This book defends and articulates an “Engaged Buddhist” approach to economics as a response to the destructive effects of global capitalism. The author posits that Buddhist understandings of the distortions of greed, aversion, and ignorance can be read to apply not only to mental states but also to socio-political ones, and that such a reading suggests rational responses to current social and environmental challenges. The book proposes that we engage both “inner and outer” modes of transformation through which to free ourselves from our current human-made, dysfunctional systems: the former, by examining the workings of our own minds, the latter by criticizing and reforming our economic systems. Since traditional Buddhism provides few sources to build a Buddhist economic vision, this work brings together Buddhist notions of skillful practice, John Dewey’s pragmatic principles for social provisioning, and institutional economics. The author provides two case studies for experiments in Buddhist-based socioeconomic policies, Thailand and Bhutan. Of special interest is the implied parallel between worldviews emerging from modern socially-engaged Buddhism and Dewey’s notion of a human existential drive to shape the world in collectively beneficial ways.
Author(s): Joel Magnuson
Series: Studies in Buddhist Economics, Management, and Policy
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 265
City: London
Contents
List of Figures
1 Introduction
Reference
2 Socially Engaged Buddhism and Economics
Peace Activism
Economics and the Buddha
Engaged Buddhism and Economics
References
3 Greed, Hatred, and Delusion
Destructive Mental States
The Institutionalization of Greed
The Commercial Revolution, Religion, and the Sanctification of Greed
The Corporation and the Institutionalization of Greed
Dharma Talk
References
4 Paradigm Shifts
Whitehead’s Speculative Philosophy
The Mechanico-Corpuscular Paradigm and Social Atomism
Social Atomism and Neoclassical Economics
A Second Paradigm Shift
The Second Shift and Buddhism
Dharma Talk
References
5 Institutional Economics, Pragmatism, and Buddhism
Peirce and James
Holism and the Individual in Pragmatism and Institutional Economics
Buddhism and Moral Necessity
Dharma Talk
References
6 Eye of the Heart
The Eye of the Heart
Meta-Economists
John Ruskin
William Morris
Patrick Geddes
Lewis Mumford
Schumacher’s Technology with a Human Face
Schumacherian Ontology
Schumacherian Epistemology
Dharma Talk
References
7 Ecodharma and Economics
Pathological System Condition: Global Warming
IPCC Reports—2018, 2021
Unheeded Warnings
“New Economics”
The Social Self and Consumerism
Ecodharma and Economics
Dharma Talk
References
8 Mindfulness and the Outer Work of Social Change
Cultural Hegemony and the Pathology of Normalcy
Mindfulness
Silent Illumination
Capitalism and the Assimilation of Mindfulness
McMindfulness
Dharma Talk
References
9 Right Livelihood Institutions
Socially Engaged Buddhist Economics and Right Livelihood
Localism
A System of Lived Ethics
Right View
Right Thinking
Right Speech
Right Action
Right Livelihood
Right Diligence
Right Mindfulness
Right Concentration
Dharma Talk
References
Appendix
Thailand and Bhutan
Thailand’s Sufficiency Economy Philosophy (SEP) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
Thailand’s Economic Crisis of the Late 1990s
Sufficiency Economy Philosophy
Bhutan and Gross National Happiness
Dharma Talk
References
Index
