In our discussion last week, several people in the group said that refraining from judging sinners was not a huge challenge. The real challenge is staying focused on your own path- your own quest for enlightenment and spiritual growth. This is a wise response and a good practice in dealing with the challenge of judging other people who commit harmful acts. As Bob Thompson often states in his sermons we cannot change the world without changing ourselves first.
However, a criticism of Buddhists is excessive self centeredness and focusing on your own practice and spiritual development. For a way that decries the self as empty, there sure is a lot of focusing on the self in Buddhism!
That being said, I have always thought that a critical way to engage in social action (or more ambitiously, to liberate all sentient beings from their suffering!) we need to progress and evolve spiritually in order to be effective actors. As we understand and internalize more about how the world actually is we naturally display more positive and useful qualities. As we realize the truth of interdependence we cannot continue to idly harm our planet or our neighbors, because our expanding awareness prevents us from doing that. And as our compassion grows we will find it impossible to sit on the sidelines when others are mistreated or when injustices occur that we can do something about. But we will do so hopefully with a thorough understanding of the situation and with a strategy that will remedy the true problem and not just replace the problem with another one.
There is then an argument to be made that working on yourself and your own spiritual path to enlightenment is working on the problems of the world but in a humble and subtle way. A person who truly internalizes spiritual values and the changes that need to happen in society will just naturally live and express them. They will also do it better and with less effort than those who force themselves to follow a rigid code of ethics.
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