Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-8bhkd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T09:52:14.729Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Sufficiency and Material Development: A Post-secular Reflection in the Light of Buddhist Thought

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2012

Shanthikumar Hettiarachchi
Shanthikumar Hettiarachchi*
Affiliation:
25/17 Pearce Av, Newington, NSW 2127, Australia. E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The notion of ‘sufficiency consciousness’ is a way of life to be adopted towards attitude change in a world that craves for absolutist secularity and religious dogmatism. The paper explores aspects of sufficiency that could promote material development, and as such require a total attitude change and behaviour remodification of public life. It is obvious that performance-driven targets, accelerated growth, investment and prosperity-driven agenda by market forces alone would lead to a skewed understanding of both the notion of sufficiency and material development. Hence, a proposition for value-based sense of material development, ethical buying and consumption have all become survival strategies for civil society groups and organisations to effect change from within. In the Buddhist scheme of thought, two significant core concepts of wisdom and compassion impact on social change and behaviour. Developing non-material values generated by wisdom and compassion are proposed as a lifelong pursuit in understanding human tendencies such as greed, clinging, and craving to amass wealth and excessive indulgence. Such an approach and an analysis evoke a sense of sufficiency alongside appropriate and sustainable material development. The use of certain economic indexes and other technical data in the paper indicate and symbolise the extent to which material progress is emphasised over and above the non-material. A possible development of an index such as Gross National Happiness (GNH) as proposed by the Thai specialists is included as an alternative to the sole-material-progress-based data discourses. Cultivating oneself with compassion juxtaposed by wisdom challenges all to uphold goodness as part of being human. Opposition to such a view of life and a way of life is problematic in the light of the current phenomena of theatrical performance of violence to redress grievances as well as limitless confidence in economic growth and greedy investment plans. It is a value-laden counterpoint to the zero tolerance that can address the larger socio-political issue of the alterity1 that both help to understand what actually sufficiency means in the array material development. Wisdom becomes a guide to action with compassion, while compassion expands the capacity of wisdom to understand the part and the whole. It is in this interplay of value-tracking that one is able to realise the importance of human activity that can evolve checks and balances, which are imperative to measure material development and social progress. ‘Sufficiency consciousness’ and material development are healthy, vibrant and adaptive aspects for civil society groups as well as other institutions to participate critically in ‘religious affairs’ in a ‘secular realm’ with what life offers. The non-material basis of wisdom and compassion offers a wholesome view of ‘sufficiency consciousness’, which is fundamental to material development, economic activity, political governance, institutional arrangements and campaign strategies, for civil society groups to achieve their potential. Wisdom steers compassion while compassion transforms wisdom in those engaged in human activity, which is both about ‘here’ and the ‘not yet’.

Type
Focus: Religiosity and Public Spaces
Information
European Review , Volume 20 , Issue 1 , 04 January 2012 , pp. 114 - 130
Copyright
Copyright © Academia Europaea 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

