BPF | Characteristics of Consumerism + Buddhist Foils

There are three parts to this section. The key characteristics of Consumerism do not fall into neatly defined, separate categories. Rather there is a whole web of interconnected factors. In keeping with the interconnected spirit of Buddhism, we have located three basic "areas". Within each of these areas, a number of interrelated characteristics are discussed.

Scientism & Dharma
Commodification-Alienation & The 3 Dynamics Of Nature
The Three Roots Of Evil & The Three-Fold Training

1) SCIENTISM AND DHARMA
a) Scientism and the Mechanization of Reality
The first key area of consumerism must necessarily deal with the larger foundation upon which it sits. This foundation we will call Scientism (not Science) which refers to the narrow minded and dogmatic application of scientific methods to all fields of knowledge. Scientism has developed out of the Enlightenment period in Europe of the 17th and 18th centuries. Scientism has turned Science into superstition through the belief in one method of human knowledge, rationality, to observe and understand all aspects of reality. As such, there has been a great focus on the material and quantitative, for what is spiritual and qualitative is outside the confines of the rational. The world which exists beyond such scientific inquiry has become private to the individual, and ultimately of little value to the organization of society.
Scientism has given birth to the concept of "machine", that which measures and produces material quantities. Beginning with the Industrial Revolution, this mechanization process has not only transformed the way we produce and consume material goods but also in the way we view our beings, organize our societies, and inter-relate. The machine as rational principle has created in the realm of human relationships the "sciences" of psychology & philosophy, politics and economics. Man's essential nature has become the sum of his appetites. Man's society has become the state, a political machine which collects quantitative duties (taxes) and distributes quantitative needs (housing, roads, utilities). Thirdly, man's marketplace has been stripped of its place and thus unique qualities and has become pure "scientific" principle, the trading of material desires. With market values such as acting in one's own interests, competitive behavior, the subordination of personal relationships, and anonymity being unleashed into society as a whole, the individual has become free from the higher community values which used to encase those of the market. Humans are now individuals free to competitively pursue our appetites within state confines deteriorating under the unbounded market.
This mechanization of man, his society and his relationships in the pursuit of material security has produced an all encompassing ethic of "progress" during the colonial period and "development" in the post World War II period. These terms are always expressed in quantities such as GNP, literacy rate, doctors per square kilometer, etc. Yet the nature of such a system is to disregard qualitative aspects such as diversity and the particular in the search for universal principles upon which to organize the whole. The whole becomes more important than its parts (organicism). The consequence is that all constituents are stripped down to common sets of quantifiable properties under this homogenizing power. Today, we see smaller communities, regions, ethnicities and countries stripped of their own creative powers by the greater "truths" of the rational machine. These groups are then made dependent on engineered needs and technologies spelled out by the "scientists" of larger states and markets.

b) Dharma: the web of particulars and truths
Buddhist teachings offer a radically different approach to understanding humanity (as opposed to organizing him). The overall concept may be called Dharma which has a deep and wide range of meanings. Strictly, Dharma is Nature - its laws, duties and fruits. Dharma does not streamline, organize and manage reality like Scientism but rather reflects a web of organic, holistic, complete and balanced systems which humans can come to understand. In this way, Dharma is a true science of observing and discovering the laws and properties of phenomena (object) through phenomena (subject). It encompasses not only physical and biological laws but also psychic and karmic (causality) laws. In this sense, it opposes Scientism by working with the spiritual as well as the material. Further, the spiritual is not reduced to measurable quantities but rather directly experienceable qualities.

As such, the emphasis is not upon machine but on sentience, on the living quality of any phenomenon. This sense for quality is also a sense for value and meaning which contrasts the pure quantification of Scientism. In Scientism, man moves forward for knowledge of all phenomena. Much of this knowledge, however, may have little meaning or digestibility for most people. Dharma, however, moves man forward for knowledge in the service of wisdom. Knowledge fits into a search for meaning and relevance, and only certain kinds of knowledge are acquired at certain times as the individual or group may find use for them. Scientism is as much as you can at once. Dharma is timely, using each piece of knowledge as a step towards greater understanding of self, society and Nature.

