Why I am a Buddhist
by
Anthony Billings Alameda, California

I would like to explain why, about fifteen years ago, I became interested in Buddhism and have continued to practice and study it since then. I am an American and was raised as a Roman Catholic. But by the time I was halfway through high school, I became disenchanted with Christianity and with all Western religions. Some years later in college, I was fortunate enough to come into contact with Buddhism and other philosophical religions from Asia, such as Hinduism and Taoism, as well as with the work of the modern British-Indian philosopher Krishnamurti.

Though I can appreciate all of these schools of Eastern mysticism, I have found Buddhism to have the clearest, most systematic, and most profound theory and practice of spiritual transformation. Within Buddhism, I have practiced the Zen and Theravada tradition with American, Japanese, Thai, Burmese, and Vietnamese teachers. Although these two schools may have some differences, they nevertheless remain consistent with the basic teachings as taught by the Buddha in the Sixth Century, B.C.

The Buddhist point of view has offered me an alternative to all theocentric (God-centered) religions because it is consistent with the findings of modern science and it offers a logical yet insightful teaching, one based upon experience and wisdom. I had to reject the theocentric religions because they are based on blind faith, superstitions, anthropomorphism, rituals, myths, and a rigid, dogmatic, and intolerant attitude towards the ideas of others.

The main problem I have with theocentric religions like Christianity is the belief in a personal God. Serious people turn to religion because they are looking for a foundation of morality, metaphysics, and psychology; that is, they want to explore the meaning of life, the best behavior, happiness, and questions about the natural world and the universe we live in. But what do theocentric religions offer us ?

They offer a character who seems very much like a human being. In The Bible, the book of Hebrew literature where God is found, we can read about a God who gets angry, revengeful, jealous, and quite petty in many ways. He wants us to honor and obey him -- much like an insecure king. Then one reads that he created the universe in six days, created mankind, who committed sin in the Garden of Eden, and therefore God had to send his son to save us. If taken as myth, this story can be meaningful and entertaining. But believers in The Bible want us to take it literally.

If one believes this, one cannot accept any of the standard findings of modern science, neither Darwin's science of biological evolution nor the theories of the evolution and nature of the universe coming from modern physics. The Bible presents us with the simplistic idea that a Creator God invented mankind and the universe all at once, and also that these three realms -- God, man and the universe -- are all separate. But if anything is infinite, can there be anything not included ? Can there be individual, distinct souls going to God ? It seems to me that modern science sees the universe as one, infinite process of change, and it is that process that is
God. There can only be Oneness -- there cannot be anything outside of the Infinite. Man, God, and the Universe are all include in that Harmony.
Buddhists and other mystics have taught this for thousands of years, and I will return to it later when I discuss Buddhism and modern physics.

Not only is the anthropomorphic God not believable, it is also a dangerous idea. Man made God in his own image, and that is why man thinks of God as his father. God is a gigantic projection of a father. He imposes salvation on us the way a father imposes good behavior on his children. People who believe that salvation is imposed on them by God then start to believe that they must impose salvation on others. Ever since God sent his son to save us, Christians have felt the need to send their soldiers and priests all over the world to save others. One only has to study some history to see that, on every continent, millions have been slaughtered and subjugated in the name of God.

When God is believed to be a person, then he can have chosen people, he can help his favorites in holy wars, he can make corrupt popes infallible, and he can sponsor the modern totalitarian movements of religious fundamentalism. The modern movements of fundamentalism are the latest stages of the Inquisition, in which millions of people were persecuted, tortured, or killed for dangerous ideas which include the heresy that the earth goes around the sun. And it is unfortunate that some of these crimes against humanity are done in the name of Jesus, for in some parts of the Gospels, Jesus speaks like a truly enlightened person. That is why I have heard it said, "The last Christian died on the cross."

It was easy to reject religions which used myths and coercive gods, but this left myself and many of my contemporaries in a spiritual void in which we could only believe in materialism and nihilism. The idea that this universe and all in it is just an accident is just incredible as the anthropomorphic God-fantasy. We needed a philosophical religion that could probe deeply into mysteries of the universe while standing up to scientific analysis. We needed a religion that was based on observable events -- like science, and could -- like all good scientific theories -- have the power to explain nature, the universe, and the mind. We also needed a religion that could help us deepen the understanding of ourselves so that we could grow psychologically and spiritually. As Westerners, we knew about modern applied psychology, both psychoanalysis and behavior modification. But those methods were based on materialistic theories and only sought to change people in the direction of statistical normality, that is, towards what society judged to be normal.

