Buddhism and the Politics of Indentity

Buddhism and the Politics of Identity
By Yifa
(draft only, no citation)
Recent scholars working to apply the insights of modern psychology into the traditional Buddhist practice of liberation encounter a complex tension between what we might call deep truths and superficial needs.[1] Personal concerns and desires to escape individual suffering distract from practice, but they also motive it, in the first place. The deep truth denies the reality of the desires, but without them there would be no need for truth. The deep and the superficial thus stand in an uneasy truce. As if sorting out these two were not enough, there is the need elucidated by Nagarjuna[2] to realize their ultimate unity; that is, that the apparent difference between profound and superficial is itself conditioned.
Scholars wrestle with these problems while exploring the role of ontological emptiness in a psychologically full life;[3] the juxtaposition of persons with the impersonal play of cause and effect;[4] and the tension between deep hearing and immediate response.[5] But while most focus on individual psychology, few explore the contribution Buddhism might make to our understanding of the psychology of larger social and political issues. Social identity conditions social suffering, just as our individual identities condition our individual sufferings. This paper attempts to connect some of these individual and social issues.
After decades of “identity politics,” many claim that we are now entering an age they describe as “post-ethnicity.” In a recent article in the LA Times, for instance, Tim Rutten writes:
Anyone with children in their 20s or younger knows that they deal with race and ethnicity in ways different from their elders. Skin color is no longer a physical marker for most of them. By and large, our sons and daughters describe their friends as tall or short, funny or serious, as good students or poor athletes, but seldom—as earlier generations would have done—as a "black guy" or a "white girl." They take the sound of Spanish and the sight of Korean shop signs for granted. (LATimes Opinion, February 6, 2008).
There are many factors behind this, one of which is the growing awareness in recent scholarship of the historically constructed nature of our concepts of race, class, and gender. In Race Matters, Cornell West explores the development of the modern notion of “blackness.”[6] In Brown, Richard Rodriguez writes of the Nixon administration’s creation of the category “Hispanic” (which did not originally include Cubans).[7]
The terms for these social divisions grew out of conditions of inequality and oppressions. Use of the terms, it follows, normalizes those conditions, making them sound real. Young people of the post-ethnic generation are thus disinclined to talk about these things at all, dismissing them as inherently stereotypical, the destructive superstitions of a previous generation. Recognizing the historically constructed nature of racial and ethnic categorizations, they refuse to buy into the essentialist notions that, so far as they can see, have caused only pain.
The parents of this new generation, however, offer harbor ambivalent feelings as the struggles that often defined their identities are dismissed as delusions. While they welcome a world in which their children are judged, as King said, not by the color of their skin but the content of their character, they don’t think we are there yet, and it is naïve to believe we are. While they are glad to see hateful racial epithets and stereotypes done away with, purging the language of all reference to race does not help us. Though ethnic and racial categories are social constructions and not real things, people meeting those descriptions still face very real problems. The simple rejection of racial and ethnic categorization will not only fail to fix those problems, they argue, but will even further entrench them by rendering them officially invisible.
To summarize, there is great uncertainty over what to make of race.
These are complex questions. They have been brewing for a long time and may be coming to a boil with the campaigns of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. While I do not claim to have a solutions, I think there are valuable connections to traditional lines of Buddhist thought which may serve as resources in modern times.
First, the constructed nature of race and ethnicity is a perfect illustration of the Buddhist idea of pratitya-samutpada, “dependent origination.” Without certain historical conditions, modern categories of race would not have arisen. They do not have any inherent existence. Nor are they permanent; as conditions change, conceptions of racial and ethnic identity change, as well, for better or for worse.
But the fact that identities are constructed does not mean they are non-existent. The process of integrating social construction with practical reality, I would argue, is analogous to the dialectic of emptiness and form that we see in the Heart Sutra. \To think that these two are opposed or inconsistent, that the construction of these identities means that they are unimportant or can be ignored, as Nagarjuna explains, “is incorrect. As a consequence, you are harmed by it.”[8] That is, it is not only an error, but a dangerous one. He continues:
Without a foundation in conventional truth,
The significance of the ultimate cannot be taught.
