What Is Wrong with Us?

What Is Wrong
with the World? A Buddhist Perspective

Hsiao-Lan Hu
University of Detroit Mercy

When being asked to join the Society of Buddhist-Christian Studies panel “What Is
Wrong with Us? What Is Wrong with the World?,” I felt honored and acquiesced
with some sense of dread. As soon as I actually had a chance to ponder about this
topic, I regretted having agreed to the engagement. For one thing, this topic seems
to be the broadest topic conceivable: given the extremely large amount of news of
destruction and injustice around the world, where do I even begin? For another,
what can I possibly say that is beyond, or simply different from, what has already
been said in the long traditions of Buddhism and Christianity? As I thought about
what I could write, I noticed that my attention at each moment is always gravitated
toward the experiences I recently had with my colleagues and my students, as well as
the articles I recently read. Perhaps, then, the only thing I can adequately assess is
“what is wrong with me.” Or perhaps I can talk about “what is wrong with other
people around me.” As it quickly became painfully obvious that I would much prefer
discussing “what is wrong with other people around me” to discussing “what is wrong
with me,” it also became clear to me that all of the teachings I have studied and all
of the thoughts I have had on the topic can actually be presented from this angle:
self and others.
While the only topic I can address with any sense of adequacy is perhaps “what is
wrong with me,” it seems much easier, and much more satisfying, to talk about
“what is wrong with other people around me.” The others who have given me grief.
The others who insulted me or looked down on me. The others who angered me or
frustrated me. The others who refused to listen to me. Surely that accounts for what
is wrong with me: the others. “What is wrong with me” is caused by what others did
to me. But that is not what Buddhist teachings say and not what Buddhist practices
would imply, and from what little I know, that is not what Christian teachings say,
either. By Buddhist standards, this line of thinking is a display of egocentric con-
sideration that we call “ignorance” or “delusion” (Pāli: avijjā; Skt.: avidyā), one of
the fundamental propellers of samsāra. And doesn’t the Bible speak of casting out
the beam in one’s own eye before doing something about the mote in someone else’s
eye (Matt. 7:5)? Shirking the responsibility by counting the wrongs of others rather
than confronting the wrongs of oneself is perhaps the most fundamental wrong.

Buddhist-Christian Studies 37 (2017) 17–27. © by University of Hawai‘i Press. All rights reserved.
18 BUDDHIST-CHRISTIAN STUDIES

So does this mean I should retreat to the discussion on “what is wrong with me”?
But shifting the focus of discussion from “what is wrong with the world” to “what is
wrong with me” seems every bit as egocentric as judging the wrongs of the world.
Besides, cognitive psychologists told us that we are often inaccurate in evaluating
ourselves or our situations. For example, one of the reasons that mindfulness-based
stress reduction (MBSR) or mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) has become
a trend is that studies have found basic mindfulness training effective in reducing
anxiety and fear because, on the one hand, mindfulness prevents perception “from
going astray to conceptual proliferation ( papañca),” and on the other hand it “prevents
feelings from developing into emotional disturbances.”1 That is, prior to basic mind-
fulness training, the subjects in those studies would experience anxiety and fear
because they would ruminate excessively about how others may perceive or react to
the self (which very often is not true at all) and have emotional reactions to their
own ruminations about the reality as they perceive it.2 Also, some studies find that
people do not even accurately perceive their friendship with others: only about a half
of the people that they consider to be good friends would consider them to be good
friends in return.3 If the subjects of these studies are representative enough of the
human population, it seems that human beings are not very capable of discussing
what is wrong with themselves, either, because misperception of reality often gets
in the way.
Furthermore, our evaluation of the perceived wrongness of the self is reached
through egocentric comparisons: I am “right” when I think I match up to, or per-
form better than, the standards that I have set up or the standards that I perceived
the world to have set up, and “wrong” when I fall short of those standards. I am
either right and better than others, or wrong and worse than others. This kind of
self-centered comparison, in Buddhism, is conceit (māna), regardless of the end judg-
ment of being better or worse. The word “conceit” in English is usually associated
with the thought or attitude “I am better.” In Buddhist teachings, however, conceit
can be manifested in three modes: “I am better” (seyyo ’ham asmimāna), “I am worse”
(hīno ’ham asmimāna), and “I am equal” (sadiso ’ham asmimāna).4 “I am worse” is a
type of conceit because it is still self-centered and mistakenly taking the traits of
self and the traits of others to be self-existing and permanent. “I am equal” is also
considered a type of conceit because, in addition to the same mistakes of centering
on the self and perceiving the current constellations of personality traits to be fixed,
no two people are completely the same and everyone is different due to the dynamic
co-arising of causes and conditions (Pāli: paṭiccasamuppāda; Sanskrit: pratītyasamutpāda)
that have made the person, moment by moment. British Theravādin bhikkhu Ajahn
Brahmavamso Mahāthera, more popularly known as Ajahn Brahm, argues that
Buddhism would not judge people’s differences to be better or worse, and would
just see different people to be equally worthy of compassion.5 An arahant is said
to no longer have the conceit of “I am” and no longer has the need for egocentric
comparisons.
Accompanying egocentric consideration is dichotomous thinking: the world is
for me or against me. When something is for me, it is good and I am attached to it;
 WHAT IS WRONG WITH US? A BUDDHIST PERSPECTIVE 19

