I would say that Buddhism emphasizes ethics which is the rational consideration of morals rather than the flawed gross moralism that judaism, christianity and islam are so prone to. A well considered ethic is actually a unitary thirdness greater oneness resolution…of a duality, that is a problem of opposites that seemingly will not resolve. An example of this is expressed in the buddhist symbol of black and white tears within a circle. The black and white tears are gross morals, the white dot in the black tear and vice versa in the white tear represents the necessity of the process of integrating opposites/the intellectual impulse and process of wisdom itself, and the entire image as a whole is an expression of trinity/thirdness/oneness/resolution/completeness/process.
Curiously, the semitic religions, understood and properly self actualized, point at trinity as well in that they point at grace as salvation/unity/resolution/completeness like Christianity’s Father, Son and Holy Ghost, Islam’s God is One God and Judaism’s Messiah/deliverer.
Viz paradigm changes and money and economics an analysis of the beneficial aspects of every historical paradigm change reveals that they are all an aspect or aspects of the natural philosophical concept of grace like trinity/thirdness greater oneness and Gifting for instance. This indicates that grace as in Strategic Monetary Gifting…is the new monetary and economic paradigm. MMT’s insight that government “deficits” are actually gifts of interest to bond holders and a job guarantee is a gift of income and hopefully of positive purpose, UBI is a continuing gift of income, and a “modern debt jubilee” is a gift of debt reduction albeit a one-off form of same. My contribution is the universally participated in and experienced 50% Discount/Rebate at the various points of retail sale, including the retail point of Finance which is a gift of price and a reciprocal gift of money back to the merchant granting the discount to the consumer which also expresses the trinitarian process and effect of double entry bookkeeping of 1) equal debits and 2) credits that 3) sum to zero.
Finally, why not have a Wisdomics-Gracenomics which is a thirdness greater oneness of capitalism and socialism and which is also an integration of the opposites of temporal universe systems and spirituality because its the greatest opportunity to self actualize grace as in gratitude for a gift…since meditation and prayer???
J:”I would say that Buddhism emphasizes ethics which is the rational consideration of morals rather than the flawed gross moralism that judaism, christianity and islam are so prone to.”
You may well say that. It is a very common misrepresentation of Buddhism calculated to make the religion attractive to potential Western converts. But it’s not true of any traditional form for Buddhism.
As Damien Keown (co-founder of the Journal of Buddhist Ethics) long ago observed, *Buddhism has no ethical discourses* (in the sense of meta-rules for making moral rules). Traditionally, Buddhism operates at the level of arbitrary moral rules. And these rules are bound up with supernatural doctrines such as karma and rebirth. This moral discourse is no more rational than the Christian one with their “sin” and “hell”.
Take a look at traditional Buddhist countries. How inspiring are Sri Lanka, Burma, and Thailand in terms of politics or economics? To me, not even a little bit, and I’m a Buddhist. Was 20th century Japanese imperialism, supported by the Buddhist establishment of the day, an attractive model? Not to me. Was pre-invasion Tibet, with 25% of it’s male population cooped up in monasteries (and thus economically unproductive) and the rest living in abject poverty, even remotely attractive? Nope.
The idea that Buddhists have anything to contribute to a better economics is not grounded in reality. In reality, most nominally Buddhist countries are now, or were until very recently, brutally repressive military dictatorships.
Westerners still tend to engage with their fantasies of the “mystic east” rather than with the reality of Asia and Asians. In 1978, Edward Said coined the term “orientalism” for this fallacy. Said had a huge impact amongst scholars of Asia. Clearly this has not manifested in the general public.
It would be nice to see some _informed_ opinions on these matters. But I’m not holding my breath.
Me: I’m not a student of buddhist history, but I don’t doubt your history is accurate. All of the world’s major wisdom traditions are corrupted by dualism/right/wrongism probably because of the powerful apparentency that dualism is an ultimate reality when its just another problem resolved by trinity/thirdness greater oneness, and possibly what I refer to as quadrinity which is a continual state of trinity and which is probably analogous to samadhi.
And again, relevant to economics we’re stuck in dualism(s) like capitalism vs socialism and incomplete analyses like systemic analysis ONLY instead of integrating both systemic and conceptual/paradigmatic analysis which can lead us to a thirdeness greater oneness I refer to as Wisdomics-Gracenomics…because wisdom is the intellectual discipline of the integration of opposites and the beneficial effects of every historical paradigm change have always been an aspect or aspects of the natural philosophical concept of grace/samadhi.
Social Credit/Wisdomics/Gracenomics/ Gracientialism 