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The ideas expressed in this essay are Rev. Esnur's personal opinions.
Mises
and the Buddha
Dukkha and Human Action
The
Argument: Both Siddhartha the Buddha and Professor von Mises saw the
crucial
role of Dissatisfaction in stimulating Human Action. However, they
found
significantly different solutions to the problems thus facing humanity.
The
Buddha expressed his view through his Four Noble Truths [1]
First, the truth of dukkha
Second, the truth of the
cause of
dukkha
Third, the truth of freedom
from
dukkha, and
Fourth, the truth of the way to
eliminate dukkha, which is the Eightfold Path
Dukkha
is a basic unsatisfactoriness pervading all forms of existence, because
all
forms of life are changing, impermanent and without any inner core or
substance. [2] Thus, the word "dukkha" that is often translated as
"suffering" is a much broader concept, of which suffering, pain, and
the like, are but examples.
Dukkha
is any cause of
dissatisfaction.
Mises'
view can be summed as: All
Human Action
is Predicated on Dissatisfaction.
Satisfying
human needs in a world of scarcity requires continual purposeful
choices among
means, in a variously changing world.
"The
most general
prerequisite of action is a state of dissatisfaction, on the one hand,
and, on
the other, the possibility of removing or alleviating it by taking
action.
(Perfect satisfaction and its concomitant, the absence of any stimulus
to
change and action, belong properly to the concept of a perfect being.
This,
however, is beyond the power of the human mind to conceive. A perfect
being
would not act.) Only this most general condition is necessarily implied
in the
concept of action." [3]
"
'Acting man is
eager to substitute a more satisfactory state of affairs for a less
satisfactory. His mind imagines conditions which suit him better, and
his
action aims at bringing about this desired state' (HA, p. 14). In order
for
action to occur, two conditions must be met. The actor must be
dissatisfied in
some manner. Furthermore, the actor must consider himself capable of
remedying
his specific dissatisfaction. If this is so, then the actor will pursue
the
dissatisfaction's elimination, provided that the benefit of eliminating
it
exceeds the disutility of his own labor in doing so. " [4]
Siddhartha
Gautama and Ludwig von Mises were both from highly sophisticated
societies,
though separated by two and a half millennia and a large part of
Eurasia. Both
were well-educated scions of substantial families. Each would have been
recognized by their contemporaries as "gentlemen of refinement."
In
some ways the societies they each spoke to were similar -- urban,
wealthy,
appearing to be stable, with well-developed commercial and cultural
traditions.
Similarly, both societies were on the brink of major changes. Great
dissatisfaction was felt by many of their contemporaries.
In
traditional India the domination of the Brahman class was being
challenged
while in Middle Europe, the old Imperial Germanic ruling elite was
losing its
hold on power.
Both
Mises and the Buddha became teachers and both had their most notable
effectiveness beyond their own homelands. Buddhism, while only a
minority sect
in India, became a dominant religion in Eastern Asia. Mises' theories
of Human
Action took root especially across the Atlantic in America where Mises
sought
refuge from the Nazis.
What
is the nature of the dissatisfaction that led Siddhartha to teach his
"Middle Way" of being harmless (the Eightfold Path) while Mises
developed a full theory of Human Action built on subjective choices
responding
to that same basic human lack of satisfaction?
"[T]he
editor to
the 4th revised edition Bettina Bien Greaves explains
“Mises’ contribution was
very simple, yet at the same time extremely profound. He pointed out
that the
whole economy is the result of what individuals do. Individuals act,
choose,
cooperate, compete, and trade with one another. In this way Mises
explained how
complex market phenomena develop. Mises did not simply describe
economic
phenomena - prices, wages, interest rates, money, monopoly and even the
trade
cycle - he explained them as the outcomes of countless conscious,
purposive
actions, choices, and preferences of individuals, each of whom was
trying as
best as he or she could under the circumstances to attain various wants
and ends
and to avoid undesired consequences. Hence the title Mises chose for
his
economic treatise, Human Action.” [5]
Siddhartha
saw no end to suffering without acceptance of his four-fold teaching on
Dukkha.
He considered individual enlightenment, through release of attachments
and
desires, to be the only way to an end of suffering.
Mises
understood that all values are individual and subjective; that all
dissatisfaction is individual too. Yet he saw great risk to human
civilization
as a whole, and consequent suffering, if his prescriptions for an
unhampered
market in Human Action were ignored. He concludes his masterwork, Human
Action,
with this powerful warning:
"Man's
freedom to
choose and to act is restricted in a threefold way. There are first the
physical laws to whose unfeeling absoluteness man must adjust his
conduct if he
wants to live. There are second the individual's innate constitutional
characteristics and dispositions and the operation of environmental
factors; we
know that they influence both the choice of the ends and that of the
means,
although our cognizance of the mode of their operation is rather vague.
There
is finally the regularity of phenomena with regard to the
interconnectedness of
means and ends, viz., the praxeological law as distinct from the
physical and
from the physiological law.
The
elucidation and the
categorical and formal examination of this third class of laws of the
universe
is the subject matter of praxeology and its hitherto best-developed
branch,
economics. The body of economic knowledge is an essential element in
the
structure of human civilization; it is the foundation upon which modern
industrialism and all the moral, intellectual, technological, and
therapeutical
achievements of the last centuries have been built. It rests with men
whether
they will make the proper use of the rich treasure with which this
knowledge
provides them or whether they will leave it unused. But if they fail to
take
the best advantage of it and disregard its teachings and warnings, they
will not
annul economics; they will stamp out society and the human race."
Chapter
XXXIX [6]
A
year or so before his passing (I recall it was 1972) Mises spoke to a
group of young
libertarians in Philadelphia. He warned this group of long-haired
students
(including a future congress-critter or two; son of a Nobel laureate;
future
best-selling authors and heads of university departments): "You
are eating your seed corn."
And he was right. He
predicted the course of the Baby Boomer generation.
Conclusion:
Both teachers recognized the primacy of individual Human Action
predicated on
individual dissatisfaction.
Nonetheless,
that action can be universal in application: the Buddha proclaimed,
when he
achieved his enlightenment, "I
together with all
beings and the great
earth attain the Way!" [7]
Mises
offered his humanitarian vision of the Way as a general prescription
for the
good society. From dissatisfaction comes purposeful Human Action; from
Human
Action in an unhampered marketplace may come satisfaction, however
fleeting.
(Rev.)
Ralph Fucetola JD
15 February 2016
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[1]
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Noble_Truths
[2]
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dukkha
[3]
- http://www.mises.org/epofe/c1p2sec1.asp
[4]
- http://www.quebecoislibre.org/06/060205-5.htm
[5]
- http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/308
[6]
- https://mises.org/library/human-action-0/html
[7]
- http://www.patheos.com/blogs/wildfoxzen/2015/12/buddhas-enlightenment-the-root-of-zen.html