Video and Q&A – Keynote Lecture: Prof. Jin Y. Park, “What Is Ethics For? A Minimalist Approach to Buddhist Ethics”

That’s obviously a question I have asked myself for a long time about human rights. We can make a distinction between human rights as an international law and the human rights as mentioned in the liberalist political philosophy. For law, there is the UN Declaration of Human Rights (1948). Those human rights are really a minimum dignity. On the other hand, when you say “I have a right not to get vaccinated”, that’s a human right based on a liberalist understanding. I have a right not to do this; I have right to do this. These are two different things. But when you consider truth, justice, and equality, or consider the claims of protesters, I feel these are ‘thicker’. The idea is thicker than the suffering. In 1989, I’m sure Walzer was right. But 2022? There are so many different versions of justice and truth. I don’t know whether this is a good thing or bad thing, but that much is clear. Suffering, on the other hand, has fewer versions that are not mutually recognized. Now, I can say, “I feel pain.” Someone else can say, “You are a woman, you don’t have capacity to feel pain.” That kind of denial is still possible, but less fraught today than a denial of truth. I’ve been trying to find this kind of minimum, what might be the most non-negotiable minimum. So, there would be just differences, but that’s a valid question. I agree. – Jin Y. Park

Buddhist suffering is not that simple, as we all know. Sung Bae Park, who was my teacher at Stony Brook when I was studying Buddhism, he would always say that, “there are 4 noble truths listed, but really there is only one: the first truth, suffering.” If you recognize suffering, you already know the other three truths. It’s not as if you move from first, to second, to third, and finally forth. If you realize that you actually suffer, then you know there are other truths. But when I describe this as a ‘human’ suffering, the type addressed by socially engaged Buddhism, then that’s a little bit different. I don’t know whether you would call it ‘thinner,’ but it is different. It is different from a really traditional concept of suffering as a first noble truth. But at the same time, I think that we can still say that human suffering is useful to help people trigger their moral imagination. It is true that suffering can be ‘thick.’ But it’s less compromisable than this idea of justice and truth in our time. In the United States, I no longer know what we mean by truth. – Jin Y. Park

If everybody recognizes suffering, then you will try to remove your own suffering first, rather than think about others suffering. That might be true. But at the same time, that’s where cultivation comes in. If you really think about this individualistic world, then ‘I’ am suffering and ‘you’ are suffering. I am more important than you. I will get rid of my suffering, and after that, I might or might not help you to get over your suffering. But, on the other hand, if Buddhist teaching is working, or if somebody is trying to exercise it, my suffering makes me realize that as much as I suffer, the other party must suffer. So, my suffering can trigger this moment of connection with others. That also has to do with the earlier versions of Buddhist Ethics. In these earlier versions of Buddhist ethics, especially Zen Buddhist ethics, people talk about enlightenment, and wisdom, and compassion. If you obtain enlightenment, you have wisdom and thus, one will naturally feel compassion for other people. I don’t think that’s the case. The very fact of attaining enlightenment doesn’t automatically make you exercise compassion. Even Buddha didn’t do that. Buddha needed to be told “Okay. Go out, teach people”, and he said “No. I don’t want to teach people”, but eventually he decided to do it. Seongju, in the Korean Zen Buddhist tradition, make this clear: The very fact that you have wisdom does not automatically help you to exercise compassion; a constant and consistent effort is required to exercise your wisdom. And that is another aspect of really thinking about my suffering and your suffering. For example, if I had the flu and then the next day William has the flu, I can see that William suffers and there is a connection between the two. And then I respond, “I’m going to get you some hot tea”, because that connection occurred, I act. Otherwise, the two sufferings are disconnected. So, once again, it might sound like an overreach to find what might connect us, help us, motivate us to give rise to this ethical imagination and action. But I think that the recognition of suffering, when this recognition of suffering is extended to the recognition of others’ suffering, is a possibility–yet this also requires constant exercise and cultivation. – Jin Y. Park

