It is a wonderful occasion to be given the opportunity to attend the Ava Helen and Linus Pauling Lectue for World Peace. It is my hope that I can in some way contribute to their work as some of the most important American contributors to global peace and human security.
Last December the United Nations sponsored in my home city of Bangkok a symposium entitled "Human security in a borderless world". The purpose of this gathering was to bring together policy makers, scholars, NGO workers, and citizens to discuss and devise effective solutions to the emerging complexities of an increasingly interdependent world. The conference was divided into two sessions based on UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's attempts to provide 'freedom from fear' and 'freedom from want' for all global citizens.
Throughout both sessions, one could not fail to sense that our world has become quite politically, socially, and economically interdependent in this globalizing era. And of course, environmentally, we have long been interconnected. In other words, security is less and less simply about national security, and even less about defense. It seems that the internal and the external are intimately interpenetrated or intertwined. And any attempt to rigidly demarcate the inside from the outside, or us from them, may be simply a disingenuous pretext to heighten intolerance for others and to increase surveillance or police action.
In fact, the majority of the Bangkok conference was spent discussing the political agenda of communities well beyond Siam, and even beyond Asia. It was apparent that voices and actions in lands once distant were now having profound reverberation in our homes, even in the most remote of Siamese villages. Globalization has shown us that even the tiniest creature in the densest jungle of our Northern Siamese provinces lives and dies by the decisions of people who may or may not even be able to find Siam on the map.
During his opening address at this conference Nobel Laureate and Co-Chair of the UN Commission on Human Security Amartya Sen, suggested that the political, social, and economic confusion we are now experiencing is ultimately due to human ignorance. And what is truly needed today is enlightenment.an enlightenment that recognizes that we as individuals cannot, or should not, distinguish ourselves from one another or assume to be above another. In short he was suggesting that we suffer when we believe ourselves to be independent from one another.
Those familiar with the basic teachings of Buddhism will immediately recognize similarities between Sen's prescription to the UN Commission last year and the Buddha.s teachings. Certainly Sen.s use of the word .enlightenment. does not refer to the Enlightenment of the 18th century, which had set up a number of binary polarities or hierarchies that foster a certain narcissism and that remain forceful to this day such as mind/body, nature/culture, knower/known, subject/object, masculine/feminine, self/other, and so on. Ken Jones captures this well in The New Social Face of Buddhism when he writes, ..there is in the culture of high modernity another influential perspective of the self, which focuses on narcissism .. [which] means a total self absorption and self-preoccupation. The whole experience of the world is interpreted in terms of self-need, to the extent that valid boundaries between the self and the external world become indistinguishable. Self-need becomes no longer objectionable.. It is this narcissism that breeds hostility, division, aggression, and war.
In contrast , I think that Sen.s use of the term "englightenment" may have more of a Buddhist ring to it. Thus, today I would like to offer some insight into how a Buddhist approach to education might put us on a path towards political and social enlightenment, which Amartya Sen suggested would help establish human security and peace in an increasingly complex and fragile world.
In the mainstream of the West, education is viewed simply as gaining knowledge, skills, or other forms of human capital that will assist one in earning a living sufficient to buy human security. This perspective, I'm afraid, will not get us very far—although it is a truism that everyone has the right to an education and training (this is, for instance, enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights). But the matter does not simply rest there. What kind of education are we talking about? Is literacy merely measured by the ability to read and write? To be able to see an atrocity as an atrocity and to realize less violent futures may require something radically different from the education presently offered in the mainstream.
An alternative perspective has been put forward by some creative Western minds. Adam Curle, for instance, has suggested that "Education is a learning process that pulls out the hidden potentials in each person, that facilitates self-creation through self-realization."
