Buddhism

[Mathew Forstater]

Like many othet texts, religious texts can and have been used to support
a wide variety of (incompatible) positions.  Buddhism is no exception.
I've looked through a bunch of the "Buddhist economics" literature, and
some of it is very different from what one might expect.  There is a guy
in Philadelphia--at Villanova I think--who says people decide how long
to meditate by economizing at the margins, i.e. they do a cost-benefit
test of an additional minute of time allocated to meditating!  This
would surprise a lot of Buddhists, I would think (and hope).  Also,
different sects of Buddhism are as different as different religions. In
particular, the distinction between Mahayana and Theravada has important
social implications. Mahayana says "we're all in it together" so there
is an explicit social responsibility and social ethic and social
concern.  The United Nations put out an interesting book (from
conference proceedings) on "global ethics" and the world's religions
which is worth looking at.  I can dig up the reference if any one's
interested. Mat

Rosser Jr, John Barkley wrote:


> To Henry C.K. Liu:
>      Is it not true that in ethnically Han Chinese parts of
> Asia that Daoism is associated with a pro-laissez faire
> attitude towards economics whereas Confucianism is
> associated with a pro-state-intervention-in-the-economy
> attitude?
>      Also, it would seem that Buddhism has almost no
> economic content at all.  Certainly E.F. Schumacher argued
> in his _Small is Beautiful_ that "Buddhist Economics"
> implies being satisfied with not too much, and thus
> presumably supports pro-ecology sustainable development.
> But in Thailand it is pro-laissez faire with little
> environmental concern and in Tibet is/was pro-feudal.  More
> a matter of meditating on Emptiness, I guess...
> Barkley Rosser
>
> --
> Rosser Jr, John Barkley
> rosserjb at jmu.edu