Over the past two decades I have had continuous contact with Buddhist
communities, in both traditional cultures and the industrialized West.
These experiences have made me keenly aware that industrial development
affects not only our way of living, but our world view as well. I have also
learned that if we are to avoid a misinterpretation of Buddhist teachings,
we need to look closely at the fundamental differences between societies
that are part of the industrialized global economy and those that are
dependent on more localized economies.

In the Buddha's day, societies were more deeply rooted to their place in
the natural world. Economies were more localized, in other words, of a
scale that made explicit the human interdependence with other sentient
beings and the rest of creation. Relations between people and between
culture and nature were relatively unmediated. Direct observations and
experiences of the natural world provided the basis for ethical decisions
in individual lives. The Buddha's teachings were formulated within the
context of societies shaped by these direct connections to community and to
the living world. Buddhism is, in fact, about life. It is about the
constantly changing cycles of the natural world: birth and death, joy and
sorrow, the opening of a flower, the waxing and waning of the moon. It is
about the impermanence and interdependence that characterize all that
lives.

In the modern industrial world, on the other hand, complex technologies and
large-scale social institutions have led to a fundamental separation
between people, as well as between humans and the living world. Since our
daily lives seem to depend largely on a man-made world--the economy,
electric power, cars and highways, the medical system--it's easy to believe
we depend more on the technosphere than on life, or the biosphere. As the
scale of the economy grows, it also becomes increasingly difficult for us
to know the effects of our actions on nature or on other people. These
forms of separation stem from and reflect a fragmented world view that is
essentially antithetical to the Buddha's teachings. In fact, modern society
is based on the assumption that we are separate from and able to control
the natural world. Thus the structures and institutions on which we depend
are reifications of ignorance and greed--a denial of interdependence and
impermanence.

The significance of these differences may not be immediately apparent to
Western Buddhists, most of whom have grown up within the industrial system
and have known no other way of life. It can therefore be easy to confuse
rapid technological and economic change with impermanence or the cycles of
nature, or to believe that the current attempt to amalgamate diverse
economies into a so-called unified global economy reflect the Buddha's
notion of interdependence. The result is sometimes passive acceptance in
the face of changes that are not only counter to Buddhist values, but are
fundamentally anti-life.

As engaged Buddhists we have a responsibility to examine current economic
trends carefully, in the light of Buddhist teachings. I am convinced that
such an examination will engender in us a desire to actively oppose the
trend toward a global economy and to help promote ways of life consistent
with more Buddhist economics.

Globalization: Eradicating the Diversity of Life

Through "free trade" treaties and globalization, a single economic system
is threatening to encompass the entire planet. At its core this system is
based on a very narrow view of human needs and motivations. It is concerned
almost exclusively with monetary transactions and largely ignores such
nonmaterial aspects of life as family and community, meaningful work, or
spiritual values. The focus on monetized social relations is echoed in the
belief that people are motivated primarily by self-interest and endless
material desires. Significantly, the Western economic system sets about not
to temper our supposedly self-centered, acquisitive nature, but rather to
exploit it: it is believed that an "invisible hand" will transform the
selfish actions of individuals into benefits for society as a whole.

What does the globalized economy really mean? The president of Nabisco once
defined it as "a world of homogeneous consumption"--a world in which people
everywhere eat the same food, wear the same clothing and live in houses
built from the same materials. It is a world in which every society employs
the same technologies, depends on the same centrally managed economy,
offers the same Western education for its children, speaks the same
language, consumes the same media images, holds the same values, and even
thinks the same thoughts. In effect, globalization means the destruction of
cultural diversity. It means monoculture.

Cultural diversity is a reflection of people's connection to their local
environment, to the living world. Centuries of conquest, colonialism, and
"development" have already eroded much of the world's cultural diversity,
but economic globalization is rapidly accelerating the process. Along with
multilane highways and concrete cities, globalization is bringing to every
comer of the planet a cultural landscape dominated by fast-food
restaurants, Hollywood films, cellular phones, designer jeans, the Marlboro
Man, Barbie.