Without understanding the significance of the ultimate,
Liberation is not achieved.[9]
We know that racial and ethnic categories are both ultimately empty and conditionally real, though it is hard to sort out precisely what that means for practical purposes. Nagarjuna argues that an understanding of the intersection of these two is essential to an ultimate solution.
A detailed analysis of Nagarjuna’s argument would take me beyond the scope of this paper. But let me just point out a simple version of it. The law of pratitya samutpada may be stated as follows:
When this is, that is.From the arising of this comes the arising of that.When this isn't, that isn't.From the cessation of this comes the cessation of that.
Social identities arise under historical conditions. This has to do with the origins of identities and it also has to do with their cessation. Analysis of the conditions that give rise to particular identities reveals the changes that could be made to cause those identities to disappear.
This knowledge, not of the emptiness of things but of the logic of illusion, is upaya, “expedient means.” Skill in expedient means is the bodhisattva’s primary tool in the compassionately alleviating suffering. This was what Nagarjuna meant that ultimate truth does not invalidate conventional truth but, quite the opposite, requires its mastery.
There are other ways that Buddhism might provide practical guidance in the dismantling of social identities. As in Diamond sutra indicates, there are “no giver, no receiver and no subject of giving.” Social identities almost always involve inequalities of power. Poor people lose self-esteem, especially when they receive the aid which makes them perceive themselves as inferiors and helpless. The giver is always superior to the taker. At the same time the givers are tempted to see themselves as separate from and superior to the takers. The amount of help given is often taken as a measure of prestige. Look at the pictures when philanthropists, especially celebrities, donate food or money to the poor or adopt their children. There is nothing wrong in helping the poor. Indeed, it is a good deed, worthy of encouragement. But what the message of Diamond Sutra tries to reveal will be how to avoid generating the pride in donors and at the same time to avoid the despair in the receivers.
There is another reason not to distinguish givers and takers in addition to the bad psychological effect. In the Buddhist view, we are living in an interdependent circle of social function. Bill Gates could not be Bill Gates if his employees were not his employees and his customers were not who they are. “Without this, that would not be.” Society is like the human body, the significant heart needs all the cell pores to take in oxygen too. It is this interdependent existence or co-existence that teaches us the meaning of non-self. To say that there is no self does not mean nothing exists. Rather, the meaning of non-self indicates three things: that there is no permanent, independent, or individual existence. If both givers and receivers understood the true meaning of interdependence, they would not generate unwholesome views of superiority or inferiority. This is what the Diamond sutra reveals as the true meaning of emptiness in the action of giving.
It might sound as though interdependence is a non-dual unity, which would then itself qualify as something permanent, independent, and individual. But this would be an incorrect understanding, as Yogacara theory explains. According to Yogacara, identity is formed in the seventh consciousness, also called mana consciousness. This is where the ego comes from and the idea of self as opposed to others. This is the consciousness which generates the delusion of self-ignorance, self-view, self-pride and self-love.
But the mana consciousness is not permanent, independent or individual. The mana consciousness is generated by the deep down consciousness, the alaya or eighth consciousness. And the alaya is not permanent, independent, or individual, either, but is a pool of continuously changing seeds. These seeds of experience are created from physical, verbal and mental actions which are themselves conditioned by a history with no beginning. It is continuous but changing, similar to the cells in our physical body. We are continuous with our childhood but the components of current body are different from those in the past.
To describe mana and alaya as the seventh and eighth consciousnesses means they are different functions, not separate things. The practice Buddhism is to transform consciousness into one that will perceive the equality of self and others. But to say they are equal does not mean there are not conventional differences between them. Let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater. It is because of the differences that the equality is important.
I would like to pause for a moment to say how odd it feels odd, at a conference on Buddhist psychology in Japan, to talk so much about American politics as filtered through the experience of a Taiwanese-American nun. But perhaps these questions are not so strange to this audience as I might fear. If so, this may suggest that national identities, like racial, ethnic, and ego identities, are not facts of the landscape which we should take for granted. They may perhaps serve as starting points, but our goal is to work through them rather than around them.