References and Notes

1. The term meaning ‘otherness’ (Emmanuel Lévinas) strictly being in the sense of the other of two. It is generally understood as the philosophical principle of expressing one's own view for that of the ‘other’, more popularised in a series of essays under the title Alterity and Transcendence. See Smith, M. B. (1999/1983) Alterity and Transcendence (New York: Columbia University Press). Later scholarship develops this idea as construction of ‘cultural others’ in G. C. Spivak, R. Guha, H. Bhabha, H. Dabashi, A. Nandy and Balagangadhara (1988) Selected Subaltern Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
2.Race, A. (2007) Religion in public life, a non-violent path to conflict resolution and peacebuilding. In: K. Mofid, A. Acikgenc, K. J. Mcinley and S. Salur (eds) Globalisation for the Common Good Conference, Istanbul 5–9 July 2007 (Fatih University Press, 2008), p. 189.Google Scholar
3. See. Tollison, R. D. and Willet, T. D. (1973) International integration and the interdependence of economic variables. International Organisation, 7(3), 255–271.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
4. ISI was created in the 1990s as the world's first measure of the ability of 53 countries to participate in the information revolution, see www.idc.com/groups.isi/main/html [accessed 1 April 2010].Google Scholar
5.http://www.idc.com/groups/isi/main.html [accessed 2 April 2010].Google Scholar
6. Walpola Rahula in fact refers to an important Buddhist text – W. Rahula (1954–59) The Book of Middle Length Sayings 3 volumes (Bristol: Pali Text Society) p. 301. See also Rahula, W. (1996) What the Buddha Taught (Oxford: Oneworld Publications), p. 46.Google Scholar
7.Pieris, A. (1996) Love Meets Wisdom: A Christian Experience of Buddhism, Faith meets Faiths series (Colombo: Orbis Books Maryknoll) (first edition 1988), pp. 65–67.Google Scholar
8.Sivaraksa, S. (1972) Religion and development. Dialogue, 3(2), p. 52.Google Scholar
9.http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/10/opinion/10zencey.html [accessed 2 April 2010].Google Scholar
10. This unique conference was held on 19–20 November 2007. The European Commission, European Parliament, Club of Rome, Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and World Wildlife Fund (WWF) hosted this high-level conference with the objectives of clarifying which indices are most appropriate to measure progress, and how these can best be integrated into the decision-making process and taken up by public debate. Over 500 people from economic, social and environmental spheres attended.Google Scholar
11. These papers took centre stage of the ‘Beyond GDP’ conference in Brussels in November 2007. They indicate the messages it wished to convey to a wide range of people that matter: ‘GDP is no longer a good measure of well-being’, ‘GDP “outdated” as an indicator of wellbeing: there's more to life than GDP (but not much more)’, ‘Does money buy happiness? Can wellbeing be measured?’ Does growth equal progress?’, ‘Wealth and well-being.’Google Scholar
12. The five key actions support the Commission's aims to develop indicators relevant to the challenges of today – ones that provide an improved basis for public discussion and policy-making. (i) Complementing GDP with environmental and social indicators; (ii) near real-time information for decision-making; (iii) more accurate reporting on distribution and inequalities; (iv) developing a European sustainable development scoreboard; (v) extending National Accounts to environmental and social issues. This position indeed indicates a significantly alternative way to work considering the fragile economies and social deficits on the increase at the global level.Google Scholar
13. The Four Sublime States (Cattaro Brahmavihara): (i) metta (loving kindness); (ii) karuna (compassion); (iii) mudita (sympathetic joy or rejoicing at others’ happiness and prosperity); (iv) upekkha (equanimity). Keeping these sublime states in mind, will all beings be happy.Google Scholar
14. In his article ‘Clash of civilisation, remaking of the New World Order’, published in Foreign Affairs magazine in 1993, Samuel P Huntington made headlines in American politics and provoked great debate among international relation theorists and proponents in his description of post-Cold War geopolitics, which contrasted with the influential ‘End of History’ thesis advocated by Francis Fukuyama. Huntington expanded his piece to book length and published it as The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Touchstone) in 1996. The article and the book posit that post-Cold War conflict would most frequently and violently occur because of cultural rather than ideological differences.Google Scholar
15. Neo conservatism is a political philosophy that emerged in the United States of America, and which supports using American economic and military power to bring liberalism, democracy, and human rights to other countries. Such a position has been proven unsustainable time and time again. I use the word ‘converted’ because of the change his ideas since 2002 and alongside his endorsement of Barak Obama in the 2008 presidential election and the distancing of himslef all together from the previous Republican administration.Google Scholar
16. F. Fukuyama's controversial book from 1992, End of History and the Last Man (New York: Avon Books) expands on his 1989 essay The End of History? published in the international affairs journal The National Interest. Fukuyama argues that the advent of Western liberal democracy may signal the end point of humanity's socio-cultural evolution and the final form of human government.Google Scholar
17. The word ‘tolerance’, I would not use as it contains some effort by the parties concerned in order to bear the good, bad and the ugly of the other party because there is no other option. Hence, the word loses what it wishes to convey. The alternative phrase might be ‘respect for opposite opinion’ which one can maintain with certain mutual trustworthiness.Google Scholar
18. J. Habermas (2008) What do we mean by ‘post-secular’ society? Paper presented by the author at the Istanbul Seminars organized by Reset Dialogues on Civilizations in Istanbul from 2–6 June 2008 see http://www.resetdoc.org/story/ for his long discussion.Google Scholar
19.Suttanipata (sn), PTS, gatha 457.Google Scholar
20.Dhammasangani (Dhs) PTS, para 1498.Google Scholar
21. One such case is the ecclesiastical paedophile scandal of the Roman Catholic tradition, which has embarrassed its own high moral ground and is under scrutiny by what is known as secular institutions standardising the good the right practice in order that there is transparency and accountability to protect the vulnerable individuals in society. This debate is at its peak at the time of writing this paper.Google Scholar
22. The idea of sufficiency economy philosophy is succinctly summarised in M. Krongkaew (2000) The philosophy of sufficiency economy, http://kyotoreview.cseas.kyoto-u.ac.jp/issue/issue3/article_292.html, [accessed 5 April 2010]. The idea was first developed by His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej, the King of Thailand. It caught the imagination beyond the national context, when the international community at the tenth United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) acclaimed ‘Sufficiency Economy’, February 2000, which expressly recognised His Majesty as ‘the Developer King’.Google Scholar
23.Edwards, D. (1998) The Compassionate Revolution: Radical Politics and Buddhism (Devon: Green Books), p. 11.Google Scholar
24.Loy, D. (2003) The Great Awakening: A Buddhist Social Theory (Boston: Wisdom Publications). Here Loy explains in detail how Buddhism can help the contemporary world develop ‘liberative’ possibilities otherwise obscured by the anti-religious bias of so much contemporary social theory.Google Scholar
25. See Habermas, J. , A ‘post-secular’ society – what does that mean? Istanbul Seminar series, http://www.resetdoc.org/story/00000000926, [accessed 5 April 2010].Google Scholar
26. According to the Capital Economics (US based think tank), the figures from the second quarter of 2010, the American firms cannot squeeze any more productivity from their workers – a 3.6% increase in the US employee hours worked, with only 2.6% increase in the US employee output. This is a 0.9% decline in US employee productivity, the first decrease since the financial crisis began. This shift has caused a 0.2% increase in unit labour costs to the firm. See. ‘Hitting the limits’, Newsweek (Asia Edition) 23 and 30 August 2010, p. 9.Google Scholar