Does Western Buddhism support capitalism?

The Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek famously claimed that Western Buddhism may serve as the “perfect ideological supplement” to the capitalist system.[1] Whilst I think Žižek’s conclusion is based on a hazy understanding of the practices of Buddhism, it is worth taking seriously the claim that Western Buddhism actually supports rather than undermines the capitalist system. The assumption amongst many Western Buddhists seems to be that the dharma’s basic message is directly opposed to the values of materialistic capitalism, and as such, Buddhism is incorruptible.

Buddhism is different?

In the West, Buddhism has a reputation for peacefulness unparalleled by any other major world religion. A basic message of peace and love is also at the heart of Islam, Hinduism and Christianity. But in the Western consciousness all three have been sullied by violence and complicity in unjust systems. Whilst the Crusades, the caste system and Jihadist terrorism loom large in people’s minds, few could name an instance of Buddhist violence. Of course, Buddhists have plenty of blood on their hands.

It is claimed that the ancient Buddhist emperor Asoka ordered several thousand Jains killed[2], whilst a canonical Mahayana text depicts the Buddha in a past life murdering Brahmins for insulting Buddhist scriptures.[3] Although these historical and scriptural claims are questionable, what is without doubt is that Buddhist majority populations are currently inflicting horrific and sustained violence against Muslim minorities in South Asia. In Burma, Muslim businesses and mosques have been attacked by gangs of Buddhists, including monks[4], whilst far-right Buddhist groups have demanded the government strip voting rights from the Muslim Rohingya community.[5] Buddhists in Sri Lanka have attacked Muslim neighbourhoods, ransacking family homes[6] in hostilities stoked by Therevadin monks.[7]

The truth is: rather than being a uniquely peaceful faith which excels all others, Buddhism is as corruptible as any other religion. Buddhism can be, and often has been, co-opted and manipulated to serve a harmful agenda.

The question is: how does this happen?

Girō Seno’o

Girō Seno’o (1809-1961) wanted to answer just that question. Seno’o was a member of the Nichiren sect, which vehemently supported the right wing Japanese government during the brutal occupation of Manchuria in the 1930s, during which thousands of Chinese civilians were killed. He wondered how a religion of peace could be twisted to support violent imperialism. He concluded the problem was institutional:

I came to question the whole religious establishment itself. I found myself with no other possibility than to oppose it.[8]

What Seno’o realised was that, so long as religious institutions fail to actively oppose the established order, they will become tools of that order. He saw that Buddhism and the capitalist system were incompatible because “the capitalist system generates suffering and, thus, violates the spirit of Buddhism.”[9] In short, a Buddhism that is complicit in capitalism is a Buddhism that fails to be truly compassionate. Some may question whether it should be called Buddhism at all.

Seno’o established the Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism, a Marxist-influenced network aimed at opposing Japanese imperialism and promoting internationalism. In 1936 he was arrested for treason. After a five-month interrogation process he confessed to his ‘crimes’, pledged allegiance to the Emperor and was released from prison. He may not be well known today, but Seno’o’s simple realisation – that institutions which fail to oppose capitalism actually become tools of the system – is a crucial lesson for modern Western Buddhists.

Maladjusted Buddhism

But how does it work? How do institutions originally established to follow a path of compassion end up being complicit with a system which generates mass suffering?

In an article entitled ‘Maladjusted Buddhism’[10], American Zen practitioner Nathan Thompson builds on Martin Luther King’s critique of the psychological concept of ‘adjustment’ to argue that Western convert Buddhists have become well-adjusted to the violence inherent in capitalism. In an address to the American Psychological Association in September 1967, Dr. King said:

There are certain technical words in every academic discipline which soon become stereotypes and even clichés. Every academic discipline has its technical nomenclature. You who are in the field of psychology have given us a great word. It is the word maladjusted. This word is probably used more than any other word in psychology. It is a good word; certainly it is good that in dealing with what the word implies you are declaring that destructive maladjustment should be destroyed. You are saying that all must seek the well-adjusted life in order to avoid neurotic and schizophrenic personalities.