If globalization is bringing monoculture, then its most profound impact
will be on the so-called Third World, where much of the world's remaining
cultural diversity is to be found. In the South the majority still live in
villages, partly connected through a diversified, local economy to diverse,
local resources: still connected more to the biosphere than the
technosphere. Because of pressures from globalization, locally adapted
forms of production are being replaced by systems of industrial production
that are ever more divorced from natural cycles. In agriculture--the
mainstay for rural populations throughout the South--this means a centrally
managed, chemical-dependent system designed to deliver a narrow range of
transportable foods to the world market. In the process, farmers are
replaced by energy-and capital-intensive machinery, and diversified food
production for local communities is replaced by an export monoculture. As
the vitality of rural life declines, villagers are rapidly being pulled
into squalor in shanty towns. The Chinese government, for example, is
planning for the urban population to increase by 440 million people in the
next twenty years, an explosion that is several times the rate of overall
population growth.

Development not only pushes farmers off the land, it also centralizes job
opportunities and political power in cities, intensifying the economic pull
of urban centers. Advertising and media images, meanwhile, exert powerful
psychological pressure to seek a better, more "civilized" life, one based
on increased consumption. But since jobs are scarce, only a fraction
succeed. The majority end up dispossessed and angry, living in slums in the
shadow of advertisements for the American Dream. Despite the disastrous
consequences, it is the effective policy of every government to promote
these trends through their support for globalization.

What happens when rural life collapses and people who once relied on nearby
resources become tied to the global economy? Consider traditional
architecture, in which structures were built from local resources: stone in
France, clay in West Africa, sun-dried bricks in Tibet, bamboo and thatch
in the Philippines, felt in Mongolia, and so on. When these building
traditions give way to "modern" methods, those plentiful local materials
are left unused while competition skyrockets for the mono-culture's narrow
range of structural materials, such as concrete, steel, and sawn lumber.
The same thing happens when everyone begins eating identical staple foods,
wearing clothes made from the same fibers, and relying on the same finite
energy sources. Because it makes everyone dependent on the same resources,
globalization creates efficiency for corporations, but it also creates
artificial scarcity for consumers, thus heightening competitive pressures.

In this situation those on the bottom rungs of the economic ladder are at a
great disadvantage. The gap between rich and poor widens, and anger,
resentment, and conflict increase. This is particularly true in the South,
where people from many differing ethnic backgrounds are being pulled into
cities where they are cut off from their communities and cultural moorings,
and where they face ruthless competition for jobs and the basic necessities
of life. Individual and cultural self-esteem are eroded by the pressure to
live up to media and advertising stereotypes, whose images are invariably
based on an urban, Western consumer model: blond, blue-eyed, and clean. If
you are a farmer or are dark-skinned, you are made to feel primitive,
backward, inferior. As a consequence, women around the world use dangerous
chemicals to lighten their skin and hair, and the market for blue contact
lenses is growing in markets from Bangkok to Nairobi and Mexico City. Many
Asian women even undergo surgery to make their eyes look more Western.

Contrary to the claims of its promoters, a centrally planned global economy
does not bring harmony and understanding to the world by erasing the
differences between us. Uprooting people from rural communities by selling
them an unattainable urban white dream is instead responsible for a
dramatic increase in anger and hostility, particularly among young men. In
the intensely demoralizing and competitive situation they face, differences
of any kind become increasingly significant, and ethnic and racial violence
are the all but inevitable result.

