When Buddhists Want Awakening Without Any Wokeness

It’s come to my attention that some Buddhists are beginning to lament what they call “woke Buddhism” taking over Western Zen centers and Buddhist communities. This is a rather ironic development, of course, given that awakening is so central to the Buddhist religion. How can people strive to be awakened while at the same time lamenting wokeness? Perhaps it behooves us to explore some definitions.

The word buddha is derived from bodhi, which means awakened, having perfect wisdom, enlightened, if you will. One who is completely awakened is called a buddha. When we speak of the Buddha, however, we are referring to the historical Shakyamuni Buddha.

Venn diagram showing the relationship of woke and awakened

Being awakened means somewhat different things in different sects of Buddhism. However, in Mahayana Buddhism—the practice of which is more widespread in China, Japan, Korea, and Tibet—bodhi is more specifically defined as follows:

“[It] is mainly understood as wisdom based on insight into the unity of nirvana and samsara as well as subject and object. It is described as the realization of prajna [wisdom], awakening to one’s own buddha-nature or buddha-essence, insight in the essential emptiness (shunyata) of the world, or omniscience and perception of suchness (tathata)” (Schuhmacher & Woerner, 1994).

That’s a mouthful. Which is why you may hear some refer to bodhi more succinctly as “seeing reality as it is,” fully and completely.

Whereas being awakened can be traced back thousands of years, being woke is slang of more recent origin. It is defined as being “aware of and actively attentive to important societal facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice)” (Merriam-Webster). While its use can be traced back to early twentieth century writings about the Black struggle against oppression, its usage exploded as the Black Lives Matter movement brought these issues to more mainstream awareness.

More recently, however, woke has begun to be used in a pejorative way to minimize or dismiss entirely whatever so-called progressive-thinking individuals consider important. Thus, in addition to racial awareness being dismissed as “woke,” relying on scientific findings related to climate change is also. Likewise, acting on and speaking about the reality that gender is nonbinary, speaking seriously about multicultural dynamics, speaking of justice within a geopolitical context, etc. Generally speaking, woke is a label oft-used by right-leaning individuals to devalue or dismiss whatever they disagree with.

Which brings me back to the topic of “woke Buddhism.” I was recently involved in a social media “discussion” begun by one of those individuals lamenting the “wokeness” of Western Zen communities. As usual, it was a white guy. A few folks joined in in support (white guys). Others, myself included, pushed back. My primary contribution to that discussion was the Venn diagram displayed above. Anyway, I’m not sure how fruitful that “discussion” was, but, for my part I left wondering just how widespread this lamentation against woke Buddhism actually is. When and from where did this viewpoint emerge?

Well, I can’t say that I found the source, but it didn’t take me long to find Woke Buddhism Must Go!, a 2024 video made by Brad Warner, an influential Soto Zen teacher (and white guy) who seems to have fallen out of the favor of many in recent years (myself included) for his positions on vaccine policy, multiculturalism, etc. He’s a reasonably engaging and entertaining guy, though, so I settled in to watch the entire 27-minute video.

Warner uses the release of the 40^th anniversary edition of How the Swans Came to the Lake: A Narrative Historyof Buddhism in America as a platform from which to rant about so-called woke Buddhism. His thesis is essentially this: American Buddhism largely grew out of the counterculture movement of the sixties. Left-leaning teachers of the day were very influential in its start, and their gatekeeping behavior down through the decades created the present atmosphere in which potential new Zen practitioners must weather a bombardment of Leftist political propaganda in order to simply learn how to sit zazen. He further opines that, historically speaking, Buddhism was an apolitical endeavor and should remain as such. Thus, woke Buddhism needs to be eradicated for the sake of the continuation of healthy Zen practice in America.

Warner really doesn’t make much of a case, though. Many of those early Zen centers were founded by Japanese teachers trained in environments that Warner would later describe as more conservative or centrist in nature. Were their American converts the ones who so quickly went astray? If so, how is it that the traditional teachings were so quickly and easily coopted?