But on the other hand, I am sure that we will recognize that there are some things in our society, some things in our world, to which we should never be adjusted. There are some things concerning which we must always be maladjusted if we are to be people of good will. We must never adjust ourselves to racial discrimination and racial segregation. We must never adjust ourselves to religious bigotry. We must never adjust ourselves to economic conditions that take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few. We must never adjust ourselves to the madness of militarism, and the self-defeating effects of physical violence.[11]

Thompson recognises this trend in Western Buddhists sanghas:

The majority of convert Buddhist sanghas have adjusted to the economic norms of global capitalism. They traffic in various forms of marketing and “selling” the dharma. They structure themselves in ways that diminish the concept of dana to monetary gifts. And they rarely, if ever, participate in opposing, advocate in favor of opposing, or even speak about opposing economic injustices, poverty, or the like. Taking any sort of deliberate stance on these issues is usually seen as “political,” or not in the realm of practice. […]

In my view, the very ways in which global capitalism structure society and our individual lives by default, reinforce all of these issues with convert sanghas and their practitioners. Keeping the doors open requires money […] And speaking out or opposing economic injustice and poverty in deliberate, tangible ways can – and often does – cause a hell of lot of discomfort. It might disrupt the perceived harmony of the sangha. Furthermore, it can and sometimes does bring certain social penalties, including “negative” press and perhaps lost revenue from individuals or organizations tied to corporate interests. I think Buddhists in general throughout history have leaned towards being a more quiet presence in whatever society they’re living in.

We can see how this functions on the sangha level. Our Buddhist centres need to keep the lights on, so they need to make money. They do this by marketing the dharma – meditation classes and the like, as well as selling gifts and books. Just like any other business entity, they must avoid anything which may alienate customers, including criticising the powerful.

This process played out in my own sangha in February 2015. Our Engaged Buddhism group, of which I am part, organised a screening of a film about the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories. The event was supported by the Buddhist Centre staff and trustees. However, members of the local pro-Israel lobby found out and began to put pressure on the Buddhist Centre to cancel the screening. After initially resolving to go ahead, the Centre’s trustees folded when a pro-Israel paper threatened to run a smear piece and there was talk of protests outside the building. The trustees couldn’t accept how bad publicity and protests would affect the normal functioning of the Centre.

Our Buddhist Centre is necessarily embedded in a market system which operates within a normative framework. By highlighting the violence of the Israeli occupation, by challenging power, we transgressed those norms. The system did what the system does: it slapped us down. The trustees have now learned not to venture outside of those norms again. Our Buddhist Centre, a religious institution, is back to functioning as a conforming part of the capitalist system. A system which, if we remember the words of Girō Seno’o, “generates suffering and, thus, violates the spirit of Buddhism.”

Compassion is not enough

One Buddhist response to these critiques I’ve heard is: what about mettā? What about karuṇā? If the capitalist order relies on division, competition and hatred, surely cultivating loving-kindness and compassion will undermine that. So we don’t need to kick up a fuss about injustice and economic systems. We don’t need to fight capitalism, we just need to spread the dharma and the rest will take care of itself.

The problem is, if our sanghas are too cowed to challenge systems of power, our compassionate acts will be on a purely charitable level. We will work with the suffering that is a symptom of the capitalist system but we will fail to address the system itself. That’s fine if you think that our compassion will ultimately transform the world. But as we’ve already seen, it is often the world that transforms Buddhism rather than the other way around. And, argues the economist Charles Eisenstein, working on a purely charitable level may in fact support the capitalist system rather than undermine it.

Eisenstein identifies four ways in which acts of charity perpetuate the system:

(1)    By ameliorating some of its worst consequences, they make capitalism all the more palatable.

(2)    They divert altruistic energy toward relatively innocuous goals instead of toward addressing the systemic foundations of injustice.