when something is against me, it is bad and I am repulsed by it. Positives and nega-
tives are projected onto the world based on my perception of how things affect me.
Once negativities are projected, egocentric consideration finds it justifiable to take
measures to avoid them, suppress them, oppress them, and even eliminate them. And
then egocentric consideration takes the measures against negativities to be “right” and
what frustrates my attempts to be “wrong,” even though someone else with a different
ego and thus a different angle of egocentric consideration may say otherwise.
When the ego is collective rather than individual, the dichotomous thinking is
even more amplified, and atrocities are justified in the name of the group, be it
“our business,” “our class,” “our gender,” “our political party,” “our nation,” “our race,”
“our religion,” “our way of life,” or “our civilization” if following Samuel Huntington’s
thesis of “the clash of civilizations.” David R. Loy calls this “we”-ego “wego.”6 Self-
centered dichotomous thinking allows the self-group to guard its interests at the
expense of other-groups, “quite apart from the motivations of the individuals who
serve them.”7 An individual may find it unreasonable or distasteful to sacrifice others
for the sake of self-interests, but institutionalized “wego” takes such qualm away.
Christian theologian and ethicist Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971), in Moral Man
and Immoral Society (1932), also observed that “the proportion of reason to impulse
becomes increasingly negative when we proceed from the life of individuals to that
of social groups.”8 That is, reason can work well only when it is individuals or small
intimate groups that is concerned; the proportion of impulse increases with the size
of groups. The “wego”-centric dichotomous thinking of large groups, the “most im-
portant and dangerous instances” of which are “nation-states, large corporations, and
military-industrial complexes,”9 justifies delusion, greed, and ill will—the self-group
should “defend” their interests (as perceived by the group’s elites), even short-term
ones, against the long-term well-being of “others,” even if doing so violates the values
professed by individuals in the self-group.10
Thus the groups that have perpetrated the most egregious atrocities in human
history, such as genocides and systems of slavery, seem to be entirely convinced that
they were doing the right thing and taking the necessary measures,11 to the extent
that, despite the denouncements from other people in the world, they would deny
wrongdoing (such as the denial of Holocaust and the denial of Nanking Massacre)
or insist on their positive contributions (such the celebration of Columbus Day
even though Columbus did not “discover” America and in fact massacred Native
Americans). As far as dichotomous thinking goes, admitting the wrongness of
actions taken by the self-group is to claim the others (against whom the self-group
was righteously defending themselves) to be completely right, which is to say others
are good and the self-group is evil, and that is unacceptable to the “wego.” For a
dichotomous mind, to say that a certain group has the right to live is saying that
their enemy does not deserve to live. An email I recently received reminds me of the
conflict between two of my colleagues over the Israel-Palestine issue. The colleague
whose field is Middle Eastern history got to know some Palestinian peace activists
during her research, and she organized a public talk to shed light on the plights of
Palestinians and call attention to their right to live. The colleague whose field was
20 BUDDHIST-CHRISTIAN STUDIES

