Zen, activism and the art of politics in the 2024 election cycle
After decades of losses to their right wing opponents, can liberals apply Buddhist principles to political campaigns and win? Thoughts from ordained Zen priest and political activist Peter Coyote.
Vice President Kamala Harris has so far frustrated requests from the media and her opponents and the public to get specific on the issues, although she’s starting to reveal her positions on the economy, energy and national security. In the meantime, Ms. Harris and her advisers seem quite content to rely on brief messages about joy, turning the page, and ‘a new way forward.’
Due to continual corporate reshuffling in the legacy media, a loss of advertising revenue, and shifts in consumer behavior, a broad segment of voters are often getting their news directly from candidates on social media. Candidates believe they have fewer reasons to grant long form interviews with the media. The clips are even shorter than they are on cable news. News influencers, who promote themselves as journalists or news presenters on social media deliver news in the compressed, short attention span formats designed for visual impact not policy-specific proposals.
In this election cycle, so far Vice President Kamala Harris has yet to post at-length policy proposals to her website. While we await the specifics the Democrats are betting voters are ready to turn the page on a national cloak of disillusionment in politics and alienation from each other. Recent polls have shown that at some level, the messages of joy and hope seem to be resonating. With the Republican presidential standard-bearer again being Donald Trump, we’re used to political messages from the right containing an amount of anger, exclusion, disaffection and antagonism. How will voters respond to these messages in November?
From a number of writers and thinkers on the left in this environment we are hearing perspectives from those involved in anti-war protests of the 1960’s about ways to politically tap into these ideas of positivity, restoring civility to our politics, learning new ways of public persuasion and actually changing the dynamics of our civil discourse at the same time.
As a young man, actor, writer, voice artist, political activist and Buddhist priest Peter Coyote was involved in protests against the Vietnam war in San Francisco in the 1960s. He joined the San Francisco Mime Troupe street theater group and a founding member of The Diggers, a radical community action group in San Francisco’s Haight Ashbury neighborhood. He witnessed frequent public, violent protests for years during the 60s and early 70s.
Mr. Coyote was ordained a Zen priest in 2011, is the author of five books and continues to be engaged in political and social causes. He has used his age, wisdom and spiritual perspective to rethink ideas of Buddhist-inspired political protest in America, 2024. Centuries ago Buddhists had to co-exist with the Hindu population in India, wanting to be harmonious and not cause problems — to avoid causing problems with their king. Mr. Coyote suggests that in America, Buddhism in the West can be reformed and become more integrated with the American vernacular. And he adds, anger and violence must be removed from this Buddhist-inspired political process.
If you can’t discuss politics without getting angry, you shouldn’t. If you can’t do a protest without being angry, you shouldn’t be protesting because you’re aiding the problem, not solving it. — Peter Coyote
Mr. Coyote gave a dharma talk recently at the San Francisco Zen Center, and he shared some of the many lessons he’s learned about political protest and community activism. Having spent so many years upon reflection about his generations’ reliance on angry public protests during the Vietnam war and has come to the conclusion that protests during that era actually led to nearly 30 years of right wing triumphs and “policies that were anti -women, anti environmental, banking deregulation, happened because we were operating on a single issue, Vietnam.”
He says he also believes that Zen Buddhists should examine whether to continue to use Japanese words and wear Japanese robes in public. He says Buddhists should no longer be sequestered in monasteries and learn to engage the American public and with political opponents with dignity, trust and respect.
I’m intrigued by Mr. Coyote’s thought to infuse western political activism with Buddhist values stated with simple American ideas.
No, I don’t think the right as it’s currently constituted would think about adopting these ideas. But I do remain an optimist and hope that someday soon we can restore compassion and meaningful dialogue to our political process. What do you think?
Thank you very much for reading Metaculture. I’m so pleased you are here. See you next time, and I hope there are many bright colors on your palette.
