The phrase and the practice
Thích Nhất Hạnh coined engaged Buddhism in Vietnam in the 1960s, working with villagers on both sides of a war while refusing to take a side in it. The practice was older than the phrase: Buddhist kings had built hospitals, and monks had always been involved in village welfare.
What was new was the explicit argument that Buddhist ethics apply to structures and not only to individuals: that greed, hatred and delusion can be built into institutions, and can be addressed there.
Across Asia
In India, B. R. Ambedkar led a mass conversion to Buddhism in 1956, presenting it as a tradition without caste and as a path out of untouchability for millions. In Sri Lanka, A. T. Ariyaratne's Sarvodaya Shramadana movement organised village self help on Buddhist terms from 1958, and became one of the largest civil society organisations in the country.
In Taiwan, Cheng Yen founded Tzu Chi in 1966 with a handful of followers; it is now a global relief organisation with millions of members. In Thailand, Sulak Sivaraksa's work led to the International Network of Engaged Buddhists in 1989.
Arguments about it
Not every Buddhist is convinced. Some argue that political engagement draws monks into exactly the entanglements the monastic rules exist to prevent, and point at the cases where Buddhist identity has been enlisted for nationalism and violence, in Sri Lanka and in Myanmar, as the predictable cost.
Engaged Buddhists answer that withdrawal is also a political position, and that compassion that stops at the monastery gate is not the compassion the texts describe.
Why it matters
It holds that Buddhist ethics apply to social life, not only to personal practice.
History and tradition
What historians can say
Christopher Queen and Sallie King's collection documents these movements case by case. They are genuinely modern in their organisation, and they draw on real precedents in the tradition; both halves of that sentence matter.