Similarly, a fundamental objective of Buddhist education is to pull out the hidden potentials in each person so that each individual might realize his or her full potential, or what is often referred to as Buddha nature. Buddha nature is something that cannot be realized atomistically. Rather, it requires collective action or social engagement. And perhaps most important, it requires nonviolence. Nonviolence may be considered as the master precept of Buddhism. As such, a proper Buddhist education would foster a culture of peace, which entails, among others, subduing the rising tide of human insecurity, structural violence, and terror through compassion, humility, generosity, mindfulness and wisdom.
Many of you may already be familiar with the story of Prince Siddartha. For the first third of his life, Prince Siddartha was confined to a life of luxury by a concerned but overly-protective father. A complicated system of blinders and misinformation made it all but impossible for the Prince to gain a proper perspective of the world. But, curiosity eventually pushed the young Prince beyond the façade and into the streets of his kingdom. While walking amongst the commoners he saw four things which transformed him: a sick person, an old man, a corpse, and a wandering ascetic.
Upon experiencing the reality of existence the Buddha to be became quite inquisitive and sought to abandon his lifestyle in a noble attempt to understand and ultimately eliminate suffering.
From this story, we can see that a Buddhist pedagogy does not separate life from education. To do so is to run the risk of misunderstanding the world. Increasingly, in living, one is always on the move, encountering new people and experiences. The process of understanding life therefore cannot be realized by rejecting the world, but by working for social justice and change. As Christopher Queen of Harvard University has recently observed, .There.s been a sea-change in the Buddhist tradition..Buddhists have gotten up off their cushions, recognizing that collective sources of suffering in the world must be addressed by collective action..
Buddhists are thus recommended to confront dukkha or suffering.not to hide from it.and, equally important, to contemplate on its causes, which are linked directly or indirectly with greed (lobha) and/or lust (r.ga), hatred (dosa), and delusion (moha) or ignorance (avijj.). All these root causes of evil, the good Buddhist would argue, could be eradicated, if we educate ourselves properly in morality (sila) mindfulness (sm.dhi) and understanding or wisdom (paññ.).
At the UN Human Security Symposium, Amartya Sen suggested that Prince Siddartha's story is one of the first recorded instances of humanity's interest in human security. Like the young Prince Siddartha, we should try to understand how the suffering we experience is linked to our view or assumptions of the universe and consequently how our invented social structures and economic systems perpetuate our pain. This opens up space for cognitive diversity, for different forms of knowledge which may be equally valid. For instance, certain forms of knowledge are needed to get men to the moon, while others are needed to foster environmental sustainability. Certain forms of knowledge are needed to build super-bombs, but certain forms of knowledge are needed to make peace. This is sheer commonsense, and lots of examples may be drawn from daily life. If modern medicine cannot heal my backache, then I visit an acupuncturist. Our problem may be that we too uncritically accept the so-called established knowledge. When a doctor fails to cure the sickness of a patient, he or she rarely questions the medical body of knowledge. Rather s/he questions his or her own expertise. Modern form of education posits a dumb learner and a smart body of established knowledge. But this isn.t right. From a Buddhist perspective, it is time that we question some of the fundamentals of the Enlightenment in order to be enlightened.
To this end, we explore a proper methodology needed to "educate for peace". Four themes central to Buddhist approaches to education can be drawn: (1) suffering (dukkha) exists, (2) dukkha finds its source in ignorance (avijj.), (3) ignorance can be resolved, and (4) there is a methodology to help us resolve ignorance.
Of course, this process of education requires the cultivation of both the intellect and the emotions or sentiment. Put differently, in Buddhist education the intellect and the emotion/sentiment must develop concurrently, and praxis must be in congruence with society, facilitating an understanding of life and the world that is not marred by prejudices, selfishness, etc. This is the essence of education for liberation. For Buddhists, the objective of the highest stage of training is liberation from the ignorance that enshrouds human beings. This liberation opens the way to wisdom; that is, understanding the Truth ('the way it is') of everything without prejudices or attachments. At this stage, understanding would blend with compassion. Thinking and emotion are inclined towards compassion. Helping other human and sentient beings becomes an endless personal mission
One must inevitably observe, understand, and solve individual and social problems. This constitutes sikkh., or education which seeks to combine wisdom and ethics.