Western psychology at that time did not probe into metaphysics or spirituality. Luckily, at that time in the late 1960's and early 1970's, Eastern philosophy was being brought into our country. It was the time to learn about Taoism and its methods of tai chi and acupuncture. It was time to learn about Hinduism and yoga, Zen and Vipassana meditation and other Buddhist practices. And it was time to learn about modern thinkers like Krishnamurti and Alan Watts. Although some basic, common currents run through all of the above philosophies, I have found Buddhism to be the most comprehensive, practical, and profound. I will now describe some Buddhist ideas in order to demonstrate why I find Buddhism so valuable.

I will summarize the most basic of all Buddha's teachings, the very first sermon covering the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path.Buddha begins with the practical and psychological aspects of human life but ends up in the realm of the metaphysical and spiritual. Like a good scientist, he formulates the problem, gathers data through observations and experiments, then tests and formulates his hypothesis. In doing so, he discovered a way for us to understand our own highest Essence, which is the same Essence of everything in the universe.

The First Noble Truth starts with the problem of suffering and unhappiness in life. There is sickness, decay, old age, death, separation from loved ones, horrific events such as war, and the constant process of not having desires fulfilled. It is true that we have many happy moments, but even these moments are transitory and constantly under attack by the threat of misfortune. Even more frustrating is the fact that once we get something we want, we want something else. Desire is like an itch which can never be stopped: Buddha sees human beings always wanting something they do not have and thus always suffering. No amount of money, will, prayers, or any device
can stop the fundamental suffering of existence.

The Second Noble Truth states the fundamental cause of suffering. It is not that things are in this sorry state, but rather that we do not understand deeply that all phenomena are constantly changing. We try to resist the powerful flow of life and thereby become strongly attached to ideas, to people, to things, to our own bodies, to status, to power, or to escape and fantasy – such as the idea of God. We also cling to the idea that we have a permanent self or soul, and this further makes us self-centered. The whole idea of the ego, the sense of "I," is a fanatical attachment to nothing but a self-image, nothing but an illusion. Buddha claims that we are merely a group of psycho-physical components: matter, feeling, perception, mental states, and consciousness. Nowhere in this combination of energies is there anything corresponding to an individual self or soul. The self is another way to try to put the constantly changing world into fixed category. All of this resistance and attachment to ourselves and other things is summarized as craving, and it is the cause of suffering.

The Third Noble Truth is that we can end this vicious cycle of craving and frustration by diminishing that craving. The extinction of craving is not death or unconsciousness, but Enlightenment, also called Nirvana. Craving keeps us ignorant, and ignorance keeps us from waking up, and that is why Buddha means "Awakened." When craving is understood and made to cease, a new life is realized.

Nirvana, which means extinction, is the end of suffering, of delusion, and
was also described by Buddha as follows: "Verily, there is an Unborn,
Unoriginated, Uncreated, Unformed. If there were not this Unborn,
Unoriginated, Uncreated, Unformed, escape from the world of the born, the originated, the created, the formed, would not be possible." Our ignorance keeps us in the dark about the true Reality, about our "Unborn, Uncreated"
Essence, which is Infinite. Buddha and the early Buddhists did not try to
describe Enlightenment as it is inconceivable to the human mind. Later
Buddhists, such as the Zen school, did elaborate on it more, as I will
demonstrate later. Early Buddhism is more concerned with the practical work of deepening our understanding, and that leads to the Fourth Noble Truth,
which is the Noble Eightfold Path. This is what a person must do to realize Enlightenment.

The Noble Eightfold Path is summarized as follows: (1) Right Understanding means that one sees things as they are, not as we want them to be; (2) Right Thoughts are thoughts by which we cultivate compassion, harmony, and peacefulness; (3) Right Speech is to avoid slander and lying; (4) Right Action is to avoid killing or hurting others; (5) Right Livelihood is not dealing in killing, such as weapons, or intoxicants; (6) Right Effort is to keep the mind energetic;(7) Right Mindfulness is to keep awareness to a high degree in all activities; and finally, (8) Right Meditation, which are the deeper practices that lead to the insight that we are Enlightened, that we are also Buddhas.