Dharma thus has a unique quality for each person and place. It respects the law of natural diversity in which forms find their highest possible development through access to a fantastic array of sources. In this way, Dharma encompasses the concept of ecology where the parts form an equally important part of a larger whole. Further, Dharma (or Nature) is not just the nature of the woods or ocean but the nature of all phenomena, such as the diverse properties of the mind or the flow of causes and conditions in urban areas. Understanding and harnessing these properties of Dharma provides a freedom with meaning. This is a freedom not to pursue what one wants but to discover one's full potential. Knowledge of this freedom, however, also bequeaths a sense of duty and responsibility. Duty and responsibility to those forces which enable one's freedom. This is duty to oneself, to one's supporting society and to the supporting Nature. True knowledge of this duty is the compulsion to follow the Truths of Nature which bequeath true freedom. Within such an order, the mass of artificial needs dictated by state and market transform into a clear, simple group of physical and spiritual requirements for achieving this qualitative freedom. Dependence upon technology is replaced by the independence of free-inquiry. Competition amongst individuals, groups, and societies is replaced by the cooperative inter-dependence of self, society and Nature.

2) COMMODIFICATION-ALIENATION & THE 3 DYNAMICS OF NATURE
a) Commodification: The Splintering of Identity
The second key area of consumerism concerns its essential dynamic or the system by which it works. This is commodification which understood more deeply is a process of alienation and disconnection. The idea behind commodification is to intervene between humans and any aspect of our reality (like our work, products, needs, words, image, environment, etc.) in order to create a commercial product of that reality to be sold for profit. This is the way capitalism makes money. It does not so much create new services or products. Rather it seeks to enter all the possible connection points in an economic transaction in order to distort value into price for the sake of turning a speculative (non-productive) profit.

The market's shedding of its particularities as a place within the larger confines of a civil society and the subsequent domination of its energies and values over societies has been the greatest cause for this alienation of man from himself. The mechanistic alienator in the market is money. Money homogenizes all qualitative value into a quantitative abstraction. Hence, a precious stone is equal to three weeks of a carpenter's skilled work. Money is the benchmark by which not only all things but also immaterial phenomena like skill and character are measured. As such, it has become the highest form of value and subsequently power.
This price making system created an initial alienation by inserting the mechanism of money between producer (creator), good (creation) and consumer (beneficiary). Yet the movement of a good out of its local environment to be sold in a new one creates another disconnection. "With the spatial distance that the product covers on its way from its place of production to the market, it also loses its local identity, its spatial presence." This process of "disembedding" is brought about by the more rapid movement of goods through the development of infrastructure and mechanized transport. Further, with the division of labor and mass production, another type of faceless good emerges, one which has no local identity and which, in all aspects, is exactly the same as the others made along with it.

Advertising also develops out of this alienation. As products are taken out of their locales, they are stripped of their original meanings and filled with new ones for the consumer in the new locale. Advertising plays its role through homogenizing local goods which had distinct qualities and investing quantities of faceless goods with meanings designed to create desire in the consumer and wealth for the producer. This is where the notion of "style" and the disturbing importance of "image" (as an abstraction of quantity) over substance in our modern capitalist culture comes in. For example, a Mercedes is more significant as a marker of affluence and sanctification than as a means of transport. For the consumer, real meanings get lost and the sense of difference between needs and desires eradicated.

With the commodification and alienation of man from nature, his livelihood, his fellow humans and himself, modern man is chopped into constituent parts and no longer has true identity, defined as "the unity or comprehensiveness of character". There is the self that works in one place which differs from the self that plays at another or the self that must cooperate with his fellow worker to get the job done yet also must compete with him for his place in the company.
In less economized societies, identity is still place based, mostly in the workplace or urban neighborhood, and consumption patterns tend to fall within these confines. Consumption in economized societies in the North and in urban areas of the "developing world" as well, however, marks a further splintering of identity. Identity shifts from consumption patterns rooted in class which is still very place centered to the actual patterns of consumption themselves.

