| Payutto, a Thai Buddhist, examines
how Buddhists can live within market economies and how they
can develop a new way of economic thinking to help make the
lives they want
P. A. Payutto's book Buddhist Economics is a look into the
material realities to which Buddhists, just as anyone, are
subject. He writes that economics are a large concern of Buddhists
and that they understand that the economic concerns of practitioners
are important to their spirituality because "hungry
people cannot appreciate Dharma"(47), and while capital
accumulation and opulent consumption is not desired or desirable,
economic stability and the satiation of basic needs is seen
as a catalyst to enlightenment on the eight-fold path. (40)
Payutto makes reference to the Buddhist teaching called the
Three Attha. It describes the three goals of human life in
this ascending order: initial, medium, and ultimate. Reasonable
"economic security is central"(48) to the initial
and medium goals, while the ultimate goal of enlightenment
is beyond the physical realm. This teaching recognizes that
while the ultimate goal is beyond the rules of economics,
one must exist within the established economic order in the
steps preceding this stage. In this book, translated from
its original Thai, P. A. Payutto describes some ways in which
Buddhism has a distinct market-based economic rationale, as
well as criticizing traditional economic theory.
Some points made in this book are actually quite interesting
from the Buddhist perspective. Economists are forced to overlook
many economic conditions in society because they use money
as a proxy for value. For instance, unpaid labour and anything
that does not register in the market is not picked up by economists
and therefore economists do not have a clear picture of the
economy. A Buddhist's good deeds are not likely to appear
in a country's GDP or affect
While the market economy values everything that is bought
and sold, Buddhism only finds value in goods and services
that bring value to the Buddhist. Products valuable to Buddhists
such as books of religious teachings are positive, while products
that Buddhists do not agree with, like those that contribute
to pollution or destroy natural habitat, are negatives.(16-17)
The problem with this formula is that the values are already
added in the theoretical framework of the marketplace model
and if things are more important to Buddhists societies, this
will be reflected in the supply and demand of such products,
and consequently in the market value. In a Buddhist society,
there would be no negative products or actions - and herein
lies the message - that a Buddhist economy must be sustainable
and free of things that bring the individual further from
spiritual enlightenment.
One of the very interesting things about Payutto's
attack on established economic thought is that it is so similar
to what is becoming a predictable criticism of the inherent
problems and contradictions in capitalist ideology.
Payutto attacks the neo-conservative model of the market
that so many modern critics see as a path to salvation for
the third world and a means of keeping a lead in the developed
world. Payutto applies Shurti to address the out-of-control
capitalism that the Buddha could not have seen historically
in his lifetime. The greed and opulent wealth we sometimes
attribute to classical economics (10) comes with capitalist
accumulation, a detail specific to modern capitalism and not
a general rule in the economist's concern with the general
distribution of wealth.
Payutto notes that his inspiration for this work stems from
E. F. Schumacher's "Small is Beautiful"
that I was very fortunate to find a copy of and read the original
text and Schumacher makes some very basic points about how
Buddhists have to depend upon material distribution in order
to function in the material world which they wish to leave
and their economic activity is not necessarily a bad thing
so long as the goods and services in which they indulge do
not do harm to people or animals. This is more inline with
an "economic" interpretation because it is less
specific to a certain type of economics. Despite Payatto's
problem in using the correct terms, he does little to make
an interesting argument about capitalism's role in spiritual
life. I would have liked to read about how Buddhism is affected
by the global capitalism that is pervading Buddhist economies.
Capitalism, being an organizational mode of economic production
and consumption, brings with it its own ideology that many
societies feel they have to adopt in order to exist in the
new global marketplace.
Buddhism, like other religions, is comprised of a set of
spiritual teachings as a vision of the ultimate truth and
also a set of social teachings that are meant to guide peoples'
actions in their more mundane day-to-day functions. While
Buddhists who have achieved enlightenment have realized that
the material world is an illusion and is empty of intrinsic
value, they also realize that the material world is a very
real thing to those who are not enlightened. It is from Smith,
Marx and other philosophers that we understand the economic
division of resources as the main underpinning of society,
seemingly in contrast to the more spiritual Buddhist teachings,
but Buddhists know that they cannot ignore the economics in
their lives.
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