Unravelling Structural Oppression in Buddhist Thailand

Maia Duerr from over at Jizo Chronicles and Liberated Life Project just returned from a month in Thailand. Having had many students from Thailand, as well as friends who have taught English over there, I'm always interested in what people's experiences are.

Maia writes:

During my time in Thailand, I’ve loved spending time with my friend Ouyporn Khuankaew. Ouyporn is one of the most courageous people I know, and a true example of what it means to live a liberated life.

This post opens up by pointing out that so much of what we think is the "truth" is really social conditioning from culture, family, and other sources that we have just accepted as the only realty. And as someone who has often questioned even the most basic things and ideas, one of the reasons why people struggle to break through social conditioning is that even questioning much of it brings great resistance from others.

Ouyporn’s life could have turned out like so many other women. But she took a different direction.

In 2002, she co-founded the International Partnership for Women’s Peace and Justice with Ginger Norwood. For the past nine years, she and Ginger have led retreats and workshops at IWP for activists and people from marginalized groups, including sex workers, trans-gendered, and people with HIV. (To learn more about IWP, see this story from Ms Magazine.)

Ouyporn is a self-identified radical feminist lesbian who teaches people how structural oppression works and how it can be unraveled. And in this intensely Buddhist country, she reminds women that the Buddha’s original teachings on karma were not meant to be used as an excuse for unjust conditions.

Interestingly, the IWP site is right next door to the house that Ouyporn grew up in. Her aging mother still lives there. So Ouyporn has managed the unique feat of staying close to her roots while at the same time living a life that is completely true to who she is.

I can only imagine how difficult this work has been for Ouyporn, and yet also probably very rewarding at the same time. Mistaken notions of karma as some sort of fixed destiny or punishment for past life misdeeds are pretty commonplace, even amongst people in North America. But again, I think a major reason for this is just an acceptance of ideas that have been spread around without examining them closely. Someone hurts another, then gets hurt themselves, and people think "Oh, it's their karma coming back around." I don't think it's as simple as that.

In addition, bring up the phrase "structural oppression" in any nation, and tie it to specific structures, and you can watch the sparks fly out of people's heads. "There's no structural racism! It's just some bad apples." How many times have you heard that one?

Anyway, I love sharing stories of people who are challenging the dominant narratives, and questioning the social conditioning that otherwise would run their lives. Ouyporn's work is inspiring.

May we all be liberated in this life.

Reflections on a Buddhist Environmentalism

Discussions and modern Buddhist teachings often feel a little too human-centric. Plenty of talk about interconnectedness, but not much movement beyond the human sphere of affairs. Obviously, being people, we're going to have a disposition towards people. There's nothing wrong with that. My own blog is pretty human centric, whether it's reflections on my own life and practice, or on social and sangha issues.

But perhaps the deep, disturbing disconnect that enough folks have these days, and which has led to environmental pillaging and poisoning, has also seeped into the way we view the dharma.

During a recent interview, Thai Buddhist teacher and activist
Sulak Sivaraksa said the following:

in the late 1960’s, the World Council of Churches requested that the Buddhists teach them. I shared everything from Buddhism. I taught them that living beings are not only animals, but also plants and trees, and that we must care for all. We are all interconnected; we are taught that without trees we could not live. The Buddha himself told us to look at trees as examples. Of course, the Buddha himself was one with the trees. He was born under a tree, enlightened under a
tree. He preached at night under the tree. He died under a tree. The tree is very important to us, and we must care for the forests and for the environment.
In my country, we have a movement for ordaining trees. Once trees are ordained, they cannot be cut. This movement helps to preserve trees. Max Weiner is a monk who has helped to spread a trend which is to ordain trees. He was from Harvard. When the tree is ordained,

Between 1936 and 1973, Thailand lost more than half of its forests. Similar patterns have occurred more recently in many other nations, including notably Brazil, where big agro-business has replaced rain forest with soybeans and other cash crops, and Ethiopia, where diversely forested areas were converted to coffee plantations. And historically, places like the northern United States, where I live, had forests that were almost logged to extinction in the name of profits and human-centric building ventures. All told, human relationships with trees over the past few hundred years have been quite off, to the point where many of us forget the simple fact that trees are major players in converting the air we breathe into breathable form.

