Into the 21st Century with Holistic Buddhist Development for Urban Spaces

by Jonathan S. Watts

September 28, 2025

A Holistic Buddhist Development Lineage

For three days in early September 2025, the holistic Buddhist development world came full circle at a workshop entitled “Urban Dhamma in Action: Empowering Temples for Sustainable Community Development”, co-hosted by the Sri Lanka Network of Engaged Buddhists (SriNEB) and the Japan Network of Engaged Buddhists (JNEB). The meaning of “full circle” encapsulates the almost 70 year history of the holistic Buddhist development movement, starting with the Sarvodaya Shramadana movement founded by Dr. A.T. Ariyaratne in 1958 in Sri Lanka. This movement spread into Thailand in the 1970s when the leading founder of the International Network of Engaged Buddhists (INEB), Sulak Sivaraksa, sent a monk named Luang Pau Nan from Thailand’s impoverished Northeast to study with Sarvodaya. Nan went on to become the beacon of the Thai Development Monk movement, which continues today with monks like Phra Sangkom Thanapanyo Khunsiri who also hails from Luang Pau Nan’s native area of Surin. In the 1980s, the leader of the Japanese Buddhist NGO Movement, Rev. Jitsujo Arima who founded the Japan Soto-shu Releif Committee (JSRC) (now called Shanti), encountered Nan and greatly inspired, published a book about his work in Japanese. In the 1990s, Prof. Jun Nishikawa, a professor of development economics at Waseda University, published a collective study of the Thai development monk movement and coined a new term for holistic Buddhist development in Japanese, called kaihotsu, in contrast to mainstream development, called kaihatsu.[1]

Alas, the holistic Buddhist development movement has been slow to grow in Japan. This has been due in part to conservatism in the Buddhist world as well as mainstream society and the reluctance to criticize the nation’s development model. In the postwar era, this model created great material prosperity but for the past three decades has stagnated into what is now called the Disconnected Society (mu-en shakai), rife with suicide and mental illness. It also seems that Japanese Buddhists have not been able to fully understand the message of Rev. Arima who called for a horizontal solidarity of learning and exchange between Japan and southern Asia. This is a way to not only heal the wounds of Japan’s imperialism but also to chart a new path of development beyond the Western dominated models of capitalism and communist socialism. Instead, while many of the Japanese Buddhist NGOs that emerged in the 1980s and 90s have delivered emergency aid to areas in southern Asia, the paradigm has remained one of a “wealthy” northern nation coming to the aid of “lowly impoverished” southern ones.

Holistic Buddhist Development in Urban Japan

There has been one priest in particular, however, who has taken Rev. Arima’s message and the work of Sarvodaya and the Thai development monks to heart. Rev. Hidehito Okochi, a priest of the Jodo Pure Land denomination, was one of the founding members of the AYUS International Buddhist Cooperation Network in 1993, which remains today one of the more dynamic of the Japanese Buddhist NGOs. Rev. Okochi’s experience travelling abroad on AYUS activities as well as study trips radicalized him in a different way than others. Rather than just focusing on the emergency needs in these countries, which he saw as symptoms of a larger illness, he used the Buddha’s Four Noble Truths to investigate more deeply into the causes of these needs and the suffering of their people. His analysis exposed the culpability of the United States, Europe, and Japan in their colonial and neo-colonial exploitation of these areas. Moving into the 3^rd and 4^th Noble Truths, Okochi saw that he not only needed to support such people in solidarity but to work inside Japan on development issues that have led to the same kinds of suffering in his own country, for example, the debacle of nuclear energy development that goes well beyond the Fukushima disaster. As the abbot of two different temples inside of Tokyo city, Okochi has studied and learned from the south and has developed a wide variety of community development activities, not as a heroic, charismatic dharma master but in solidarity and cooperation with local and regional citizens organizations.

From this background, Rev. Okochi has been creating more connections with like-minded Buddhists across Asia through the INEB Eco-Temple Community Development Network, founded in 2016 with his active participation. In May, another of Okochi’s groups in Japan called the Buddhism Social Ethics in Contemporary Japan Study Group hosted INEB Chairman Harsha Navaratne, who helped build Sarvodaya in its early years, for a talk in Japan on “Religion and Civil Society in Japan and Asia: Learning from the Theory and Practice of Buddhist Development (kaihotsu)”. From this event, a collaboration between SriNEB and JNEB was born for this full circle moment: Rev. Okochi introducing a new brand of urban holistic Buddhist development to compliment the well-established form of rural holistic Buddhist development.

