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Buddhism in the Public Sphere BUDDHISM IN THE PUBLIC SPHERE The core teachings and practices of Buddhism are systematically directed toward developing keen and caring insight into the relational or interdependent nature of all things. This book applies Buddhist thought to reflect on the challenges to public good created by emerging social, economic, and political realities associated with increasingly complex global interdependence. In eight chapters, key arenas for public policy are addressed: the environment, health, media, trade and development, the interplay of politics and religion, international relations, terror and security, and education. Each chapter explains how a specific issue area has come to be shaped by complex interdependence and offers specific insights into directing the dynamic of this interdependence toward greater equity, sustainability, and freedom. Thereby, a sustained meditation on the meaning and means of realizing public good is put forward, emphasizing the critical role of a Buddhist conception of diversity that is relevant across the full spectrum of policy domains and that becomes increasingly forceful as concerns shift from the local to the global. Peter D. Hershock is Coordinator of the Asian Studies Development Program at the East-West Center in Honolulu, Hawai’i. His research interests focus on the philosophical dimensions of Chan Buddhism and on using the resources of Buddhist thought and practice to address contemporary issues. He is the author of several books and articles on Buddhist Philosophy and Chinese Religion and Philosophy. ROUTLEDGE CRITICAL STUDIES IN BUDDHISM General Editors Charles S. Prebish and Damien Keown Routledge Critical Studies in Buddhism is a comprehensive study of the Buddhist tradition. The series explores this complex and extensive tradition from a variety of perspectives, using a range of different methodologies. The series is diverse in its focus, including historical studies, textual translations and commentaries, sociological investigations, bibliographic studies, and consid- erations of religious practice as an expression of Buddhism’s integral religiosity. It also presents materials on modern intellectual historical studies, including the role of Buddhist thought and scholarship in a contemporary, critical context and in the light of current social issues. The series is expansive and imaginative in scope, spanning more than two and a half millennia of Buddhist history. It is receptive to all research works that inform and advance our knowledge and understanding of the Buddhist tradition. A SURVEY OF VINAYA AMERICAN BUDDHISM LITERATURE Edited by Duncan Ryuken Williams and Charles S. Prebish Christopher Queen THE REFLEXIVE NATURE OF IMAGING WISDOM AWARENESS Jacob N. Kinnard Paul Williams PAIN AND ITS ENDING ALTRUISM AND REALITY Carol S. Anderson Paul Williams EMPTINESS APPRAISED BUDDHISM AND HUMAN RIGHTS David F. Burton Edited by Damien Keown, Charles Prebish and Wayne Husted THE SOUND OF LIBERATING TRUTH WOMEN IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF Edited by Sallie B. King and THE BUDDHA Paul O. Ingram Kathryn R Blackstone BUDDHIST THEOLOGY THE RESONANCE OF EMPTINESS Edited by Roger R. Jackson and Gay Watson John J. Makransky THE GLORIOUS DEEDS OF INDIAN BUDDHIST THEORIES PURNA OF PERSONS Joel Tatelman James Duerlinger EARLY BUDDHISM – A NEW ACTION DHARMA APPROACH Edited by Christopher Queen, Sue Hamilton Charles Prebish and Damien Keown CONTEMPORARY BUDDHIST ETHICS TIBETAN AND ZEN Edited by Damien Keown BUDDHISM IN BRITAIN David N. Kay INNOVATIVE BUDDHIST WOMEN THE CONCEPT OF THE Edited by Karma Lekshe Tsomo BUDDHA Guang Xing TEACHING BUDDHISM IN THE WEST THE PHILOSOPHY OF Edited by V. S. Hori, R. P. Hayes and DESIRE IN THE BUDDHIST J. M. Shields PALI CANON David Webster EMPTY VISION David L. McMahan THE NOTION OF DITTHI IN THERAVADA BUDDHISM SELF, REALITY AND Paul Fuller REASON IN TIBETAN PHILOSOPHY THE BUDDHIST THEORY OF Thupten Jinpa SELF-COGNITION Zhihua Yao IN DEFENSE OF DHARMA Tessa J. Bartholomeusz MORAL THEORY IN SANTIDEVA’S SIKSASAMUCCAYA BUDDHIST PHENOMENOLOGY Barbra R. Clayton Dan Lusthaus BUDDHIST STUDIES RELIGIOUS MOTIVATION AND FROM INDIA TO THE ORIGINS OF AMERICA BUDDHISM Edited by Damien Keown Torkel Brekke DISCOURSE AND DEVELOPMENTS IN IDEOLOGY IN MEDIEVAL AUSTRALIAN BUDDHISM JAPANESE BUDDHISM Michelle Spuler Edited by Richard K. Payne and Taigen Dan Leighton ZEN WAR STORIES Brian Victoria BUDDHIST THOUGHT AND APPLIED PSYCHOLOGICAL THE BUDDHIST RESEARCH UNCONSCIOUS Edited by D. K. Nauriyal, William S. Waldron Michael S. Drummond and Y. B. Lal BUDDHISM IN CANADA BEYOND ENLIGHTENMENT Edited by Bruce Matthews