A Review of Buddhist Spirituality and Social Action by Phra Paisal Visalo

Buddhist Spirituality and Social Action: The Collected Writings of Phra Paisal Visalo, edited by Jonathan S. Watts, INEB 2025.

The title of this book already contains its most important message: spirituality and social action belong together. Phra Paisal Visalo does not advocate a Buddhism that withdraws from the world. For him, meditation, mindfulness, and inner calm are not an escape from social problems. Rather, they are meant to enable people to engage with the world more clearly, compassionately, and nonviolently.

Published in 2025, this collection brings together forty earlier talks, essays, interviews, and teachings. They address personal conduct, the reform of Thai Buddhism, consumer society, environmental destruction, social development, political conflict, nonviolence, and end-of-life care. The book is therefore not a systematically structured monograph. Some ideas recur, and several of the political texts are closely tied to the Thai circumstances of the periods in which they were written. Yet taken together, they form a remarkably coherent picture.

At its heart lies a simple insight: the crises of the world and the crises of the human mind cannot be separated from one another. Environmental destruction, compulsive consumption, religious corruption, political violence, and social injustice do not arise only from flawed laws or poor institutions. They are also driven by greed, fear, hatred, delusion, and the desire to secure and protect the self.

Conversely, however, it would be too simple to reduce all social problems to the inner attitudes of individuals. At this point, I draw on Western thinkers such as Adorno, Horkheimer, Foucault, Deleuze, and Lacan to make what is being said more accessible to us ‘Westerners’—and to supplement it where social relations of power need to be described more precisely.

Consumption and the Promise of a Better Self

Phra Paisal’s critique of consumer society is particularly compelling. People do not buy things only because they need them. They buy recognition, belonging, and the image of a happier self. The right car, the right clothes, or a particular social status are supposed to prove that one is somebody.

Adorno and Horkheimer described how advertising, media, and the culture industry produce needs that subsequently appear to us as entirely personal desires. Phra Paisal makes a similar observation in simpler, more immediate language: we create technology, money, brands, and social norms—and then allow ourselves to be ruled by our own creations.

Lacan approaches the same process from the psychological side. Human beings experience a sense of lack and hope to close it through a new object. Yet no possession can ultimately give us what we are looking for. As soon as one desire is fulfilled, the next appears. The problem, therefore, is not that we have simply failed to find the right object. The problem is the expectation that any object could ever make us complete.

Phra Paisal’s response is not to condemn all desire on moral grounds. Rather, he invites us to become consciously aware of the movement of desire itself. Through mindfulness, we can observe how a desire arises, what idea of happiness is attached to it, and why its fulfilment brings only temporary relief.

His criticism also extends to a Buddhism that itself becomes a consumer product. Amulets, blessings, religious titles, and generous donations can turn into a kind of spiritual status commodity. Even meditation can deteriorate into a technique of (neoliberal) self-optimization: one meditates in order to become more productive, more successful, or more respected. Spirituality then no longer calls the ego into question; instead, we simply arrive on a new spiritual ego-platform. The ego has many faces.

Power Is Not Located Only at the Top

Phra Paisal’s critique of the Thai Sangha, the community of ordained practitioners, can be understood particularly well through Foucault. Paisal describes a centralized system in which hierarchies, personal dependencies, close ties to the state, and a lack of oversight encourage corruption.

Foucault shows that power does not emanate only from a ruler or an institution. It operates through rules, educational pathways, habits, language, and ideas about what is normal or true. A monastery is no exception.

This is what makes Phra Paisal’s proposals for reform so interesting. He advocates transparency, local participation, and greater responsibility for laypeople. A new ministry or a special state status for Buddhism, by contrast, would not resolve the crisis. More state power cannot bring a weakened religion back to life.

At the same time, Foucault helps us pose a critical question to Paisal himself: who actually decides what ‘true’ Buddhism is? Reform movements, too, create new rules, authorities, and ideas about the right way to live. Power does not simply disappear. It can, however, become more visible, more accountable, and less centralized. This perspective also has consequences for politically created structures. Laws and reforms can only gain broad social support when decision-makers are themselves engaged in personal development.

Everything Exists in Relationship

Gilles Deleuze opens up another route of understanding. For him, the world is not made up of fixed, separate things. Reality consists of relationships, transformations, and ever-new connections.

This resonates with Phra Paisal’s description of impermanence and interdependence. No human being exists by themselves. Food, air, language, community, and nature sustain our lives. Our personality, too, is not something unchanging. It is continually being formed anew through experiences, relationships, memories, and decisions.

Deleuze, however, would understand desire less negatively than traditional Buddhism often does. For him, desire is not merely greed or the expression of a lack. It is also a creative force. The decisive question would therefore not only be how we can calm desire, but also what shapes it: Why is it directed toward consumption and status? How might the same energy instead produce community, creativity, and ecological ways of living?

Phra Paisal’s accounts of Buddhist environmental movements, local cooperatives, engaged monks, and international networks point to such possibilities. Social change does not emerge from a single center alone. It grows out of many interconnected initiatives—and yet it always begins with ourselves.

The Real Enemy

In political and religious conflicts, too, Phra Paisal begins with inner experience. The enemy is not only the person on the other side. The real enemies are hatred and anger, which cause us to stop seeing the other person as human.

Lacan helps us understand why images of the enemy are so persistent. Groups often gain their identity through separation and exclusion. We are the good ones because the others are supposedly evil. What we do not want to see in ourselves, we project onto the enemy. Even outrage and moral superiority can produce a peculiar kind of satisfaction.

