India’s New Economic Model: Sustainable Development the Buddhist Way
By Sandeep
Pandey & Rigzin Samphel
Over 2500 years ago, Siddharth Gautam, a 29 year old man from
India undertook a spiritual quest. His 6-year-old journey took him from
Kapilvastu, then in India, to Bodh Gaya in Bihar. The event marking the end of
his journey is known as enlightenment. Gautam, who was now called Buddha,
defined enlightenment as "The End of all Sufferings".
India of the 21st Century stands at the cusp of
a great economic transformation. Whether this change leads to a trickle-down
utopian prosperity or catastrophic social inequality will depend on how India
defines its future economic philosophy.
The term Buddhist Economics was first coined in
1973 by the legendary English economist EF Schumacher in his book "Small
Is Beautiful: A Study of Economics As If People Mattered". A chance visit
to Burma in the 1950s had Schumacher inspired by the Buddhist concept of
"right livelihood".
While traditional capitalist economics uses
"maximising profit" as its underlying philosophy, Buddhist economics
aims at "minimising suffering". Buddha's first sermon after achieving
enlightenment is known as the "Four noble truths". Applying these in
the present day context of the Indian economy can give us insights into this
wisdom. Like a modern-day management guru, Buddha supplements his theory of the
Four Noble Truths with four workable strategies of understanding, abandonment,
realisation and development.
The Noble Truth of Suffering
According to Buddha, the suffering needs to be
"understood". Thomas Pikkety in his book 'Capitalism in the 21st
century' presents his now famous equation of r > g, that is, how, over a
long period the rate of return on capital—r—is greater than the rate of
economic growth—g. Policy formulators, civil society and the corporate classes
need to understand that any wilful, myopic denial of the underlying social
sufferings will lead to a lopsided and divided society, bringing conflict among
the divides.
The Noble Truth of the Origin of Suffering
Buddhist economics attributes causes of suffering
to man's desire built on ignorance about his delicate interdependence to his
environment. This is coupled with a compassion deficit among the affluent
towards the poor. According to Buddha, the causes of suffering need to be
"abandoned," thus, calling for the abandonment of the anthropocentric
basis of economic and business decision-making.
The Noble Truth of Cessation of Suffering
According to Buddha, the possibility of cessation
of suffering should be "realised". Buddha gives us hope that it is
possible to achieve freedom from economic suffering. According to the World
Happiness Index report of 2015, Paraguay, Colombia, and Ecuador are the
happiest nations on Earth. Other examples of this optimism are the Madyamarg of
New Zealand, for its , moderation and preservation of natural resources, Ahimsa
of Japan, limiting investment in arms trade and militarisation, and Karuna of
Brazil, the "Bolsa Familia," which is one of the most successful
welfare schemes in the world. Bhutan, our neighbour country, has for long used the
economic index of Gross National Happiness (GNH).
The Noble Truth of Eight Fold Path
Schumacher says, "Right livelihood is one of
the requirements of the Buddha's eightfold path. It is clear, therefore, that
there must be such a thing as Buddhist economics". According to the
Buddha, the path to cessation of suffering needs to be "developed".
To develop this path, Buddhist economists use the tools of Sila (ethics),
Samadhi (concentration), and Prajna (wisdom).
Sila: Buddhist
economics is built on the foundation of ethics. According to economist Jaffery
Sachs "And as the great sages from Buddha to Aristotle to Jesus, taught
us, morality is ultimately the path to a life worth living".
Samadhi: Buddhist
Economics believes that the causes of suffering can be eradicated if man is
able to train his mind to attain happiness for all sentient beings. In 1989,
the ministry of Human Resource Development first recognised the Vipassana
Research Institute in Igatpuri, Maharashtra, as a one-of-a-kind institute
"fostering national integration and international understanding". An
institutionalised beginning in this regard has already been made by the state
governments of Andhra Pradesh, Madya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Goa,
Gujarat and Delhi, who each support Vipassana as a secular method of training
the mind.