biblical studies and had many Israeli friends made sure to attend that talk in order
to denounce the public talk itself by asserting, “But Israel has the right to defend
itself!” The historian’s attempt at clarifying her intention of fostering peace dialogues
fell on deaf ears and, in fact, only seemed to have inflamed the biblical scholar because,
for the latter, talking about peace was condemning Israel’s defensive war.
An arguably less damaging but very common manifestation of egocentric dichoto-
mous thinking is magnification of one’s own suffering and minimization of others’
suffering because, to an either-or mind, acknowledging others’ suffering means the
self is responsible, and the existence of self’s suffering negates the suffering of others.
In the past year I found out that one of my graduate students sincerely believes
that racism and sexism were things of the past and so all the feminists, particularly
feminists of color, “should just get over it,” but at the same time he would assert
that men and women are just fundamentally different and blacks just need to take
more responsibility for their lives. When talking about unarmed black men being
shot by police, he asserted it happened “only this year” and “before, those men
deserved to be shot for acting like thugs.” He is also deeply prejudiced against
Muslims and Mexicans, commenting that Muslims have never done a thing to stop
terrorism (and thus are in a way complicit in terrorist activities) and that Mexican
immigrants are mostly dangerous criminals, completely oblivious to the facts that
Muslims suffer the most from terrorist attacks and that immigrants are statistically
much less likely to commit crimes than native-born citizens.12 Thinking that he
needs to be better educated, I told him to audit my undergraduate course Class,
Race, and Gender. Over the course of the semester he would come to me every other
week to tell me that he feels like the persecuted minority due to his status as a male
librarian working in a female-dominated field, due to his right-wing political views,
and most of all due to his physical condition of alopecia universalis. He is convinced
that, because of his physical condition of having no hair on his entire body, he is the
absolute minority whose suffering that other self-proclaimed minorities could not
even fathom: “With all due respect, professor,” he said, “there are several black girls
in the class, and there are a few Latino girls, too, but there is always just one bald
kid.” Being bald has frequently led others to assume that he has cancer or is a skin-
head, and by his reckoning such assumptions about him by others have made it
impossible for him to have a girlfriend. He was outraged that, in one of the readings
I assigned, bell hooks seemed to be only talking to black women. He said, “I am
sorry that my ancestors made her ancestors feel bad, I really do, but she is making
me feel just as bad by excluding me.” In his mind, he not being directly addressed in
an essay feels just as bad as the centuries of brutal treatments of black women in the
United States of America. In his mind, as a bald conservative white male librarian, he
is the absolute minority who knows suffering that others do not, but women, blacks,
Muslims, and immigrants should just get over their sufferings and stop unfairly blam-
ing white men. “My” suffering is always too much, and others’ suffering is negligible.
Despite all of the current sociological studies that I have the class read, he would
still ask me why the feminists covered in class hold on to “the past” and would not
let it go. Despite the fact that the very first two pieces of assigned reading for the
class are about using one’s privileges to be better allies, and despite my repeated
 WHAT IS WRONG WITH US? A BUDDHIST PERSPECTIVE 21

