Abstract
As the fundamental authority of universal rights claims are contested in a declining liberal international order, constructivists seek to transcend the limits of the Western, rationalist rights ethos and explore humanistic spiritual alternatives. This essay will evaluate the promise of a leading non-Western cosmopolitan ethos: engaged Buddhism. Buddhism offers a vision of universal compassion and moral responsibility that has shaped influential global advocacy efforts, with the potential to address a significant sector of the world community. But the Buddhist ethos has functioned as both a source of and a challenge to state power and nationalist identity in an era of globalization. Through examining a range of contemporary movements of engaged Buddhism in Tibet, Burma, Thailand, and Taiwan, we will see how this form of religious cosmopolitanism can play a role in constructing a rights ethos—if and when it maintains critical autonomy and Buddhist spiritual detachment from worldly power.
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Notes
Both schools of Buddhism share a fundamental belief in the teachings of Buddha and overlap at different periods and in different societies. However, Theraveda Buddhism of Southeast Asia is historically closer to the original formulation of Buddhism in India, and is generally more conservative, scriptural, monastic, and focused on individual enlightenment to ascend to Nirvana. The Mahayana school of Buddhism dominant in China, Tibet, and Japan has blended more with local traditions, accepts multiple pathways to enlightenment, and puts more emphasis on saint-like Boddhisattvas who forgo transcendence to help human struggles.
Jewish human rights activism and reform doctrine have split over the “lessons of the Holocaust,” with many Reform Jews identifying with universalist advocacy campaigns while more Orthodox link the religious ethos with Zionism.
The content of his political stance was considered especially problematic since Yung is a member of the Kuomintang (KMT) generation of post-revolutionary mainland Chinese exiles who openly favors reunification with China—a view now rejected by the majority of Taiwan’s population and the current ruling party. Fo Guang Shan has also extended back to mainland China, with a notably less engaged apolitical emphasis on collective moral improvement than its more cosmopolitan Taiwanese base and Western branches. (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/24/world/asia/china-buddhism-fo-guang-shan.html)
Although Thailand’s corporatist clergy are similar in some ways to pre-modern Catholic or contemporary Islamic states, Thailand’s Sangha do not legislate, judge, or perform governmental functions.
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Brysk, A. Engaged Buddhism as Human Rights Ethos: the Constructivist Quest for Cosmopolitanism. Hum Rights Rev 21, 1–20 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12142-019-00575-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12142-019-00575-9