Buddhism, religion, modernity BUDDHISM, CONFLICT AND Richard Cohen VIOLENCE IN MODERN SRI LANKA BUDDHISM IN Edited by Mahinda Deegalle THE PUBLIC SPHERE THERAVADA BUDDHISM AND Reorienting global THE BRITISH ENCOUNTER interdependence Religious, missionary and Peter D. Hershock colonial experience in nineteenth century Sri Lanka Elizabeth Harris The following titles are published in association with the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies a project of The Society for the Wider Understanding of the Buddhist Tradition The Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies conducts and promotes rigorous teaching and research into all forms of the Buddhist tradition. EARLY BUDDHIST METAPHYSICS Noa Ronkin MIPHAM’S DIALECTICS AND THE DEBATES ON EMPTINESS Karma Phuntsho HOW BUDDHISM BEGAN The conditioned genesis of the early teachings Richard F. Gombrich BUDDHIST MEDITATION An anthology of texts from the Pali canon Sarah Shaw BUDDHISM IN THE PUBLIC SPHERE Reorienting global interdependence Peter D. Hershock I~ ~?io~!~~n~~:up LONDON AND NEW YORK First published 2006 by Routledge Published 2017 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © 2006 Peter D. Hershock Typeset in Times New Roman by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd, Chennai, India The Open Access version of this book, available at www.tandfebooks. com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial- No Derivatives 4.0 license. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN13: 978–0–415–77052–1 (hbk) FOR ALL PARENTS, SONS AND DAUGHTERS, PRESENT AND FUTURE. BUT ESPECIALLY FOR MY OWN YOUNGEST SON, KA’EO. CONTENTS Acknowledgments x Introduction 1 1 Liberating environments 13 2 Health and healing: relating the personal and the public 39 3 Trade, development, and the possibility of post-market economics 59 4 Technology, media, and the colonization of consciousness 85 5 Governance cultures and countercultures: religion, politics, and public good 102 6 Diversity as commons: international relations beyond competition and cooperation 127 7 From vulnerability to virtuosity: responding to the realities of global terrorism 154 8 Educating for virtuosity 171 Notes 203 Bibliography 221 Index 225 ix ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Books have histories. But like the histories of all things—at least from a Buddhist perspective—there is no question of telling the whole story of a book or tracing it back to an ultimate point of origin. Acknowledgments can never be anything but partial. Here I want to make special mention of four people who have contributed to the writing of this book. First and foremost is my Buddhist teacher, Ji Kwang Dae Poep Sa Nim. I have been fortunate enough to witness Dae Poep Sa Nim’s peerless demonstration of the meaning of compassion and wisdom for nearly twenty years. This book could not have been conceived, much less written, in the absence of this opportunity. If it is true that books are completed only as they are read, three friends and colleagues must be thanked for their contributions to completing this book: Russell Alfonso, Sonja Amadae, and Graham Parkes. Their critically appreciative engagement with various chapter drafts over the past years has been crucial in bringing the writing of this book to a fruitful close. x INTRODUCTION The public sphere can no longer be understood or responded to skillfully as a domain in which essentially independent actors engage one another in pursuit of their individual and common interests. Neither can the public sphere be under- stood as a uniform or neutral space of engagement from which we can effectively retreat as needed or desired. If such a public sphere ever actually existed, global historical processes have dissolved its boundaries and, it would seem, irreversibly altered its complexion. The public sphere is now a realm of complexly dynamic interdependence. It is an uneven space—a space curved in ways that at once shape and are shaped by global currents of every imaginable type of material good, service, information, and knowledge, but also increasingly powerful flows of attention and markedly differing senses of “the good.” In ways celebrated by some and lamented by others, it is a space from which we cannot truly retreat and in which we are made aware that, beyond a certain threshold, our interdependence is also interpenetration. The dynamics of the public sphere have come to compel realizing that relationships are more basic than things related and that, at bottom, we are what we mean for one another. This book emerged out of twin concerns. The first is that globally deepening interdependence has been meaning greater inequity
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