clarification that critiquing racial, sex/gender, and class systems is not the same thing
as attacking everyone who currently benefits from those systems, he complains that he
feels he is the one in the “birdcage” with all these discussions on white privileges,
male privileges, and class privileges. In his egocentric dichotomous thinking, talking
about the existence of privileges is to persecute him for being a middle-class white
heterosexual Christian man, and critiquing social inequalities is to blame him as
“the problem.” In his dichotomous thinking, one is either “the problem” or “the
victim,” and he feels victimized for being considered “the problem” while the real
problem, according to him, is that those self-proclaimed victims use “the past” to
blame their situations on people like him without taking responsibility for them-
selves. Once the world is dichotomously conceptualized as “the victim” versus “the
problem,” acknowledging the suffering of others is to say the self is at fault. Discus-
sion of “my” privileges amounts to persecution, and inhumane treatment of “others”
is justified.
While this student may seem to be just one extreme individual case, I found
many echoes of his views in politicians’ claims of hardships despite having been
privileged in most regards, as well as in their outcries about the ways in which
“others” may have inconvenienced them and made them feel insecure despite the
fact that those “others” have gone through tremendous sufferings. In US politics, it
is with an astonishingly high frequency that we see the ultra-privileged crying
“witch hunt” and blaming the victim. The discussions about policies on refugees
(and migrants, for that matter), for another example, seem to suggest that some
people do not see refugees and migrants as human beings whose life struggles are
worth empathizing with and whose deaths are worth mentioning. Instead, refugees
and migrants are viewed simply as unfamiliar objects that may (or may not) cause
problems for our way of life, and any possible problem for our way of life is intolerable.
Similarly, on some level we may know that “our consumerist lifestyle depends on a
global web of unjust social relationships and destructive ecological impacts,”13 but
paying fair-trade prices or driving less inconveniences me/us too much.
Dichotomous thinking is pervasive and persistent, even among generally reflective
people who see the harm in such thinking. In the first class of my graduate course
on the methods and theories in religious studies last year, a graduate student who is
married to a Hindu asked, with a sense of having been puzzled for years and finally
finding someone who might be able to answer his question: “Why is it that Western
thinking is so dichotomous” (or at least that is what he has observed in his surround-
ings) and “Eastern thinking does not seem to be this way” (based on his observation
of his wife and her relatives from India). After pointing out that his Eastern-Western
distinction is itself a dichotomous construct, I replied that people are perhaps prone
to dichotomous thinking, and it is just that some cultures, religions, or schools of
thought discourage and deconstruct it, while other cultures, religions, or schools of
thought promote and amplify it.
Buddhism is one of the cultural-religious-philosophical systems that discourage and
deconstruct dichotomous thinking of self/other, zero/sum, and good/evil. Buddhism
understands things to be composite and changing and so does not presuppose any
independent, unchanging essence. A “self” or an “other” is therefore not constant
22 BUDDHIST-CHRISTIAN STUDIES

and not a self-contained package deal that is completely this way or completely that
way, containing all good traits or containing all bad traits. And even what is con-
sidered a bad trait is not “bad” in all situations. Following this thought, there is
nothing that is eternally and inherently good, and nothing that is eternally and in-
herently evil. As Walpola Rahula stated in What the Buddha Taught a long time ago:
there is no “sin” in Buddhism as understood in some religions.14 Some may object
by saying that there is some sort of Satan figure in Buddhism: Māra, referred to as
“the Buddhist Devil” or “the god of evil” in some textbooks written in English.15
However, the notion of a devil, or god of evil, as an independently existing king
completely in charge of the world and yet above the influence of the world does
not hinge well with the Buddhist worldview of dependent origination and composite,
changing existence. Furthermore, not presupposing an all-knowing, almighty, and
all benevolent Creator God, Buddhism has no need for theodicy through dualism.16
Catholic feminist theologian Rosemary Radford Ruether has critiqued the tendency
for dualistic thinking, too, and has further pointed out that male/female, conscious-
ness/body, and human/nonhuman nature dualisms are often turned into good/evil
dualism and thus scapegoating the “evil” side as “female.”17 With dualistic thinking,
any sense of inadequacy and negativity is projected onto the “other,” which rationalizes
exploitation, abuse, or even killing.18 When the nonself “other” is constructed to be
unlike the self, against the self, and endowed with qualities that the self does not
want in the self, the life of the “other” is less “grievable,” as feminist philosopher
Judith Butler puts it, and the general interdiction against violence finds exceptions,
which are framed along the line of “self-defense.”19 What is wrong with the world,
Ruether remarks, is “the distortion of the self-other relationship into the good-evil,
superior-inferior dualism.”20
By emphasizing interdependent co-arising and no-Self (Pāli: anattā; Skt.: anātman),
Buddhist teachings deconstruct the validity of such dualistic understanding of the
world and its concomitant distortion of self-other relationship. Peter Harvey explains
that the teaching of no-Self “undermines the attachment to self—that ‘I’ am a positive,
self-identical entity that should be gratified, and should be able to brush aside others
if they get in ‘my’ way—which is the basis of lack of respect for others.”21 What is
wrong with the world is not any specific thing that is inherently “wrong,” but the
dichotomous egocentric consideration that will lead to justification of not caring
about others or even doing harm to others. Therefore, the fundamental problem in
Buddhist understanding, as Peggy Morgan points out, “lies in ignorance, avidya
(p. avijja), false views and a lack of wisdom.”22 Wisdom refers to seeing into reality
as it is and understanding the co-arising, no-Self nature of anything and everything.
As such, “The more enlightened people are, the more they treat all beings (not just
human beings) as equals without separate egos.”23 Zenju Earthlyn Manuel, in The
Way of Tenderness: Awakening through Race, Sexuality, and Gender, states that she expe-
riences spiritual liberation “as freedom from projections of superiority and inferiority
among sentient beings,”24 and she recognizes that “to walk the path of compassion
and wisdom is to carry no harmful distinctions within our personal lives or between
ourselves and others.”25 Whether it is ego on the individual level or “wego” on the
 WHAT IS WRONG WITH US? A BUDDHIST PERSPECTIVE 23