(3)    They appease the conscience and make one’s own complicity more acceptable.

(4)    They generate a codependent relationship with the needy, in which the charitable enterprise depends for its survival on the very conditions it ostensibly seeks to address.[12]

Point three particularly reflects my experience of Western Buddhist sanghas. Once, in a discussion about whether we should challenge structural suffering or just perform acts of kindness, I was told that “it’s all merit in the end”. This is a viewpoint I’ve come across many times: it doesn’t matter the nature of the good deed, so long as you feel satisfied with yourself afterwards.

It’s worth noting that Eisenstein also provides an inversion of each point to demonstrate how challenging structural suffering without working on the charitable level is also harmful. But if we accept Eisenstein’s critique it seems clear that our compassion – limited because we are institutionally prohibited from challenging structural suffering – may in fact fortify the system is purportedly seeks to undermine.

Navayana - a new vehicle

The Mahayana – or ‘Great Vehicle’ – emerged as a reform movement against what were considered trends in early Buddhism which had moved away from the Buddha’s basic message. By re-conceptualising elements of the dharma to shift the focus back to compassion, the proponents of the Mahayana felt they were reaffirming the essential meaning of the Buddha’s teaching for a new age. This is what we must do in the West today.

The Buddha talked about economics. For example, in the Kutadanta Sutta the Buddha implies that social problems can be overcome by restructuring the economy[13]. But the Buddha certainly never spoke about capitalism. The modern global economic system dictates aspects of our lives in a way that the Buddha could never have foreseen and as such, we cannot simply look to the historical Buddha’s teaching for ways to solve modern problems. What is surely undisputable is that the Buddha would not have supported modern capitalism, with its focus on material wealth and its reliance on violence.

As Buddhism takes root in the West, we need to conceptualise the dharma in new ways to meet our modern challenges. Like the Mahayanists, we need a ‘New Vehicle’ – a Navayana.[14] It must be a vehicle that takes in to account the realities of the modern economic and political system, and learns from political critiques of capitalism. Whilst keeping compassion as our core, we shouldn’t be afraid to learn from Marxist, anarchists, feminists and other political thinkers, as well as the liberation theologies of the Christian tradition. If not, we will continue to acquiesce to the capitalist system, a system which “violates the spirit of Buddhism.”

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[1] http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/2/western.php

[2] https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Kp9uaQTQ8h8C&pg=PA232&hl=en#v=onepage&q&f=false

[3] http://www.loonwatch.com/2012/07/warrior-monks-the-untold-story-of-buddhist-violence-i/

[4] http://time.com/2956180/burma-mandalay-race-riots-sectarian-violence-buddhist-muslim/

[5] http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2015/2/myanmars-buddhist-terrorism-problem.html

[6] http://time.com/3090990/how-an-extremist-buddhist-network-is-sowing-hatred-across-asia/

[7] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-32929855

[8] http://enlight.lib.ntu.edu.tw/FULLTEXT/JR-MAG/mag29564.pdf

[9] https://web.archive.org/web/20131119194506/http://nirc.nanzan-u.ac.jp/nfile/4207

[10] I would highly recommend reading the whole of Nathan’s article ‘Maladjusted Buddhism’ to get a full understanding of his argument - http://www.patheos.com/blogs/americanbuddhist/2013/03/maladjusted-buddhism-a-guest-post-by-nathan-thompson.html

[11] Ibid.

[12] http://charleseisenstein.net/a-neat-inversion/

[13] DN5, The Kutadanta Sutta, translted by Prof. T.W Rhys Davids - http://www.bps.lk/olib/wh/wh120-p.html

[14] This term has been used by Dr. Ambedkar, leader of the Dalit conversion to Buddhism in India in the 1950s

Is dukhha structural? (discussion notes)

These are notes from the intro to a discussion session at the Manchester Buddhist Convention on 10th October 2015. 

Is dukkha structural?

