Does anyone need to tell us what is good?

“NO, we can think, say and do whatever we want” most people say, adding, (if they feel kind) “Bread is 60 bucks a pop, grandpa, ya can take it or leave it”.

This is shallow, casual and anarchic thinking that has washed over the world like a plague. So much so that each time I have thought “there cannot be anything more vicious than that”, “there cannot be anything more terrible than that”, “there cannot be anything more disgusting than that” I have been forced to recalibrate lower. In every new time, clime and social sub-stratum I traversed, I saw people standing on their rights to what they want, screwing themselves, screwing the world and assailing me with new and improved versions of human viciousness. Clobbering me with bigger and better versions of human failure.  Horror in human thought, word and deed was a bottomless pit I concluded. These days, be it politics, religion, education, ethnicity, medicine, finance, art, fashion, war;  there are few men and fewer matters that can elicit more than an amused smile and casual shake of my head.  Mildly tragic perhaps, but nothing really surprises me anymore. But one.

Quality surprises me. Nay. The presence of quality in people, ideas and things shocks the living bejesus outta me.  And I was surprised to say the least when I came across it in an article by Gamini  Akmeemana titled “Math, Idiocy and All Those Sums Which Don’t Add Up”. He and I both seem to share a mutual regard for Robert Pirsig and his book “Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance”.  He and I both seem to share a mutual regard for Robert Pirsig. He says a few nice things about stuff I’d written earlier but that was not the reason why I think he is a quality human being. Not as a reciprocal patting of backs but rather as a statement of fact, he did three things in that article that set him way apart from the raff that I deal with on a daily basis. In it, he said a beautiful thing, he did a beautiful thing, he triggered a beautiful thing.  Any one of those is kinda rare but to be at the receiving end of all three at a single sitting is indeed an event. Let me take a few paragraphs to explain because I feel that will give me a nice Segway into the topic and an opportunity to present eventually, a comparative example.  

First, even before I read the piece, I saw his strapline where he says that books are not mentioned anymore. With that statement he indicated a love of books and a nostalgia for their true worth as precious and valuable creatures, pets even, that can, as Pirsig says “edify” and not merely inform. To be read, reread, caressed, dog-eared, underlined, annotated, mulled over, discussed. Giving them relationships with their readers that are unique and personal and pretty much impossible with your Kindle versions of them. In an age and day where the time between thought formation, thought consolidation and thought dissemination is zero, where knowledge acquisition has been completely subsumed by information interchange and information overload, where harried people hurry through their own experiences and those of others, where, as Gamini says, “today’s big becomes tomorrow’s trivia” it indicates an uncommonly even keeled person. When I saw that, I fondly remembered the greatest love strong ever written about the love of books: Helene Hanff’s “84, Charring Cross Street” and I silently saluted Gamini for bringing those memories flooding back.

Next, he excellently outlined the gist of a very complicated read with a tapestry of images veined with the thread of all of those sums that cannot possibly add up through any rubric known to modern man. As I was writing my previous piece, the thought had crossed my mind that I should speak in greater detail of Pirsig’s brilliant defense of Sophism and rhetoric and his deviously clever strategy to sweep the church of reason and dialectics into the intellectual dustbin. But that task is no longer required. Gamini has executed it very well.

Finally, he took me back to the meat of the book itself and Pirsig’s tortuous route to understanding the meaning of quality.  Those memories also put in sharp relief, its most lasting takeaway for me. It is when Pirsig, towards the end of the book, in what  I consider to be its most powerful and dramatic chapter, finally ties his real self “Phaedrus” to a Platonic dialogue of the same name and says “What is good, Phaedrus and what is not good, need we ask anyone to tell us these things?”.  This is both the apex question and the rhetoric answer to the question  “what is quality?”  where this quality in described in terms of the Greek word araté meaning moral value.  It triggered in me the thought that I should write about that at some future date and with that thought came another one. That the man making me think all of this was a man of quality.  