Meeting the Challenges of Urban Development in the South through Buddhism

As SriNEB explains, “Sri Lanka’s urban temples are vibrant centers of faith, yet their potential as engines of community transformation remains untapped. While rural temples excel in integrated development, our urban sangha faces unique challenges, such as: 1) limited social engagement beyond Sunday schools and rituals, 2) a lack of strategies for untapped resources, such as land and even solar panel installations, which can be used for broader community benefit, and 3) a lack of practical skills for young monks to address urban suffering and temple sustainability.” Indeed, while Buddhist temples in southern Asia have engaged in a variety of forms of rural development work, they have been slow to adapt to the new landscape of consumer-capitalist-driven urban environments, often getting drawn into this unskillful consumerist culture themselves, and resulting in the loss of trust and confidence by urban lay Buddhists. The three-day program with Rev. Okochi thus sought to provide an opportunity to learn from experiences in one of the most highly consumer capitalist economies in Japan while beginning to experiment with creative local responses in Sri Lanka.

The Four Noble Truths Socialized for Collective Change

The workshop revolved around temple mapping exercises using the Four Noble Truths and three learning modules related to Rev. Okochi’s work. On the morning of the first day, participants created extensive maps of their temples on large sheets of paper that charted buildings, land, social services, and human resources, while considering their levels of integration. There were 13 participants in total: 10 monks and 3 fully ordained nuns (bhikkhuni) from all three major sects (nikaya) in Sri Lanka. They came from three districts in the environs of Colombo, so are largely dealing with urban issues, although some are in suburban areas that are impacted by environmental destruction going on in adjacent rural areas. A more urban based, environmental problem common to group members is water: poor drainage and flooding in the rainy seasons, degradation and drying up of wells and the water table, pollution of local water increasing the rate of dengue fever, etc. These problems were often connected to others, such as garbage disposal and an increase in garbage from consumer lifestyles. Another main area of dukkha is “mental ecology” with high rates of drug addiction and suicide, especially among the young, as well as challenges in dealing with the elderly and end-of-life care.

In the afternoon, Rev. Okochi spoke about his life path and how he became conscientized to go beyond the typical view of providing charitable aid to the South. An essential part of this process was developing a sophisticated, contemporary understanding of the Buddha’s classical teaching of the Four Noble Truths. Dukkha, in this case, is not individualized as existential suffering but socialized into solidarity with the suffering of common citizens both within Japan and globally. This creates the impetus to “go forth” (pabbajja), as the Buddhist instructed his disciples, which in a contemporary context means the Buddhist monk leaving the friendly and comfortable confines of the temple and learning how to engage with suffering in the sometimes unfamiliar confines of the secular world. Samudaya, the causes of the dukkha, are also not limited to the psychological realms of greed-anger-delusion but are externalized as structural violence and its partner-in-crime, cultural violence, found in the values, beliefs, and rationalizations for creating systems of dukkha. As Rev. Okochi notes, this is the essential level of understanding and necessary wisdom needed before actions can take place. Without such deep investigation, nirvana as a vision “of the world to be aimed for” and magga as the path of action can fall into simplistic acts of charity and even well-intentioned but rather neo-colonial forms of “aid”. As a way of further contextualizing this teaching to the ordained monk and nun participants, the basic forms of emergency aid work known as Holding Actions are explained as shamatha, the first step in Buddhist meditation that calms the body and mind yet does not root out greed-anger-delusion, ignorance, and hence dukkha. Shamatha creates the space for the deeper work of vipassana or insight, which in this case translates into the creation of Alternative Social Structures and Shifts in Consciousness and Culture.[2]

Over the next day and a half, participants learned and worked on three modules based around three key areas of engagement in Rev. Okochi’s work (which have been documented in various articles and publications):

1. creating local, solar energy projects as a basis for social enterprise to fund community development.
2. using various properties and social assets owned by the temple for community-based education, medical welfare, and various forms of civic engagement as a new urban commons.
3. linking the temple and urban consumers with alternative, rural development organizations for sustainable living, especially ecological housing.

