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)