Prajna: Man does not live
and thrive in isolation. Neither is he the Centre of the Universe. A Buddhist
economist uses man's interdependence to his natural environment as the basis of
all policy and livelihood decisions. Recent reports of Delhi being named the
World's most polluted city is a living proof of the violation of this delicate
relationship of man to his environment.
Buddhist economics is not anti--modernisation.
Schumacher advocates the concept of "Appropriate Technology" to
replace mass production with production by the masses. Over 2500 years after
Buddha's first sermon, India can take the lead in demystifying the Four Noble
Truths to develop a unique economic model combining, material health (GDP),
mental health (GNH) and moral health (National Sustainable Goals) of the
nation. The United Nation's proposed Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that
will replace the present Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) after 2015 can be
seen as living endorsement of Schumacher's vision. The economic horizon holds
many promises for India and its economy. The cusp it stands on is urging India
to chant a new economic mantra.
( Retrieved http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/bodhi/wheel433.html)
1. The Life of the Buddha
First, The Blessed One's awakening to the harsh realities of human existence — his discovery of our bondage to old age, illness, and death — teaches us the importance of deep reflection and critical thinking.
The awakening of the Buddha reflects back to us the somnambulance in which we usually live, mired in our pleasures and little petty concerns, as a reminder to break away from our thoughtless infatuation with our youth, health, and vitality, and to rise admidst our inevitable encounter with the mires which characterise life.
The Blessed One's departure from the palace, his "great renunciation," teaches us a lesson in values. It shows us that from among the wide range of wholesome values, the quest for enlightenment and liberation should reign supreme.
Far beyond the pleasure, wealth, and power to which we ordinarily give priority, we must all order our values according to a scale which gives the highest place to the most worthy goal, to that which is also the most real of all realities, Nibbana, and allow ourselves the strive to thrive our aspiration.
Next, the Blessed One's six years of struggle shows us that the quest for the highest goal is an undertaking that calls for deep dedication and unrelenting effort, and those who strive such a goal must thrive to a difficult and demanding course of training.
The Buddha's enlightenment teaches us that ultimate wisdom and deliverance from suffering is a real potential inherent in human beings, one we can realize for ourselves without the aid or grace of an external savior. His enlightenment also highlights the ideal of sensible moderation, "the middle way."
The decision the Buddha made after his enlightenment, as he took upon himself the burden of guiding errant humanity along the path to liberation, is a tremendous impact on the subsequent development of Buddhism.
For throughout its long history the spirit of compassion has been the heartbeat of the Buddha's dispensation, as an inspiration in a wide variety of ways, even when one can express their compassion only in humble acts of kindness and tender concern for those less fortunate than themselves.
Finally, the Buddha's passing away, his attainment of final Nibbana, teaches us once again that everything conditioned must perish, that all formations are impermanent, that even the greatest of spiritual masters is no exception to the very law he so often proclaimed.
His passing away also teaches us that the highest bliss and peace comes only by relinquishing all, through the stilling of all conditioned things. For this is the final entrance way to the attainment of the unconditioned, the Deathless, Nibbana.
2. The Buddha's Mission
To ask why the Buddha's teaching proved so attractive and gained such a large following among all sectors of Northeast Indian society is understood principally in terms of two factors: one, the aim of the teaching; and the other, its methodological features.
(i) The Aim of the Teaching
Unlike the so-called revealed religions, which rest upon faith in unverifiable doctrines, the Buddha formulated his teaching in a way that directly addresses the critical problem at the heart of human existence — the problem of suffering — and he promises that those who follow his teaching to its end will realize here and now the highest happiness and peace. All other concerns apart from this, such as theological dogmas, metaphysical subtleties, rituals and rules of worship, the Buddha waves aside as irrelevant to the task at hand, the unraveling of the problem of suffering.