It is tempting to leave this question in the realm of Sophism and rhetoric where Pirsig left it. I would be justified in walking away with a vague sense of easy unease that the question was completely and fully answered - not through the convenient method of actually answering it but rather, by expanding the potency of the question-answer matrix to the point where any dialectic answer would be the silly indulgence of the church of reason and its henchwoman – rationality. Yet, we have moved on from a hundred years ago when guys like Pirsig was battling these issues. More importantly, we, as easterners, know that our dharma licked this problem of quality yonks ago through ways of seeing (dharshana or philosophy) that the west (Pirsig included) found difficult to understand. We used a whole body of material generally described by such words as sathdharma, saarachiththa, sathguna, sathyakriya to explain moral value. Rather than delve into the complex intricacies of these terms, I will give an idea of araté  through a comparison of how the meaning of a set of key social tasks and those assigned to execute them have changed over time. Those that I choose for this example are the ones associated with protection and the reason I choose them is that they are the foundation upon whose strength all societies and all nations either fly or fall.

The things that protect us and make us safe, we value over all else. The people that protect us and make us safe, we revere above all others. There are four ways in which we are protected and there are four types of people who use them for our protection.

We are protected by knowledge, we are protected by truth, we are protected by medicine and we are protected by the material requisites of food, clothing, shelter and security from physical attack. Until quite recent, these factors, also known as the four societal shields against disaster, were deemed so critical that they were provided to all for free. The first was provided by teachers, the second by the renunciates, the third by healers and the fourth by the kings.

Gurukama, pavidikama, vedakama and rakajama  as we used to call them protected us. I use the past tense here on purpose.  Not too far back, kings thought, spoke and acted in accordance with the kingly virtues and disciplines (raaja dharma, raaja vinaya) and similarly, written edicts of virtue and discipline governed the way in which the other shield bearers engaged society. The basis for those codes of conduct were simple: they were put in place to make sure that every thought, word and deed of the societal shields served to protect and succor the people and make their lives more content, more even, more stable, more sober. Therefore, they were callings, often thrust upon people because of proven ability and never considered to be livelihoods. Their practitioners were the “aristo” or the best, as Pirsig notes. Their conduct increased, every day, the trust and love that the people had for them. For that they were revered.

Now, instead of kings we have leaders. Instead of healers we have doctors. Instead of teachers we have educators and instead of monks we have clergy. The difference between these is devastating. Whereas the earlier crop had these vested upon them to protect society, the present crop take these labels on simply to protect themselves. They set themselves out to become leaders or doctors or teachers or clergy and quite apart from being shields for society, they want society to protect them. Through that very desire they prove that they are the worst. The filth. The slime. The dregs of society. Defaulting to conduct that lacks both value and morality. All the while, they also insist that their self-serving hollowness is given the same status as that of the protectors of yore  and that they too are similarly worshiped. Compounding the insults they heap upon society, they also insist that everything reduces to money and therefore they are merely cat’s paws of those who have it. They damage. They destroy. They give us, day by day, increasingly more terrible examples of human mediocrity and failure. Sucking almost all people into their horrifying vortex of disaster, they wipe out whatever goodness remains in them. Their conduct continuously increases the doubt, suspicion, anger and hatred people have for them. For that they are reviled.

Taking the above comparative example folks, as Asians, steeped in our dharmic tradition, cocooned in our dharmic ethos, we do not need to be told what is good. We know. But that knowledge has been subsumed, marginalized, ridiculed and finally eliminated from societal ordering by a set of shield bearers that sit, not upon thrones of honor but rather, upon their brains. Let us therefore resolve to redeem ourselves and reclaim our knowledge. Our heritage. Our legacy. Let us, my friends, resolve to blow away the clouds of ignorance and webs of deceit that have trammeled our vision for decades and see our true worth. Our true quality. Our true  araté . 

(this article appeared in the Daily Mirror in September 2017)

Buddhist Economics Part II - The Means

(Click here for Buddhst Economics Part I - The Way)

Present day ideas of meaningful economic action:

Well, that is not all that hard to figure out. For most of us, any action that minimizes effort and optimizes profit is to be considered above all else. So, wheeling, dealing and selling dreams to pessimists is the order of the day. From doing the bare minimum to hold a job, to promoting other’s work as our own, to blowing up our own work and resources and marginalizing and minimizing that of others, to currying favor with more powerful people, to resorting to commission and omission, to devouring TV soaps, all the way to futures and derivatives, we, in our self-centered madness, want to live a lie and live it as if it were good and true. This implies that we, as economic entities, will incessantly attempt to default to unfair use of power, position and resources for personal gain or, to put it succinctly, we default to corruption in the broadest possible use of that word. In the shallow sense, we think of corruption only in terms of graft and theft but the issue is far more widespread. Far more sinister and deadly. It goes to the blatant violation of natural justice with the commandeering of commons, suborning highly questionable use of science to provide proofs where none exist, and, most dangerously, lowering performance benchmarks  and reducing the quality of “quality” by suppressing and destroying the better work of others so that one’s own work lands on top of the heap. Modern economics  ensures that the basest of human desire, the worst human effort and the most despicable of human beings lead, decide and chart our socioeconomic futures while the capable, the worthy and the visionary are filtered out of the system like a sieve that retains the discards and drains the essence.

