The Buddha on Wall Street: What's Wrong with Capitalism and What We Can Do about It - Paperback

by Vaddhaka Linn (Author)

After his Enlightenment the Buddha set out to help liberate the individual, and create a society free from suffering. The economic resources now exist to offer a realistic possibility of providing everyone with decent food, shelter, work, and leisure, to allow each of us to fulfill our potential as human beings, while protecting the environment. What is it in the nature of modern capitalism which prevents that happening? Can Buddhism help us build something better than our current economic system, to reduce suffering and help the individual to freedom? In this thought-provoking work, Vaddhaka Linn explores answers to these questions by examining our economic world from the moral standpoint established by the Buddha.

Having completed a degree in economics, Vaddhaka Linn initially worked in the United Kingdom in trade unionism, politics, and adult education, before joining the Triratna Buddhist Community, in which he has lived and worked since 1994. He now divides his time between the United Kingdom and Estonia, where he teaches and helps to run a Buddhist center

Front Jacket

After his Enlightenment the Buddha set out to help liberate the individual, and create a society free from suffering. The economic resources now exist to offer a realistic possibility of providing everyone with decent food, shelter, work, and leisure, to allow each of us to fulfill our potential as human beings, while protecting the environment. What is it in the nature of modern capitalism which prevents that happening? Can Buddhism help us build something better than our current economic system, to reduce suffering and help the individual to freedom? In this thought-provoking work, Vaddhaka Linn explores answers to these questions by examining our economic world from the moral standpoint established by the Buddha.

"Many Western Buddhists regard Buddhism as primarily a path to personal insight and inner peace, thus as a virtual escape route from the madness of the modern world. Yet deep within the Dharma are the seeds for a new vision of human relatedness, a web of ideas about how our social and economic systems can promote authentic well-being rather than the oppression, violence, and exploitation so widespread today. Vaddhaka Linn here boldly uses the lens of Buddhism to closely examine the dominant structures of corporate capitalism. He lays bare the pernicious consequences of these structures and draws forth from the Teaching suggestions for creating benign alternatives conducive to true human flourishing. This book helps us to better see the Dharma as a comprehensive message that has much to offer to the emergent global community in its broadest dimensions. It should also help Buddhists understand more clearly the potential relevance of Buddhism to the crises of our age."
Bhikkhu Bodhi, editor In the Buddha's Words

"Buddhism arose at a time of rising inequalities, partly as an answer as to how to behave in, understand, and remedy such times. The Buddha on Wall Street is an invaluable guide to how this time, faced again with crisis, there are alternatives to believing there is no alternative."
Professor Danny Dorling, School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford, and author Inequality and the 1%.

"The Buddha on Wall Street is an original, insightful, and provocative evaluation of our economic situation today. If you wonder about the social implications of Buddhist teachings, this is an essential book. "
David R. Loy, author Money, Sex, War, Karma: Notes for a Buddhist Revolution.

"Do ever greater income levels lead to greater human fulfilment? Vaddhaka Linn does an outstanding job exposing the false accounting of social ills that make it into the list of goods, as measured in the GDP statistics. More fundamentally, he questions any definition of wellbeing that does not rest on a firm ethical foundation, developing a refreshing Buddhist critique of the ends of economic activity."
Dominic Houlder, Adjunct Professor in Strategy and Entrepreneurship, London Business School

"Slavoj Zizek has written that Western Buddhism is the 'perfect ideological supplement' to capitalism. Zizek the provocateur thinks Western Buddhism is complacent about the terrible harms of unbridled neoliberal capitalism. Vaddhaka Linn's essay makes the argument for an activist Buddhism that responds to Zizek's challenge."
Professor Owen Flanagan, Department of Philosophy, Duke University, and author The Bodhisattva's Brain: Buddhism Naturalized

Author Biography

Having completed a degree in economics, Vaddhaka Linn initially worked in the UK in trade unionism, politics, and adult education, before joining the Triratna Buddhist Community in which he has lived and worked since 1994. He now divides his time between the UK and Estonia, where he teaches and helps to run a Buddhist center.