I was born in Taiwan. Both my parents speak what is called “Taiwanese.” After the Nationalists came to Taiwan from Mainland China in 1949 under Chiang Kaisei, we were ordered speak only mandarin Chinese. And from the material in our school texts we mostly learned the history and geography of mainland China, not our own island.
Now there is tension in the political situation as Taiwan would like to claim its independence while China insists on unification. I used to say that I am biologically Taiwanese and culturally Chinese. Once at UN meeting an Asian woman whose origin I do not know asked if I am Chinese or Taiwanese. My answer was that I am American citizen. Then I added that I am a global citizen. I meant it.
I realized that even in my own mind I have only a very vague sense of my own nationality and national identity. This experience began in me a process of the dissolution of my self-identity. More precisely, it taught me the true nature of the non-self of so called social identity. And seeing through this, I realized, can help to reduce the political conflict in international society.
International conflicts like that between the Israel and Palestine are founded on national identities. The UN or other countries tried to help to negotiate the division of land for both sides. But this strategy will never work out. No matter how the land is divided, one side always feels they have not gotten their fair share. And yet, as the woman’s question at the UN showed me, the national identities that form the foundation for these conflicts are the most tenuous things in the world.
Had Chiang Kaisei stayed on the mainland, I would have remained Taiwanese. And if I had not stepped on a plane to Hawaii, I would not be American. Have the mediators in the Israel-Palestine conflict ignored the children of interracial marriage? Two identities unite in one person all the time. And these people have no alternative but to share land with themselves. So it is possible for the two identities to co-exist. The same processes that create divisions can mend them. And haven’t these social identities led to enough conflict? I think Buddhism can help us cope with these problems.
There are also ways in which the modern political situation challenges Buddhism. The Buddhist tradition typically presents contrasts such as form versus emptiness and metaphysical reality versus illusion as binary opposites. The contrasts here between social identities and the economic and political conditions that both give rise to and result from them, however, mark out not polar extremes but relative points in the grey zone. Neither is completely empty, nor ultimately real, either. Engaging the problem as located in this metaphysical grey zone may not only be necessary in addressing the political questions; it may depend our understanding of Buddhism, as well.
Finally, modern studies tend to point merely to the ill-effects resulting from ethnic and racial identifications: prejudice, gang wars, etc. They don’t see them, like ego identity, as essentially painful in themselves; that is, as forms of suffering. We tend to view these ill-effects as social problems that can be cleaned up with improved education and increased policing, while preserving the rest of our lives intact. To the extent that the Buddhist analysis is correct, however, these ill-effects cannot be cleaned up without addressing the fundamental cause. Here again, the Buddhist analysis of suffering might help us to understand the implications of our “selves,” not just as individuals but as ethnicities and groups.
What is identity? In the Buddhist view, identities are empty, which does not mean that they do not exist but that their existence is conditioned. People unreflectively mistake social identities as having permanent or unchanging nature. But nationality changes with naturalization different races can become one through marriage. This is not even to mention changes in people’s economic, social, or political fortunes. As the Diamond sutra says, “There is No self, no others, no all sentient beings and no long-life.” None of what we see has a self nature.
The different identities we see and feel are just ripples and waves on the surface, eddies and currents in the depth of the pool of alaya consciousness. What I would really like to learn from the experts in modern psychology is how these consciousnesses correspond to unconsciousness or sub-consciousness in the west.

[1] For example, see chapters in Buddhism and Psychotherapy Across Cultures, Mark Unno, ed., (Wisdom Publications: Boston, 2006).
[2] Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way, Jay Garfield, tr., (Oxford University Press, 1995)
[3] Engler in Unno (2006)17–30. See especially 24–25.
[4] Waldron in Unno (2006) 87–104.
[5] Unno in Unno (2006)139–158.
[6] Cornell West, Race Matters (Beacon Press, 2001).
[7] Richard Rodriguez, Brown (Viking, 2003) 95.
[8] Garfield (1995) 296.
[9] Garfield (1995) 298.