Buddhist Economics

From an article by the economist E.F.Schumacher in
Resurgence magazine 1968
"The Buddhist point of view takes the function of
work to be at least threefold: 

to give a man a chance to utilize and develop his
faculties; to enable him to overcome his ego-
centeredness by joining with other people in a
common task; 

and to bring forth the goods and services needed for
a becoming existence. 

Again, the consequences that flow from this view
are endless. 




               
To organize work in such a manner that it becomes
meaningless, boring, stultifying, or nerveracking for
the worker would be little short of criminal; it would
indicate a greater concern with goods than with
people, an evil lack of compassion and a soul-
destroying degree of attachment to the most
primitive side of this worldly existence. 

Equally, to strive for leisure as an alternative to
work would be considered a complete
misunderstanding of one of the basic truths of
human existence, namely, that work and leisure are
complementary parts of the same living process and
cannot be separated without destroying the joy of
work and the bliss of leisure. 
                         More Schumacher

While the materialist is mainly interested in goods,
the Buddhist is mainly interested in liberation. But
Buddhism is "The Middle Way" and therefore in no
way antagonistic to physical well-being. It is not
wealth that stands in the way of liberation but the
attachment to wealth; not the enjoyment of
pleasurable things but the craving for them. 

The keynote of Buddhist economics, therefore, is
simplicity and non-violence. From an economist's
point of view, the marvel of the Buddhist way of life
is the utter rationality of its pattern- amazingly small
means leading to extraordinarily satisfactory results.


For the modern economist this is very difficult to
understand. He is used to measuring the 'standard of
living' by the amount of annual consumption,
assuming all the time that a man who consumes
more is 'better off' than a man who consumes less. 




A Buddhist economist would consider this approach
excessively irrational; since consumption is merely a
means to human well-being, the aim should be to
obtain the maximum of well-being with the
minimum of consumption. Thus, if the purpose of
clothing is a certain amount of temperature comfort
and an attractive appearance, the task is to attain this
purpose with the smallest possible effort, that is,
with the smallest annual destruction of cloth and
with the help of designs that involve the smallest
possible input of toil. 
The less toil there is, the more time and strength is
left for artistic creativity. It would be highly
uneconomic, for instance, to go in for complicated
tailoring, like the modern West, when a much more
beautiful effect can be achieved by the skillful
draping of uncut material. It would be the height of
folly to make material so that it should wear out
quickly and the height of barbarity to make anything
ugly, shabby, or mean. What has just been said
about clothing applies equally to all other human
requirements. The ownership and the consumption
of goods is a means to an end, and Buddhist
economics is the systematic study of how to attain
given ends with the minimum means.

          

     



A Famous Religion and the Environment
Quote

"We don't need to worry about saving the forests,
Jesus is coming any day now."

Reagan's Secretary of the Interior, James Watt










In his End of Nature, McKibben explores the
theological and philosophical implications of our
meddling with God-created nature, a meddling
which has produced a new "nature," unpredictable,
unreliable, and out of control.   Bill McKibben

     Quotes from Schumacher's Small is Beautiful
"[A modern economist] is used to measuring the
'standard of living' by the amount of annual
consumption, assuming all the time that a man who
consumes more is 'better off' that a man who
consumes less. A Buddhist economist would
consider this approach excessively irrational: since
consumption is merely a means to human well-
being, the aim should be to obtain the maximum of
well-being with the minimum of consumption. . . .
The less toil there is, the more time and strength is
left for artistic creativity. Modern economics, on the
other hand, considers consumption to be the sole
end and purpose of all economic activity." 
                                
"The most striking about modern industry is that it
requires so much and accomplishes so little. Modern
industry seems to be inefficient to a degree that
surpasses one's ordinary powers of imagination. Its
inefficiency therefore remains unnoticed." 



"It is clear, therefore, that Buddhist economics must
be very different from the economics of modern
materialism, since the Buddhist sees the essence of
civilisation not in a multiplication of wants but in
the purification of human character. Character, at the
same time, is formed primarily by a man's work.
And work, properly conducted in conditions of
human dignity and freedom, blesses those who do it
and equally their products." 
                                
