One hundred thirty American Buddhist representatives from laypeople, monastics, and academics to writers, met with White House officials on 14 May in a landmark gathering aimed at raising the profile of Buddhist involvement in civic life and to discuss issues concerning Buddhists with the government. The event was titled the first “White House–US Buddhist Leadership Conference,” and the theme for this maiden symposium was “Voices in the Square—Action in the World.”
Photo by Philip Rosenberg. From lionsroar.com
Attending Buddhist leaders included Venerable Bhikkhu Bodhi, board chairman of Buddhist Global Relief, Rev. T. K. Nagagaki, of the New York Buddhist Council, and popular meditation teacher and writer Tara Brach, among many others. Representing the US government to respond to the Buddhist concerns were: Melissa Rogers, of the White House Office of Faith-based and Community Partnerships; Shaun Casey, US special representative for religion and global affairs; Rev. Susan Hayward, interim director for religion and peacebuilding at the US Institute of Peace; and Angela Barranco, from the White House Council for Environmental Quality.
Vice abbot of the Berkeley Zen Center and poet Hozan Alan Senauke, writing in Lion’s Roar, emphasized that the gathering was organized out of a collective concern for compelling issues threatening the well-being of all sentient beings. He also observed that the rich opportunity to meet so many friends and allies was also frustratingly brief, being limited to a single day.
Conference organizer William Aiken (public affairs director for Soka Gakkai International in Washington DC) and attendee Clark Strand (an ex-Zen monk and former senior editor of Tricycle: The Buddhist Review who currently writes for publications like The Huffington Post, The New York Times, and Newsweek’s On Faith blog) said that this was the first meeting of American Buddhists at the White House on diverse social issues—previously, interest had been kept to fairly narrow questions like Tibet. The Washington Post reports that prior to the conference, organizers gave attendees a list of about ten items to prioritize for discussion. Aiken said that the most popular was climate change and the environment, while education and peace and disarmament were second and third, respectively.
According to The Washington Post, American Buddhists identify heavily as liberal; 66 per cent say they are Democrats or lean Democratic. However, The Washington Post quotes several leaders at the conference as emphasizing that the purpose of the meeting was simply to try and start a general conversation about shaping a political identity for Buddhists, rather than focusing on or lobbying for specific issues. In any case, religion watchers and commentators say it’s too early to tell what a “Buddhist” policy agenda would look like.
“If you ask Buddhists how to solve poverty, they don’t know, they’re just at the beginning of thinking about this, about what would be a Buddhist response to poverty. They are actively seeking to start to think about what they could do to affect politics in a positive way for the future of the planet. Maybe in 50 years you’ll have these rifts [like you see in other faith communities] but right now that’s premature. It’s just Buddhists saying: ‘Hey, we should speak up!’” said Janet Gyatso, a Buddhist Studies academic at Harvard Divinity School.
Senauke wrote that the conference should be seen as an important first step, an opportunity to bring together a diverse group of practitioners “to shape a common understanding of how to bring our various Buddhist practices into a troubled world.” This was also a unique dialogue, the first of its kind, between American Buddhists and State Department staff who want to find partners and allies among the former in order to address problems like climate change, racial justice, and peacemaking.