collective level, “it obscures our interdependence with the other(s)” and “the solution
is to realize our nonduality with the other(s), and to integrate that realization into
the way we live our lives.”26
While it is in line with the tradition of Buddhist philosophy to say that what is
wrong with the world is ignorance, the Buddhist Ennobling Eightfold Path, as a
system of spiritual practices, indicates that what is wrong with us goes beyond having
ignorant, dichotomous, self-centered views. The “Three Learnings” of the Ennobling
Eightfold Path points to three aspects of conventional way of life that could be
“wrong” and are in need of transformation or reconditioning. Besides the conceptual
reconditioning through wisdom development that moves from egocentric considera-
tion to seeing co-arising, the Three Learnings also prescribes behavioral recondition-
ing through ethical self-discipline, and attitudinal reconditioning through mental
training. Sometimes a person may know, in theory, that one is interdependent with
others but, in practice, is still driven by antagonistic attitudes, emotional turbulences,
and habitual egocentric ways of acting and reacting, and/or is not aware of the rever-
berations of one’s bodily, verbal, and mental actions.27 The Maggasamyutta says that
the unwholesome states of shamelessness and fearlessness of wrongdoing follow igno-
rance, while the wholesome states of shame and fear of wrongdoing follow wisdom
(Samyutta Nikāya V.1). Holding dichotomous egocentric views, i.e., being “ignorant”
by Buddhist definition, one does not respect others enough to fear wrongdoing, and
one does not respect oneself enough to feel ashamed of doing wrong (Anguttara
Nikāya I.51).28 Ethical self-discipline in Buddhism requires that one respect others
enough to take their well-being into consideration when behaving oneself, thereby
enabling one to attenuate the already formed excessive concern for the self. The
most basic five precepts (pañca-śīla), for example, is formulated as the way of free-
ing “immeasurable beings,” oneself included, from “fear, hostility, and oppression”
(Anguttara Nikāya VIII.39).29 Mental training helps one to cultivate the emotive
qualities of intending the well-being for all, oneself included30 through proper effort
(Pāli: sammā vāyāma; Skt.: samyag-vyāyāma), to be more aware of one’s own thinking
and its accompanying emotive states through proper mindfulness (Pāli: sammā sati;
Skt.: samyak-smṛti), and to generate calmness, equanimity, and joy from within one-
self through proper concentration (Pāli: sammā samādhi; Skt.: samyak-samādhi).31 The
habituated conceptual “wrong” has led to problematic behavioral patterns and emo-
tive states, and the Three Learnings seek to redress the problems in all three regards.
Some may question why the nondualistic Buddhist philosophy would develop
a system of spiritual practices that teaches its followers to work on the individual
“self” and to consider the well-being of “others” before one acts—wouldn’t non-
dualism imply the sameness of “self” and “others” and thus negate the necessity of
working on the “self” for the benefits of “others”? This line of questioning shows the
extent to which dichotomous thinking is pervasive and persistent: in the zero/sum
dichotomous thinking, to assert the nonduality of “self” and “others” is to assert that
“self” and “others” are completely the same and there is no distinction whatsoever.
Buddhist nondualism, however, is not monism. Rather, it is based on the under-
standing of interdependent co-arising of all phenomena; what it points to is not
24 BUDDHIST-CHRISTIAN STUDIES

