Articles

Globalization and Religious Vocation: A Response

Don Swearer

Herb Swanson didn't provide the panelists with a specific "road map" for this event, but he did suggest that we should address the questions of how globalization shapes our work, or how we see our work as a response to globalization. There were two parts to his charge, "our work," and "globalization," so I intend first to share with you something of "my work" and then step back and ask whether or not it has anything to do with globalization.

My career has been as a teacher of Asian and comparative religions at the undergraduate college level with a special focus on Buddhism, especially the Theravada traditions of South and Southeast Asia. Many of my students have been captivated by Asian cultures and religions, and have found their life's work in this area; some as university professors, others in government service (Bea Camp, a former student, will become the American Consul in Chiang Mai next year), and even a few, I might add, have become Buddhist monks (Thanissaro Bhikkhu, is the abbot of Wat Mettaaram, Valley Center, California, and a productive scholar) I should hasten to add that my students have also become Christian ministers and Jewish Rabbis!

I would like to believe that being students in my classes in Asian and comparative religions helped them to achieve a lasting interest in cultural traditions other than their own, and an empathy for peoples of other ethnicities and religions--in the terminology of postmodernism, those who represent "otherness." I hope that my students learn to appreciate, respect, and even admire differences, rather than being oblivious to or fearing them because those who are different from us seem foreign.. At the same time, it is my fervent wish that my students not only come to appreciate the integrity of difference, but also discover commonalities among those differences and realize that ultimately, beneath our separate ethnicities, religions, cultural backgrounds, and histories, we share a common humanity. Not everyone likes McDonald's hamburgers, but I know no one who doesn't desire love and respect, even though the qualities of love and respect may be expressed in quite different ways in

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different cultures. Americans shake hands; the French embrace; the Thai wai but these are all forms of greeting. By the way, legend has it that the American handshake developed in the wild West as proof that you weren't holding a gun. These days, it seems we've forgotten that piece of our legendary history!

One of the ways students learn to attain what I call a "global perspective,"—one that embraces both difference and similarity—is through comparative study. Comparative study runs the risk of glossing over differences—"all religions are alike"—or ignoring similarities—"my religion is the truth and all other religions are untruth." Let me give you an example of comparative study in global perspective. I teach an honors seminar in comparative religious ethics called, "Religious Belief and Moral Action." The course focuses on what I refer to as "moral exemplars" in different religious and cultural traditions, for example, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and Thich Nhat Hanh. The course studies them in their particular historical contexts—the period of emergent Indian nationalism, the civil rights movement in America, the Vietnam War and international socially engaged Buddhism. Although the historical, religious, and cultural contexts are very different, these "moral exemplars" all embrace the principles of love and compassion, justice, and non-violence.

I cannot guarantee, of course, that all of my students graduate from Swarthmore with a degree in world, rather simply American or Western, citizenship. Such a cosmopolitan self-understanding requires that one attain factual understanding in both breadth and depth, but also qualitative insight that is difficult to teach. I try to bring into the classroom something of the "flavor" (Thai, rot) of other cultures and religious traditions so that my students attain a multi-dimensional understanding of, say, the Buddhist Traditions of Asia, one of the subject matters I teach. Unfortunately, university education has become so specialized and one-dimensional that too often our graduates know "more and more about less and less," and lack a broad understanding of what it means to be truly human with aspirations beyond a mere technical expertise or acquiring a handful of advanced degrees that will lead to fame, success, and wealth.

My interest in Asia and Buddhism did not result from academic study but was a consequence of living in Bangkok for two and half years from 1957-60 where I was an instructor at Bangkok Christian College, appointed as a Fraternal Worker by the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. During my last year in Bangkok I also taught English at

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Mahachulalongkorn University for Buddhist monks. I even had a short television career as an English language instructor on a program which, by an odd coincidence, was produced by Rak Rapong, better known to the Thais in the audience at Phra Bodhirak, the founder of the Santi Asok movement. (So far as I know, this coincidence had nothing to do with Bodhirak's decision to leave the entertainment industry and become a monk!!)

On the eve of my return to the United States my students at Mahachula presented me with several books authored by Buddhadasa Bhikkhu who in the 1950's had already established a reputation as one of Thai Buddhism's most distinctive interpreters of Buddhadhamma. The Mahachula monks could not have foreseen—or perhaps they did—that this dhamma gift was to become one of the turning points in my spiritual and professional journey. After reading these books my feeling of spiritual kinship with Buddhadasa was as overpowering as when I immersed myself in the Apostle Paul's New Testament letters and the writings of Dietrich Bonhoffer when I was a high school student, or read St. Augustine and Soren Kierkegaard in college, and was challenged to think critically about comparative religions by Mircea Eliade as a young graduate student. A consistent focus of my professional life has been an on-going interest in Buddhadasa that has resulted in two books of translations and several articles about his provocative interpretations of Buddhist thought and practice.

Upon my return to America I completed seminary and then graduate studies in the history of religions and began my teaching career, first at Oberlin College in Ohio, and subsequently at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. During these thirty-eight years I have had the good fortune to spend several research leaves in Asia, primarily in Thailand but also Sri Lanka and Japan. Residencies of several months in Chiang Mai have made an indelible and lasting impression on my wife and two children and instilled in them a global, cross-cultural perspective. In fact, my son, a marine biologist, now makes his home in Melbourne, Australia, and is on the faculty at Melbourne University.

