This book defends and articulates an "Engaged Buddhist" approach to
economics as a response to the destructive effects of global capitalism.
The author posits that Buddhist understandings of the distortions of
greed, aversion, and ignorance can be read to apply not only to mental
states but also to socio-political ones, and that such a reading
suggests rational responses to current social and environmental
challenges. The book proposes that we engage both "inner and outer"
modes of transformation through which to free ourselves from our current
human-made, dysfunctional systems: the former, by examining the workings
of our own minds, the latter by criticizing and reforming our economic
systems. Since traditional Buddhism provides few sources to build a
Buddhist economic vision, this work brings together Buddhist notions of
skillful practice, John Dewey's pragmatic principles for social
provisioning, and institutional economics. The author provides two case
studies for experiments in Buddhist-based socioeconomic policies,
Thailand and Bhutan. Of special interest is the implied parallel between
worldviews emerging from modern socially-engaged Buddhism and Dewey's
notion of a human existential drive to shape the world in collectively
beneficial ways.