“Interest in eco-dharma – the ecological implications of Buddhist teachings – is finally growing after years of apparent indifference and little conversation about it in Buddhist sanghas. … Indifference to eco-dharma seems to be reflective of a larger problem with socially engaged Buddhism in the West. … we are getting better at pulling drowning people out of the river, but we are not much better at asking why there are so many more people caught in the river. Who or what is pushing them in upstream? When we dare to ask why so many are homeless in the wealthiest country in history, or why so many languish in prisons, we are dismissed as radicals or leftists. “These concerns,” goes the common response, “have nothing to do with Buddhism.”

Does the ecological crisis also have nothing to do with Buddhism? Or is the disconnect due to our misunderstanding of Buddhism? The philosopher Slavoj Zizek has argued that this disconnect applies generally to Western Buddhism, which “enables you to fully participate in the frantic pace of the capitalist game while sustaining the perception that you are not really in it; that you are well aware of how worthless this spectacle is; and that what really matters to you is the peace of the inner self to which you know you can always withdraw.” His point has some validity. (meer…)