With the commodification of not only goods and services but now personalities (like the image of Michael Jordan), the recreation of image and the commodification of an image with another image makes this splintering of man, goods and his own imagination endless. For example, the seductive image of sports personalities for consumers has come to the point where people actually want to buy in the clothes they wear the image (Nike) of the image of these sports personalities. When an Argentine comments,"But isn't Coca-cola Argentine" , we can know that the post-modern world of placeless and faceless consumer items has not only penetrated America but also wherever Coca-cola rears its head. Trans-national corporations make products completely "disembedded" from any place or context. They are the universal products to be consumed by universal citizens pursuing their individual appetites in a global free market.
Such a manipulation of image enables the powerful (corporations and their network of interests in state) to exploit the disenfranchised (the common citizen and consumer). The corporation has become the mediator between the individual and his/her own sense of identity, as seen in the religious like quality imbedded in consumer items. Through the control of production and imaging in advertising, corporations build larger amounts of quantifiable "sanctification" through capital accumulation while selling the empty image of success and material "sanctification" to the consumer and leaving him the poorer and less sanctified for it.

b) The Three Dynamics of Nature: Experiencing Consumerism's Bite
Buddhism's internal dynamic is based in the dynamics of Nature (Dharma) and directly contrasts the alienation and disconnection of commodification. Buddhism describes such basic dynamics as Impermanence (anicca), Dissatisfaction (dukkha), and Not-self (anatta). The dynamic of Not-self is not a nihilism but rather points to the holistic inter-connectedness of all things. Not-self means that no one person or phenomena rests by itself and is independent of causes and conditions. As such, it directly opposes the commodification process which breaks down the apparent connections between interdependent forms. In consumerism, money is seen as an independent, absolute form of value (self or atta). Further, form and image are fetishized. Goods are presented as independent entities to be acquired by another separate entity, the self or consumer. It is not that commodification actually defies these dynamics, rather it deepens confusion by hiding these truths more deeply. Impermanence and Dissatisfaction point to the futility of grasping and the filling up of oneself with commodified goods, services and images. Since the pleasure and satisfaction of consuming is fleeting, consumption is an endless process. In the end, it merely makes the producer richer and the consumer poorer financially and thus existentially as well.

The Buddhist system of Dependent Co-origination (paticca samuppada) enables us to examine how we interact in this process of consumerism. Consequently, it is a way to experience the inner-workings of these three dynamics and this process of commodification and alienation. Simply, beginning with misled notions such that there is a free standing, independent self and consequently other such selves and essences (ignorance), the mind concocts a stew of unconscious buffers towards experiencing reality as dualistic (sankhara). When one comes in contact (phassa) with various forms, especially consumer images, feelings (vedana) of pain, pleasure or neither-pain-nor-pleasure condition a relationship with oneself and that good. By not seeing into the Not-self, the Impermanence and the Dissatisfaction, one clings to various properties of the good (tanha&upadana). By this time, there has arisen a distinct sense of duality between subject and object. There is the individual self which sees the object as other and desires to bring it into the self. Once this separation is formed, a separation from the present occurs, and time and space take on significant meaning. Time is the period between desire and satisfaction. Space is the distance between self and object. This establishes a certain inescapable and unquenchable feeling of lack. The individual self is not enough, not complete and must be completed by an other. Not-self, Impermanence, and Dissatisfaction, however, all dictate that this action is temporarily satisfying at best. Unfortunately, the experience of this pain (another meaning of dukkha) more often leads us to reinforce our attempts to gain happiness through the acquisition of things, selves and essences. In sum, the modern consumer begins to look like the Hungry Ghosts (pretas) of Buddhist cosmology. These phantom-like creatures with withered limbs, grossly bloated bellies, and long, narrow needle-like necks wander through their existence in the vain search for sensual satisfaction.
The ignorance of commodification and advertising was created from this cycle of Dependent Co-origination. As the process continues unabated, these systems take on their own "life" energy like a virus, further taking advantage of the system of Dependent Co-origination. The individual becomes not only entrapped by his/her own ignorance but by a system created from that ignorance. Using this framework of Dependent Co-origination along with the Three Dynamics of Nature is the first step in awareness and understanding which leads out of our delusion.

