The term is a modern one and has, as far as I can tell, no corollary in the Discourses or the Commentaries. It refers to the rapidly growing movement wherein Buddhists and those sympathetic to the Buddha’s analysis of how things unfold and how we transform ourselves engage issues of peace and social justice with methods derived from and a mindset prepared by that analysis.

The sutta passage that I’ve prepared to introduce our discussion of Socially Engaged Buddhism is the beginning of the Mahaparinibbana Sutta, the sutta that follows the Buddha through the final months of his life, ending with his death, his funeral rites, and the distribution of his remains. It’s the longest sutta in the Tipitaka, full of rich and significant discourses and vivid description of events. We see the Buddha’s humanity throughout; his body has become infirm; he is in great pain; he is confronted at turn after turn by the temptation to give in to the ravages of time, to surrender the task, to take his own release. But he never deviates from the Dharma that he accepted as his own 45 years earlier. He continues to teach, preparing the sangha of Bhikkhus to go on without him. When he does finally release his life, it is at the time of his choosing, at the place of his choosing, and in his own way. It is one of the most absorbing stories in the world and worth reading in all its detail.

In Class 6, we will only be dealing with the opening six passages of the sutta. In the first of those, the wicked King Ajatasattu sends his chief minister to tell the Buddha that he is about to destroy the Vajji federation, an alliance of Northern Indian republics that included the Buddha’s own birth republic of Kosala and his family clan, the Sakyans; Ajatasattu tells his minister to ask the Buddha what he thinks of his plans. The Buddha does not respond directly to Ajatasattu’s minister; instead, he reminds Ananda of a discourse that he’d given to the Vajjis several years earlier, about how to ensure the expansion of their federation and prevent its decline. His method here is to ask Ananda whether the Vajji have, indeed, managed to preserve the practices that the Buddha had recommended in that earlier discourse.

The practices that the Buddha recommended to the Vajji Confederation and the civic qualities he told them that they must preserve are still relevant today to any federation that wishes to maintain its independence, its wealth, and the freedom and welfare of its people. It’s not hard at all, in our 21st Century United States of America, to hear what the Buddha told the Vajjis and recall that those same practices and qualities were what made us a great nation, and that we must restore and maintain those if we are to restore and maintain our greatness as a society and our individual freedoms.

If the first passage in our reading establishes goals for our engagement with our society, the following passages remind us of what we must do to prepare ourselves for that engagement and to build our Engaged Buddhist movement.

When Ajatasattu’s minister has gone, the Buddha asks Ananda to assemble the bhikkhus, and he proceeds to give them five short teachings, each of which covers a list of practices that the bhikkhus must follow and qualities they must nurture in themselves to ensure the expansion of their community and prevent its decline. Once again, it’s not much of a stretch to substitute the term “social activist” for “bhikkhu“, and to understand the term “community of bhikkhus” as an analogue to the concept of a Socially Engaged Buddhist movement. Just as the bhikkhus must preserve the integrity of their community, settle their disputes peacefully, share their resources, watch one another’s back, and preserve their personal qualities of mindfulness, ethical behavior, and diligent pursuit of enlightenment, so we must maintain those same qualities if we are to grow our movement and build our strength to confront the poisons of greed, hatred and delusion that are hastening the decline of our civilization.