The Middle Path and Polarized Politics

Editor’s note: The gist of the following article was first presented as a Dharma talk by Joanne Gozawa, a Minister’s Assistant at the Palo Alto Buddhist Temple, on Nov. 24, 2024. The Wheel of Dharma is honored to publish Gozawa’s article with her permission.

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By Joanne Gozawa

Palo Alto Buddhist Temple

            Dis-ease may have us given the presidential inauguration last month. 

Ill will infects us, no matter our political party. In these polarized times, what might we learn profoundly from Buddhism’s Middle Path? In our current mood, we resist compromise; on the other hand, consensus seems impossible. But is the Middle Path about compromise and consensus? Let us look to the polarities contemplated in Buddhism for insight. Among these are indulgence versus self-denial and good versus evil.

Insulated within the walls of his father’s castle, Prince Siddhartha led a life of indulgence and pleasure. Only when he witnessed the life of ordinary people did the prince realize the inevitability of disease, aging and death. He became an ascetic monk, living a life of self-denial. Ultimately, he became the Buddha, walking the Middle Path, living a life neither indulgent nor self-denying yet engaged in this life.

The Middle Way proved to be an enduring spiritual path. Fifteen hundred years later, Shinran Shonin claimed he was “neither monk nor lay” — neither cloistered in a monastery nor fully living the commoner life. And life in Shinran’s time was full of political upheaval. 

In late Heian in Japan, the period just before Shinran’s birth, bitter political feuds broke out among Buddhist subsects who vied for imperial appointments. 

The rise of Sohei warrior monks gave temples a fighting force. In Shinran’s time, incessant wars pitted warlords of competing clans against each other. Clans enlisted Sohei into their samurai ranks, promising to protect the temples of the affiliated warrior monks. Clan troops were financed on the backs of the common people, who were severely taxed in money and kind, leaving them with little for themselves. 

In human affairs, the political is ubiquitous and religious institutions are not exempt. Shinran, in exile and later by choice, lived a spiritual life among the exploited people. 

One more polarity clarifies the Middle Path anew. Shinran, in the “Tannisho” said, “I do not know what the two, good and evil, mean.” Shinran was not saying that he didn’t know how to behave in society. Rather, he is unknowing of ultimate good. Good and evil are the same when both are enacted by self-power. When we are “good,” we are often self-righteous. This is not the true good of Amida Buddha. 

What can we learn from the polarized dualities of indulgence versus self-denial and good versus evil and what insight might we fathom for our polarized political times? 

Perhaps it is that humans in their inevitable duality-seeing way are prone to conflict. Still, our hearts can open, even in contentious times, when in gratitude we realize that true good does not come through our own effort. 

Rather, the good has been eternally sustaining us despite our human limitations.

Politics is about the power to decide how finite resources are distributed — who is favored and who is denied. Compromise and consensus are skillful, self-power means and worthy human goals in political life. 

However, self-power does not give rise to ultimate good. When with sincere hearts we say, Namo Amida Butsu, what suddenly, without thought, is compassionately imagined and wisely enacted in the moment? In self-power, we cannot say.