings
to the process.
Gimian: If you're asking what a unique Buddhist contribution
to politics could be, I think it would be about maintaining a radical perspective
throughout the process. By radical I mean always coming back to the roots. From
a Buddhist perspective, basic reality has to do with the truth of suffering. We
accept that there is going to be a certain kind of dissatisfaction. We don't try
to ignore it or cover it over, because it is often the covering-over that perpetuates
conflict.
Along with suffering, we have egolessness and impermanence, which
are the other two of the three marks of existence. Things are constantly changing,
and that scares a lot of people. In a political arena, people don't like change.
But it's a fundamental truth of human existence that things are constantly in
flux-changing from an inner point of view and from an outer point of view-and
if we acknowledge that it will help people become comfortable with it.
All
of these things lead to a more natural gentleness, and I think that's what it
comes down to in the end. The result of this kind of radical perspective is a
natural gentleness that makes it possible to work with groups of people and come
to resolutions that they can't even imagine initially.
Finally, Buddhism says
that the real answer to human suffering is spiritual. So what are the limits of
what can be achieved in politics? The converse might be: If we want to really
change things, would we be talking about using politics to present a spiritual
view? For instance, Roshi Glassman, can you have a powerful effect on the situation
in the Middle East by purely political means, or do you have to act as a spiritual
teacher in some way?
Glassman: I don't think I have to act as a spiritual teacher
to do that. My feeling is that to have real effect you have to be dealing in all
of the spheres. You can't leave any of them out. In the Middle East, we are involved
in the political world, the social action world, the religious world, the cultural
world. I think you have to deal with each of those. Whichever one you leave out,
that's the one that will destroy your progress.
Brown: I have to say two things.
First, I think the idea that we can have some big impact on this complicated thing
called the world-all these billions of people and all these complicated systems
that we form a small part of-is a bit fatuous. I don't know what to say about
it. However, at the same time, I do operate with the idea that I am doing something
that has some impact that can be positive. So that right there is a rather dualistic
stance of both impotence and empowerment.
Second, presenting people with spiritual
teachings is no easy matter if you are a politician and hold an elected office.
It would be difficult to be heard unless one spoke very carefully. I still recall
Yamada Roshi saying when I lived in Kamakura, "You yourself are completely
empty." But I don't think I'm going to bring that up at a city council meeting,
much less on the campaign trail or on Hardball.
The more we can talk in common
sense, the more we can utter simple and straightforward truths, the more people
will listen. We can't get caught up in the latest language. There's a lot of cant
in the political process. The important thing is to speak in words that you use
when you are speaking to a friend or another person. Words at the most basic level
have a certain power because they are not so abstracted and distorted. Common
sense is so rare, and it has a power that constantly has to be brought to bear
on the politics of our time.
Gimian: I think what Mayor Brown has articulated
is a very Buddhist perspective-that it comes down not to a religion but to our
basic human experience. If you can communicate that from the depths of your being,
that's a very powerful contribution in a political context. ©
Jerry Brown
is mayor of Oakland, California. Governor of California for eight years and a
three-time presidential candidate, he has long been one of America's most interesting
politicians. He has a strong spiritual and philosophical background as a student
of Zen and former Jesuit seminarian.
Roshi Bernie Glassman has a created a
series of successful social action and political organizations. He founded the
Greyston Mandala in Yonkers, New York, which provides employment, housing, health
care and other services to the disadvantaged of Westchester County. His current
project is the Peacemaker Circle, a multi-faith organization working to create
more effective peacemaking and social transformation in trouble spots around the
world.
James Gimian is executive director of the Denma Translation Group, which
produced The Art of War: the Denma Translation (Shambhala Publications, 2001),
a new edition of Sun Tzu's classic text with explanatory essays. He was a close
student of and aide to the late Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche and is publisher
of the Shambhala Sun.