Classical Buddhism lacked an understanding of systemic injustice and its contribution to collective suffering. Despite the teaching of impermanence, classical Buddhist schools viewed social institutions as given and offered no path to social transformation. Today, Buddhists are shaped by multiple religious and secular traditions, including those stemming from the Hebrew prophets. The prophetic tradition offers a socially and religiously powerful concept—the concept of justice—that reconfigures the Buddhist dharma.
In a time of unparalleled peril, Buddhists are challenged as never before to turn wisdom into strategic action to foster systemic social change. Compassion is not enough.
Prophetic Wisdom shows how Engaged Buddhists can expand their understanding of the causes of collective suffering and develop nonviolent means for social transformation through a dialectic of love, power, and justice. It concludes by confronting the poison of racism in the American body politic.
Table of Content
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I: The Prophetic Wisdom of Elders
1. Like a Fire in the Bones: The Prophetic Voice
Buddhist Reflections in a Prophetic Key #1: Cries of the Crows: A Buddhist Take on the Prophetic Voice
2. Crossing Boundaries: Rita Gross and the Transformation of Patriarchal Buddhism
Buddhist Reflections in a Prophetic Key #2: Reading a Buddhist Classic of Mother’s Grief against the Grain
3. Thich Nhat Hanh: A Buddhist Monk in the Conflagration of War
Buddhist Reflections in a Prophetic Key #3: Sea Pirates, Nazis, and the Need for Moral Judgment
4. Joanna Macy and the Work That Reconnects
Buddhist Reflections in a Prophetic Key # 4: Bearing Witness to the Suffering of Our Time
5. B. R. Ambedkar: The Annihilation of Caste and the Liberation of the Dalits
Buddhist Reflections in a Prophetic Key # 5: Gautama’s Leave-Taking
Part II: Liberation in the American Context
6. The American Jeremiad: Creating the City upon a Hill
7. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr: America’s Jeremiah
Buddhist Reflections in a Prophetic Key #6: Reinventing Buddhism in a Hostile Society
Part III: From Prophecy to Praxis: Strategic Action and Social Liberation
8. Nonviolent Action: The Dynamics of Love, Power, and Justice
9. From Prophecy to Praxis: Thinking Strategically about Action
10. Facing Up to Evil, Abolishing Our Racial Caste System
Conclusion
Notes
Works Cited
Index
About the author
Charles R. Strain is Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies at De Paul University. His previous books include
Global Migration: What’s Happening, Why, and a Just Response (coauthored with Elizabeth W. Collier) and
The Prophet and the Bodhisattva: Daniel Berrigan, Thich Nhat Hanh, and the Ethics of Peace and Justice, which won the Society for Buddhist Christian Studies Frederick J. Streng Book of the Year Award in 2014.
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