Buddhism is among the religions that guide the beliefs and values held by Buddhists. It is a tradition that predominantly focuses on individual spiritual development. Buddhists have a tendency of striving for a deep insight into life’s true nature and do not in any way worship deities or gods. Because Buddhism commenced as a religion of the Iron Age, and all its critical teachings being pre-modern, some have questioned whether it could help humans to understand and address the contemporary social issues including economic globalization, terrorism as well as biotechnology (Lay 2009, p.101). The Buddha mainly understood the human dukkha, the way it works, its causes and how to bring it to an end. Perhaps, one of the most renowned lessons in Buddhism is that provided by David Loy as he links the three poisons of greed, ill will and delusion with institutionalized forms of dukkha. This paper seeks to explore the connection for Loy and assess ways in which the three positions relate to systems of economics, institutions, media and military.
The translation of dukkha is often “suffering” but its meaning is that even the wealthy and healthy also have some level of dissatisfaction or a disease that continues festering. It is not accidental for humans to find life as dissatisfactory since it is the nature of their minds to bother about something. Pali Buddhism describes three forms of dukkha. The first type of dukkha includes everything that people identify as mental and physical suffering (Loy 2008, p.44). This also includes all the things that people do not want to separate from and remaining stuck with those they do not want to be with. The second form is dukkha because of impermanence or the realization that one could be enjoying something at the moment, it will soon end. An example is the awareness of death that affects the way people appreciate life. Realizing that death is an inevitable things often casts a shadow that deters the ability of humans to live fully and in the moment. The third form of dukkha is difficult to comprehend. This is dukkha that results from conditioned states or non-self. Frustration results from one’s sense of being a self in a unique world from the world that they are in. This is an illusory separation and has been identified as the most dangerous delusion.
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One of the modern ways of expressing this truth is the fact that self-ego does not have an independent reality because of being a psycho-social-linguistic construct. The fact is quite significant since it contributes to the likelihood of both a reconstruction and deconstruction. People are forced to undertake such a quest since their lack of reality is usually experienced as an emptiness at their very core. They feel this problem because of the sense of inadequacy; a consistent source of frustration since it cannot be resolved. To compensate for this, people often spend their lives attempting to achieve things that they think could make them to be more real. However much they try, their anxious sense-of-self could not become a real-self. In other words, humans tend to identify with as well as attach to something within the world, and believe that this could make them to become whole and complete. Many of people’s social issues could be traced to collective or group ego whereby they identify with their gender, religion or nationality and discriminate their own group from other groups (Loy 2013, p.1). The ironic aspect is that institutionalized religion also has a tendency of reinforcing this discrimination since religion in itself encourages people to subvert such dualisms that exist between the self and other. Contrastingly, the Buddhist non-discrimination does not entail privileging one group over another. This implies that selflessness offers the foundation for social action of the Buddhist. Despite this, the situation today has changed compared to the one of Shakyamuni Buddha as people have more access to powerful scientific technologies and social institutions.
Three Poisons Institutionalized
Loy argues that modern institutions erroneously take on a life of their own as new collective ego forms. The example provided is the way large corporations function. Even in case the CEO of a multinational organization intends to be socially responsible, they are limited by stockholder expectations. In case he responds to environmental concerns rather than interests of these stockholders, there is likelihood that he may lose his job. Such companies, according to Loy, are new types of impersonal collective self that flourish in preserving themselves and increase their power. The three poisons provide a critical foundation for understanding the relationship between collective selves and dukkha (Loy 2014, p.20. The Buddhist conception of karma places an emphasis on the role of intentions since an individual’s sense of self is made up of mainly habitual intentions and actions. One wonders whether the three poisons relate. To simplify this, in case collective selves exist, there is likelihood that collective ill will, collective delusion and collective greed also exist. This means that the current economic system tends to institutionalize greed while militarism has a tendency of institutionalizing ill will as the corporate media institutionalizes delusion. In other words, the three poisons operate collectively and have become institutionalized.
Institutionalized Greed
In the current economic system, organizations are not sufficiently profitable and individuals’ consumption is never enough. This is a circular process where all persons participate but there is little personal sense of responsibility for the things that take place. Contrary to what people often hear, such an economic system is neither inevitable nor natural. It is founded on the historical worldview that perceives the world as resources, people as labour as well as money as capital. All things become a means to the motive of profit which can never be fulfilled, thus implying that greed has taken precedence in the society. Despite the current economic system providing many benefits, it institutionalizes greed in two major ways: companies are never profitable enough and people’s consumption is never sufficient (Loy 2013, p.1). To increase profits, people have to be conditioned into discovering the meaning of their lives through purchases and consumption. Things that people are inevitable and natural are factually conditioned and could be changed. Corporate capitalism has increasingly been globalized, thus implying that the emphasis on growth and profitability will only become the engine of the planet’s economic activity. All things are subordinated, including the quality of life as well as the environment, to the anonymous need for more growth and profits; an objective that cannot be satisfied.
