When someone says that socially engaged Buddhism is “confused,” they’re almost always speaking from a place where engaging is optional.

Disengaging isn’t a neutral spiritual stance. It’s a luxury. It’s only possible if your life is insulated enough that turning away doesn’t really cost you. For a lot of people, engagement isn’t a choice. It’s just life as it shows up every day.

Ritual practice helps us see more clearly. But the minute we stand up, we’re already applying it. If what we learn on the cushion doesn’t show up in our relationships, our work, or how we respond to harm, it is confused.

The Buddha didn’t teach a path away from life. He taught a path straight into it. Practice and life are in constant conversation, each one keeping the other sane.

I’ve never heard the argument against socially engaged Buddhism from people whose lives are structurally at risk.

“Socially engaged” Buddhism—whether that looks like mothering, caregiving, mutual aid, boycott, protest—is simply what we do with the Dharma when suffering shows up in our lives, as it does.

Emptiness is form. Form is emptiness. Dharma abstracted from lived life becomes another form of dukkha. Engagement isn’t confusion. It’s what’s meant to happen when we step off the cushion.