Present day ideas of high quality work:

That’s easily figured out as well. The highest quality work is that which we can get others to do. If others are not going to do it, then get machines to do it. Our task is not to bring our work to an end. Rather, our task is to put an end to our work. Period. We desire above all else, to engage exclusively in  vacant-action or vacation. Such a goal has only one possible outcome and it is not good. Such a goal demeans us as human beings and insults, denigrates and derogates the whole idea of human worth. It destroys human dignity, stunts human growth and cauterizes the ability of human beings to become strong within. Unfortunately, this is the shameful “history of less” that is our economic legacy, our social foundation and development debacle.

How the Buddha’s Dharma informs us on economic action:

It is tempting to approach kriya (action, work) via the eightfold path that the Buddha prescribed for the wise (Dhammacakkapavattana Sutra, Samyutta Nikaya, Sacca Samyutta, SN 56.11). It seems on the surface that right view, right resolve, right living (livelihood) and right effort are tailored to inform the world on the matter of all human activity of which economic activity is part. Indeed, Schumacher starts his essay with this very reference. However, I shall desist because that path was given to the wise (Ariya) and not for the worldly (Pothojjana / pruthagjana) and if I use it, paraphrase it or reduce it to the worldly plane of existence, I would be guilty of the fifth heinous crime (ananthariya karma) of stating something in the name of the Budhdha that the Buddha himself did not. 

Instead, I will take my cue from the Khaththiya Sutra (Anguththara  Sixes, 52) which discusses the basis of life of various types of people from kings to thieves. Here, when the Brahmin Janussoni inquiries from the Buddha (among other similar queries): “What, Master Gotama, is a householder’s aim, what is his quest, his mainstay, his desire and his ideal?”  the Buddha responds, “Wealth, O brahmin, is a householder’s aim, his quest is for knowledge, his mainstay is his craft, his desire is for work and his ideal is to bring his work to an end”. 

Thus, for a householder, a common person, the quest and mainstay are knowledge and craft respectively and necessitates a significant level of understanding and an equally significant level of skill. They imply an incremental growth of the human being as well as sufficient time to reach specific levels of capability. They require instruction, observation, study, guidance, mentoring, apprenticeship,  expansion of mind, internal stability, personal growth.

Next, according to the Buddha, his desire is for work and indeed, a human, worthy of the claim, will ultimately desire nothing else. This obviously is the exact opposite of the modern human being  whose every effort seems directed at ensuring greater and greater amounts of idle time or vacant time. Eschewing rote in any form, work, based on knowledge and skill, indicates an entire lifetime spent alert, aware, and, most importantly, as Schumacher states “developing faculties”. Finally, his ideal is to bring his work to an end. Is it therefore terminated upon its accomplishment and not by what it can reciprocate its doer.

Thus, the entirety of a person’s worldly actions are exercises in human development from birth to death and the constant exercise of effort to become a fuller, more internally accomplished person.

It is not, as is the wont of the modern world, towards the oxymoronic exercise of striving so that striving can be completely stopped but rather, to use human faculties to optimize human faculties individually and collectively.

The relevance of work in a Buddhist Economy:

From the Kaththiya Sutra, it is clear that at the most fundamental level, human work is an end in itself and not a means to an end. If a person is considered accomplished, recognized for skill and knowledge, acknowledged for capability, lauded for societal contributions, obtains material wealth etc. those are complimentary outcomes of economic action and not the reason for it. Although human beings desire such things very much, the desire for work overarches all of those and therefore they must execute, applying both knowledge and skill, aiming for quality and accomplishment, regardless of and in spite of reward. The question then reduces to why do anything? Why do anything if its outcomes are, at least on the surface, irrelevant for the person doing it? Well, obviously the measure has to be personal since external, mundane, material metrics provided by mainstream economics are useless. Since the measure is internal, it is not one of perceived truth but rather one of absolute truth and here, the Anama Sutra (Anguttara Fours:62)and the Pattakamma Sutra (Anguttara Fours:61) gives it to us.

