Alan Senauke on "Systems of Suffering"
What is the relationship between inner suffering and societal ills? Or how about between seeking individual salvation and pursuing a better overall world for all? These are questions that have humankind for centuries; deep but disparate thinkers from Marx to Christ to Einstein have all weighed in according to their own background and perspective. In my interview with Alan Senauke, he looks at this age-old query from a Buddhist perspective. And as one of the early thinkers behind the very concept of “Engaged Buddhism,” you can imagine that Alan has quite a bit of introspection about this matter. Following is one excerpt where he clarifies his understanding of this term, and how the individual path opens up to a wider, holistic vision.
“Engaged Buddhism to me is really looking at the wide picture, or the wide view of interdependence, and taking responsibility for it.”
“Engaged Buddhism, to me, is a way of looking at the world, not through the eye of an individual, but through the eye of communities, and societies, and systems. So the suffering, most of the teaching that I've received is very clear in saying not so much that ‘I’ am suffering, but that ‘there is suffering.’ However, many of the structures of our [Buddhist] meditation tradition… attend to suffering at the level of individual activity and individual karma.
But from the perspective of Engaged Buddhism, we see that our societies are a fluid interdependence and [a] dynamic between individuals who are operating in the context of a system, or systems—[in fact], you actually almost always have multiple systems. And so what we have are systems of suffering.
And we can put names to them. You can talk about racism, or sexism, or any form of structural oppression that is not simply the suffering of one individual or of an accumulation of essentially individuals, but is something that whole communities or whole groups of people experience collectively, and suffer from their systemic effects. And the other side of that coin is that as participants in these systems, we don't necessarily see our individual agency in the proliferation of that system. And so everything goes along with a sense of disconnect. So, I think that way to look at Engaged Buddhism is as really taking responsibility in the sense that each of us is completely responsible for everything that happens in the world. That's a broad expression, but it’s by virtue of our participation in systems. And this can be very simply described.
If we get in our gasoline-powered car, and go out for a drive, we are making use as individuals of resources that have been extracted from the earth, [often] in other parts of the globe, and often extracted to the ends of great profit for the companies that are selling the oil but incredible oppression for the people who are working in the oil fields or digging in the coal mines. And so, we live our lives at the expense of theirs.
So, Engaged Buddhism to me is really looking at the wide picture, or the wide view of interdependence, and taking responsibility for it.”