As one can see, Buddhism is based on personal experience, rationalism,
practice, morality, and insight. There is no need to propitiate gods or
priests, no blind adherence to useless dogmas, rituals, holy books, or
myths. Although many magical stories have arisen in the popular practice of Buddhism, they are not essential to the practice. The idea of having to believe something is also foreign to Buddhism. For example, part of the Buddhist scheme is that the five groups of components that make an individual are combined according to laws of Karma, somewhat like genetics. Since everything is energy, and since energy cannot be destroyed, only transformed, it is only conceivable that a karmic life, the particular arrangement of matter, feeling, perception, mental states, and
consciousness, could continue after death.

This can be thought about scientifically, just as psychologists and
geneticists try to explain human behavior by explaining genes, drives,
traits, organic variables, memory, neurons, and parts of the brain. Most
scientists will not venture into realms of spirituality, although modern
physics does seem to approach such matters. The point is that I can work within Buddhism even if I say I cannot prove the law of Karma; no one will send me an Inquisitor. The true spirit of Buddhism was expressed by Buddha's directions to accept nothing, to find out for oneself, to treat his teaching as a boat needed to cross a river: When finished, leave the boat behind.

A great Chinese Zen master, Rinzai, states it even more explicitly: "If on
your way you meet the Buddha, kill him. ... O you disciples of the truth,
make an effort to free yourself from every object. ... I say to you: No
Buddha! No Teaching! No disciple! What are you ceaselessly looking for in your neighbor's house ?" The important thing is to practice and develop the mind, especially through meditation. Questions of life before birth and death can only be verified by an Awakened mind.

Later Buddhism, in the thousand years after Buddha's death, developed the ideas of Original Buddhism to a high degree, to such a high degree, in fact, that they predicted modern Quantum Physics. I will quote a scripture known as the Heart Sutra, which states: "Form (matter) is emptiness; emptiness is form. Form does not differ from emptiness; emptiness does not differ from form. The same is true for feeling, perception, mental states, and consciousness."

Here we see Buddha's original analysis of the psycho-somatic organism, but the idea is carried further. Quantum Physics has discovered that matter is nothing but a form of energy. Sub-atomic particles are merely
concentrations of a field of energy that constantly appear and disappear,
losing their identity as they blend into the underlying field.

Emptiness is a term (also called the Void) used by Buddhists to describe
the source of life, and is what Buddha called the "Unborn, Unoriginated,
Unformed." It gives birth to an infinite variety of forms in the universe,
which it sustains and then reabsorbs. Everything -- our bodies, our minds, consciousness, nature -- is constantly being born and dying; everything is vibrations coming from the source. We are a temporary manifestation of the Void, or – in more traditional terms – we are the manifestation of the Absolute Principle.

Our real nature is that of the Principle, but we identify ourselves with
the appearance, with manifestation. That is why we suffer -- because we try to cling to phenomena that are impermanent. This is what Buddhists meditate on: We try to destroy the ignorance that makes us think that we are separate, substantial, autonomous beings living in a world of static,
concrete entities. Thus the Heart Sutra reminds us that we must realize
that the world of the senses and of our minds is only a bubble on the
ocean: the Reality or Essence or Absolute Principle of the bubble is the ocean.

Thus Buddhism can keep pace with the latest findings in the fields of
psychology, biology, and physics. It is supremely practical and profound at the same time. It has helped me to understand myself and the world around me and challenges me to grow spiritually. I have not found any philosophy or religion so pragmatic and comprehensive at the same time. That is why I am a Buddhist.

RIGHT LIVELIHOOD AND THE BUDDHIST VISION OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT
First of all, I would like to thank the German Dharmaduta Society for inviting me to give the keynote address at this meeting, which is being held to honour the late Ven. Meethirigala Dhammanisanthi thera( formerly known as Asoka Weeraratna), who dedicated his life to causes that I regard as unreservedly praiseworthy. I particularly appreciate the role he played to resuscitate the ethic of ahimsa in Sri Lanka by getting the government to withdraw its support to the destruction of life in our inland reservoirs which had been held as sanctuaries by our ancient kings.

Right at the outset, I would like to mention that this is not going to be an academic presentation on Right Livelihood. Rather, it is as an “interested party” that I will be speaking; addressing issues of everyday concern to all of us who call ourselves Buddhists, living in a  social environment that is becoming perilous by the day, in the fragile and endangered planet that is ours today.