At no other time in history is the importance of sikkh. in applying ourselves to resolving social and political failure more urgent than today. For centuries mankind has exhibited magnificent aptitude at manufacturing all sorts of interesting little things but never have we stopped to ask ourselves whether these things make us more secure or less secure. As Martin Luther King Jr. stated: "our scientific actually has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men."
Buddhism emphasizes ethics with education, while western educational systems struggle to do so. G.E. Moore writes in his Principa Ethica that Western thinking not only cannot be used to teach ethics, it also cannot define morality or goodness.
Buddhist education cultivates morality (sila) alongside wisdom (paññ.): the one guiding the way for the other. Before wisdom can be grasped and ultimately used to benefit humanity one must have a proper perspective of the world (right view). Thus the highest training in the Buddhist system is liberation from ignorance. At this stage understanding blends with compassion. Thinking and emotion are inclined towards compassion. To know or understand does not mean to dominate or possess others or contain their singularities. Helping other sentient beings becomes an endless personal mission.
Sikkh. or training entails developing oneself so that one is able to lead life in a beautiful and correct manner-- pursuing the Path (magga) that will lead to the cessation of suffering.
Sikkh. and magga thus can be seen as one. At times the Buddha would use the word patipada (mode of progress) interchangeably with magga. Ultimately the path leads to a noble and celibate way of life. I feel that tertiary education for liberation must start with the concept of the Right Understanding, and then proceed down the Noble Eightfold Path, namely:
The Buddha grouped points 3, 4, and 5 as morality; points 6, 7, and 8 as concentration; and 1 and 2 as wisdom.
The Noble Eightfold Path is also called the Middle Way-- the Path towards liberation from the extremes of sensual indulgence and self-mortification. On the one hand, structural injustices in society are perpetuated by violence. On the other hand, they are also held in place by our selfishness-- our tacit consent. Social and individual sufferings result from the interpenetration of external and internal causes.
As mentioned above, to overcome individual and collective forms of suffering, a Buddhist practitioner can resort to socially engaged Buddhism. At the individual level, Buddhism seeks to transform greed, hatred, and delusion into loving kindness and compassion. But to overcome individual suffering one must also be aware of the suffering emanating from social injustices, from structural violence. And to overcome social suffering, one cannot act as an island unto itself: one must cooperate with others. In other words, one must avoid the Scylla of hermetically sealed personal liberation, and the Charybdis of social transformation without cultivating loving kindness and compassion.
The training of the mind and of morality will help students to develop knowledge in tandem with goodness. As Wittgenstein mentioned, goodness and beauty are in fact one. If "ethics is transcendental" then it is also supramundane. And once students develop training in wisdom, they will understand things differently; different, that is, from what has always been taught in mainstream education. David Loy, for instance, has written an history of the West from a Buddhist perspective. Many, if not most, of what the West has described or cherished as "progress" are in fact rooted in suffering. This is because the history of the West, like other histories, is a by-product of greed, hatred, and delusion.
The training that constitutes the Noble Path is the three-fold training (tisikkha): morality (sila), mindfulness (sam.dhi), and wisdom (paññ.).
Wisdom is the recognition of the interdependence of things and of reality 'that which is.' This is the origin of the Right Understanding, which is the beginning of the Noble Eightfold Path. Conversely, with the Wrong View, one's thought processes and beliefs will always be wrong such as the mainstream value system that induces the tyranny of the "I" and its many offshoots.
The Buddha taught that Right Understanding has two main dimensions: external and internal. Externally are the voices of or warnings raised by others, especially those of virtuous companions. Internally is critical reflection-- the ability to think, contemplate, analyze, etc. without prejudices, without personal attachments, resulting from mental training. With proper internal and external understanding we are better equipped to tread softly in the world.