Is dukkha structural? Or more precisely, can the causes of dukkha be found in our social, political and economic structures?

In explaining the Four Noble Truths, the Buddha does not individualise dukkha. To quote Bhikkhu Santikaro:

In the Buddha's original formulation of these truths, he neither spoke of "my dukkha" nor of "your dukkha." He spoke simply of dukkha. "There is dukkha." It is important that we remember this fact and do not overly personalize the four noble truths such that they become merely a matter of "my dukkha" and getting rid of "my dukkha." Many Buddhists have fallen into this trap, which is a primary reason why many of them are not concerned with the incredible dukkha that surrounds them in the world. This observation helps explain why many so-called Buddhists simply retreat into themselves without participating responsibly in collective efforts to solve the dukkha of society.[1]

Question one: Do Buddhists tend to over-individualise dukkha?

If we habitually think of dukkha as “my dukkha” or “your dukkha”, we will also habitually think of the Second Noble Truth in similarly individualised ways. We will then look for causes on a purely individual level.

I have come across this tendency many times, both in Buddhist circles, in the field of secular mindfulness and in non-Buddhist thinking. I will look at one overt example from my own tradition, Triratna.

Dharmachari Subhuti is an experienced and revered member of the Triratna Buddhist Order. Along with our founder Sangharakshita, he is author of a collection of texts known as the Seven Papers – texts which are meant to help define what it is to be a Member of the Triratna Order. Suffice it to say, these texts are very important to the Triratna Buddhist Order and presumably reflect ideas that run deep through our movement.

One of the texts is called The Dharma Revolution and the New Society. It covers what is apparently Sangharakshita’s vision for revolution, for creating a society structured in accordance with the dharma. Here is a paragraph about how we as Buddhists can help society’s disadvantaged. To me, this paragraph sums up the attitude that underpins what is at times a contradictory argument. Says Subhuti:

Those who are poor, marginalized, excluded, or subject to prejudice need to hear the Dharma's most basic message: they are human beings, equal to all others in the most important sense of being morally responsible. Their dignity and their strength is to be found in accepting responsibility for their own lives and acting in accordance with ethical principles to be found within Karmic conditionality. Understanding this, they will gain the power and the courage to help themselves – not passively waiting for others to help them, but lifting themselves up and making for themselves a better life through skilful, responsible action.[2]

By claiming that people are marginalised because they are failing to take moral responsibility, Subhuti is implying that the underprivileged are at least partly to blame for their own situation because of their faulty attitude. But there are plenty of people who are in poverty, who take responsibility for their own lives and yet still struggle. Poverty is not a matter of poor moral choices, it’s not caused by having the wrong attitude. It is a material, structurally-created condition – Subhuti fails to acknowledge this.

In a neo-liberal capitalist economy, corporate-backed governments like our own function to create an “attractive investment climate” for big business. They do so by cutting social security, eroding workers’ rights and privatising public services[3]. The cost of living rises sharply but wages stagnate. With the safety net of social security gone, poverty is rife and big business can employ cheap labour from a wide pool of desperate people. In this way, poverty is an essential component of how neo-liberal economic works. The dominant economic structure of our world functions to make a select few wealthy by throwing masses in to poverty.

Given this, it seems confusing for Subhuti to suggest that those in poverty simply need to “accept… responsibility for their own lives.” When multi-national corporations and governments, backed by vast and powerful militaries, are conspiring to cast people in to poverty, is it really fair to say that the poor should simply “accept… responsibility for their own lives” without any mention of structural causes? Would Subhuti apply the same logic to some of the darker moments in humanity’s history?

In the whole text, issues of economics are barely touched upon and the word ‘capitalism’ does not appear once.[4] It seems that the ‘dharma revolution’ is a revolution of people’s personal attitudes, not of the structure of our society as a whole. In my experience, this reflects a great deal of Buddhist discourse around social problems.