a) Greed->Dispersion->Delusion->Despair
The third area of characteristics and foils concerns how we more consciously and actively behave upon the foundation of the first area and within the dynamics of the second area.
As we have seen through the system of Dependent Co-origination, desire or greed is a fundamental motivating factor in our consumer societies. Through this ethic of material accumulation spread by the unleashing of the market into society at large, we become ever more befuddled about how to relate to the world. The market and the state are perpetually designing new "needs" for the individual. The terms "need" and "want" have now almost become synonymous. Such an ethic has transformed our world into one of haves and have-nots. Poverty has taken on a distinct meaning of material underdevelopment. Those in poverty suffer from under-consumption of the essentials of a developed lifestyle, i.e. cars, TVs, expensive university educations, etc. Yet, as noted, we have become blind to what real our real needs are. So we see teenagers in the United States living on food stamps acquiring $150 Nike basketball shoes or squatter families living in corrugated steel shacks in Jakarta owning TVs and motorbikes.

As we can see, such greed naturally concocts dispersion and delusion. With the loss of a discriminating mind which distinguishes between need and desire, the door is open to swim in the ocean of delight and numbness in consumer goods and experiences. The media, principally TV, is the foremost component of this dispersion and delusion. It not only offers myriad worlds of entertainment without depth or meaning but is fueled by advertising dollars thereby spreading the ethic of greed every ten minutes with commercials. The consumption of experience in the booming leisure industries are another major arena of delusion and dispersion. From mega-media to tourism to sports, leisure activities have become a major component of most national economies. The foreign exchange made by governments on tourism and the building of entertainment empires like Time-Warner and Disney make the business of dispersion and delusion key components to solidifying ever centralized power structures.

The consequences of this dispersion and delusion is thus twofold. Firstly, it leaves the individual distracted and disconnected from him/herself and his/her surroundings. With so many games to watch, so much shopping to do, so many trips to take, we have less and less time to check in on our families, our relationships, our neighbors and, most importantly, ourselves. From the turning on of the TV first thing in the morning to the car stereo or walkman on the way to work to the pass out in front of the TV at night, the time to constructively ponder and plan a more meaningful life is washed away. With the ever increasing speed of technology, the disconnection's deepen into the next level in the causal chain, despair and disempowerment. There remains little hope for changing our lives when the "democratic" politics of "developed" countries involve image adjustment rather than policy adjustment, and from Bangkok to New York, people fear for their livelihoods as corporations shred employees in the race for competitive edge. This political effects of this consumer world dominated by market and state leads ever more deeply into the dispersion and numbness of consumer experience.

The Problem: greed-->dispersion-->delusion-->disempowerment/despair-->
paticca samuppada (revolving in the chain of suffering)