"Ever bigger machines, entailing ever bigger
concentrations of economic power and exerting ever
greater violence against the environment, do not
represent progress: they are a denial of wisdom.
Wisdom demands a new orientation of science and
technology towards the organic, the gentle, the non-
violent, the elegant and beautiful." 
                                
                                
                                
                                
                                
                                
"[N]o system or machinery or economic doctrine or
theory stands on its own feet: it is invariably built on
a metaphysical foundation, that is to say, upon man's
basic outlook on life, its meaning and its purpose. I
have talked about the religion of economics, the idol
worship of material possessions, of consumption
and the so-called standard of living, and the fateful
propensity that rejoices in the fact that 'what were
luxuries to our fathers have become necessities for
us."

"Systems are never more no less than incarnations of
man's most basic attitudes. . . . General evidence of
material progress would suggest that the modern
private enterprise system is--or has been--the most
perfect instrument for the pursuit of personal
enrichment. The modern private enterprise system
ingeniously employs the human urges of greed and
envy as its motive power, but manages to overcome
the most blatant deficiencies of laissez-faire by
means of Keynesian economic management, a bit of
redistributive taxation, and the 'countervailing
power' of the trade unions.
 
"Can such a system conceivably deal with the
problems we are now having to face? The answer is
self-evident: greed and envy demand continuous and
limitless economic growth of a material kind,
without proper regard for conservation, and this type
of growth cannot possibly fit into a finite
environment. We must therefore study the essential
nature of the private enterprise system and the
possibilities of evolving an alternative system which
might fit the new situation." Evangelical Lutheran Church in America 
The Rev. Dr. Herbert Chilstrom, Bishop 
The adoption of statements on the environment by
church councils is important. 
But unless every local congregation actually carries
out sound environmental practices in its buildings and
in the homes of the members, these statements are
worthless. Care of the earth -- our mandate from the
Creator -- is the responsibility of us all. 

""Caring for Creation: Vision, Hope and Justice"" 
A Policy statement of the Evangelical Lutheran
Church in America 
Adopted, August 28, 1993, Kansas City, Missouri 
The idea of the earth as a boundless warehouse has
proven false and dangerous. Damage to the
environment eventually will affect most people
through increased conflict over scarce resources,
decline in food security, and greater vulnerability to
disease. ... Action to counter degradation, especially
within this decade, is essential to the future of our
children and our children''s children. 

                    Islam and the Environment

Stewardship of creation is a clearly defined
theological responsibility. It exists under the doctrine
of the person as a "" khalifah,"" or divinely appointed
representative, on behalf of Allah. As the Koran says
of Allah, "I am going to place my   khalifah' (deputy
or steward) in the earth...and He taught Adam..." 

As God's    khalifah,' devout Muslims believe that the
human person is entrusted with the care of the earth.
The individual is God's deputy who exercises
"dominion" over the material, that he or she may also
be the servant (" abd" ) of the divine law. Man is thus
understood as a servant-ruler, and is not rightly
thought of as either servant or ruler separately, but as
being both. For a Muslim to rule, he (or she) must also
consecrate himself or herself to Allah and serve, and
the devout Muslim only does either in proper Islam by
doing both.





Tied to the concept of khalifah in the Koran is the
Islamic concept of "ayat," or signs. This is an aspect
of stewardship in which the world is understood as a
sphere of hints, intimations, meanings, disclosures and
divine mercy. Implied in this assessment of the world
is that there is a ""cosmic Islam."" By definition,
Islam means prayerful adoration of God. In the idea of
a cosmic Islam, every feature of creation is always at
prayer. When one enters into a sufficiently prayerful
state, and thereby attains some upliftment of
consciousness, then the world opens up as a series of
lessons about Allah and his nature.                    JUDAISM AND THE ENVIRONMENT 
                                
The premise that "you and what you possess are
God's" ( Avot 3:7) underlies most of Talmudic
thinking, both about the environment and about the
nature of mitzvot in general. The doing of mitzvot
acknowledges that we live in a God-centered and not
a human-centered universe, that because of God's
ownership, we have a variety of obligations to the
Divine Will. The rabbis further believed that many
mitzvot, such as the Sabbatical year, had as their
central purpose the reaffirmation of God's ownership
of the land ( Sanhedrin 39a). 
The particular and compelling gift of these sages is
that they made their concerns concrete, translated into
codes of action. 
Rabbi Daniel Swartz