So, how would the Buddha react to the underprivileged in modern society? There are several Suttas of the Pali canon in which the Buddha responds to social unrest. One such discourse is the Kutadanta Sutta in the Digha Nikaya. In this text, the Buddha tells the story of a wealthy king. There is disorder in the king’s realm, so he seeks advice from his Chaplain – later revealed to be the Buddha in a past existence. The Chaplain advises the king thus:

The Buddha-to-be doesn’t suggest, like Subhuti, that the suffering in the kingdom is caused by people not taking responsibility for their own morality. He doesn’t argue that those suffering “need to hear the Dharma’s most basic message.” And he doesn’t offer a therapeutic mindfulness course. The Buddha-to-be instead prescribes an economic solution, a redistribution of wealth. He recognises that the existing economic order is at the root of the disorder and suggests to the king how to restructure the economy so as to ensure his subjects prosper. In other words, the Buddha-to-be has recognised that the suffering of the realm has its roots in an unjust economic structure.

Question two: how would the Buddha respond to the those marginalised and impoverished by modern-day capitalism?

Question 3: do poverty and marginalisation provide barriers to practising the dharma?

The problem with the over-individualistic position is not simply that it fails to address structural causes of suffering. Over-individualising the causes of dukkha can in fact support unjust political and economic systems.

Remember Subhuti’s words:

Understanding this [the law of Karma], they [the marginalised] will gain the power and the courage to help themselves – not passively waiting for others to help them, but lifting themselves up and making for themselves a better life.

The claim that ‘the poor just need to help themselves’ is a common rhetorical device used by politicians and the corporate media to place the blame on to those that experience poverty, whilst distracting from the harmful and reckless behaviour of governments and corporations. This has been particularly prevalent in the UK since 2010, when the government has been slashing benefits and public services whilst employing the rhetoric of “strivers vs. skivers.”

I’ve worked in a food bank, I’ve given food parcels to people who work a 40 hour week and still can’t afford to feed their family. The idea that people are poor simply because they don’t try hard enough is a complete nonsense. Wages have stagnated whilst the cost of living has soared. Poverty is a consequence of our broken economy, not the laziness of individuals. And by suggesting the poor need to “help themselves – not passively wait for others to help them” Subhuti is reproducing the government’s manufactured delusion. We need to fight the system, not individuals.

The economist Charles Eisenstein claims that by engaging with suffering on an individual level – that is, by performing acts of charity rather than challenging the system itself – we support the structures that cause the suffering we claim to be attempting to alleviate. He identifies four ways in which this functions:

1)      we ameliorate some of the worst effects of capitalism, making capitalism more palatable

2)      we divert altruistic energy to relatively innocuous goals rather than addressing the systemic foundations of injustice

3)      acts of charity appease our own conscience and so make our own complicity with the system more palatable

4)      we may generate a co-dependent relationship with the needy in which the charitable enterprise depends for its survival on the very conditions it ostensibly seeks to address[6]

Question 4: can focussing on suffering on an individual level, without challenging structural suffering, actually support unjust and harmful structures?

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[1] Santikaro Bhikkhu, The Four Noble Truths of Dhammic Socialism,  http://www.inebnetwork.org/thinksangha/tsangha/skbdsbook.html

[2] Subhuti, Dharmachari, Dharma Revolution and the New Society: http://subhuti.info/sites/subhuti.info/files/pdf/DharmaRevolution.pdf

[3] http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=376

[4] This is particularly astonishing considering the paper is based on a talk given originally in October 2010, still very much in the wake of the global financial crisis of 2008.

[5] DN5, The Kutadanta Sutta, translted by Prof. T.W Rhys Davids - http://www.bps.lk/olib/wh/wh120-p.html

[6] Eisensteins’ own view is far more nuanced than I have described here. He demonstrated how this view can be inverted to provide a similar challenge to acts which tackle suffering on a purely systemic level. The answer, of course, is a synthesis of the two – we must both help those who are suffering and challenge the suffering caused by unjust systems. http://charleseisenstein.net/a-neat-inversion/