I have been truly blessed over the years to have had the privilege of working with many Asian colleagues as mentors and friends. While in Sri Lanka in 1967 I was mentored by the Buddhist philosopher, K.N. Jayatilleke, and the German monk, Nyanaponika Thera, my first meditation teacher; and, later in Japan by Eshin

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Nishimura and Bando Shojun at Hanazona and Otani Buddhist Universities. Subsequently, I invited them to co-teach January term courses with me at Oberlin College. It was during this 1967-68 sabbatical leave year that I made the acquaintance of S. Sivaraksa, and it was Acharn Sulak who took me to Suan Mokh to meet Buddhadasa Bhikkhu for the first time. Over the years my life has intersected with Sulak's so often that the only explanation must be karmic synchronicity! Most recently we invited him to Swarthmore College as the Lang Visiting Professor of Social Change for the Fall term, 2002. Other Thai friends, colleagues, and mentors who have figured prominently in my professional and personal life are so numerous that I can mention only a few. I have known, and admired, Phra Dhammapitaka (P.A. Payutto) almost as long as Acharn Sulak, and it was my great honor to have arranged for him to be a guest professor at Swarthmore College and also at Harvard where we were both in residence at the Center for the Study of World Religions. The late Singkha Wannasai of Lamphun introduced me to much of what I know about northern Thai Buddhism and traditions, and also filled a personal void left by my father's death when I was a young man of twenty. I have often turned to Mani Phayomyong, emeritus professor, Chiang Mai University, for help in translating northern Thai texts and for his extensive knowledge of northern Thai culture. Sommai Premchit has been a friend and professional colleague par excellence. Acharn Sommai spent a Fulbright year at Swarthmore College with his family, and we have co-authored several articles and books including The Legend of Queen Cama, and the Sacred Mountains of Northern Thailand and Their Legends in collaboration with Phaitun Dokbuakaew. For the past two years I have worked closely with Herb Swanson on a project called "Christian Identity in Buddhist Thailand." Herb heads the Department of History of the Church of Christ in Thailand, has amassed an invaluable archive of material on the history of the Protestant church in northern Thailand, and even recently received an award from his home village his lasting contributions to Ban Dok Daeng. Finally, I should mention Acharn Saeng Chandrangam whose wisdom is matched by his compassion, and whose association with the Institute for the Study of Religion and Culture makes Buddhist-Christian dialogue a reality rather than a theory.

You may be wondering what this litany of mentors, colleagues, and friends has to do with "my work" and globalization. I see it as a graphic illustration of the obvious fact that my work has occurred in a global context that in an earlier age

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would have been difficult if not impossible. Bangkok Christian College where I taught for over two years was a product of the late nineteenth century missionary movement that contributed to the modernization of Siam at the time it was emerging as a nation-state, and Mahachulalongkorn Buddhist University came out of the same state-building impulse. My religious self-understanding has been challenged and transformed, deparochialized and globalized through my encounters with Buddhadasa Bhikkhu, Phra Dhammapitaka, and S. Sivaraksa; and, my teaching and scholarly work has been continuously broadened and enriched by the opportunities I've had to live and study in Asia--an on-going cross-cultural experience greatly expedited by the technologies we associate with globalization ranging from modern jet travel to the internet.

But globalization has affected me in another way, also directly related to the time I've spent in Thailand over the years. When I came to Chiang Mai the view of Doi Suthep was unobstructed by condominiums, and the scenery along the Chiang Mai-Lamphun road, still lined with giant Yang trees now "ordained" with saffron sashes, was dominated by rice paddies. There wasn't a Seven-Eleven or a Swenson's to be seen nor was there an Airport Plaza Shopping Mall, and wats and other religious edifices still outnumbered banks and service stations—but, there was also no Rama Hospital, or Payap University, and the government was controlled by the military. The impact of globalization on Thailand and around the world has challenged me to shift the focus of my study of Buddhism and other religions to the area of social ethics, as the seminar to which I referred earlier illustrates. I have found the socially engaged Buddhism movement a challenge both personally and as a scholar, and my forthcoming book on sacred mountain traditions in northern Thailand explores this subject not as a cultural artifact but as a basis for an environmental ethic.

Several years ago, the American environmentalist, Bill McKibben wrote a book entitled, The End of Nature. He demonstrated that if the nations of the world don't dramatically curtail carbon dioxide emissions, nature as we have known it for hundreds and thousands of years would be altered in ways unprecedented in human history. The global environmental crisis to which McKibben points is matched today by a host of other global crises. I believe that today's globalized world challenges all of us—ractioneers and scholars alike—to find in the religious traditions to which we are committed and which we study, resources to address the pressing issues of our

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time—war and violence, civil and human rights, the exploitation of women and children, poverty and the increasing gap between rich and poor, AIDS and other pandemic diseases, the depletion of natural resources, the preservation and conservation of natural habitats, the destruction of local cultures, and the commodification of value—to name only a few. In this mutual undertaking of which this conference is an example, we shall come to a new appreciation of the uniqueness of our particular faith-traditions but also of the universal principles of love and justice that underlie them. I believe this to be a moral imperative that we ignore at our own peril and the peril of the world.

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