Sitting and Acting—Both are Essential: A Response to Kyeongil Jung

Cushion Mindfulness and Street Mindfulness

Kyeongil Jung tells us that Zen enables him to connect his spiritual practice with his social action and that “To practice Zen, we do not necessarily have to sit still in silence . . . Zen masters teach that we can practice meditation while ‘walking, standing, sitting, lying down, speaking, being silent, moving, [and] being still.”’ I would distinguish cushion mindfulness and street mindfulness. Essentially, of course, there is no difference. And yet practically, there is. I ask whether action in the world can take the place of sitting on the cushion. The mindfulness that we can and must bring to our social activity must be nourished by the mindfulness that we practice on our cushion. Cushion mindfulness and social-action mindfulness are two aspects of the same mindfulness; but if we do only one, if we think that one can take the place of the other, we will, I fear, be in trouble. Cushion mindfulness enables us to practice street mindfulness. Without sitting, our acting will not be able to be properly mindful.

Enlightenment Essentialism is Dangerous; But Enlightenment Prioritization is Necessary

Jung rightly warns against an essentialization of enlightenment that prevents enlightenment from leading to social action/compassion. He quotes Thich Nhat Hanh: “If you are awake you cannot do otherwise than act compassionately to help relieve suffering you see around you. So Buddhism must be engaged in the world. If it is not engaged it is not Buddhism.” But notice that Thich Nhat Hanh says “IF you are awake.” That presupposes, I think, a certain priority to awaking before—or better, within—one’s engagement. This brings up the same point I made earlier: cushion mindfulness must be action mindfulness, but they are not the same. Without the cushion, without efforts at attaining enlightenment, our actions will not be truly mindful and they will not be truly compassionate. So when Jung says, “Silence alone cannot end suffering; it needs social action,” I want to ask: But without silence, can social justice end suffering? Here, again, I face the conclusion that we need both, silence and action, but silence/enlightenment holds a certain non-temporal but ontological priority.

Resolute but Unattached Commitment

Jung says that when people are attached to their ideology, it becomes an idol that makes its worshippers “intolerant of other ideologies, other idols, and other people. . . For instance, many Christian have strong attachments to the Bible, to Jesus, and to God. Their conceptual manifestations are the doctrines of the infallibility of the Bible (or of the Pope), uniqueness of Jesus Christ, and monotheism. . . These doctrines often deteriorate faith into a fire of hatred that burns the other and self.” But although we must be non-attached to our beliefs and programs, we must be strongly committed to them. Otherwise, the social activist loses fervor, stamina, endurance, the ability to resist. So the pivotal question is: How to combine non-attachment and commitment? The Christian would perhaps answer that there are some beliefs, some truths, that we cannot burn or kill. We have to keep to these truths in a way in which we hold them but do not cling to them. We propose and defend them strongly, and yet we are ready to view other perspectives. This may be the significance of the “negation of negation.” So when Jung says, that God (or one’s concept of God) can be a problem, yes, I agree. The problem consists in reifying God or Dhamakaya, of clinging to God or to doctrines about God. And yet to say that God calls for justice, or that God inspires a preferential concern for the oppressed, is to say something that I must hold to, not lose, but without clinging, without thinking that this is the only thing to say about God, or that I fully know what I am saying when I say that to know God is to do justice.

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