Plurality doesn’t necessarily lead to a kind of collectivism. In other words, when Pak Ch’iu says that “I am plural-singular”, this is a conclusion he reached after criticizing Western Liberalism. In his view, Western Liberalism is a one-to-one relationship and fails to accomplish its promise of equality for all. He says that this promise that was made in the European enlightenment fails because of individualism and because the idea was actually based on a hierarchical relationship among the individual members of society. From there he moved to plurality of identity, in the sense that my freedom should also be shared in others’ freedom. If one remains in the individualistic paradigm, in which my freedom is ‘my’ freedom, then in order to have freedom, you must invade my freedom–so there is a constant competition. That’s our society, one-to-one relationship and individualism. The basis of this kind of relationship is seeing other people as objects of my competition, and thinking that I have to win over others. To overcome this idea, and this unhealthy relationship with others, we must think of our identity as a plural. Because I am plural-singular, my freedom should be shared by your freedom. The issue of collectivism is there as well but, for context, Pak Ch’iu was a Communist. In the 1940s he moved to North Korea, emphasizing that philosophy must be practiced in action. And he actually practiced it as a Communist. Then he came down to South Korea as a Communist guerilla and was killed by the South Korean army. That was why he was not studied in South Korea until very recently, for obvious reasons. Although he was a Communist, he didn’t address the issue of collectivism. He focused more on a criticism of Western Liberalism. – Jin Y. Park

There have been many questions about why choose suffering? Why is suffering better than liberal ideas about justice and truth? How do we get to the bottom of it? To the bottom of our sharedness and, in that case, we have a tendency to thinking of liberal ideas. That’s why truth and justice have been candidates for this kind of shared ground of values. But what if we go down to something more earthly. Suffering really has to do with the body. Suffering includes mental suffering, but mental suffering does not happen just mentally, it happens in our body. So, one reason I put suffering forward is that ethical discourse can become so abstract. I think that ethical discourse should really involve the discourse about our bodies. Psychology, too, can become very abstract. I want to focus on the concrete reality of our bodies, how they relate to our ethical imagination, and suffering to me is at the border of bodies and imagination. – Jin Y. Park

That’s a very good point. The suffering of your enemies might give you pleasure; the suffering of a victim might give rise to hatred. However, if we consider suffering as a kind of a trigger for moral imagination, we might be able to change this course. That’s what I’m trying to propose. Truth and justice have been centered in moral discourse, and in social and political discourse. But I do not believe we have centered suffering as a kind of foundation for moral discourse. Suffering has been treated as just an emotion or reactions. If we begin to think about suffering in a more complex way–and here there is a conflict with ‘thinness’–we can consider how suffering can actually create a certain kind of relationship with others. I do not think that suffering has been thought of in this way, as a centered or foundational aspect of moral discourse in the ways that truth and justice have. It has appeared in moral reasoning as just a kind of reaction to a certain situation. My hope is to think about this suffering as itself forming moral discourse. – Jin Y. Park

‘Solidarity of the margin’ is an idea that I’ve been thinking a lot about in the sense that those people at the margin are the ones that usually suffer, because the center has power and margin does not. But when we really consider who is at the margin, we see that it includes many people. Women–half the population of the world–are at the margin. If you think about people of color, they are at the margin. If you think about people that do not have money in a capitalist society, they at the margin. There are more at the margin than at the center. The thing is we tend to ignore our marginal position, and we kind of inflate our central position. For example, if you are a woman but you are white, there is a tendency to explore this white centrality rather than women’s marginality, and so on and so forth. To face one’s marginality is another way of really thinking about other people suffering. This is why I invoked the idea from African American studies that, if you are marginalized, you are black. This is a very radical idea, but that’s exactly what I have in mind when I point to the solidarity of the margin. If you really think about your marginal position and the suffering of other people at the margin, if you count all these things, at a certain level you are at the margin. We simply try not to be aware of that. We try to suppress our marginal position and highlight our central position. Solidarity of the margin, like the awareness of suffering, requires a cultivated or educated awareness of we mean by margin. Where are you in this structure? Are you all at the center, or are you at the margin in some spectrum? And when you are aware of your place at the margin, then you have to think about other people that are at the margin as well. – Jin Y. Park