Thinking the Unthinkable: Not Growing the Economy

At what point does economic growth become uneconomic growth?

by Tim Jackson in Common Dreams

Every society clings to a myth by which it lives. Ours is the myth of economic growth. For the last five decades the pursuit of growth has been the single most important policy goal across the world. The global economy is almost five times the size it was half a century ago. If it continues to grow at the same rate, the economy will be 80 times that size by the year 2100.

This extraordinary ramping up of global economic activity has no historical precedent. It's totally at odds with our scientific knowledge of the finite resource base and the fragile ecology we depend on for survival. And it has already been accompanied by the degradation of an estimated 60% of the world's ecosystems.

For the most part, we avoid the stark reality of these numbers. The default assumption is that - financial crises aside - growth will continue indefinitely. Not just for the poorest countries where a better quality of life is undeniably needed, but even for the richest nations where the cornucopia of material wealth adds little to happiness and is beginning to threaten the foundations of our well-being.

The reasons for this collective blindness are easy enough to find. The modern economy is structurally reliant on economic growth for its stability. When growth falters - as it has done recently - politicians panic. Businesses struggle to survive. People lose their jobs and sometimes their homes. A spiral of recession looms. Questioning growth is deemed to be the act of lunatics, idealists and revolutionaries.

But question it we must. The myth of growth has failed us. It has failed the two billion people who still live on less than $2 a day. It has failed the fragile ecological systems we depend on for survival. It has failed spectacularly, in its own terms, to provide economic stability and secure people's livelihoods.

Today we find ourselves faced with the imminent end of the era of cheap oil; the prospect (beyond the recent bubble) of steadily rising commodity prices; the degradation of forests, lakes and soils; conflicts over land use, water quality and fishing rights; and the momentous challenge of stabilizing concentrations of carbon in the global atmosphere. And we face these tasks with an economy that is fundamentally broken, in desperate need of renewal.

In these circumstances, a return to business as usual is not an option. Prosperity for the few founded on ecological destruction and persistent social injustice is no foundation for a civilized society. Economic recovery is vital. Protecting people's jobs - and creating new ones - is absolutely essential. But we also stand in urgent need of a renewed sense of shared prosperity. A commitment to fairness and flourishing in a finite world.

Delivering these goals may seem an unfamiliar or even incongruous task for policy in the modern age. The role of government has been framed so narrowly by material aims and hollowed out by a misguided vision of unbounded consumer freedoms. The concept of governance itself stands in urgent need of renewal.

But the current economic crisis presents us with a unique opportunity to invest in change. To sweep away the short-term thinking that has plagued society for decades. To replace it with policy capable of addressing the enormous challenge of delivering a lasting prosperity.

For at the end of the day, prosperity goes beyond material pleasures. It transcends material concerns. It resides in the quality of our lives and in the health and happiness of our families. It is present in the strength of our relationships and our trust in the community. It is evidenced by our satisfaction at work and our sense of shared meaning and purpose. It hangs on our potential to participate fully in the life of society.

Prosperity consists in our ability to flourish as human beings - within the ecological limits of a finite planet. The challenge for our society is to create the conditions under which this is possible. It is the most urgent task of our times.

There is Only This

When the great Chinese Zen master Ta-mei was dying, his students asked him for a final helpful word. "When it comes, don't try to avoid it; when it goes, don't run after it," he said. Just then, a squirrel chattered on the roof. "There is only this, there is nothing else," said Ta-mei, and then he died.

Can we conceive of what this is? Can this be enough for us? Is there another reality more real or more wonderful than this? To know that there is only this is to, as Hui-neng put it, "see the original nature and not become confused."

~ Francis Dojun Cook, How to Raise an Ox

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Silently and serenely one forgets all words;

Clearly and vividly That appears

When one realizes it, it is vast and without edges;

In its Essence, one is clearly aware.

Singularly reflecting is this bright awareness,

Full of wonder is this pure reflection.

Dew and moon,

Stars and streams,

Snow on pine trees,

And clouds hovering on the mountain peaks.

In this reflection all intentional efforts vanish.

Serenity is the final word of all the teachings;

Reflection is the response to all manifestations.

~ Hung Chih of the Tsao Tung School

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Rest in Natural Great Peace

Rest in natural great peace
This exhausted mind
Beaten helpless by karma and neurotic thought,
Like the relentless fury of the pounding waves
In the infinite ocean of samsara.
Rest in natural great peace.

Above all, be at ease, be as natural and spacious as possible. Slip quietly out of the noose of your habitual anxious self, release all grasping, and relax into your true nature. Think of your ordinary emotional, thought-ridden self as a block of ice or a slab of butter left out in the sun. If you are feeling hard and cold, let this aggression melt away in the sunlight of your meditation. Let peace work on you and enable you to gather your scattered mind into the mindfulness of Calm Abiding, and awaken in you the awareness and insight of Clear Seeing. And you will find all your negativity disarmed, your aggression dissolved, and your confusion evaporating slowly like mist into the vast and stainless sky of your absolute nature.

~ Sogyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying

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"In the mind of natural perfection, certainly, moral discrimination and moral causality do not exist, yet what remains in nondual 'bodhichitta' , both the ground and the emanation of pure mind, which can only ever be pure vision and perfect conduct. .... there is no fall from grace, and there never has been a fall, and in the realization of that reality where the golden age lies just beneath an insubstantial, fragile surface of dualistic belief, any moral dualism becomes a problem rather than the solution.

