[Buddha-l] Wealth and excess

[jkirk]

On Thu, 2009-01-15 at 11:18 -0700, jkirk wrote:

> However, I still go with the Middle Way view of wealth. There
is 
> excess, and excess gets people and things into trouble.

R.H.
>.Widespread poverty is a possible but not a necessary
consequence of some people having a great deal of wealth.

JK: True. In some socio-economic circumstances, however, perhaps
necessity is much less of a force than possibility.  Our
political economy is built on competitive striving aligned with
risk-taking, aka opportunism-- or possibility. Necessity is for
those without resources, who are forced into debt, theft or
worse. Our society has become based on ever expanding debt
pyramids more than production. In his teachings to householders,
the Buddha warns them off of debt.   But if this formula about
poverty not being a necessary consequence of wealth had been a
social fact in his time, the Buddha would not have found it
necessary to teach householders (the lay people who mainly figure
as the subject of his teachings for non-monastic living) about
being generous and doing the necessary for happiness and
well-being.  In Anguttara Nikaya he talks about the proper uses
of wealth, which he calls "righteous wealth righteously gained"
(a description that sure doesn't apply to the likes of Madoff, et
al.) (AN 4:61; II: 65-68) 
The happiness he speaks of is the happiness of well-provided
householders, and one he's often addressing is the rich
Anathapindika.  

Sidebar: It's interesting to me that the householders described
in these teachings seem to be well-off people, landowners
supporting workers and slaves,  or farmers (because Bhikkhu Bodhi
whose translations I read has used the term wealth earned "by the
sweat of your brow," which is more applicable to the small farmer
than to the big zamindar.  The Buddha of necessity had to be
interacting with people who had some education, who could benefit
from what he had to say; in these addresses on lay life I don't
find evidence that he was also addressing household slaves and
servants, beggars or vagabonds.

The only time the Buddha verges into sociology seems to be when
he is indirectly causing King Ajattashatu to call off going to
war against the Vajjians, who meet regularly in their assemblies
and carry on their business in harmony---the Vajjians being a
description of an uncorrupted society. 

 Recently noticing that individual corruption cases like the
Madoff one were multiple here in the states as well as over in
India (the Satyam company executive, for ex.) , as well as the
rampant fraud and corruption of many of the biggest banks and
brokerages here and in the EU, none of which was a one-off, leads
me to ponder the old adage that too much money is the root of all
evil. 

These New York mavens were highly educated people who, despite
perhaps the wise men and women they might have come across in
their lives, were motivated to achieve one thing only--making a
humongous pile of money. That they collaborated in building
wealth with a kind of money that was even more fictional than the
money we all use daily, is even more astounding.  The Buddha
wasn't a sociologist, he aimed his wisdom at the individual. He
doesn't seem to have noticed that a social milieu (in this case a
culture of money/wealth ueber alles) can materialise where stinky
values are shared by hundreds within the society--a culture of
corruption impervious to any drop of wisdom, including even
common sense.

The Buddha did teach about how individuals (not societies or
groups) could fall into such straits when he discusses the
attractions of sensual pleasures (money can be included as one of
these, since a huge pile of it necessarily pays for more of the
rest). He says that it is a "mistaken perception" that causes one
to ignore the suffering such pleasures cause, even when burned by
them, while striving on for more. (MN 75: Magandiya sutta) How
kind he seems to be by attributing such behavior only to mistaken
perceptions, when they might really be considered a kind of
insanity (I guess in today's terms, neurosis?).

I can't recall if early Buddhism shared the yuga theory of the
Hindus, with the Kali yuga being the final era of utter cultural
corruption, where dharma completely disappears. That is a
sociological concept of sorts, in that it focuses on an entire
culture rather than on the behavior of individuals, although it
depends on the idea that every individual in the culture is
behaving badly. It has seemed to me that the recent rise and
devolution of the banking and high finance industries was based
on a set of shared values. Is  a sociology utterly illusory? does
whatever is going on basically devolve upon the behavior of
individual humans? but that leaves out Arendt's theory of the
banality of evil, the "it's not my lookout, I'm just doing my
job" mentality. Is this conundrum beyond a Buddhist critique, or
what? 
(Sorry if this comes across as a rant--I didn't mean it that
way.)

Joanna