But Warner’s contention that Buddhism has historically been apolitical is actually quite disingenuous. Surely Warner knows that Buddhists, and anyone living under the rule of a king or emperor, had to remain in the good graces of their ruler for the sake of their survival. Criticizing the social order would not have gone well. The Buddhism presently blossoming in Western countries may look different than the Buddhism of the past, but that doesn’t mean it is an erroneous manifestation.   

Benjamin Bogin’s introduction to the aforementioned anniversary book release is purportedly such rich fodder for making Warner’s point that he was “yelling and screaming” when he read it. However, when I found a copy to read for myself, I see that Bogin is really just making the point that, while the original book begins with seemingly boundless hope after the national disillusionment of the Vietnam War and the criminal Nixon administration, the anniversary edition comes out during a similarly disillusioning but not so hopeful time marked by human-caused climate change, worldwide pandemic, and racial trauma inflicted on the American psyche by the very public murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police. Far from requiring the reader to wade through propaganda, Bogin is merely contextualizing the new release as the original was contextualized within the early 1970s timeframe. If the book is, as Warner states, “emblematic… of a lot of what is wrong in American Buddhism today,” then what is wrong with American Buddhism is merely the acknowledgement of the social and geopolitical reality in which it is practiced.

For what it’s worth, my own formal Soto Zen training began at a center founded by an older Japanese teacher who spoke quite frequently about waking up that we might save the planet from the dangers of nuclear weapons and the sixth mass extinction that is presently underway. Was he poisoning the well with “Leftist, nutcase stuff,” as Warner says? He did speak more about those things to brand new visitors than I might have liked at the time. But that didn’t make his teaching any less true.

And so it is with much of the so-called woke Buddhism being lamented. It’s not that climate change is not real. Warner admits as much in his rant. He just wants no talk of it in the zendos of America. It’s not that racial injustice is not real. It’s simply that Warner appears not to want any mention of it to distract from the teaching of Buddhism.

But what critics of so-called woke Buddhism don’t seem to fully grasp or take into consideration is that Mahayana Buddhists, the sects that those same critics ostensibly belong to, hold the bodhisattva vow in very high regard. Practitioners who make this vow declare that they will forgo their own complete awakening until all other beings are saved. Presumably this would mean that all beings are safe from climate change and other threats of extinction, that no person must face the violence of racial injustice, that nobody faces oppression because of their sex, gender identity, or sexual orientation, etc. And if you think that this vow pertains only to the dissemination of the Dharma, well, try to focus on the Dharma when your very survival is in jeopardy.

The bodhisattva ideal is one in which we cultivate vision to see the suffering of the world, hearing to know of the suffering of the world, and our agentic capacity to help alleviate the suffering of the world. Why then would anyone who understands Buddhism in this way take be chafed by the Dharma being taught with these issues in mind? It seems to me that wanting to avoid discussion of difficult issues in the zendo is essentially wanting to remain comfortably ensconced within the ego that brought you there. Sure, let’s enjoy a little relaxing zazen, ponder some sutras as if we’re living alone in the forest, and then go about our pleasantly entitled day.

And that is why I’ve drawn the Venn diagram as I have. Yes, I have met individuals who seem to have become very proud of and attached to their “wokeness.” To the extent that this may hinder complete awakening, I include them in the woke but not awakened part of the diagram—which is not to say that they won’t become fully awakened at some point. Those who are awakened but not woke might be those who really are not well-versed in the topics mentioned in this post, climate change, race relations, et al., but who are nonetheless able to recognize their reality. But then there are those who lament this so-called wokeness. They can be just as stuck in their attachment to views as those attached to their wokeness. However, because these lamenters are essentially denying the reality of the difficult issues we face, denying the suffering caused by the issues we face, or simply don’t want to know about these difficult issues we face, I can’t think of any of them being truly awakened, nor do I see them truly awakening without a drastic change of heart.

Sure, my Venn diagram is flawed, but I think it helps focus and further discussion on these matters. There’s more I could say, but this post is getting long, and I don’t want to belabor the point. How about you? What do you think?     

 

References 

Schuhmacher, S., Woerner, G. (1994). The encyclopedia of Eastern philosophy and religion. Shambhala Publications, Inc.

Images

Venn diagram courtesy of the author

 

Copyright 2026 by Mark Robert Frank