It's difficult to explain to the extreme left wing radicals that Engaged Buddhism isn't about joining their paradigm. In this article, Strong Lessons for Engaged Buddhists the author takes on Thich Nhat Hanh as not going far enough for his tastes in the areas of social reform. When one is entrenched in one view point, and in fact, feels that they are in a holy war defending their view point, learning to see other sides becomes nearly impossible. Having compassion for other sides unthinkable.

So the author hands out leaflets explaining why Engaged Buddhism is ineffective without listening to the real point - to do our best as individuals to help others and to work on the cultivation of our own awareness of truth.

Even if we ran around and were successful at fixing all the problems of the world, if we haven't cultivated joy in our own hearts, we would look around and still feel empty. Even worse, all the problems in the world that we thought were the cause of our unhappiness wouldn't be there as our excuse not to be happy.

Can Engaged Buddhism do better? Of course! Can the "Bureau of Public Secrets" do better? Asolutely! (I'd never heard of them before today, and I've been a bleeding heart liberal all my life! lol) Should Buddhism be exclusively socialy active? No - all human beings have spiritual needs that social activism alone simply will not fill. There needs to be time in my day that I turn off all the noise of what is wrong with the world and recharge my batteries at the very least.