Reverend Dr. David Zuniga, PhD, dzuniga@post.harvard.edu, Fielding Graduate University, 6800 Westgate Blvd., Suite 132-147, Austin, TX 78745
This video presentation will explore how Zen Buddhism promotes social justice through experiential meditation practices and their related philosophical underpinnings which draw on both the Pali Canon (the oldest collection of Buddhist texts) and East Asian Zen texts. Significantly, in seminal Pali Zen texts, such as the Samaññaphala Sutta, the cultivation of an ethical life is a necessary precursor to any formal meditation practice, and the ethical imperative driving Zen meditation is the cultivation of a lifelong path of compassionate service to transform suffering for all sentient beings. From a Zen perspective, this engagement in social justice is a natural manifestation and the highest aspiration of the philosophical idea of no-self (Pali, anatta). An experiential embodiment of no-self, cultivated through Zen mindfulness, asserts that people do not possess a permanent, discrete, distinct individual self. Rather, people exist in a state of change and interpersonal interconnection with the natural world and all sentient beings. If one person is suffering from racism, sexism, homophobia, or other forms of discrimination, we are all suffering and we are all called to be a lotus (vehicle of healing) in the muddy water of discrimination and inequality.