Institutionalized Ill Will
Loy believes that much of the suffering of the world is attributed to the way of thinking about evil and good. The fundamental issue with the simplistic way of understanding conflict as good versus evil is that it deters people from conducting a deeper scrutiny by precluding further thought. This simply means that once something is depicted as evil, people find no need of explaining it, but work towards fighting against it (Loy 2009, p.101). The criminal justice system in the US that incarcerates a higher percentage of its population compared to any other country is an example. This begs the question on why people are incarcerated. One of the reasons is that the incarcerated symbolize what is wrong with the current society, hence people vent their collective ill will through expelling and placing them in a place they cannot be seen. Through incarceration, there is no need to think about them. The institutionalization of militarism is the best example of collective aggression and institutionalized ill will. After the Second World War, the United States failed to de-militarize but maintained a permanent war-economy for fighting communism (Pranke 2015, p.255). When communism collapsed at the end of 1980s, the military industrial complex problem was created, but currently an unending ‘war against terrorism’ has taken place. Today, militarism continues afflicting the world, and the US remains a militarized society since WWII. It is estimated that during the 20th century, not less than 105 million individuals died because of war, with many of them being non-combatants. It is estimated that the global military expenditures such as the arms trade made up the largest expenditure in the world in 2005. A Buddhist perspective suggests that the ‘war on terror’ is similar to an Abrahamic civil war. George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden had a similar understanding regarding the struggle between evil and good, as well as the need to bring evil to an end despite belonging to various sides. The ironic aspect is that one of the major triggers of evil has been the historical attempt to eliminate evil. For example, Mao, Stalin and Hitler were trying to purify humanity through elimination of its negative elements including landlords, kulaks and Jews. In other words, terrorism cannot be destroyed through militarism since it is a tactic rather than an enemy.
Institutionalized Delusion
Buddhism appears to be a description of people’s dreams. This is because each person lives inside various delusions that distort their expectations and perceptions. Buddhists remain conversant with this problem, but humans reside in a larger bubble that significantly ascertains the way they collectively comprehend the world and themselves. The media is the institution that plays a critical role in moulding people’s collective sense of self (Purser & Milillo, 8). It has increasingly become people’s “group nervous system.” Ideally, genuine democracy calls for an activist and independent press in order to expose abuse as well as talk about political issues. However, as the major media try to become mega-corporations, they abandon all apart from the pretence of objectivity. Because the media are profit-making corporations with a bottom-lie of advertising revenue, they are mainly concerned with how to maximize these profits (Ives 2005, p. 172). They do not find it necessary to question the aspect of consumerism. For example, because of clever advertisements, people can satisfy their chocolate and coffee cravings without understanding the social conditions of farmers growing the commodities for them. They are also not aware of what is affecting the biosphere including global warming, extinction of species and disappearance of rainforests. A crucial aspect of genuine education is understanding that a larger proportion of the things that people perceive as natural and inevitable are conditioned (Ives 2008, p.32). The world should not be the way it is, and there are numerous other possibilities. However, the current role of the media is foreclosing many of these possibilities through confining public awareness. The developed societies in the world are currently dominated by a power elite made up of the government and large organizations such as the major media. People seamlessly move from one institution to the other due to little difference in their perception or objectives; mainly economic expansion (Loy 2003, p.22). The media’s role is normalizing the situation in order for the society to accept it and continue performing its roles, particularly frenzied consumption that is needed for maintaining economic growth. Understanding the nature of the three institutional poisons presented by Loy is crucial.
Overall, Loy creatively links the three poisons of ill will, delusion and greed with dukkha’s institutionalized forms. This paper has assessed way in which they connect dukkha with institutions of the media, military and economics. There is need for people to dispel the element of group delusion in order to have a better understanding the socio-economic and ecological realities. In case the parallel between individual and collective dukkha holds, it becomes difficult to conclude that the great socio-economic and ecological crises today are also spiritual problems, thus calling for a response that also has some spiritual element. The significance of individual commitment to non-violence, spiritual practice as well as the understanding that ending dukkha needs people to tackle others’ dukkha as well. The current power elites and organizations are unable to address the crises that threaten humanity and future of the planet. They have become part of the problem, and perhaps a Buddhism that promotes social awakening could be transformational.
References
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Loy, D. 2014. Listening to the Buddha: how greed, ill-will and delusion are poisoning our institutions . Open Democracy. https://www.opendemocracy.net/transformation/david-loy/listening-to-buddha-how-greed-illwill-and-delusion-are-poisoning-our-instit
Loy, D. 2014. The Three Poisons, Institutionalized . The Huffington Post. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-loy/buddhist-three-poisons_b_4293245.html
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