b) Renunciation->Mindfulness->Wisdom->Confidence/Faith
The Buddha's method for unraveling the nets of delusion seen with Dependent Co-origination is the Noble Eightfold Path. This path can be condensed into three interconnected practices sila-samadhi-panna. First, we begin with sila or Proper Action. In the face of unlimited greed and the loss of qualitative distinctions between right and wrong and needs and desire, sila offers a kind of discipline and ethics. There is a very detailed system in Buddhism, and such systems exist in other religions and social groupings. The core of sila for us in this sense today may be understood as "renunciation". Renunciation is an experience rich in diversity from culture to culture. Its essence is the letting go of certain pleasures for the chance to experience a higher meaning or perform a higher task. A traveling musician renounces a settled home in search of the muse. A boxer abstains from sex before a crucial fight. A business man gives up cigarettes for better health. The expressions are endless and beyond the stern admonishments of the starving recluse in the woods. Such extremism was not the Buddha's discovery. Rather he discovered a middle way of moderation. Renunciation in a consumer society begins with a spark of faith from the bitterness of consumer attachment and hope that disconnecting from these attachments will open new and deeper possibilities for fulfillment.
Further, such a value of renunciation reasserts the value of simplicity into our societies so that those in poverty are not seen as half-human underconsumers. Without such a vilifying sense of poverty, or in turn a paternalistic one of bringing lesser beings into the fold of consumer values, the poor may reassert their power of self-determination and rediscover the true priorities in their quest towards material and spiritual stability. The rich are transformed as well. In the Buddha's day, a person of wealth was called a sresthi. Their wealth was measured not by how much they had accumulated personally but by how many soup kitchens or shelters they had established. With renunciation as an active social value, it becomes clearer to the rich what they actually need for a comfortable life. The rest is excess to be shared with subordinates and those of lesser means among one's associations and community.

In the space and simplicity created from a life with a certain level of renunciation, the second component of Buddhist practice enters, namely, samadhi or Mindfulness. With the walkman and TV cleared away or used only at certain times, the reality of our place comes streaming in. We begin to notice how other family members spend their time. Intricacies in a loved one's state of being become apparent. Neighbors become like colleagues or extended family rather than faces next-door. Most centrally, our body, mind, emotions and our interaction with the world become more conscious. Connections between physical well being and emotional and mental well-being arise. Chronic ailments are cured with simple adjustments in one of these areas. In short, connections begin to be restored. In the Buddha's meditation of Mindfulness with breathing (anapanasati), the long slow breath yields greater Mindfulness, awareness and well-being. If we practices anapanasati for just a moment or two, we can experiences that the action films, multi-media entertainment, caffeine and nicotine, sports excitement, and shopping mall dazzlement of our consumer culture all make our breathing shorter and quicker and in turn make our thoughts faster, less-connected, less aware.

With the building of some restraint (renunciation) and some Mindfulness, the third component of the practice develops, Wisdom or panna. Renunciation opens our life up to deeper experiences in the present. Mindfulness enables us to seize on these moments and penetrate them ever more deeply. When this occurs, we begin to see the delusion of events surrounding us. We begin to see the bite of our greed and dispersion which had seemed so pleasurable before. We begin to see the non-lasting nature and instability of these pleasures and the frustrations they concoct as they fade and as we squirm and writhe to re-light them. Wisdom, however, does not end just here. Buddhism may seem like some value free system for gaining mental power. The system is, indeed, a very powerful tool for becoming aware of values and attachments and cutting them. However, Buddhism which uses sila and Mindfulness to train corporate workers to be better employees and more ruthlessly accomplish their tasks does not lead to true Wisdom. Wisdom may enable us to see the causes and conditions of events in our environment, yet it also critically includes the use of this Wisdom for thebenefit of others. Wisdom in the service of greed or power is not true Wisdom. True Wisdom harnesses the operative imperative of the human being, to spend a life in supporting others as a vehicle free of defilement. Being free of attachments allows us to help ourselves as we help others. We have seen through Dependent Co-origination that selfishness can never lead to the highest fulfillment. It runs contrary to the inter-connectedness of Natural Law. Working for the benefit of others is in harmony with this Law. If this power is developed, it can enable us to overcome the disconnective powers of those caught in greed, anger and delusion.

