Editing Radical Buddhism in the West (section)

== Systematic Critiques: David Loy and Joanna Macy ==

By the final decades of the twentieth century, Western radical Buddhism moved beyond its early association with the counterculture toward more systematic philosophical accounts of the structural causes of suffering. Two thinkers, David Loy and Joanna Macy, were particularly important in this development, though their approaches differed considerably in emphasis.

=== David Loy ===

David R. Loy (1947–), a Zen teacher and scholar of Buddhist philosophy, developed the most sustained Buddhist critique of institutionalized greed among his generation. In ''The Great Awakening: A Buddhist Social Theory'' (1997; expanded edition 2003), Loy argued that the three poisons traditionally identified by Buddhism as the roots of individual suffering, greed, ill will, and delusion, can become embodied in social institutions themselves, producing forms of collective suffering that cannot be addressed through individual practice alone.<ref>Loy, David R. (2003). ''The Great Awakening: A Buddhist Social Theory'' (expanded ed.). Boston: Wisdom Publications, chap. 1.</ref> This argument was extended in ''Money, Sex, War, Karma: Notes for a Buddhist Revolution'' (2008), which applied it to consumerism, militarism, and ecological destruction, and which Loy framed not as a call for violent overthrow but for the transformation of the institutional assumptions through which modern societies reproduce suffering.<ref>Loy, David R. (2008). ''Money, Sex, War, Karma: Notes for a Buddhist Revolution''. Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications, introduction.</ref> Loy generally avoids advocating a single alternative economic model, treating the transformation of institutional conditions rather than the adoption of a particular ideology as his central concern.

=== Joanna Macy ===

Joanna Macy (1929–2025) integrated Buddhist philosophy with general systems theory, ecology, and anti-nuclear activism, an approach with roots in doctoral research examining parallels between the Buddhist doctrine of dependent co-arising and systems theory.<ref>Macy, Joanna (1991). ''Mutual Causality in Buddhism and General Systems Theory: The Dharma of Natural Systems''. Albany: State University of New York Press, introduction.</ref> Her central concept, the "industrial growth society," described not merely capitalist economic institutions but an entire civilizational orientation toward unlimited expansion incompatible with ecological limits, a critique she developed most fully in ''World as Lover, World as Self'' (1991).<ref>Macy, Joanna (1991). ''World as Lover, World as Self''. Berkeley: Parallax Press, chap. 2.</ref> Rather than treating despair at ecological destruction as a problem to be suppressed, Macy developed practices, later known as the "Work That Reconnects," intended to convert grief and fear into capacities for collective action, aimed at what she termed the "Great Turning" toward an ecologically sustainable society.<ref>Macy, Joanna, and Johnstone, Chris (2012). ''Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We're in without Going Crazy''. Novato, CA: New World Library, chap. 1.</ref> An early member of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, Macy occupied an intermediate position between engaged and radical Buddhism: she rarely identified with socialist or anarchist traditions as such, but her critique of the industrial growth society went well beyond the alleviation of environmental problems within existing economic structures.