My experiences in Ladakh and in the Kingdom of Bhutan have made me
painfully aware of this connection between the global economy and ethnic
conflict. In Ladakh, a Buddhist majority and a Muslim minority lived
together for six hundred years without a single recorded instance of group
conflict. In Bhutan, a Hindu minority had coexisted peacefully with a
slightly larger number of Buddhists for an equally long period. In both
cultures, just fifteen years' exposure to outside economic pressures
resulted in ethnic violence that left many people dead. In these cases it
was clearly not the differences between people that led to conflict, but
the erosion of their economic power and identity. If globalization
continues, the escalation of conflict and violence will be unimaginable;
after all, globalization means the undermining of the livelihoods and
cultural identities of the majority of the world's people.

The Response of Engaged Buddhists

In the difficult situation globalization is creating, Buddhism's
philosophical foundation and emphasis on compassion put the followers of
the profound teachings in a unique position to lead the way out. Not only
can Buddhism provide the intellectual tools needed to oppose further
globalization but, more important, it can help illuminate a path toward a
localization based on human-scale structures--a prerequisite for action
rooted in wisdom and compassion. For how can we make wise judgments if the
scale of the economy is so great that we cannot perceive the impact of our
actions? How can we act out of compassion when the scale is so large that
the chains of cause and effect are hidden, leading us to unwittingly
contribute to the suffering of other sentient beings?

Despite the answers Buddhism offers, many Western Buddhists have been slow
to address the disturbing social and economic impact of globalization. In
part this is clearly because Westerners in general have received very
little accurate information about the impact of the global economy,
particularly on the so-called Third World. Another reason may be a lack of
clarity about the fact that Buddhist teachings refer to the state of the
world as it is, in and of itself, unaffected by human intervention. In
other words, it refers to the natural world, not an artificially
constructed technosphere and its corrupt economic system. In fact, the
teachings warn against "ignorant" human interpretations of reality--that
is, seeing the world as made up of static, separate particles. We need to
see many of today's institutions and suprastructures as nothing more than
reified ignorance.

The challenge for Western Buddhists is to apply the Buddhist principles
taught many centuries ago, in an age of localized social and economic
interactions, to the highly complex and increasingly globalized world in
which we now live. To do so it is vital that we avoid the mental traps of
conceptual thought and abstraction. Otherwise it is easy, for example, to
confound the ideals of the "global village" and the borderless world of
free trade with the Buddhist principle of interdependence--the unity of all
life, the inextricable web in which nothing can claim completely separate
or static existence. The buzzwords--"harmonization;' "integration,"
"union," etc.--make it sound as though globalization is leaving us more
interdependent with one another and with the natural world. In fact, it is
instead furthering our dependence on large-scale economic structures and
technologies and on a shrinking number of ever larger corporate monopolies.
It would be a tragic mistake, indeed, to confuse this process with the
cosmic interdependence described by the Buddha.

The Buddhist notion of impermanence can also be distorted unless we are
clear about the fundamental differences between life processes and the
global economic system. The Buddha's teachings are about change and
impermanence in the natural world. We are taught to accept the ever
changing flow of life in the biosphere, the cycles of life and death, the
impermanence of all beings. The changes precipitated by globalization,
however, are based on a denial of the impermanence in nature observed by
the Buddha. Megaprojects such as nuclear powerplants, dams, and
superhighways are not a part of the flow of life that the Buddha taught us
to accept, nor is the manipulation of genetic material through
biotechnology. Instead, these are manifestations of a world view that seeks
to dominate nature and pretends that life can be held static, split into
fragments, and manipulated to satisfy the needs of a technologically
dependent consumer culture.

Two final and interconnecting Buddhist concepts can sometimes be
misconstrued to support social apathy: karma and the three poisons of
greed, hatred, and delusion. The Law of Karma is one way to explain the
growing gap between rich and poor: if one is rich, one must have performed
good deeds in the past. However, an honest examination reveals, of course,
that the more immediate cause of much social inequality is a global
economic system which allows a few to prosper at the expense of the many.
Rather than attributing differences in wealth to karma from the deeds of
past lifetimes, we need in particular to acknowledge the implications of
the urbanized Western lifestyle. The lack of wisdom and compassion inherent
in this lifestyle is quite evident: we in the industrialized parts of the
word consume roughly ten times our share of the world's resources, often
oblivious to the incalculable cost to all life on this planet. Without
taking entire responsibility personally for a global system that has been
built up over centuries, we nonetheless need to muster the courage to
scrutinize our collective contribution to a system that encourages
exploitation and social atomization and exacerbates inequalities and
destruction---often out of sight, on the other side of the world.