First, let me say something about the ”Buddhist Vision of Human Development”. I feel a little uneasy for having chosen these words. The Buddha was no visionary who spoke about a golden age or a millennial society of ‘developed’ individuals. He is known to have been a practical and pragmatic teacher who said that he spoke of things that we can do, here and now. It seems to me that the main thing he said we can do is that we can be ‘free’. He said that his teaching had just one taste, the taste of freedom. Freedom: this single word expresses what I have called the Buddhist vision of human development.

Freedom could be a vague word. Often today we speak of “freedom of the individual”, that is, the freedom to do what one likes, to follow what one thinks is one’s self-interest. The Buddha did not speak of that kind of freedom. Rather, he spoke about the possibility of being free from compulsions - first and foremost, the compulsions that come from within ourselves and then influence our actions. We are not free from such compulsions. We are not free from likes and dislikes, anger, jealousies, greed, hate, hunger for power. We are not free from our many and varied delusions. The Buddha’s message is that we can be free from such inner compulsions; and if we are free from them, then we can face the obvious external compulsions -  what society seems to compel us to do  -  in a spirit of freedom. That is, we will be able to disregard these external compulsions and do what we see to be the right thing to do.

The economy has almost nothing to do with the attainment of such freedom. Nevertheless, we must not forget that the Buddha also shows that the social environment can be helpful for a human being to lead the good life. He says that “dwelling in a befitting location” is a blessing for  a person. He further says that “good friends” are a great help to a person, whereas bad friends will lead us astray, and stand in the way of the freedoms that we would be able to actualize. My contention in this talk is that forces that can be compared to “bad friends” have gained, during the last few centuries, such vast influence in the world that they are able to create an environment which is extremely unhelpful for persons who are interested in the freedoms that the Buddha commended. What I wish to emphasise is that there is a very real need for us to be aware of this social environment and the “pseudo- friends” who sustain it. Because, they will lure us into living a false life, a false way of living, diametrically opposed to the Right Livelihood of which the Buddha spoke.

Right Livelihood. It is one of the least abstruse of the teachings of the Buddha; and yet it bristles with deep implications for our day to day living.

It is a crucial thing in any religion to know  “what is right”. The ethics of that religion will flow from its conception of what is right.There are two pronouncements of the Buddha that help us understand his thinking about “what is right”. He says, Do not do to others what you do not want them to do to you. Just as you do not want to be treated violently, so do they. Therefore, do not hurt, do not kill. This is the
first precept.
Secondly , the Buddha says that what is right (or what should be done: sevitabba) is what is beneficial to both oneself and to others. As if to emphasize this from the negative side, he also that you should not do what harms yourself and also what harms the others.

It is in this context that the First Precept becomes meaningful. For, what other thing does any living being  hold as good and valuable than life itself? What greater harm is there than having to be deprived of one’s life?

Many people seem to think that if they do not intentionally kill, they have followed the first precept. This is a mistaken view. Consider the fact that the Buddha says that his followers should not practice the meat trade. The trader only wants to make a profit. Nevertheless, it is bad because it leads to the killing of animals, which the trader would not have intended.

The wide implications of the precept are revealed in a Discourse of the Buddha on the Taking of Life. According to this discourse, the precept means (1) that we do not kill (2) that we persuade others to abstain from killing, (3) that we do not show approval of killing and (4) that we praise and  show appreciation of behaviour that prevents killing. What becomes clear from this is that the Buddha endorses advocacy and activism as aspects of the commendable life. In fact, the Buddha has explicitly
commended praising the praiseworthy and criticising the blameworthy as preferable to passively looking on in situations of wrong behaviour.It is clear from these comments of the Buddha on the first precept, that it involves accepting responsibility for one’s actions in a wide sense.

In an article on Buddhism and the Ethics of Nature (EB NS XXXII 2 {2000} 73 ff.), Prof. Lambert Schmithausen of Hamburg University, one of best scholars on Buddhism in the West, comments on the ecological implications of the First Precept. He says that the precept should be understood as implying not only abstention from killing and injuring animals physically, but also “abstention from destroying or polluting their habitats, which after all may entail their death.” He thinks that it is for this reason that Emperor Asoka prohibited (5th PE) the burning of chaff …and the unnecessary burning of forests, which may contain many thousands of living beings.
The Buddha spoke of Right Livelihood,  he did not preach a theory of economics. So much so that some orthodox Buddhist scholars will scoff at the idea of extracting economic teachings from the statements of the Buddha. It is clear however that he offers a large number of suggestions on the creation , the consumption and the exchange of goods. Such suggestions have been given to people whom he calls kaama-bhogi, i.e., ordinary, pleasure-seeking householders or lay persons.
The economic and social implications of these statements have been discussed by a number of scholars, among whom there are prominent Sri Lankans like Prof. O.H.de A. Wijesekera, Ven. Koswatte Ariyawimala, Dr. Dharmasena Hettiarachchi and so on. Prominent non-Sri Lankans include Eric Schumacher and recently Shinichi Inoue. I am grateful to these scholars for the data they have brought to light on what may be called the Buddhist view of economic activities.