Right Understanding will also help us see the flaws in traditional perspectives. For example, binarisms have long been utilized as useful tools for classification, for making sense of the world. But the problem is that there are few neutral binary oppositions: one pole is often privileged over the other. Say, white/non-white, modern/traditional, upper-class/lower class, us/them, developed/underdeveloped, and so on.
Shunning or being mindful of dualistic thinking, Buddhism can well take part in healing these oppositions that serve as sources of great sufferings in the world. Emphasizing what Thich Nhat Hahn calls "inter-being" Buddhism proposes a sense of difference without being purely or absolutely different: the self/same is always constituted by others (hence non-self), while remaining unique. Put simply, Buddhism does not abide by the so-called "spectator theory of knowledge." To Buddhists, our minds are not simple mirrors that reflect the world. Rather we take part in constructing 'reality'. This does not mean that there is no world "out there", that everything is in our heads. It simply means that the "out there" does not have meaning in itself. We must give it meaning, and we often do so narcissistically. A rock, for instance, is not simply a rock. It can be a national boundary, a work of art, a prized geological formation, etc. Our processes of representing, ascribing meaning to, or relating to the "out there" are marred by greed, hatred, and delusion-- with serious consequences. Buddhism urges us to be quick in recognizing and taking care of the prejudices involved in our knowing/knowledge of the world. At the very least, Buddhism urges us to reduce our prejudices, which are rooted in self-attachments and self-preservation.
We must seek to understand the root causes that have created these effects.
Although the Buddha taught that sila consisted primarily of right speech, right action, and right livelihood, I will for the sake of time encapsulate all three of these within the Buddha's teaching on generosity.
Generosity, or d.na in the Pali language, may be seen as the foundation of education shared by every religion. And it is a subtle way of reducing self-attachments. We can say that generosity at the most rudimentary level means giving money or things. It requires helping the badly off by means that would not jeopardize the well-being of the better off. Such acts of generosity may be for particular ends--earning praise or goodwill, reserving a place in heaven, etc. Or it may be a completely selfless act. This level of generosity may be equated with primary education. Generosity at the level of secondary education means giving knowledge or truthfulness to a society that is full of lies. It entails speaking the truth to power, which may be basking in ignorance or prejudices. At the level of tertiary education, generosity means the absence of fear. Here, one no longer fears internal enemies such as greed, hatred, and delusion. How then could one fear external enemies? Without fear, one is willing and able to give and forgive. In the absence of fear (of death, personal security, etc.), one is in the position to perform noble deeds to society or to serve as a worthy model. Perhaps at this stage real distribution is also possible: giving to the badly off in a way that would impact significantly on one's well-being without however, making one worse off.
Applying the concept of d.na to contemporary society, we may cultivate a consciousness that stresses giving more than taking. Humility, simplicity, and sufficiency-self-reliance-may consequently follow. And if one has an inclination for generosity and cherishes simplicity and humility-- that is, stressing compassion and solidarity more than competition-one may begin to reclaim human dignity. In this case, it comprises having pride in local cultures and traditions, which are being overwhelmed by consumerism, modernity, and globalization. This is a Buddhist vision of a prosperous life.
The third factor in the Buddhist three-fold training is mindfulness. .I breathe therefore I am,. might have been the Buddha.s response to Descartes. Ultimately, Buddhism urges us to be "awake" or what is often called "enlightened." And being awake in part results from proper or mindful breathing. As I have cited numerous times before: according to a Buddhist story, a leader of a religious sect came to visit the Buddha one day and asked Him, "If I follow your Way, what will I do day by day?" The Buddha replied, "Walk, stand, lie down, sit eat, drink.." The religious leader the inquired ".what is so special about your Way?" And the Buddha answered, "It is indeed special. The ordinary man, though he walks, stands, lies down, sits, eats, and drinks, does not know he is walking, standing, lying down, sitting, eating and drinking. But when we walk, we know that we are walking. When we stand, we know that we are standing.." Buddhism urges us to restructure our consciousness, to perceive the world non-judgmentally; that is, without division and conflict.