Phra Paisal’s teaching of non-duality interrupts this mechanism. Good and evil cannot always be neatly divided between two separate groups. Those who use violence in the name of the good may themselves become part of the violence. For Paisal, nonviolence is therefore not merely a polite method of negotiation. It rests on the insight that opponents remain interconnected and that neither side stands outside the shared causes of a conflict. We can also say, with Dudley Weeks, that a conflict exists ‘only’ through the other person. This creates a conflict partnership: I need the other person in order to resolve the conflict, and very likely the same underlying needs are at stake for both of us.

The Positive Power of Not-Self

The deepest point of the book, however, lies beyond social criticism. It lies in the Buddhist insight of not-self, anattā.

Not-self does not mean that human beings are worthless or that they do not exist at all. It means that no fixed, independent, and unchanging essence can be found within us. This is difficult for Western thought to digest, shaped as it is by Descartes’ ‘I think, therefore I am.’ Yet once this bitter pill has been swallowed, it opens up the possibility of ‘non-identification.’ Only then does it become possible to play with the roles of life—to make use of them when they are needed and let them go when they are unnecessary or burdensome. What we call the ‘self’ is a living constellation of body, perceptions, memories, relationships, and consciousness.

At first, this insight can be unsettling. Western thought usually asks: If there is no fixed self, then who acts? Who decides? Who bears responsibility?

Phra Paisal’s answer lies less in theory than in experience. When fixation on the self loosens for a moment, life does not disappear. It becomes wider. The boundaries between one’s own well-being and the well-being of others become more permeable. Compassion no longer has to be imposed from outside as a moral duty. It arises from the experience of connectedness. A ‘must’—a social demand—becomes a ‘can’: the recognition that I have the inner capacity to act compassionately.

Not-self is therefore not a teaching of negation, but an opening. Where no rigid identity has to be defended, change becomes possible. Where no isolated self stands at the center, space opens up for other people, for nature, and for new forms of living together.

In this sense, we can say: where no fixed essence can be found, anything can become. For our deeply polarized Western society, that is an absolute game changer.

This is the positive social power of Phra Paisal’s spirituality. Human beings are not fixed in greed, competition, or violence. Institutions and societies, too, have no immutable nature. Because everything arises through conditions, everything can change.

Thinking Is a Map, Not the Landscape

The Western authors arrive at such insights by long and winding paths. Adorno and Horkheimer analyze the culture industry and instrumental reason. Foucault examines power, knowledge, and the governance of the self. Deleuze describes becoming, difference, and social assemblages. Lacan traces the movements of language, lack, and desire.

These concepts are valuable. They help us recognize invisible relations of power and avoid overly hasty spiritual answers. They show that greed and fear are not merely personal failings. They are organized through markets, media, institutions, and political identities.

Yet Western thought often remains within language and thought itself. It describes, distinguishes, criticizes, and generates new concepts. Buddhism takes a different path. It does not merely ask how the self is theoretically constructed. It invites us to look, right now, and see whether this fixed self can actually be found in immediate experience.

This does not mean that thinking is unimportant. That would not be the Middle Way either. Without thought, we could not name power and injustice. We could not develop political alternatives or assume responsibility. But thinking is not the crowning point of being human. It is a tool—perhaps a map. Reality itself meets us only in the present moment.

Phra Paisal’s particular achievement is that he does not separate this present moment from the world. For him, mindfulness does not end on the meditation cushion. It leads directly to the question of how we work, consume, deal with opponents, shape institutions, protect nature, and accompany people who are dying.

The book is not equally strong in every part. It is repetitive at times, some of the political examples require contextual explanation, and occasionally its social analysis risks being reduced too much to individual greed or lack of mindfulness. This is precisely where the Western thinkers provide a necessary complement. They show how individual consciousness is shaped by social conditions.

Conversely, Phra Paisal protects Western critique from another problem: endless analysis without inner transformation. Understanding how power operates does not mean one is free from hatred. Criticizing consumerism does not mean one is free from greed. And theoretically deconstructing the self does not mean one has experienced not-self.

Read in this way, a fruitful conversation emerges between two worlds. Western thought makes structures visible. Buddhism makes the present mind visible. The former protects us from naivety; the latter from hopelessness.

Buddhist Spirituality and Social Action shows that insight into not-self does not have to lead to withdrawal from the world. On the contrary, it can become the foundation for a more humane world. For if the self is not a closed entity, then our national borders are not ultimate either. The suffering of others is not separate from our own lives. This allows us to shoulder responsibility for the centuries ahead—because responsibility itself gives us the strength to do so.

By Christoph Richter

About the Author

Christoph Richter is a German social worker, educator, and founder of SAILR (Social Work in Rural Areas), a non-profit organization based in Saxony, Germany. He holds a degree in Social Work and has studied Social Theory at Friedrich Schiller University Jena. His professional experience includes social work, educational leadership, counselling, mediation, conflict management, and Nonviolent Communication.

Through SAILR, Christoph develops projects that bring together social work, arts, mindfulness, embodied learning, intercultural dialogue, and democracy education. His approach, “Democracy from Within,” explores how self-awareness, compassion, dialogue, and openness to different perspectives can strengthen democratic participation and social responsibility.

Engaged Buddhism is an important foundation of his work. Through his connection with INEB and Buddhist practitioners in Asia, he is particularly interested in bringing contemplative practice, compassion, and Buddhist perspectives into social and educational work in Europe.