As a preamble to examining the Buddhist notions associated with Right Livelihood, let us for a moment consider in broad strokes the economic realities of developing nations at the present time. I believe it will be correct to say that the economic policies of these countries today depict a general consensus: that what is best for the historically agrarian nations of the third world is to follow a path of development aimed at transforming them in the same way that western nations changed from agrarian to industrial and then to technological societies since the industrial revolution in Europe. With this aim Sri Lanka tried for some time to follow what was regarded as the socialist path of development; after the failure of that experiment in the 1970s, we are now following the capitalist model. In the process we are caught up in the phenomenon known as globalization - which is marked by increased international trade, dominance of multi-national corporations, deployment of finance internationally and the use of information and other new technologies in all these operations. Globalisation is also associated  with an attempt to  lay down all   the ground rules for the co-existence of nations: democracy, human rights, the rule of law and  procedures  governing world trade and industry.
The alliance of capitalism and technology seems, on the face of it, to have given rise to a new “global civilisation” which on the one hand  is based on the belief in the possibility of unlimited growth, and on the other by lack of ethical or moral constraints, unlike the Buddhist notions of the desirable economy mentioned above.
If globalization, in which the nations of the world seem to be inextricably enmeshed, is unrestrained by ethical and moral considerations, then there must be an implied critique of it in all the religions of the world. The Buddhist critique, apart from what is seen in the broad principles I mentioned a while ago, is evident in the notions of the Noble Eightfold Path, especially in its fifth step known as Right Livelihood.

The basic principles In the enunciation of the Buddhist view of economic activities, we can first of all see that two principles are emphasized: The manner in which economic activities are to be conducted is  described with two words (1) dhammena: in accordance with dhamma or as befits righteousness and (2) asaahasena: without the use of violence. Come to think of it, the first proviso already implies the second, for dhamma means the rejection of violence. Nevertheless bringing the second proviso serves to highlight the predominant emphasis that the Buddha lays on non-violence.Right Livelihood: the economic aspect
Economic issues are those concerned with production, buying and selling and consumption of commodities and services. Buying and selling (i.e., commerce) is the lynch-pin upon which the whole economic operation rests.
It is not generally recognised that a great deal of the  fifth step in the  Eightfold Path, Right Livelihood,  is about matters economic. References in early Buddhist literature give us a vivid picture of the application of the principles of Right Livelihood in economic activities. Thus they must conform to three requirements: (a) they should not involve killing or otherwise harming the physical and mental well-being of
others  (b) there should be no recourse to cheating and falsehood  (c) profit-making should be moderate, it should not be so excessive as to hurt the consumer. These restrictions highlight the importance of trade being conducted along ethical lines.
The supreme principle in righteous profit-making is moderation. The cowherd who milks leaving enough for the calf is held out as an example even for the monk. Wealth obtained in the manner of the bee (who gathers honey without harming the flower) is wealth rightly got. Hypocrisy, slick talk, insinuation, disparagement are aspects of wrong livelihood  to be avoided in all circumstances. The Buddhist  advice to the merchant is to cultivate a customer base that has implicit trust in his reliability and worthiness rather than devising means to  undercut his competitors. On the other hand, modern marketing thrives on exaggeration, falsehood and the deliberate increase of greed among consumers.
The Buddha has nowhere condemned profit-making or private enterprise; in fact he mentions several important qualities of a good entrepreneur: innate ability, energetic application, resourcefulness of strategy, executive skill, ability to get work out of others and knowledgeability in the calculation of profit.

Violent and unbuddhistic businesses
The fifth step of the Eightfold Path. speaks of a number of trades which the Buddhist disciple should not engage in. They are: dealing in flesh, in living beings, armaments, intoxicants and poisons. These are all violent businesses. But modern entrepreneurs do not shun these businesses, because they bring huge profits, which is  their first priority.

