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The practice of Buddhist economics?: another view
American Journal of Economics and Sociology, The, Oct, 1993 by Simon Zadek
IV
Buddhist Action
THE HISTORICAL ROOTS of the notion of Sangha reflect that Buddhism concerns first and foremost the "practice of being" rather than any "philosophy of becoming." It is, therefore, critically necessary to consider the implications of the Buddhist signposts in today's society. The real achievements of people attempting to act in the imperfect world according to the tenets of Buddhism offer the only meaningful understanding into what Buddhism does or does not contribute to our manner of living. The difficulty of this approach, of course, is that the records are so diverse. The experiences of communities influenced by Buddhism range from the inspirational direction taken by the community of exiled Tibetans through to the role of Buddhist nationalism in the current civil war raging in Sri Lanka (Chapela, 1992). The limits of this paper, and of the author, does not allow for any comprehensive assault on this daunting subject. However, it is possible to offer a simple illustration of how Buddhist principles are applied in pursuit of social transformation.
The illustration draws from the experience of the Sarvodaya Shramadana Movement ("Sarvodaya") in Sri Lanka. Sarvodaya is a community organization working to improve the situation of people in rural areas throughout Sri Lanka (Zadek and Szabo, 1993). Important here is that the philosophy and imagery through which Sarvodaya's aims and approach are articulated are drawn from a combination of Gandhian and Buddhist principles (Ariyaratne, 1985; Macy, 1984). Underpinning Sarvodaya's work is the view that social action and change must seek to achieve spiritual transformations, and so bring forward both compassion and wisdom in people's social relationships, and also in their relationships to themselves and nature (Batchelor and Brown, 1992).
The critical feature of Sarvodaya's method is embodied in its approach to village-level consultation and mobilization. Sarvodaya has evolved a process of decision-making at village level which would in secular "development vocabulary" be called participative decision-making (Chambers, 1992; Max-Neef, 1991). This includes, for example, meetings of the entire village in family gatherings, and the formation of groups within the village (women, youth, elders, etc), who are then encouraged to articulate their own needs and the path by which those needs might be achieved (usually with some technical, organizational or material help from Sarvodaya). That is, the way to break the vicious circle of poverty, loss of dignity, passivity, and ultimately selfish attitudes towards others, has everything to do with the process of decision-making within the community. Where it was possible to create more open and equal dialogue between the members of the community, and sometimes outsiders, this supports a process of growing self-awareness of needs and capacities, a recovering of self-dignity, and ultimately, spiritual development.
The important place of "economic development" in Sarvodaya's work arose from the very real needs of its constituencies in the rural areas of Sri Lanka (Ariyaratne, 1988; van Loon, 1990). The explosion of violence in Sri Lanka from the early 1980s, in particular, further accentuated an already declining economic situation throughout the country, which struck most deeply at the weakest members of the community (Athukorala and Jayasuriya, 1991). At the same time as recognizing this need, Sarvodaya continued to view improvements in material standards of living as instrumental to achieving a broader sense of well-being. However, this perspective, while consistent with the movement's Buddhist beliefs, proved difficult to act out in practice. As the material lacking of village communities became more extreme, Sarvodaya came increasingly under pressure to act in practice more like a service-delivery agency, offering credit, business development advice, etc., rather than attempting to maintain the links between economic and broader spiritual development (Perera et al, 1992; Zadek and Szabo, 1993).