One of the reasons why the environment in general, and trees in particular, have been forsaken - in my view - is the disappearance of, or lack of connection to, narratives speaking to the interconnection of people and the environment. Although scientists have done a fairly good job of detailing the many ways people have damaged and sometimes destroyed parts of the planet, what they have learned hasn't really been translated into the kinds of living, breathing stories our ancestors lived on.

The Buddha's story is one of those narratives, one that doesn't need to be updated in order to be powerful. His life was amongst the trees, touching the ground with every step. However, perhaps those of us who live in cities, are sheltered in buildings all day, spending hours on computers, sitting zazen inside, struggle to connect with the fullness of Buddha's experience of interconnectedness. Because of our many physical disconnections, our psychological and spiritual awareness is also cut off - not quite awake to the immensity of the world.

Dean's current post over at The Mindful Moment speaks of his experiences meditating in a cave. From what he writes, it's seems he felt this immensity while being there. However, what happens to that awareness a week, a month, a year after returning to the human-focused, human built "everyday" environment. I have had similar experiences to what Dean describes. I remember the awe I felt sitting on a cliff overlooking the Atlantic Ocean on the Aran Islands. And the sense of how tiny I am while going through the California desert. Wonderful experiences, but ones that tend to get drowned out by life in the city.

But this is beyond a city/country divide. I can go out less than an hour in any direction from the city I live in and find large scale farms loaded with poisoned plants and abused animals, sitting on land that was, a hundred years ago, entirely forested.

Tree ordination seems like a damn good idea in my view. Not only to protect the trees from human greed and stupidity, but also to remind people of a sacredness that is beyond ourselves, and whatever we think we need to live.

It's seems to me, as modern practitioners of the Buddha way, it's essential that we learn how to embody interconnectedness fully, and to act accordingly. And I think in order to do that, the ways we talk about the dharma, teach the dharma, must move beyond a human-centric approach. Just look at the words of the old masters. It's there. They got it. And now we have the work of scientists and environmental activists offering the fodder for new stories, and new ways of being and acting.

Some are out there doing just this. But more of us must take it up, to move beyond pessimism and despair. To make the dharma anew, one more time.

2000 + Fetuses Discovered inside Thai Buddhist Temple

Here's a story that highlights some of the challenges and contradictions tucked away in the wider Buddhist world. Here in the U.S., we have things like power abuse scandals, money grubbing charlatans, and all kinds of poorly examined class and race issues. In Thailand, they recently discovered this:

Thai police investigating a strong smell emanating from a Buddhist temple have found more than 2,000 fetuses hidden in the complex's morgue that appear to have come from illegal abortion clinics.

During an initial investigation at the temple in Bangkok on Tuesday, police discovered piles of plastic bags containing more than 300 fetuses. Police Lt. Col. Kanathud Musiganont said workers pulled more bodies from the temple's morgue Friday. More than 2,000 have been unearthed from vaults where bodies are traditionally interred pending cremation, which under some circumstances can take place years after death.

Abortion is illegal in Thailand except under three conditions — if a woman is raped, if the pregnancy affects her health or if the fetus is abnormal.

The article goes on to say that amongst those helping to maintain the rigid laws on abortion in Thailand are Buddhist activists. This, in a country where foreign male tourists come in swarms to indulge their sexual fantasies, and where thousands of women and girls have been sold into sex slavery, and where "abstinence education" is probably much more prominent than any well-rounded form of sex education.

It's quite complex. There's a whole layer of the old colonialist, exoticism-based attitude going on with the men using the sex trade in Thailand. The strict abortion laws, coupled with heavy emphasis on abstinence, are hallmarks of an oppressive patriarchy. (In some parts of the United States, there is a quite similar combination going on.)And then there are the Buddhists who are helping to maintain all of this.

It's pretty easy to see how a strict, literal take on Buddhist teachings would lead people to press for limited or zero legal abortions. Awhile back, I wrote a post detailing my own struggles over how to view abortions as a Buddhist. There aren't any easy answers. However, in my view, it's quite clear that when you try to eliminate access to abortions in a place where women are second class citizens (much of the world), you're bound to have trouble.

What do you think about this story? How can Buddhists work with abortion in a way that upholds the teachings, but also isn't oppressive?