sameness, but deep interrelatedness. In elaborating Huayan philosophy, which has

developed a sophisticated and detailed exegesis of interdependent co-arising, David
Landis Barnhill uses the image of a tripod to explain that interdependence is not
sameness: “If all three legs leaned in the same direction, they could not stand up . . .
They have to lean into each other at different angles in order to be integrated. So too
the phenomenal world. Every single thing in the world is different and plays a
unique role in the universe.”32 Phenomena can interrelate “only if they are distinct
from each other,”33 each phenomenon depending on, and conditioning, all others,
directly or indirectly. “Phenomena are particular and momentary conjunctions of
relationships, mutually conditioning and conditioned by all other phenomena, rather
than discrete and enduring entities.”34 Nondualism informed by interdependent
co-arising thus “affirms both the lack of substantial or permanent self and also
one’s particular place in the social network;”35 it does not imply nondistinction of
phenomena and does not say that “self” and “others” are completely the same. Every
“other” is distinct because the constellation of causes and conditions that lead to
the arising of that “other” is different. In so far as it recognizes the existing distinct
phenomena, Buddhist nondualism, Sallie B. King notes, “is the very opposite of
monism.”36
In such an understanding of the world of interconditionality, “where everything
needs everything else,” as Francis Cook puts it, “what is there which is not valuable?”37
Inasmuch as every distinct “other” plays a role in conditioning the “self,” every distinct
“other” is valuable, just as the “self” is distinct and valuable in conditioning “others.”
Buddhist nondualistic thinking thus does not negate the respect due to each distinct
“other,” with which the “self” interdependently co-arises. Neither does this non-
dualism of “self” and “others” deny the suffering of “others” on account of the lack of
suffering of “self” at the moment: “[A]ll people occupy a different social and political
position and thus experience reality in their own way. Some are priveleged [sic]; some
are exposed to more pollution than others; some are considered subversives and
tortured by governments. These social differences and the suffering involved remain”
in the world of mutual conditioning.38
“The suffering of individuals is fully real and worthy of our earnest attention.”39
But then how does each “self” deal with the suffering of “others,” considering that
each suffering is the result of the co-arising of many complex causes and conditions,
which are beyond the control of an individual “self”? A “self” can only take seriously
the ways in which the “self” conditions “others” and begin by working on the “self”
so that the “self” contributes to the well-being of “others” or, at the very least, does
not inflict harm or adding to the co-arising of suffering. Nondualism informed by
interdependent co-arising does not take lightly the suffering of “others” even if the
“self” is not experiencing that suffering or does not see how the “self” might have
indirectly contributed to the arising of that suffering. A “self” may seem powerless in
changing everything in the intricate network of interconditionality, but the Ennobling
Eightfold Path teaches that any “self” can help reducing the co-arising of suffering
and contribute to the co-arising of well-being by reconditioning oneself through
the “Three Learnings,” by committing the “self” to the conceptual, behavioral, and
 WHAT IS WRONG WITH US? A BUDDHIST PERSPECTIVE 25

attitudinal transformations. Buddhist nondualism negates neither the suffering of

“others” nor the work still needs to be done on the “self.”
Let me circle back to the graduate student who feels victimized by the critiques
of race, gender, and class privileges. Earlier last year in the winter term, he asked me
to teach him meditation, and so I gathered a small group of people in my university
who were also interested in learning meditation. Besides the basic mindfulness medi-
tation, I also taught them a short form of metta meditation. The short form of metta
meditation progresses, in one sitting, from wishing the self to be happy, to wishing
an honored person, a neutral person, and an irritating person to be happy, to wishing
all beings to be happy. After a few weekly sittings, he said that he liked it and re-
quested that we do more metta meditation instead of the basic mindfulness medita-
tion. Interestingly enough, he commented that “May all beings be happy” is much
easier than “May I be happy” and “May you be happy.” That is, even with his
tendency for dichotomous thinking, his self-esteem issues, and his unexamined fear
and hatred of “others” who are living, breathing human beings in his surroundings,
he can still easily imagine himself to be concerned with the happiness of “all beings”
in a very abstract way. Again, this may sound like a unique, extreme case, but in my
admittedly limited experience it really is not, or at least this is not at all the first
time I encountered someone who claims loving-kindness and compassion for “all
beings” but holds on to, and acts out, his/her deep prejudice against “others.” It is
easy to care for “all beings” in the abstract sense if one is not required to be aware of
one’s own thinking and emotive states or to examine one’s concrete interactions with
“others.” Likewise, it is easy to talk about “what is wrong with the world” (and this
student can easily delve into a litany on the topic) if one does not need to take an
honest look at “what is wrong with us” (whoever that “us” is) and “what is wrong
with me” (and my interactions with others around me). Therefore, while it may
seem narcissistic to tackle such a topic by drawing from recent experiences concern-
ing “me/us,” “me/us” is perhaps the appropriate place to start when attempting to
address “what is wrong with the world.”

