Buddhism is Apolitical? (Or, Stop Trying to Wiggle Out of the Damn Koan!)

Very glad Jiryu Mark is still blogging. On the supposed ‘apolitical’ nature of Buddhism.

No Zen in the West

I’m surprised to have to write this post (which surely wiser heads would advise me not to), but I’ve come to see recently that the idea that “Buddhism is apolitical”/“Buddhism should stay apolitical” is deeper than I thought in the American Buddhist community.  It’s also not true, and it’s not helpful, and I’d like to talk about why.

First, let’s just be clear that Buddhist doctrine is about two things and only two things.

The first let’s call Emptiness, and let’s say it like this: everything you think misses the point entirely, has zero traction, zero contact with anything like reality.  Even the thought “reality.”  Even the most basic of thoughts: “there is” or “there is not.”  No concept reaches, and no thing anywhere at all can be grasped.

The second let’s call Precepts.  It’s a little more complicated, because there’s something to it, but we can say it simply…

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