So stay here, you lucky people,
Let go and be happy in the natural state.
Let your complicated life and everyday confusion alone
And out of quietude, doing nothing, watch the nature of mind.
This piece of advice is from the bottom of my heart:
Fully engage in contemplation and understanding is born;
Cherish non-attachment and delusion dissolves;
And forming no agenda at all reality dawns.
Whatever occurs, whatever it may be, that itself is the key,
And without stopping it or nourishing it, in an even flow,
Freely resting, surrendering to ultimate contemplation,
In naked pristine purity we reach consummation. "

~Longchepa, translated by Keith Downman

--from "Old Man Basking in the Sun."

"You'll laugh on the day of awakening, so you might as well laugh now!"


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A Fisherman

By Ikkyu (Ikkyu Sojun)
(1394 - 1481)

Studying texts and stiff meditation can make you lose your Original Mind.
A solitary tune by a fisherman, though, can be an invaluable treasure.
Dusk rain on the river, the moon peeking in and out of the clouds;
Elegant beyond words, he chants his songs night after night.

-- from Wild Ways: Zen Poems of Ikkyu, Translated by John Stevens

Contemplations

The joy which is
in Revelation
is nowhere else.
No amount of
perception
thinking
projecting
planning
doing
efforts
achieving
every will give you
that joy
that radiance
which Revelation does.

- Swami Amar Jyoti

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Close to Home

Jane Dobisc, who later became a Zen teacher under Korean Master Seung Sahn, went on a pilgrimage to the East as a young woman, searching for a Buddhist teacher. At one point she spent weeks trekking through the Himalayas to get to a particularly remote monastery. Reaching it at last she knocked upon the door and asked if she could see the lama.

"Oh, no," replied the nun who'd opened the door. "He's in New York."

When Dobisc returned home she discovered that Master Seung Sahn had been operating a practice center in Rhode Island all along, no more than a ten-minute drive from her family's home.

- from Sean Murphy's One Bird, One Stone (Renaissance Books)

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The Path

All of us are apprenticed to the same teacher
that the religious institutions originally worked
with: reality. Reality-insight says ... master
the twenty-four hours. Do it well, without self-
pity. It is as hard to get the children herded
into the car pool and down the road to the bus
as it is to chant sutras in the Buddha-hall on
a cold morning. One move is not better than the
other, each can be quite boring, and they both
have the virtuous quality of repetition.

Repetition and ritual and their good results
come in many forms. Changing the filter, wiping
noses, going to meetings, picking up around the
house, washing dishes, checking the dipstick-don' t
let yourself think these are distracting you from
your more serious pursuits. Such a round of chores
is not a set of difficulties we hope to escape
from so that we may do our "practice" which will
put us on a "path"-it is our path.

- GARY SNYDER, 'The Practice of the Wild'

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What Is The Point?

So what is the point of waiting? What exactly are you waiting for? Is somebody going to give you what you always wanted? Will a train come from Heaven bringing you goodies? But nothing that could ever happen could be as good, as precious, as who you are. What stops you from being, from being present, is nothing but your hope for the future. Hoping for something to be different keeps you looking for some future fantasy. But it is a mirage; you'll never get there. The mirage stops you from seeing the obvious, the preciousness of Being. It is a great distortion, a great misunderstanding of what will fulfill you. When you follow the mirage, you are rejecting yourself.

-- A.H. Almaas, from 365 Nirvana, Here and Now by Josh Baran

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All wisdom and holiness are but streaks of lightening - Huang Po

I love the mystery of it all. I love the ancient Chinese Zen Master Huang Po's declaration that all our spiritual insights are at best momentary lightening flashes in the vast mystery beyond all understanding. I am delighted that thought can never grasp its source and there is no way to explain it.

There are times of identification, of emptiness and fullness, of expansion and contraction. The awakening is reborn and refreshed each day as quiet releases, small epiphanies, gratitude and wonder. At each time it is the same awakening - the realization of being the silent presence, the enduring ground of wholeness and peace that is always here beneath the surface activity. All the variations in experience - including identification and sense of separation - are seen to be the expressions of this ever present reality underlying and sourcing it all.

Dasarath
Freedom Dreams

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That we know this awareness exists means only that we have an idea of awareness. We do not see that awareness as itself an object, nor can we ever do so. If we are to know the awareness by itself, first we would have to drop knowing its objects, its reflections in thought, including the ego-thought, and then be it, not see it.

- Notebooks of Paul Brunton

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"All disciplines are fixations: discipline excludes everything, except
the one thing that one wishes to concentrate upon. Thus one
establishes a dictatorship over oneself and all understanding is
jeopardized. What is absolutely necessary is attention without
strain. When I observe myself, I am really forced to admit that
every day I am the prisoner of a thousand unsatisfied desires, or
desires whose satisfaction brings me no permanent bliss. So it
seems to me that instead of endless running from one desire to
another, it would be better to stop and examine the true nature of
desire. If this investigation is successful you will penetrate the
nature of the true aim of all desire. What any desire really aims at, is
a state of non desire. This non desire is a state in which we demand
absolutely nothing. Thus it is a state of extreme abundance, of fullness.
This fullness is revealed as being bliss and peace. You now
know that you are really seeking nothing else but fullness and
absolute peace.

Now that you have understood the inner nature of your ultimate
goal, you perceive that the ultimate goal is, in fact, not a goal, that is
to say an end towards which you strive, but that the ultimate state
can only be the consequence of relaxing and letting go. Liberation is
not to be obtained by collecting and accumulating, but by being
rooted in a state of being which is truly ours and in which we live
constantly without knowing it. Even if we wished to, we could not
live for a single moment outside of this state."

- Jean Klein