Dealing in weapons: The arms trade is an enormously profitable business. In 1997 USA was by far the biggest arms exporter with Britain as the runner-up. The world's top military spenders were USA, China, Russia, France, Japan, Britain, and Germany - which includes all the permanent members of the UN Security Council whose duty is to ensure the safety of the world.
Dealing in intoxicants: The evil that is inherent in the manufacture and sale of intoxicants is all too obvious. It causes abuse of women and children, family and social disharmony and serious damage to health. And yet it is not regarded as an unethical trade in the world of modern business, or as a disreputable habit in modern society. In our country, the governments have all along been encouraging this trade.  In the not too distant past, issuing of liquor licences was one of the favourite activities of our parliamentarians. Why is it that curbing the manufacture and consumption of liquor are not receiving the priority of attention that they deserve? In fact many persons in high society including a large number of our legislators are better known as unabashed consumers than as people interested in banishing  this menace from society.

Dealing in living beings: abduction and exploitation of women and children, sale of live animals - these are some examples  of this trade. These activities are widespread in the modern world, often in association with the tourist industry, which encourages many unethical practices and is undoubtedly doing enormous damage to the moral fabric of society.

Animals, the Environment and the Trade in Flesh
One of the most  obnoxious industries that has come to occupy a position of great importance in the modern world is what is called factory farming  the breeding of animals on industrial lines, to be killed for human consumption. In these farms animals are commodified or treated like any commodity produced in a factory. They are steadily replacing family farms of the past, where “free-range” animals used to run around the farmyard or grazed in a pasture. Here the animals are confined to a small space (e.g. 14 sq ft each for beef cattle, 8 for  pigs) and the food is brought to them.  This kind of severe confinement is for the sake of mass-production.

The most profitable farms, the ones that confine animals the most severely, are now known as Concentrated Animal Feedlot Operations or CAFOs. One well-known CAFO in North Carolina is said to produce 12 million pigs a year. The animals, denied exercise, grow much faster than they would in natural conditions. They are given antibiotics to pre-empt diseases and growth hormones to increase bulk. Their natural habits are thwarted; horns, beaks and tails are cut in order to control aggressive behaviour, light is denied or given in excess to artificially change the biological rhythms of the animals to suit requirements of production. In order to maintain production at optimal levels they are killed long before the end of their full span of life,. At the end of this cruel and unnatural life, they are transported by truck, “subjected to overcrowding, severe weather, hunger and thirst.” The treatment they get at the slaughterhouse is a matter of everlasting shame for humanity.
“..Just about every aspect of meat production  from grazing-related loss of cropland and open space, to the inefficiencies of  feeding vast quantities of water and grain to cattle in a hungry world, to pollution  from factory farms - is an environmental disaster with wide and sometimes catastrophic consequences.” Energy-intensive U.S. factory farms generated 1.4 billion tons of animal waste in 1996, polluting American waterways more than all other industrial sources combined. “Meat production has also been linked to severe erosion of billions of acres of once-productive farmland and to the destruction of rainforests. Oregon State University professor Peter Cheeke
calls factory farming “a frontal assault on the environment, with massive groundwater and air pollution problems.”
Due to persistent pressure by animal rights groups such as PETA, there is  now a tendency to enforce stricter environmental standards on industrial animal farms in Europe and America, and a shift away from severe farming practices.  “Large agribusineses in the European Union and the U.S. attempt to escape tighter environmental restrictions by moving their animal production operations to less developed countries”, says  WWI researcher Danielle Nierenberg in a paper published in the May/June 2003 edition of  World Watch. Factory farms are expanding in the former Soviet Union, Mexico, India, China and the Philippines, says Nierenberg. “The Philippines now houses Asia’s largest pig rearing operation, producing some 100,000 hogs a year. Water supplies near these hog farms have been polluted and local residents have named the river where many of them bathe and get drinking water “The River Stink”. “But the economic benefits of these
businesses tempt many to look the other way when faced with the environmental and health consequences.”

Will Sri Lanka be next in line? The prevailing signs are quite ominous. What would the Buddha have said, who advised rulers that birds and beasts should be given “ward and protection” ?

Employer-employee relations

The Buddha proposes that employers should maintain a cordial and compassionate relationship with their  employees. Five basic obligations are mentioned: (1) Work should be allocated to suit the employee’s abilities; (2)  provision should be made for not only wages but also food; (3) medical needs of the workers should be cared for; (4) close relations should be maintained  by  sharing delicacies etc. with the workers and (5) employees should not be over-worked, but should be  released at appropriate times allowing them leisure as well as leave to participate in community events.
In the world of modern business however, the relationship between employer and employees is far from cordial. The employee is generally dispensable and has to live under the constant threat of being fired in the exercise of ‘restructuring’. At best s/he can hope to part with a ‘golden handshake’.
Achieving competitiveness  at the cost of increasing unemployment and the resultant poverty of erstwhile employees is buddhistically unacceptable.