As an integrative practice, sila-samadhi-panna give rise to a host of physical, emotional and mental fruits in the same way that greed-anger-delusion give rise to dissatisfaction (dukkha). One of these fruits is a kind of Confidence or Buddhist Faith (saddha). Notice that this Faith comes as a result of practice and realization. It is not a blind faith based on something yet experienced. The practice of sila-samadhi-panna is not a single process. It rather occurs over and over at ever depending levels. Certainly, practicing in a world of conspicuous consumption will challenge us. Thus, Confidence is an important fruit to experience. When we are successful in moderation, in developing understanding and improving our lives and then in benefiting others, even just for one interaction, we will taste the fruit of Confidence. This is the fruit of discovering the harmony with the natural connectedness of our universe. Tearing down the massive nets of consumer delusion spun by corporations and entrenched state powers single-handedly is the task of a great Buddha. Taking on this as a personal practice can destroy the fruit of such Confidence. However, nourishing the small connections made in life through this practice will deepen it. As the practice deepens, the fruits of Confidence and connection deepen. As the virus of commodification and advertising spread by the principle of paticca samuppada (Dependent Co-origination), so can the anti-body of inter-connectedness spread by the principle of paticca-nirodha (the Interdependent Quenching of Suffering).

The Solution: sila-->samadhi-->panna-->saddha--> paticca nirodha (quenching of suffering)

The Methodology 1:
Individual: renunciation-->connection-->beneficial wisdom-->confidence to liberate oneself-->

c) Solidarity->Sharing->Communal Resources->Empowerment
The above maps out a process of individual transformation, yet as we have seen in Dharma and Wisdom (panna), there is a compulsion towards others and society. This is envisioned as Sangha or Community, the third pillar of Buddhism. Community reasserts the value of connection and of local, intimate groupings who support yet challenge one another towards realizing Dharma (Natural Truth). When we re-evaluate the Three-Fold Training on the level of Community, we can see it as a means for confronting the systems of exploitation seemingly out of reach by individuals. The Three-Fold training is the glue which bring and keeps Community together.

Firstly, sila (Proper Action) are the shared initiatives of the Community. Sila are the expressions of Community Solidarity renouncing individual concerns and working for betterment of the Community. In rural Thailand, Buddhist monks have been traditional leaders of the Community. Today, there are a number of cases of monks applying this personal Buddhist training to the social level. Based at the village temple, the buffalo bank and rice bank as bulwarks against the manipulation of these essential forms by outside market forces have become common forms of Community sila. In Japan, there is a well known network of food cooperatives run mostly by housewives. Although not directly informed by Buddhism, Buddhist temples as Community centers and priest's wives as intimates with local families are often the distributing points for the cooperative.

Within this concept of Proper Action are the notions of Right Speech and Right Livelihood. This calls for the monitoring of information and accountability within the Community. For example, ensuring that harmful forms of advertising and corporate propaganda, and outside businesses which have no long-term interest in the Community are kept out. Further, it marks a public witness of members of the Community not to engage in such practices in other Communities. Such practices flow right back into Renunciation as a key form of sila . The recent development of selective trade practices in which smaller Communities ban trade with businesses and corporations with unethical practices is one such example. In such cases, the Community renounces the trade benefits and material goods of an outside business not for political gain (as with many self-righteous governments) but for the higher benefits of a life which does not harm others. With local leaders espousing "buddhist" values like renunciation, such campaigns can develop even greater depth, creativity and force.

Secondly, coming out of Community Solidarity (sila) is Community Mindfulness (samadhi) which finds expression in a myriad of Community conscientization practices. In Thailand, there is a nationwide network of Buddhist monks called Phra Sekhiyadhamma which have devoted themselves to Community awareness campaigns on issues such as the wasteful use of plastics. This network has also engaged in the preservation of local and regional natural resources. Using a conscientization process called Dhammayatra (Dhamma Walk), this network of monks along with lay people have spent an entire month for both of the past two years walking around the deteriorating Lake Songkhla. The Lake, on which 20% of the residents in Southern Thailand depend, and its residents have been severely impacted in recent years due to rampant logging leading to drought, industrial prawn farming depleting vital mangrove forests, and economic "development" destroying local culture and community. These walks are an example of building Community Solidarity and initiatives (sila) and raising awareness and connecting the multifarious communities along this brackish lake. What is perhaps most interesting is that this walk has brought together Buddhist, Christian and Muslim communities using non-sectarian "buddhist" ideals. In Cambodia, where this practice of Dhammayatra was first used in modern terms as a witness to peace, lay and ordained Buddhist leaders have also taken a central role in the campaign against land mines.

