In turbulent times it’s easier to know what we’re against than what we’re for. The old union anthem “Which Side Are You On?” urges us to stand up against the “other side.” This is the opposite of Zen Master Bankei’s advice to “not side with yourself.” A colleague of mine says, “every side has another side, and that other side has another side, too.” Perhaps, rather than “taking a side,” we should seek to clarify the moral ground on which we stand.
Buddhism gets it wrong when it teaches that human beings are basically good while greed and hatred are merely adventitious. It seems closer to the truth to say that we all have self-interests that coexist alongside our higher aspirations for love and harmony. Whatever Buddha-nature is, it coexists with our possessiveness and territoriality, our competitiveness, jealousy and envy, our desire for self-aggrandizement and domination, and our biases in favor of members of our own families and tribes. We are beset with conflicting sets of lower and higher motivations and our cultural storehouse of moral teaching stories— Aesop’s Fables, Biblical parables, the Jataka Tales, etc.—acts as a set of resources to help guide us towards wiser solutions.
The great world religions and classical philosophies instruct us to lean as much as possible in the direction of love, harmony, community, and care—whether in terms of Jewish chesed, Christian agape, Confucian rén, or Buddhist metta and karuna. Modern philosophers such as Kant, Dewey, Rawls, and Rorty stress the central importance of care and respect for the dignity and happiness of each and every person. In contrast, the current American political administration encourages the cultivation of vice: win by any means; dominate, manipulate, intimidate take advantage of, and cheat others; despise weakness; seek revenge; resent other’s good fortune; be dishonest; and be transactional rather than loyal.
Democracy depends on respect for the dignity of others, restraint in the ways we seek our own betterment, and compromising to maintain social harmony. Democracy depends on civic virtue: that, as much as possible, we strive to be honest and fair, restrain our unruly passions, lend a hand when we’re able, and recognize others have the right to their own viewpoints, customs, and conceptions of the good life.
What we must be for, then, is the cultivation of the personal and civic virtues that allow democratic life to flourish. These virtues are rooted in a foundational sense that others have the same right to seek happiness that we have, that we consider their needs and desires as we make our decisions, and that we extend them a degree of care and concern.
Most of us know this in our bones. It’s what we teach our children at home, in Sunday school, and in kindergarten. Rather than merely reacting to political events, we need to maintain a reflective space to consider our responses, and our considerations must be grounded in our basic understanding of what it means to be a decent person.
As Buddhists, our political actions grow out of maintaining this reflective space and our grounding in a sense of basic decency that excludes no one; everyone is held within our circle of care and concern. Often this means witnessing, supporting, accompanying, protecting, and affirming rather than merely rallying, protesting, chanting, and shouting. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not against rallies and protests. I’ve participated in plenty of them and will continue to do so. But it’s important to remember this is not the heart and soul of our work. The heart and soul of our work is sustaining the personal and civic virtues that allow democratic life to flourish.
What does this mean, concretely? We do this concretely when we participate in amicus curiae briefs to the court, when we accompany immigrants to their hearings, when we provide groceries to immigrants who are afraid to leave their homes, when we propose local laws restricting local police from collaborating with ICE or forbidding them from wearing masks or being near polling booths. We do this when we fiancially support organizations and candidates who share our moral vision.
It also means that we remain in dialogue—as much as possible—with people who disagree with us in the hopes of finding, if not areas of agreement, at least ways of continuing to see each other as human. Because “they” are not going anywhere, and we will need to find ways of living together in the same communities for some time to come.
While it is natural to want to withdraw into one’s own sub-community for comfort, respite, and support, the work of healing the world requires continually reaching out beyond one’s comfort zone. Reaching out does not mean persuading, arguing, or debating. It means relating, exploring, sharing points of view, and establishing mutual respect. While there are sociopaths and bullies one cannot have true conversations with, don’t assume most of “the other side” is like that.
There are complex reasons why people believe what they believe, and not all bad beliefs are due to inherent moral deficiency. A lot has to do with identity formation—the regions and traditions we hail from and the reference groups—the people we revere, look up to, or see as being “like us”— that we use to justify our norms.
When people change their views, it’s rarely because someone has defeated them in an argument. More typically it’s because they have come to care about a person who sees things differently. Or because their lives have changed in some previously unanticipated ways so that what was once of central importance to their lives no longer is.
It’s natural to be disappointed or repelled by people who hold sets of views we find repugnant, but Buddhism teaches us to continue to treat them with empathy, kindness, and compassion. If you find there are people you are unable to do that for—or not yet able to do that for—that is a dharma door for deepening practice.