The three poisons of greed, hatred, and delusion are to some extent present
in every human being, but cultural systems either encourage or discourage
these traits. Today's global consumer culture nurtures the three poisons on
both an individual and societal level. At the moment, $450 billion is spent
annually on advertising worldwide, with the aim of convincing
three-year-old children that they need things they never knew existed, such
as Coca-Cola and plastic Rambos with machine guns. Before the rise of
consumerism, cultures existed in which this type of greed was virtually
nonexistent. Thus we cannot conclude that the acquisitiveness and
materialism of people trapped in the global economic system are an
inevitable product of human nature. Instead we need to recognize the near
impossibility of uncovering our Buddha natures in a global culture of
consumerism and social atomization.

Buddhism can help us in this difficult situation by encouraging us to be
compassionate and nonviolent with ourselves as well as others. Many of us
avoid an honest examination of our lives for fear of exposing our
contribution to global problems. However, once we realize that it is the
complex global economy that is creating a disconnected society,
psychological deprivation, and environmental breakdown, Buddhism can help
us to focus on the system and its structural violence, instead of
condemning ourselves or other individuals within that system. The teachings
can encourage an understanding of the many complex ways that we affect
others and our environment and encourage empathy and a profound affirmation
of life. Only by recognizing how we are all part of this system can we
actively work together to disengage from these life-denying structures.

Stepping Back from the Global Economy.

At a structural level, the fundamental problem is scale. The ever expanding
scope and scale of the global economy obscure the consequences of our
actions: in effect, our arms have been so lengthened that we no longer see
what our hands are doing. Our situation thus exacerbates and furthers our
ignorance, preventing us from acting out of compassion and wisdom. In
smaller communities, people can see the effects of their actions and take
responsibility for them. Smaller scale structures also limit the amount of
power vested in one individual. What a difference between the leader of a
large nation-state and that of a small town: one has power over millions of
faceless people with whom there will never be any real contact; the other
coordinates the affairs of a few thousand people and is an active part of
the community. The scale of the modern nation-state has become so large
that leaders would be unable to act according to the principles of
interdependence, even if they wished to. Decisions are instead made
according to abstract economic principles--in the name of "progress"--often
disregarding the implications for individual members of society and for the
rest of the living world.

In decentralized economies and political structures it is difficult to
ignore the laws of impermanence and interdependence. Being personally
accountable to the community means being constantly in tune with its
changing social and environmental dynamics. Since the consequences of any
action are evident in a smaller community, decisions are more likely to be
guided by wisdom and compassion. As difficult as it may sound, our choice
as Buddhists seems clear: we need to help move society toward rebuilding
smaller-scale social and economic structures that make possible a life
based on Buddhist notions of interdependence and impermanence. It is
helpful to remember that continuing the competitive race toward increased
globalization is far more difficult. In fact the global economy represents
an impossible dream, since it is eradicating the diversity on which life
depends.

An important aspect of moving toward smaller-scale human institutions is
reaffirming a sense of place. Each community is unique in its environment,
its people, its culture. Human scale minimizes the need for rigid
legislation and allows for more flexible decision making; it gives rise to
action in harmony with the laws of nature, based on the needs of the
particular context. When individuals are at the mercy of faraway,
inflexible bureaucracies and fluctuating markets, they feel passive and
powerless; more decentralized structures provide individuals with the power
to respond to each unique situation.

