This volume collects brief essays on "Engaged Buddhism", the tradition of personal work and social action rooted in Buddhist ethical precepts.

The term Engaged Buddhism was coined by Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh in the 1950s as a corrective to Buddhists who limited their conception of their practice to the internal work of meditation and ethics defined individually. Hanh's work during the conflicts in Vietnam and his teachings since have inspired many followers and disciples, and the writings in this book, with a few exceptions, follow his conception, a conception which seems to me inadequate to face up to the gravely mounting threats to life and happiness in the world.

The vision of Engaged Buddhism presented in most of the essays is individualist, metaphysical, naively pacifist, and bereft of class analysis. So it offers inadequate insight into the forms and approaches of collective action that we will need to avert global catastrophe.

A few examples of the kind of crippled thinking I'm talking about: "We always deserve our government." (p.106); "If the leaders of all nations had all the information about the consequences of their actions, they would desist from the foolish policies they espouse."(p.89); "The success of nonviolent struggle can be measured only in terms of the love and non-violence attained, not whether political victory was achieved."(p.63) These sorts of blindnesses to the structural and institutional nature of oppression and violence in our world would preclude effective social engagement, in the mechanincal sense of the word, and replace it with spinning wheels. Real engagement will mean a meshing and monkeywrenching with the hard gears and cogs of a system that increasingly resembles a runaway train.

Gary Snyder, whose political views and spiritual practices were formed independently of Hanh, offers in his contribution the most important corrective to this worldview: "The mercy of the West has been social revolution; the mercy of the East has been individual insight into the basic self/void. We need both."

The other essays that I found most useful were Hanh's and Laity's discussions of the Six Concords of the sangha, as they have applied them to life in their community of Plum Village.

For a more thorough, constructive critique of the Engaged Buddhist tradition from an anarchist perspective, I highly recommend seeking out Ken Knabb's pamphlet "Strong lessons for Engaged Buddhists" on the web.

Mr. Kotler's lucid analysis of Buddhism is superb reading for the West. Noticeably absent in recent years from Thich Nhat Hanh's books (and his books show it), Kotler will hopefully share more material on his own that better communicate the "meat of Buddhism" for modern Westerners.