Engaged Buddhism, Social Change and World Peace

Foreword:

I am indeed very glad to know that Ven. Dr. Thich Nhat Tu is bringing out his monograph entitled Engaged Buddhism, Social Change and World Peace. Today’s profit-oriented, globalizing consumer system has been causing untold damage to ecology and world peace. Such a system believes that fulfilment of the material needs of humankind will lead to peace and happiness. But this is a mistaken view.As Erich Fromm once pointed out, an animal is content if its physiological needs are satisfied because being rooted in the inner chemistry of the body, they can become overwhelming if not satisfied. Inasmuch as man is also animal, these needs must be satisfied. But in as much as one is human, the satisfaction of these instinctual needs is not sufficient to make one happy because human happiness depends on the satisfaction of those needs and passions which are specifically human. These essential needs which modern civilization fails to satisfy are “the need for relatedness, transcendence, rootedness, the need for a sense of identity and the need for a frame of orientation and devotion.”From the Buddhist point of view, economic and moral issues cannot be separated from each other because the mere satisfaction of economic needs without spiritual development can never lead to contentedness among people. Thus, as Ven. Dr. Thich Nhat Tu has shown in his book, socially engaged Buddhism can play an important role in building a happy and peaceful world. I congratulate him for publishing such an important work.

Prof. K.T.S. Sarao University of Delhi, India