Despite the many environmental, social, and even ethical benefits that
decentralized economic activity could provide, governments are blindly
promoting exactly the opposite: massive centralization on a global scale.
Since economic centralization is promoted in the name of "oneness" and
"interdependence," among the first steps we need to take as Buddhists is to
educate ourselves and others about the mental confusion that these terms
engender. By seeing education as action and promoting discussion and
sharing information we can remove the layers of ignorance that lead us to
unwittingly support a system of greed and violence while we are striving in
our individual lives to do just the opposite. Once we are more awake, we
can join with others to pressure government for changes in policy.

Since the global economy is fueled by transnational institutions that can
now overpower any single government, the policy changes most urgently
needed are at the international level. In theory, what is required is quite
simple: governments that have ratified "free trade" treaties such as the
Uruguay Round of GATT need to sit down around the same table again. This
time, instead of operating in secret--with transnational corporations at
their side--they should be made to represent the interests of the majority.
This can only happen if there is far more awareness at the grassroots,
awareness that leads to real pressure on policymakers.

Pressuring for policy change can seem a daunting task. Many today have
abandoned any hope of meaningful political change, thinking that we no
longer have any leverage over our political leaders. But it is important to
remember that in the long term, blind adherence to the outdated dogma of
free trade benefits no one, not even the political leaders and corporate
CEOs that are promoting it today. Among its other effects, globalization is
eroding the tax base and power of nation-states--and that means the budgets
and influence of elected officials. It is also threatening the job security
of individuals, even at the highest levels of the corporate world.

It is heartening to realize that even the tiniest change in policy toward
curtailing the movement of capital and diversifying economic activity at
the local and national levels would reap enormous systemic rewards. The
ability to shift profits, operating costs, and investment capital between
far-flung operations has played a key role in the growth of ever more
powerful transnational corporations. Today the capital controlled by these
businesses and the ease with which it can be transferred around the world,
allow corporations to hold sovereign nations hostage simply by threatening
to leave and take their jobs with them if governments attempt to regulate
or restrict their activities. Rules that limited the free flow of capital
would therefore help to reduce the advantage that huge corporations have
over smaller, more local enterprises and would make corporations more
accountable to the places where they operate.

Steps to decentralize energy development would also be immensely
beneficial. All around the world, large-scale power installations are
heavily subsidized. Phasing out these multibillion dollar investments,
while offering real support for locally available, renewable energy
supplies would result in lower pollution levels, reduced pressure on
wilderness areas and oceans, and less dependence on dwindling petroleum
supplies and dangerous nuclear technologies. It would also help to keep
money from "leaking" out of local economies.

In less-industrialized countries in particular, large dams, fossil-fuel
plants, and other large-scale energy infrastructures are geared toward the
needs of urban areas and export-oriented production. Shifting support
toward a decentralized, renewable energy infrastructure would help to stem
the urban tide by strengthening villages and small towns. Since the energy
infrastructure in the South is not yet very developed, there is a realistic
possibility that this could be implemented in the near future if there were
sufficient pressure from activists lobbying Northern banks and funding
agencies.

A parallel change in regulatory laws could also provide significant
systemic benefits. In almost every country, for example, tax regulations
currently discriminate against small businesses. Small-scale production is
usually more labor intensive, and heavy taxes are levied on labor thorough
income taxes, social welfare taxes, value-added taxes, payroll taxes, and
so on. Meanwhile, tax breaks (accelerated depreciation, investment
allowances, and tax credits, etc.) are afforded the capital-and
energy-intensive technologies used by large corporate producers. Financial
policies aimed at reversing this bias in the tax system would not only help
local economies, but would create more jobs by favoring people instead of
machines.

Until now, governments of every stripe have embraced free trade policies in
the belief that liberalization and economic globalization will cure their
ailing economies. However, since these policies are, in fact, eroding the
tax base,destroying countless businesses, and leading to widespread
unemployment, policymakers will soon be forced to wake up to the real
impact of globalization and reassess the free trade dogma. Policy changes
such as those outlined above would shift the economy virtually overnight
toward fuller employment and truly free markets, in which stronger small-
and medium-sized businesses could compete. They would also enable local and
national governments to generate the taxes they require to fulfill their
obligations to society.