This pragmatic thrust of the Dhamma is clearly illustrated by an incident related in the texts. Once a monk named Malunkyaputta was pondering the great metaphysical questions — whether the world is eternal or non-eternal, infinite or finite, etc. — and he felt unhappy because the Buddha had refused to answer them. So one day Malunkyaputta went to the Master and told him, "Either you answer these questions for me or I leave the order."
The Buddha then told Malunkyaputta that the spiritual life did not depend on any answers to these questions, which were mere distractions from the real challenge of following the path. He then compared the metaphysician to a man struck by a poisoned arrow. When his relatives bring a surgeon, the man tells him, " I won't let you remove the arrow until you let me know the name of the man who struck me, the type of bow he used, the material from which the arrow was made, and the kind of poison he used." That man would die, the Buddha said, before the arrow was removed, and so too the metaphysician, struck with the arrow of suffering, will die without ever finding the path to freedom.
(ii) Characteristic Features of the Teaching
1. Self-reliance. This discussion of the aim of the Buddha's teaching leads us to the teaching's characteristic features. One of its most attractive features, closely related to its psychological orientation, is its emphasis on self-reliance. For the Buddha, the key to liberation is mental purity and correct understanding, and for this reason he rejects the notion that we can gain salvation by leaning on any external authority. He says: "By oneself is evil done, by oneself is one defiled. By oneself is evil left undone, by oneself is one purified. Purity and defilement depend on oneself; no one can purify another" (Dhp 165).
2. Experiential Emphasis. Since wisdom or insight is the chief instrument of enlightenment, the Buddha always asked his disciples to follow him on the basis of their own understanding, not from obedience or unquestioning trust. He calls his Dhamma ehipassiko, which means "Come and see for yourself." He invites inquirers to investigate his teaching, to examine it in the light of their own reason and intelligence, and to gain confirmation of its truth for themselves. The Dhamma is said to be paccattam veditabbo viññuhi, "to be personally understood by the wise," and this requires intelligence and sustained inquiry.
3. Universality. Because the Buddha's teaching deals with the most universal of all human problems, the problem of suffering, he made his teaching a universal message, one which was addressed to all human beings solely by reason of their humanity.
At the time the Buddha appeared on the Indian scene the higher religious teachings, recorded in the Vedas, were reserved for the brahmans, a privileged elite who performed sacrifices and rituals for others. Ordinary people were told to perform their duties in a spirit of humility in the hope that they might win a more fortunate rebirth and thus gain access to the sacred teachings.
But the Buddha placed no restrictions on the people to whom he taught the Dhamma. He held that what made a person noble was his personal character and conduct, not his family and caste status. Thus he opened the doors of liberation to people of all social classes. Brahmans, kings and princes, merchants, farmers, workers, even outcasts — all were welcome to hear the Dhamma without discrimination, and many from the lower classes attained the highest stage of enlightenment.
4. A Code of Ethics. One aspect of the Buddha's universalism deserves special mention: this is his conception of a universal code of ethics. It would be too extreme to say that the Buddha was the first religious teacher to formulate a moral code, for moral codes of different kinds had been laid down from the dawn of civilization. But it might not be farfetched to say that the Buddha was one of the very first teachers to separate out true moral principles from the complex fabric of social norms and communal customs with which they were generally interwoven.
To sum up, the Buddha's mission was to establish a path to spiritual perfection, to full enlightenment and Nibbana, liberation from suffering. He did this by propounding a teaching that acknowledged our capacity for attaining spiritual perfection yet which also remained fully respectful of the intelligence and autonomy of human beings. His approach was psychological in orientation, non-dogmatic, pragmatic, and open to investigation. He emphasized self-effort, moral rectitude, and personal responsibility, and he proclaimed his message universally, holding that the potential for spiritual growth and even for the highest enlightenment was accessible to anyone who makes the appropriate effort. It is these factors that give to the ancient teaching of the Buddha such a distinctly modern flavor, making it so relevant to us in these times of shifting ideas and changing values.
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