A Passionate Buddhist Life

Abstract

This paper addresses the ways that we can understand and transform our strong emotions and how this project contributes to moral and spiritual development. To this end, I choose to think with two Tibetan Buddhist thinkers, both of whom take up the question of how passionate emotions can fit into spiritual and moral life: the famous, playful yogin Shabkar Tsodruk Rangdrol (1781-1851) and the wandering, charismatic master Patrul Rinpoche (1808-1887). Shabkar's The Autobiography of Shabkar provides excellent examples of using one's own passionate emotions to connect to others and gain insight into the world. Patrul Rinpoche's The Words of My Perfect Teacher (kun bzang bla ma'i zhal lung) focuses on passionate empathy with the emotions of others. Drawing on these texts, I present a (distinctly Buddhist) conception of a passionate life and argue that passionate emotional experience is a central part of moral and spiritual development more broadly construed.

Water Sources in the Buddhist Ecology: Looking through the Engaged Tradition

“…Joanna Macy adopted realistic proportions of the Buddhist teachings, especially paticcasamuppāda, while engaging with environmental issues and water crises. She proposes the model in which the doctrine of Dependent origination could be integrated into kuśala kamma or moral action (Macy, 1979). She says that to deal with problems like environmental degeneration, the paticcasamuppāda should not be taken in a metaphysical sense but as an assumption to know that nothing happens without a cause, yet no outcome is predetermined because causes are multiple and mutually intervening, giving an opportunity to new as well as existing.…”

“…Consequently, it reveals reciprocal dynamics between personal and social transformation as expressed in Buddhist scriptures. The metaphysical thought that consciousness and substance are interdependent, that the existence of the self and the world are mutually conditioning psycho-physical phenomenon that ascends and withers interdependently, is replicated in the ethical sphere in many ways (Macy, 1979). The Kośambiya Sutta indicates the way the water crisis can be resolved.…”

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“…This fundamental ontological mistake leads to reifying oneself and objects of desire or aversion in the belief that protecting and cherishing ourselves and our desires and harming and destroying our enemies and aversions will bring us security and happiness. This tendency is only made worse in collectives, like states, nations, and institutions, which are projections based on a false premise (Macy, 1979).…”