Psychology & Buddhism.pdf

270 David W. Chappell
much more attention by Buddhists. Fortunately, it is in this middle area where
many of the new contributions of Buddhist social activism are taking place.
The thirty articles of the Declaration of Human Rights have a remarkable parallel
to the threefold morality of Mahayana Buddhism: do no evil, cultivate good,
and save all beings. The French jurist Karel Vasak (1982) saw the three values of
the French Revolution (liberty, equality, and fraternity) as representing three levels
or “generations” of human rights. The human rights articles consist of
prohibitions that protect individuals from governments (2-21), those that nurture
individuals in their economic, social, and cultural relationships (22-27), and those
that affirm the need for a global order (28-30). This structural affinity with
Mahayana ethics, as well as the importance of human rights in Buddhist liberation
movements and peacework, and the global spread of human rights as a shared
standard, is making the Declaration of Human Rights an essential new pillar of
social ethics for contemporary Buddhists.
When the Diem regime outlawed public celebration of Wesak in Vietnam in
1963, thousands of Buddhists publicly resisted nonviolently in public gatherings.
The resulting arrests, torture, and killing of practitioners were detailed in a fortyfive-page
report on human rights violations submitted to the government by a
Buddhist delegation. The appeal to human rights as a standard that is recognized
worldwide has been a major advance of human civilization in the twentieth century.
But it is the picture of Thich Quang Duc enveloped in flames at a Saigon
intersection in 1963 that has seared itself into our collective global consciousness.
Nonviolent political protest reported widely by the media has transformed our
cultures. Legal protection of individuals is the first level of human rights and
Buddhist morality.
But the second and third levels of human rights and Buddhist morality
require mutual responsibility and global awareness that involve personal and cultural
transformation. Many of these efforts are illustrated in detail in Buddhist
Peacework (Chappell, 1999b). But for our purposes, some reflection is needed to
consider the role of social responsibility within the field of Buddhist psychology.
Contemporary Buddhist Social Principles
The Buddhist tradition has always affirmed that practitioners were at different
levels of maturity, and that different practices were appropriate for people at
different stages of spiritual growth. The variety of paths to salvation, and their different
levels, are elaborate and extensive (Buswell & Gimello, 1992), just as the
American Psychological Association now lists fifty-five major divisions on its
website (www.apa.org).
The diversity of Buddhist practice also reflects cultural patterns. Even
though “socially engaged Buddhism” is a term that was coined in Vietnam by