Hooked!: Buddhist Writings on Greed, Desire, and the Urge to Consume

---

Judith Simmer-Brown suggests that a kind of "Buddhist liberation theology" might be necessary as an ideological framework for what will necessarily be a prolonged struggle to name the forms taken by consumerist desire and develop strategies for its transformation. On the level of the individual practitioner these strategies sound like traditional Buddhist meditation: But "liberation theology" implies as Simmer-Brown, Kaza, Santikaro, and others say overtly a collective praxis for social as well as psychospiritual change.

Kaza remarks that, historically, religions have been cultural sites for the discussion of ultimate and collectively resonant questions, reproducers of ideology but also, potentially, revolutionary transformers as well. The "inner work" of overcoming greed in the mind must be paired with an "outer work" of social change.

The suggestion of these Buddhist writers collectively seems to be that Buddhism and the other world religions, rooted as they are in the precapitalist past, might have central roles to play in this necessary revolution toward a post-consumerist and therefore ecologically sustainable mode of human life.

The essays in Subverting Greed take up this suggestion. Seven scholars of religion who have thought deeply about the role of religions in a world of globalized capitalism offer responses to these questions: Just as the writers in Hooked! The writers survey their respective traditions on the issues of economic ethics, generally concluding that, for every religion, the virtues of attention to the collective good rather than private profit, generosity rather than greed, communal longterm sustainability rather than immediate gratification of desires for pleasure especially on the part of the wealthy and powerful, are the winnowed wisdom of the traditions' authoritative voices.

The underlying question, raised by them all, however, is on the order of: Share with your brothers and sisters, especially the poorest! In the absence of powerful social movements, religious wisdoms tend to sound like old saws preached to the converted. These essays are intended for classroom use in courses on religion and social ethics questions for class discussion [End Page ] are provided at the end of each chapter , and so one might respond to the challenge by asserting that education, the gradual raising of consciousness in the schooling of the young, is the answer, at least at the level of what scholars, separate from their possible other roles as activists and some of these writers are also activists can do.

Hooked! : Buddhist writings on greed, desire, and the urge to consume

This cultural work of raising consciousness, in which the study of religions centrally includes a focus on the environmental and economic implications of their traditional teachings, is obviously vital, and Subverting Greed is an important, helpfully short, contribution to the literature available to teachers.

The question does persistently arise, however, of why, if the religions are so unanimous in their teaching of nonmaterialist and thereby anticapitalist values, they have not as yet seemed to have offered any significant resistance to the globalization of capitalism. Of course, liberation theologies in Latin America, Africa, and Asia were significant forces in the social movements of the s and s, and in some cases later as well.

But in the twenty-first-century world of incipient eco-collapse in the midst of imperial war, terrorism, and continued economic exploitation of the poor by the rich, the emancipatory voices of the religions have seemed to be drowned out by the voices of worldly forces on the one hand and the global spread of religious fundamentalisms on the other.

Subverting Greed presents the religions as important resources for a communal, compassionate, and just global ethico-economic pattern of life. Its writers are skilled interpreters who know their traditions well and are clear and well informed about the realities of the contemporary world situation. These are the religious spokespeople that the socially engaged Buddhists of Hooked! David Loy is the one writer who appears in both texts must seek out in dialogue if the Buddhist liberation theology they are interested in developing is to have dialogue partners in the wider realm of world religions.

HOOKED! Buddhist Writings on Greed, Desire, and the Urge to Consume

But if the writers of both of these collections wish to substantiate the cry of the World Social Forum that "another world is possible" in resistance to the practices of greed that ravage the planet, then the question of social and political praxis must be addressed, responsive to the Leninist question, "What is to be done? Project MUSE promotes the creation and dissemination of essential humanities and social science resources through collaboration with libraries, publishers, and scholars worldwide.

Forged from a partnership between a university press and a library, Project MUSE is a trusted part of the academic and scholarly community it serves. Built on the Johns Hopkins University Campus. This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience on our website.

Altruism, Professional Decorum, and Greed: Perspectives on Physician Compensation. McCarty - - Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 38 2: Moral Equivalents of Greed.

Next Article

Alan Cottey - - AI and Society 28 4: Smith - - Journal of Human Values 16 2: Conversations About Need and Greed. Living Paradoxes of a Global Age.

An Eastern Christian Perspective. Karras - - Buddhist-Christian Studies 24 1: Added to PP index Total downloads 16 , of 2,, Recent downloads 6 months 1 , of 2,, How can I increase my downloads? Sign in to use this feature. This article has no associated abstract. No keywords specified fix it.

No categories specified categorize this paper. History of Western Philosophy.

• Text Encoding Initiative: Background and Context
• How We Met: Sita Describing Her Marriage to Rama
• Killing Ground on Okinawa: The Battle for Sugar Loaf Hill
• A Hometown Went to War
• The Literacy Game: The Story of The National Literacy Strategy
• NATO Forces Part 2: Fighting the Forces of Evil
• Temple of Dreams, The Changing Face of Ibrox