Mindfulness takes form in religious Community as group prayer or meditation (body). In any Community, it can take form as the deepening of local and regional cultural heritage through the arts (feelings&mind). In the Mahayana tradition, from Tibet to China to Vietnam, Korea and Japan, Buddhist monks are well versed in the cultural arts from Thanka painting to calligraphy to tea ceremony. In consumerized Japan, the Buddhist temple is one of the best places to discover these marginalized arts. Although young Japanese are as entrenched in Coca-cola, shopping, and TV as any young westerner, it is still quite common for young women and young men to study one of these arts, often at a local temple.

Further, Mindfulness may take form in the preservation or re-awakening of knowledge of local plant and animal types which can offer the Community sustainable resources for medicines, food, clothing and shelter (phenomena). In the forest training traditions of Theravada Buddhism, monks still serve as healers with their intimate knowledge of local plant life. In Thailand, there is one temple quite well known for its dramatic results in curing heroin addicts, both local and foreign. Further, such forest monks have recently come to the fore as protectors and preservers of South East Asia's dwindling forests.

Theoretically, Mindfulness is the developing of concentration into unity or one-pointedness. Thus, practically, in terms of Community, it means the bringing together of individuals in united awareness and feeling through the Sharing of time, energy and information.

Thirdly, developing out of Solidarity (sila) and Sharing (samadhi) is Wisdom and the strength of the mind to cut through delusion. This is the strength of Community to empower itself through the Wisdom of its own resources. No longer dependent on government subsidized housing, urban communities renovate and gentrify decaying dwellings. No longer bending to cash crop agriculture and corporate ranches, rural communities re-establish self-sufficiency in food and communal lands for public energy needs and the like. In South East Asia, remarkable stories are coming to light of such communities, many of them based on Buddhist principles, still flourishing and almost untouched by the recent financial crisis hitting these countries. With the developing of Community Solidarity in sila and the Sharing of Community knowledge in Mindfulness, the Community becomes a powerful center of social action. Further, in keeping in line with the imperative of Wisdom to benefit others, a Community will not become a selfish entity narrow minded in outlook and hostile towards other Communities. Rather, the imperative to benefit moves the Community outwards towards other Communities in the same energy of Solidarity-Sharing-Communal Resources (sila-samadhi-panna) which enabled their smaller Community to prosper. Such Community based networks are growing throughout the Buddhist world. One such forum is the International Network of Engaged Buddhists (INEB). In such a way, small Community is built and strengthened while feeding into an ever widening web of Community. In the end, a truly beneficial global society emerges where Community, bio-region, land mass, continent and world are united in a cooperative social project.

On the personal level, one simple connection made through the Three-Fold Training imparts the higher mental and emotional fruits of Confidence (saddha) and satisfaction at something done well and contentment (sukha). These fruits are vital in nourishing the cultivation of the Three-Fold Training. Consequently, when one Community can build Solidarity, Sharing and Communal Resources and win just one small battle for their self-determination (stopping relocation from a dam project or cleaning up drug related crime), not only does the Community become empowered, it becomes a model and a resource to other communities struggling for self-determination. As communities all over the world splinter under Consumerism's Dependent Co-Origination (paticca samuppada), so can Communities re-unite under the Interdependent Quenching of Suffering (paticca-nirodha).

There are many cases today of this already happening. Many of these Communities are not Buddhist yet encompass these key methods of Dharma, the Three Dynamics of Nature, and the Threefold Training. What Buddhism may offer is an integrated and very powerful spiritual-social foundation for Communities yet unable to realize themselves. The above methods are not forms of social engineering which can be applied in a single form anywhere. Such engineering to overcome social problems is limited reform at best. This Buddhist model rather attacks social problems at their psychological roots of selfishness and ignorance. It then offers an integrated system of individual and communal awareness and practice on which social development in the service of generosity and wisdom can flourish.

The Methodology 2:
Communal: solidarity-->sharing-->communal resources-->empowerment-->