Perm do both---Buddhism doesn’t necessitate being apolitical

I’m surprised to have to write this post (which surely wiser heads would advise me not to), but I’ve come to see recently that the idea that “Buddhism is apolitical”/“Buddhism should stay apolitical” is deeper than I thought in the American Buddhist community. It’s also not true, and it’s not helpful, and I’d like to talk about why. First, let’s just be clear that Buddhist doctrine is about two things and only two things. The first let’s call Emptiness, and let’s say it like this: everything you think misses the point entirely, has zero traction, zero contact with anything like reality. Even the thought “reality.” Even the most basic of thoughts: “there is” or “there is not.” No concept reaches, and no thing anywhere at all can be grasped. The second let’s call Precepts. It’s a little more complicated, because there’s something to it, but we can say it simply too: there is a right way and a wrong way to live. There is wholesome action, and unwholesome action. The basic nature of things (underlying even this “Emptiness” notion) is interdependence or dependent co-arising, the total and complete depedence of each thing on each other thing, throughout space and time. The Buddhist life and path is to honor and celebrate this interdependence, to meet all things with respect and gratitude, and to act altruistically such that this basic interdependence is celebrated and revealed. Selfishness, violence, and contempt emerge from and further reinforce the delusion of individual separability, and as such are the root of all suffering. If there’s a third teaching, it’s just this: Emptiness needs Precepts and Precepts needs Emptiness. The bird with one wing doesn’t just fail to fly – it dies an awful writhing death in a pool of its own blood. I assume all of the above is clear to my dear readers. And if you disagree, I hope I’ll hear from you. Now to this “apolitical” business. In the last couple of days I’ve had roughly four versions of it thrown at me, and I’ll say more about each below. The short version though is that they’re all nonsense. They are most basically nonsense because “apolitical” isn’t a thing – “apolitical” doesn’t exist. To say that Buddhism should be “apolitical” is just to say “I prefer to see Buddhism not through the lens of its political operation.” But Buddhism still has people in it, doing things. It still has a culture, and a flavor, and a social impact. It still supports some political expressions and doesn’t [not] support others. Believing something is “apolitical” is like believing that “secular” or “science” is not a belief system. Secularity is just another belief system, just as “apolitical” is just another politics. Politics can’t be removed from the operation of humans together. More specifically, the politics of “apolitical” here and now, as we approach the inauguration of Donald Trump, is very clear. Expressing the value of “apolitical” is an active politics of complacency and complicity. Who does “apolitical” benefit? A friend shared Desmond Tutu’s words: “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.” My friends who advocate for apolitical Buddhism ask with such sincerity: “Why do you have to take sides? That just alienates people! Why not just love and accept everyone equally? goes the mouse. go its tiny bones. Anyway, here are the versions of “Buddism is apolitical,” helpfully annonated with how they are nonsense: 1) Emptiness The idea: Remember item #1 above, how no idea, no thought, even remotely touches “reality”? Being “apolitical” is closer to emptiness than is having a political view. Why? Having some political view is obviously one of those inherently false views. It’s actually worse – it’s a bunch of layers of views, starting from the most basic one of “there is something” and then adding lots of even further deluded layers of “there should be something else,” etc. These views from their most basic to their most elaborate are completely deluded, have no reference to any kind of actual world. So let it go, man! Buddhism doesn’t get into that stuff. In a more memorable quip, someone dismissed my political and social justice concerns as “Much ado about emptiness.” . Why it’s nonsense: A) The idea that no-view is closer to emptiness than a-view misses entirely the point of emptiness. “No view” is just another view – you can’t get off this train with any formulation. You don’t get closer to or farther from emptiness. In fact, sticking to emptiness – that no-view somehow gets it while a-view doesn’t get it – is not just wrong but is a deep Dharma sickness. As Yunmen says, it’s better to have a whole mountain of views of “existence” than just a particle of view of “nonexistence.” But more to the point, B), is just #2 above – Precepts. The bleeding dead bird of thinking Emptiness is a complete teaching. “Much ado about emptiness.” Easy to say about other people’s suffering. So it’s best not to say it. In fact, never say it like that. We know it, we know the deep ground, but the activity is compassion, relation, the relative deluded world of people living and dying. Of course it’s ok for beings to suffer and indeed the whole world to die. That’s the fearlessness of the emptiness side – I know completely that there never has been a “world” anything like what I thought, and even my views of “living and dying” don’t capture it in the least. But we act in the world anyway. We save beings in the dream. We give ourselves wholeheartedly to the welfare of others. That’s not “much ado about emptiness” – that’s actual Bodhisattva practice. That’s the bird, now flying off with some water in its beak to put out the forest fire. When someone is attacking our friends, or our family, or ourselves, we tell them to stop. Even if that means we’ve now had to let go of emptiness and descend into “politics.”