Without mindfulness, moral training may bring about narrow-mindedness or hubris; that is, the certainty or feeling that one is better than those without morality. For example, those upholding the 8 precepts may feel superior to those only practicing the 5 precepts; and those upholding the 10 or 227 precepts may regard themselves as superior to all others. This is of course dangerous. The Buddha had warned against this tendency: the belief that one will attain purity and enlightenment by blindly practicing or observing moral training is akin to heightening personal attachments, which will undoubtedly contribute to suffering.
The training of the mind will contribute to mindfulness; one will be quick in taking care of one's feelings, especially greed and hatred, and will have concentration in leading life. With mindfulness, one may learn to become less attached to oneself. Moreover, mindfulness contributes to happiness in the present. It enables the mind and the heart to operate synchronically, and may bring about internal peace. Additionally, mindfulness enables one to grasp the realities of the past, the present, and the future. And lastly, mindfulness enables one to overcome mental defilements, thereby contributing to liberation.
Unfortunately, the cultivation of mindfulness is a dimension missing from contemporary education. Mindfulness increases the capabilities or potentials of the mind, making it stronger, more stable, more courageous, more persistent, more diligent, and more responsible. And mindfulness helps increase virtue by fostering loving kindness, compassion, altruistic joy, and equanimity-- all these, even at the moment when one is being exploited or oppressed. In other words, mindfulness entails cultivating the capability, value, and health of the mind, which are indispensable in modern society.
A Buddhist education for peace shows us how to act ethically with wisdom and mindfulness. Such an education is valid not only in our personal affairs, but also in how we interact with the world. This means that we must confront those causes that are linked to the abuses of capitalism and consumerism. To profess faith in the sciences and industrial technologies without questioning their ethical value or our moral responsibility could have serious consequences in our immediate future. We must resist war and confront state power in this age of weapons of mass destruction. We must reexamine the role of the mainstream mass media that are involved in processing truth programs that serve power and legitimize violence. We must reexamine the status and role of women, and see how they are related to, among others, war and poverty. Many, for instance, have pointed out the increasing feminization of poverty.
Linus Pauling and his wife, Ava Helen, were pioneers in the field of human security. They devoted their lives to promoting a world that was free from fear and from want. For example, after Dr. Pauling unraveled many mysteries surrounding the molecular bond, he and his wife spent years trying to assure that their work was applied properly, in a fashion that enhanced human security and freedom from fear. Their efforts resulted in nuclear arms treaties that have done a great deal to prompt peace in our age. Their commitment to a more ethical science is evident in a comment Dr. Pauling made in an interview in the mid 1960s:
I think that scientists have a special responsibility. All human beings, all citizens, have a responsibility for doing their part in the democratic process. But almost every issue has some scientific aspect to it, and this one of nuclear war, or war in general, is of course very much a matter of science. Scientists understand the problem somewhat better than their fellow citizens. I think that scientists who are able to do it, who are in the position to do it, and who have the ability to do it, should help their fellow citizens to understand what the issues are and how they look at it, and should go beyond that and express their own opinions for the benefit of their fellow citizens."
As inspired as we have all been by these two enlightened minds, and as indebted as we are to them for their contributions, we must remember that their work is not finished. The arms treaties to which they devoted themselves are, at present, being tossed to the wind by a world once again fascinated by destruction and war. We must pick up where they have left us and utilize our wisdom to not only advance science and human understanding, but also to promote the freedom from suffering of all.
True human security is the art of mindful living : peace in ourselves and peace in the world.
I should like to thank Johnson Blaine, S. Jayanama and Ted Mayer for helping me in preparing this speech.
S. SIVARAKSA