notes
1. Tse-fu Kuan, Mindfulness in Early Buddhism: New Approaches through Psychology and
Textual Analysis of Pali, Chinese, and Sanskrit Sources (London: Routledge, 2008), 10.
2. Clive J. Robins, Shian-Ling Keng, Andrew G. Ekblad, and Jeffrey G. Brantley, “Effects of
Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction on Emotional Experience and Expression: A Randomized
Controlled Trial,” Journal of Clinical Psychology 68, no. 1 (2012): 117–131; C. Alexander
Simpkins and Annellen M. Simpkins, Zen Meditation in Psychotherapy: Techniques for Clinical
Practice (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2012), 135–152; Emily L. B. Lykins and Ruth
A. Baer, “Psychological Functioning in a Sample of Long-Term Practitioners of Mindfulness
Meditation,” Journal of Cognitive Psychotherapy: An International Quarterly 23, no. 3 (2009):
226–241; Susan M. Bogels, G. F. V. M. Sijbers, and Marisol Voncken, “Mindfulness and
Task Concentration Training for Social Phobia: A Pilot Study,” Journal of Cognitive Psychotherapy:
An International Quarterly 20, no. 1 (2006): 33–44; Jon Kabat-Zinn, “Mindfulness-Based Inter-
ventions in Context: Past, Present and Future,” Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice 10 (2003):
144–156; Jeffrey B. Rubin, “Close Encounters of a New Kind: Toward an Integration of Psy-
choanalysis and Buddhism,” in Encountering Buddhism: Western Psychology and Buddhist Teachings
26 BUDDHIST-CHRISTIAN STUDIES

(Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003), 31–60; L. Roemer and S. M. Orsillo, “Ex-
panding Our Conceptualization of and Treatment for Generalized Anxiety Disorder: Integrating
Mindfulness/Acceptance-Based Approaches with Existing Cognitive Behavioral Models,” Clinical
Psychology: Science and Practice 9 (2002): 54–68.
3. Abdullah Almaatouq, Laura Radaelli, Alex Pentland, and Erez Shmueli, “Are You Your
Friends’ Friend? Poor Perception of Friendship Ties Limits the Ability to Promote Behavioral
Change,” PLoS One 11, no. 3 (2016): e0151588 (doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0151588, accessed
August 22, 2016); Elizabeth Vaquera, and Grace Kao, “Do You Like Me as Much as I Like
You? Friendship Reciprocity and Its Effects on School Outcomes among Adolescents,” Social
Science Research 37, no. 1 (2008): 55–72.
4. Bhikkhu Bodhi, trans., The Connected Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Saṃyutta
Nikāya (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2000), 355.
5. Ajahn Brahmavamso Mahāthera, “Gay Marriage, Why Not?” March 16, 2012 (http://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOPcbFhCEj0; accessed April 19, 2015).
6. David R. Loy, “What’s Buddhist about Socially Engaged Buddhism?” Un Zen Occidental,
February/March 2004 (http://www.zen-occidental.net/articles1/loy12-english.html; accessed
August 26, 2016).
7. Ibid.
8. Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study of Ethics and Politics (Louisville,
KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1994), 25.
9. Loy, “What’s Buddhist about Socially Engaged Buddhism?”
10. David R. Loy, “The West against the Rest? A Buddhist Response to The Clash of
Civilizations,” in Awareness Bound and Unbound: Buddhist Essays (Albany: State University of
New York Press, 2009), 143–154.
11. Katie Geneva Cannon, “Slave Ideology and Biblical Interpretation,” in The Recovery of
Black Presence: An Interdisciplinary Exploration, ed. C. Bailey and Jacquelyn Grant (Nashville:
Abingdon Press, 1995), 119–128.
12. Alex Nowrasteh, “Immigration and Crime—What the Research Says,” CATO at
Liberty, July 14, 2015 (http://www.cato.org/blog/immigration-crime-what-research-says; ac-
cessed August 30, 2016).
13. Loy, “What’s Buddhist about Socially Engaged Buddhism?”
14. Walpola Rahula, What the Buddha Taught (New York: Grove, 1959), 3.
15. For examples, Gary E. Kessler, Studying Religion: An Introduction Through Cases, 3rd ed.
(Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2008), 135, 139; Willard G. Oxtoby, ed., World Religions: Eastern Tradi-
tions, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 208–209.
16. For more on the difference between Satan and Māra, see Bhikkhu Ñāṇamoli and Bhikkhu
Bodhi, trans., The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Majjhima Nikāya,
2nd ed. (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2001), 1246–1247 n. 499, and 1250 n. 517; Maurice
Walse, trans., The Long Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Dīgha Nikāya (Boston: Wisdom
Publications, 1995), 545 n. 117. Māra, literally meaning “Death”, is the personification of the
defining character of samsāra, and the names of his daughters, Taṇhā (Skt.: Tṛṣṇā), Aratī, and
Rāga (Skt.: Ratī), indicated that the derivative characters of samsāra are “craving,” “dis-
content,” and “lust.” Due to the unavoidable death that all lives have to encounter, there is
lusting after certain things in life, discontent with other things, and craving for a particular
kind of permanent existence, filled with things after which one lusts and void of things with
which one is discontent. Hsiao-Lan Hu, “Māra, Samsāra, and Identity,” Sākyadhitā: Interna-
tional Association of Buddhist Women 23 (winter 2014): 6–9; Damien Keown, comp., “Māra’s
daughters,” in A Dictionary of Buddhism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 174; Bodhi,
The Connected Discourses of the Buddha, 422 n. 322.
17. Rosemary Radford Ruether, Sexism and God-Talk: Toward a Feminist Theology (Boston:
Beacon Press, 1993), 160.
18. Ibid., 162.
 WHAT IS WRONG WITH US? A BUDDHIST PERSPECTIVE 27