In the breaks between Rev. Okochi’s presentations of these three modules, participants began to analyze their temple maps based on the Four Noble Truths process: first, identifying the real life, experienced problems of the temple and the community; second, struggling to figure out the various levels of causes and their interconnections; and then, beginning to chart a vision and plan of action as the 3^rd and 4^th Noble Truths.

In examining Rev. Okochi’s path, we see a common pattern in the way the 3^rd and 4^th Noble truths emerged that was instructive to the participants in designing their own plans. Generally, Rev. Okochi and his partners have created an initial study group to examine a specific set of issues of concern. This intensified inquiry into the 1^st and 2^nd Noble Truths becomes the first step of the 3^rd and 4^th in educational activities for community conscientization, a collective form of wisdom practice (panna). From this foundation, individual activities in daily life have been imagined, such as more ecological consumption, as a form of social virtue or discipline (sila). From this step, there is a major transformation that needs to take place in the shift to group activities to create new social systems—perhaps understood as the “concentration” (samadhi) of energy (virya), generosity (dana), and patience (ksanti) as all six paramitas emerge in the social development process. This step is indeed a great one that many religious-based organizations cannot envision or develop while remaining stuck in the efforts of individual virtue. For Okochi, the key to this transformation is a dedicated and deep inquiry into the 2^nd Noble Truth. As the mechanisms of power and exploitation become clearer through analysis and critical thought, creative alternatives more naturally arise.

“Going Forth” Beyond Religious-based Charity to Social Transformation

Certainly, in such a short three-day workshop, an exhaustive analysis and comprehensive action plan could not be made by the participants. It was important, rather, that the participants began to develop an understanding of and skill in using the Four Noble Truths method. From this basis, they are being encouraged to deepen their understanding by creating study-action-praxis groups in their own communities. Further, the organizers have developed a post-workshop follow up plan to nurture each of these monastics as well as to work on common issues as a collective.

An initial step will be the physical gathering of participants in one month’s time to continue to work on their social analysis and action plans using the Four Noble Truths. This time will also enable for further solidarity and sharing among the group. From this, there will be online Zoom meetings with Rev. Okochi for further study and inquiry every month for three months (November, December, January). By February, there is a plan for the aforementioned Thai development monk, Phra Sangkom from Thailand, who is a founding member of the INEB Eco-Temple Network, to make site visits to temples that need support for water management and groundwater rejuvenation. The organizers also plan to conduct their own site visits and eventually expand the group of participants beyond the three districts around Colombo.

In conclusion, this event was very much a pilot one. It was the first time for Rev. Okochi and the JNEB network to present his work in a systematic three-day workshop. This required “skillful means” (upaya) at various points to ensure the participants remained engaged in the sometimes dizzying integration and complexity of Rev. Okochi’s work. Yet there is incredible potential benefit in this work and not only in helping monastics and temple communities grapple with the challenges of urban life. There is also the need to more deeply conscientize Buddhists in northern countries, who also have not learned properly from their southern brethren of the violence of what Joanna Macy called the Industrial Growth Society. In keeping with the 1^st Noble Truth of dukkha, this issue should no longer be an East-West or North-South one but a collective one of our humanity.

Finally, the organizers would like to thank the Sri Devram Viharaya Temple and Ven. Kolonnawe Siri Sumangala Thero, Chief Incumbent, for their generous support in hosting the program for three days, and also Mr. Bandula Perera of Kaihatsu Management Consulting Lanka, whose tri-lingual interpretation of Sinhala-Japanese-English was invaluable in our communications.

[1] For more on the work of Rev. Arima and Prof. Nishikawa, see Watts, Jonathan S. Engaged Buddhism in Japan, Vols. 1 & 2. (Ottowa: The Sumeru Press, 2023).

[2] The concepts of Holding Actions, Alternative Social Structures, and Shifts in Consciousness and Culture were created by Joanna Macy, another pioneer in this field of holistic Buddhist Development. She, too, was was strongly influenced by the Sarvodaya movement, where she worked for a year studying Buddhist community organizing that significantly influenced her theories on power and social change.