Buddhism and Ethics in the Non-Imaginary World.

I've been studying a course called Peace and Conflict Studies which includes the topic of ethics in peacebuilding from various perspectives.

A fundamental point about our deluded thinking and perceptions, a 'pivot-point' to use the sort of term that Master Dogen liked, is that our thinking mind tends to split our experience of the world into 'this' and 'that', 'good' as opposed 'bad', 'me' as opposed 'other, 'us' and 'them'... in this way, when we fall for the familiar and attractice reductive simplicities of our own polarised thinking, we lose the much broader, inclusive view of what we are.

This occurs within Buddhism around the debate about 'socially engaged' Buddhism, whether Buddhists should take sides in social issues and that.

As a person who works in the 'helping professions' it seems to me however that people whom are inclined towards that sort of effort just gravitate towards it naturally, while others gravitate towards other fulfilling modes of work and activity -- some people will be more 'engaged' while others may find fulfilment and meaning in doing other things. There's plenty of room for all. No big deal, no 'us' and 'them' other than in our own little heads.

For those who gravitate towards helping others we may have to stand up to, even resist, organised structures of power in doing so - unjust social conditions, abusive or even violent institutions... a Buddhist view of oppressive systems and people might see them as based on delusion, and/ or confusion -- a lot of the time we do things, and are involved in things, that directly harm people and we aren't really aware of the fact. If we were we might think differently about how we act.

Other times we humans try to dominate situations and other people out of a fear of lack of security or control, or we may try to gain more exterior social power to fend off a feeling of inner powerlessness -- that existential 'emptiness inside to which I just could not relate', as Dylan sang in the song.

Either way, we can see this for the delusion and suffering that it is, and needn't get angry at 'the man' in confronting it or trying to positively change it. It's the same sort of human suffering we all experience directly ourselves.

I think it was the late Thich Nhat Hanh who said that getting angry with people about a situation is like a person who discovers that their house is on fire and runs around looking for the person who lit it, rather than trying to put the fire out!

In Buddhist ethics we put the fire out first.

It's a simple idea, but is not always easy to do.

And when we inevitably slip up, when we get too angry, it's no big Mortal Sin in Buddhism -- it's just seen as not a particularly smart way to go about things.