Poverty and Welfarism
It is said that in the year 2000 the number of persons in the very rich category and the very poor category were equal at 1.2 billion. How is this to be seen from a Buddhist perspective? Even in the citadel of global business, the U.S.A., something like 15% of the population is said to be living in conditions of great poverty.
Income disparity of such magnitude is, from a Buddhist perspective, a  serious moral lapse on the part of society. Buddhism regards poverty as the root of many social ills: It leads progressively to theft and plunder, resort to the use of weapons, bloodshed and extensive massacre of fellow-beings. To counter this causal progression, the ruler is given advise on how to alleviate poverty - give seed and implements to farmers; capital to traders; adequate wages to state employees. The poor are not to be left to their own devices, in the hope that benefits from the activities of the rich will eventually trickle down to the rest of the community.

A measure of welfarism was therefore quite in order from the Buddhist perspective. The gospel of economic globalisation on the other hand is firmly opposed to subsidies and welfare spending, although it does not preach this  message to developed nations who are known to subsidise agriculture (including the “livestock industry”) to the tune of billions of dollars.  Of course there are other voices, like this from a US critic:Some people even deny the need for the government to subsidize a daily guaranteed hot meal for every poor child in the country, and today such children are almost one in four. You have to be morally malnourished so to treat any child of God in the richest country in the world.The ethic of consumption

Buddhism recognises the fact the lay life is not to be denied the pleasures of  ownership (atthi-sukha) and of reasonable consumption (bhoga-sukha). That poverty is the worst ill in the life of ordinary persons is also fully recognised. Incompatible with the spirit of Buddhism however is the life-style that is characterised by wastefulness and extravagant over-indulgence.What is earned in accord with dhamma, Buddhism regards as blameless wealth. That is why the Buddha told Esukari the Brahmin that he would not say that  to have great wealth was by itself good or bad. It all depends on how it was got and what one did with  it.

Having earned wealth by fair means, the earner should know how to spend it rightly. Reckless consumption is like stripping the whole tree of its fruits when only a few are ripe. At the other extreme is the rich person who lives like a pauper. The proper use of wealth is to get  reasonable comforts for oneself and for one’s family and employees, friends and relations and also to do what is religiously valuable. One should know the possible ill-effects of wealth and not be fettered, infatuated or obsessed by it. So acting, one  will also know in time how  to  exit from its grasp.
In the Vinaya discipline of the monastic order there is plenty of advice on how to make the best and longest use of materials in day to day life.When monks get new robes, the old robes are taken as coverlets, the old coverlets are used as mattress covers, old mattress covers are used as rugs, old rugs as dusters, old dusters are kneaded with clay to repair cracked floors and walls.Frugality (appicchataa) and sharing (saadhaaraNabhoga) are the cornerstones of the economic life in the monastery. The same principles are valid for the laity.
On the other hand, global business is unabashed in the advocacy of consumption. Business can thrive only if consumers keep on buying endlessly.

Closely related to over-consumption is the problem of waste. Says one American observer:Our waste problem is  .... the fault of an economy that is wasteful from top to bottom - a symbiosis of an unlimited greed at the top and a lazy, passive and self-indulgent consumptiveness at the bottom...The Question of Debt
Another ‘pleasure’ that Buddhism regards as essential for ordinary life is freedom from  debt (anaNa-sukha). This need not mean that one should never take a loan. For, in another context, the Buddha has said that when you take a loan, the right in order to maintain production at optimal levels hing is to repay the loan promptly, not to run away when the creditor comes after you. Experience has taught poor countries that this pleasure of freedom from debt  is an ever receding goal as long as they have to deal with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, universally recognised as the great promoters of globalisation.Indeed in many African countries, the arrival of the two organisations is dreaded like the plague. .. First (they) ‘relieve’ debt by increasing it. Before they agree to talk to a country in financial difficulties, they ‘invite’ it to talk to its own creditors first, in order to ‘reschedule’ the debts it owes them. At these meetings with creditors, the debtor country is advised to agree to a short ‘moratorium’ on payments currently due after which the unpaid capital, plus accrued interest (including interest on the waived interest repayments) would be paid. At the end of the moratorium, many a country finds itself in greater debt than  before.
A criterion to assess the quality of life?
There is also a reference to a fourth ‘pleasure’ in the life of a person. It is the pleasure of knowing that one is leading a blameless life (anavajja-sukha). Here is the essence of Buddhist economics:  it is not enough to own wealth, to enjoy the benefit of its consumption and  to be free of the burden of debt. Over and above these, one’s economic life should be such that it is not an obstacle to the ethical life. One must be
able to feel that one’s life is blameless in word, deed and thought.