The  Anama Sutra informs us that the four kinds of happiness which may be achieved by the laity enjoying sensual pleasures are the happiness of possession, that of enjoyment, that of debtlessness and that of blamelessness.

From the Pattakamma Sutra we understand that the four rarities of the material world, namely, the acquisition of wealth righteously, fame regarding self, parents and teachers, longevity and rebirth in a good destination are impossible without accomplishment in four other factors, namely, faith, virtue, generosity and wisdom.

So, from these two sutras, we understand that without spiritual accomplishment there is no possibility of any sort of happiness. It is clear that without being capable of giving, one is incapable of getting. It is clear that without virtue, there is no righteous acquisition of anything. It is clear that without faith and wisdom, there is no possibility of debtlessness or blamelessness. Therefore, the approach to quality physical living is through a metaphysical exercise that rejects and negates activities for personal gain, glory and comfort on the part of one human that results in putting a massive, unfair burden on every other.

This is where the world has gone very wrong, creating thankless, mindless jobs for millions so that a few can vacate their responsibility to work or creating machines that take as many human beings out of the loop as possible and putting equal stress and burden on people who are placed in a position where the essence of their lives, namely, their need and desire for work, is cauterized. As Schumacher states, in Buddhist Economics, “To organize work in such a manner that it becomes meaningless, boring, stultifying, or nerve-racking for the worker would be little short of criminal”. I will add to this the following “creating machines that render people jobless would be little short of criminal”.

All of this informs us that in Buddhist economics, meaningful action is something that results in happiness for the whole community. It is action to which each person contributes whatever skill, knowledge and insight they possess, fully understanding that the result of such a contribution is to be shared among all. It is action based on recognition and optimal common use of the capabilities of all members of a community. It is action where machines are not created to replace human beings but rather, tools are created to help everyone accomplish their economics goals and bring their work to a close. It is action that is based on an understanding that every human being must be given every opportunity to grow more and accomplish more while acquiring less and achieving less. It is action that defaults human beings to saving more for the benefit of all and consuming less for the same purpose. It is a purpose that calls for restraint and detachment, insight into what constitutes  the building blocks for sustaining contentment and implicitly, maintaining happiness. It is action that leads human beings  to gradually rid themselves on one side and transcend on the other, the crude, the vulgar and the inferior (pothojjana) and  to ultimately exist only within the refined, the wholesome, the superior (ariya). In that sense, Buddhist Economics is like a winnow that blows away the chaff and leaves only the grain.

This fact is implicitly mentioned in the Sappurisa Sutra (Anguttara eights: 38) where the Buddha states this about a superior person “Just like a great rain cloud, bringing all the crops to growth, arises for the good, welfare and happiness of many people, so too it is when a superior man is born into a family”.

Conclusion:

Looking at our world these days, we see it has indebted itself three times more than there is physical money to cover it. We see everyone accusing everyone else of every type of transgression imaginable. We see everyone looking over their shoulders with eyes clouded in doubt instead of looking ahead with untrammeled vision. We see massive increases in vacancy – in life, in attitude, in work, in pleasure, in quality. We see everyone paying for their imagined joys in soul-coin and fear-dollars, leaving them gasping in the final throes of life, even as they live out their twilight existence in a self-imposed prison of want, need and greed, tired beyond redemption, shattered beyond remedy, chasing after Chimeras and mirages of some unidentified happiness dreamt up by fevered minds and tortured souls. This world is drowning in unhappiness. Therefore, it is miserably poor.  If it is to enrich itself it must trash all mainstream economic theory, and completely destroy all of the structures and processes that they claim are the outcomes of  science. It must understand that none of that is the outcome of rational thought but framed in ignorance and cooked in insanity. But… will it? 

The great tragedy of our times is not that it doesn’t get this simple equation but rather that it does not want to get it. On the one side,  the world has blindly bought into the idea that self-centric economic development of the material kind is the honorable pursuit of all who  desire to be known as “worthy”. On the other, it has hoodwinked itself into thinking that the effort to improve their social standing  is the laudable exercise of all who desire to be known as “important”. So, of course, Buddhist Economics is an “oh horror” eventuality for most people on earth for it destroys fondly held but foolish ideas of what is of worth and what is of note.  Habit, or “assavakkaya” or “ashrava dharma”, as the Buddha notes, dies hard and “artha” or meaning is hard to swallow and even harder to digest. 

Sabbe Saththa Bhavanthi Sukhi Thaththa (May all beings be happy)