Localization: Toward a Buddhist Economics

Even now, without the help from government and industry that a new
direction in policy would provide, people are starting to change the
economy from the bottom up. This process of localization has begun
spontaneously, in countless communities all around the world. Economic
localization means adaptation to cultural and biological diversity; no
single blueprint would be appropriate everywhere. The range of
possibilities for local grassroots efforts is therefore as diverse as the
locales in which they take place.

In many towns, for example, community banks and loan funds have been set
up, increasing the capital available to local residents and businesses and
allowing people to invest in their neighbors and their community, rather
than in a faceless global economy.

In other communities, "buy local" campaigns are helping locally owned
businesses survive even when pitted against heavily subsidized corporate
competitors. These campaigns not only help to keep money from leaking out
of the local economy, but also help educate people about the hidden
costs--to their own jobs, to the community, and the environment--of
purchasing cheaper but distantly produced products.

In some communities, Local Exchange and Trading Systems (LETS) have been
established as organized, large-scale bartering systems in which even
people with little or no "real" money can participate, benefiting the local
economy. LETS have been particularly beneficial in areas with high
unemployment. The city government of Birmingham, England, where
unemployment hovers at 20 percent, has been a cosponsor of a highly
successful LETS scheme. Such initiatives have psychological benefits that
are just as important as the economic benefits: a large number of people
who were once merely unemployed--and therefore "useless"--are becoming
valued for their skills and knowledge.

One of the most exciting grassroots efforts is the Community Supported
Agriculture (CSA) movement, in which consumers in towns and cities link up
directly with a nearby farmer. In some cases, consumers purchase an entire
season's produce in advance, sharing the risk with the farmer. In others,
shares of the harvest are purchased in monthly or quarterly installments.
Consumers usually have a chance to visit the farm where their food is
grown, and in some cases their help on the farm is welcomed. While small
farmers linked to the industrial system continue to fail every year at an
alarming rate, CSA is allowing small-scale, diversified farms to thrive in
growing numbers. CSA has spread rapidly throughout Europe, North America,
Australia, and Japan. In the United States, the number of cities with CSA
has climbed from only two in 1986 to two hundred in 1992 and is closer to
one thousand today.

These and countless other initiatives around the world are a reflection of
a growing awareness, a realization that it is far more sensible to depend
on our neighbors and the living world around us than to depend on a global
economic system built of technology and corporate institutions. As
Buddhists faced with this same reality, we have little choice but to become
engaged. Buddhism provides us with both the imperative and the tools to
challenge the economic structures that are creating and perpetuating
suffering the world over. We cannot claim to be Buddhist and simultaneously
support structures that are so clearly contrary to Buddha's teachings,
antithetical to life itself.

The economic and structural changes needed will inevitably require shifts
at the personal level as well. In part, these involve rediscovering the
deep psychological benefits--the joy--of being embedded in community.
Another fundamental shift involves reintroducing a sense of connection with
the place where we live. The globalization of culture and information has
led to a way of life in which the nearby is treated with contempt. We get
news from China but not next door, and at the touch of a TV button we have
access to all the wildlife of Africa. As a consequence, our immediate
surroundings seem dull and uninteresting by comparison. A sense of place
means helping ourselves and our children to see the living environment
around us: reconnecting with the sources of our food (perhaps even growing
some of our own), learning to recognize the cycles of the seasons and the
characteristics of flora and fauna.

As the Buddha taught, our spiritual awakening comes from making a
connection to others and to nature. This requires us to see the world
within us, to experience more consciously the great interdependent web of
life--of which we ourselves are among the strands. In this way we
experience the teachings of impermanence and interdependence, principles
which exhort us to interact with others and with nature in a wise,
compassionate, and sustainable way.