Buddhistically speaking then, there are two sides to the coin of human development. The notion of such a twin development is more than implicit in the Buddhist teachings. There are several Buddhist texts where material and spiritual well-being are characterised as complementary to each other. In one, the Buddha speaks of some who have only one eye and others who have two eyes. Some have the eye for producing and increasing wealth. Others have that eye, and also the eye wherewith one  discerns the good and the bad, the low and the wholesome. They earn wealth by righteous means and share with others what has been earned by initiative and hard work.
This idea is even further developed in another text. Here the Buddha  speaks of two aspects of growth or development. By the one there is the increase of  lands and fields, wealth and grain, family and children and servants and flocks; by the other there is increase of faith and virtue,  knowledge, charity  and insight. The "noble growth", is that whereby one grows in both these aspects.

Buddhism and  the rat race?
Obviously what Buddhism recommends is a  tranquil life with enough time for
cultural and ‘spiritual’ pursuits, in which  one has the freedom and space for inquiry and observation of inner reality (i.e., meditation), not one in which  you are engaged in incessant work and competition with others. But, in the world of corporate globalisation, whenever you can snatch some time for yourself, the entertainment industries, commercialised sport and the electronic media are there to usurp that time. You live in a deliberately created environment in which you are manipulated to become  addicted chasers of goods and services. In this  “rat race” there is no space for discernment, insight and the awakening of caring and affection. This is not a “suitable environment” for the flowering of the Buddhist ideals of virtue, integrity and intelligence.

Buddhist  assessment of globalization
One way of assessing the effects of globalisation on a country is to look at the statistics about the changing structure of its economy and such other matters. Using this yardstick, we see that industrial and service sectors now employ far more people than does agriculture, that more people are earning a living by working in foreign countries than ever before, that a significant new factor in the economy is the role played by foreign investments, that trade liberalisation has resulted in more consumer goods being available in the market, that foreign funds have helped upgrade infra-structure etc., etc.
From a Buddhistic point of view we should also ask another set of  questions. Do the kinds of work now available make us better or worse as human beings? Do workers receive humane treatment? Can they lead a contented life without getting into debt? Is their way of life free of stress? Is it blameless according to their religious convictions? What are the cultural achievements of the society of our time? What are the facts about crime, suicide, drug addiction? Is the moral and physical welfare of
the families of migrant workers looked after? How do the new kinds of occupation impact on the  various segments of society, the environment,  other species of living beings, etc. etc.
It is only when both kinds of questions are asked and answered that we will be able to make a proper assessment.
Concluding Remarks
From this discussion  it should become clear that the Buddhist tradition has preserved a distinct ethic for the conduct of commercial activities. Five features are implicit in this ethic: (1) respect for the life of beings, (2) respect for the ecology, (3) respect for the health and moral welfare of consumers, (4) commitment to cordial relations with employees and (5) moderation in the pursuit of profit.
There is also a parallel consumer ethic whose main features are (1) avoidance of excess, waste and also niggardliness, (2) sharing with relatives, friends and workers and (3) spending on worthy causes. Equally importantly, there is a message to the state: its commitment should be to justice and compassion for all and not solely to economic considerations.

What I have outlined above are some of the many Buddhist observations on the economic  activities of production, sale and consumption. Undoubtedly these will sound idealistic and utopian to economists and business people. They will appear to be so, as long as we assume that human greed is unalterable and that it is perfectly justifiable for business to take advantage of it.
However, the religions of the world do not operate on this assumption. If we agree with them that greed is not unalterable and in fact all persons are not equally greedy, it might dawn on us that the Buddhist goals are at least partly attainable. Hence they deserve serious attention, in view of the perilous condition in which humanity finds itself at this period in history.
Dr.Mahinda Palihawadana( Emeritus Professor,University of Sri Jayewardenepura )