19. Judith Butler, Precarious Life: The Power of Mourning and Violence (London: Verso. 2006);
George Yancy and Judith Butler, “What’s Wrong with ‘All Lives Matter’?” New York Times,
January 12, 2015 (http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/01/12/whats-wrong-with-all-
lives-matter; accessed November 10, 2015).
20. Ruether, Sexism and God-Talk, 163, 181.
21. Peter Harvey, An Introduction to Buddhist Ethics: Foundations Values and Issues (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2000), 36.
22. Peggy Morgan, “Buddhism,” in Ethical Issues in Six Religious Traditions, ed. Peggy Morgan
and Clive A. Lawton, 2nd ed. (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007), 92.
23. Ibid., 101.
24. Zenju Earthlyn Manuel, The Way of Tenderness: Awakening through Race, Sexuality, and
Gender (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2015), 78.
25. Ibid., 87.
26. Loy, “What’s Buddhist about Socially Engaged Buddhism?”
27. Hsiao-Lan Hu, This-Worldly Nibbāna: A Buddhist-Feminist Social Ethic for Peacemaking in
the Global Community (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2011), 138.
28. Bhikkhu Bodhi, ed., A Comprehensive Manual of Abhidhamma: Pali Text, Translation and
Explanatory Guide (Onalaska: Pariyatti, 2000), 86; Hu, This-Worldly Nibbāna, 133.
29. Hu, This-Worldly Nibbāna, 141.
30. Sallie B. King, Being Benevolence: The Social Ethics of Engaged Buddhism (Honolulu: Uni-
versity of Hawai‘i Press, 2005), 69–70.
31. Hu, This-Worldly Nibbāna, 135.
32. David Landis Barnhill, “Relational Holism: Huayan Buddhism and Deep Ecology,” in
Deep Ecology and World Religions: New Essays on Sacred Ground, ed. David Landis Barnhill and
Roger S. Gottlieb (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001), 86.
33. Ibid.
34. Ibid., 93.
35. Anne Carolyn Klein, Meeting the Great Bliss Queen: Buddhists, Feminists, and the Art of the
Self (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995), 21, 40.
36. Sallie B. King, Buddha Nature (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991), 107.
37. Francis Cook, Hua-yen Buddhism: The Jewel Net of Indra (University Park: Pennsylvania
State University Press, 1977), 19.
38. Barnhill, “Relational Holism,” 96–97.
39. Ibid., 92.
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