In this week’s FBA Podcast , “Buddhism: A Force for Good in the World” Vajragupta explores the potential of the Buddha’s teachings to transform society, starting with seeing how the Dhamma has helped millions of people who’ve suffered under the Hindu caste system change their lives. He asks how we’ve done in bringing this part of Bhante’s vision into being in the last 40 years, and encourages us to take opportunities to change society, including helping activists in positive change, and bringing a Buddhist perspective to current social debates.
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Buddhism: A Force for Good in the World
(upbeat music) This podcast is brought to you by Free Buddhist Audio, the Dharma for your life. Our work is funded entirely by donations from our generous listeners. If you would like to help us keep this free, make a contribution at freebuddhistaudio.com/donate. Thank you and happy listening. - Very nice to be here and see your lovely sangha, lots of people and very warm and friendly. It's very nice, very impressive. So yeah, I'm gonna give a talk called Buddhism as a force for good in the world. And I gather, yeah, you're just embarking on a number of weeks, looking at the history of the Tree Rat and the Buddhist movement and also looking at sangha agisto and his role in the movement. So in a way, hopefully my talk doesn't begin with that theme. And it's rather minorly set up. Yeah, recently, particularly recently, I've been getting inspired or re-inspired by the idea of our Dharma practice and our work of Buddhist centers and building sangha, having an effect on society. Just us kind of seeing our practice about having a positive effect on the surrounding society. So yeah, that's gonna be the kind of theme of my talk tonight. And yeah, that's always been a really strong emphasis of sangha agisto, the man who founded our movement, Tree Rat and the Buddhist movement. He's always had a very strong emphasis in his life and in his teaching on the potential of the Dharma to transform society, to kind of play a really strongly positive role in society. And apparently he especially started to kind of believe this and emphasize this after he saw the effect of a life and work of a man called Dr. Ambedkar in India. So sangha managed to live for quite a number of years in India and he saw this man called Dr. Ambedkar, who was born as an untouchable, but managed to get an education and became extremely well educated and became qualified as a lawyer and worked constantly over many, many years to try and uplift the untouchable people. And formed various political parties, campaigned, did all sorts of things. And eventually converted to Buddhism and, well, his work, the work of Dr. Ambedkar, radically transformed the life of thousands and thousands and thousands of people. So sangha agisto was really moved and impressed by this and just saw, enabled him to see the potential of the Dharma to change society and to change people's lives on a large scale. And after Ambedkar died, he died only six weeks after converting to Buddhism. Sangha Agisto got involved in that movement and spent, I think he spent six months of every year traveling around towns and villages and cities, giving talks to these people about the Dharma, teaching them the Dharma and, you know, showing them how they could use the Dharma to change their lives and escape the kind of oppression and prejudice of the caste system. So yeah, it's always been a kind of central part of Sangha Agisto's vision and work for the Dharma, is this idea of a transforming society. So what I'm gonna try and do is answer three questions. So firstly, how can Buddhism be a force of the good in the world? So anyway, I'm gonna kind of give you the theory. Second question is, how has the tree gotten the Buddhist community fed in its first 40 or so years trying to do this? So just a little kind of review. And then third question, where can we go from here? How can we kind of build and develop what we've done so far? Yeah. So first question, how can Buddhism be a force of the good in the world? So first point, I think, I think the first thing Buddhism says about this, and also the first thing Sangha Agisto's emphasized in his teaching on this, is that we have to start with ourselves here. We have to start by developing ourselves and developing a kind of greater individuality within ourselves here. So yeah, we start developing qualities like awareness, loving kindness, courage, confidence, and so on. We start becoming more individual, knowing what we really think and feel about things. We start developing an ethical sensibility and the ability to kind of stand by what we believe in and kind of think for ourselves and work things out in that kind of way. So yeah, that's what Buddhism says, that having an effect on the world around us has to kind of start with ourselves, has to start with us developing the necessary qualities as it were. And if we don't do this, well, maybe we just might get into a bit of a mess. I've been thinking about myself recently as a young man. When I was younger, I was very idealistic and I was concerned about the state of the world. And I was involved, since I've suppose the mid-80s, I was involved in the peace movement, which was quite big at the time. And I was also involved in development issues. So I was involved in something called the World Development Movement, which was just sort of taking off at most time all those issues which are starting to be much more on the agenda at that time. And I threw myself in and through that, I met some very good people, some impressive people. But I also started to notice how many activists and people involved in that world, which is how angry they could be. Sometimes how cynical they could be, actually. Sometimes even they could be quite unethical and manipulative in the way they went about things and the way they tried to kind of get their way in what they did. I remember I had a summer job in a health food shop on summer as a student. And there was two women who worked in the shop who ran the local vegetarian society. And they were really into animal rights. But the funny thing was they hated each other. They were really into caring for animals, but they couldn't get on with each other at all. And it was really kind of, it just kind of jarred. It just didn't feel right in a certain kind of way. But I started getting more and more involved in various political campaigns and stuff. But after a few years, I realized it wasn't enough on its own. I didn't have the tools or the awareness in myself to kind of deal with things that arose. So I'd get into situations of conflict or situations of anger. And I just didn't kind of know myself or have the tools to work with that in an adequate way. I didn't have the communication skills to deal with certain situations that arose. Even more deeply, I didn't have a kind of ethical framework. I had certain values that I believed in and certain causes that I believed in. But I didn't have enough of a kind of a sort of underlying philosophy you could say, or underlying ethical framework that kind of fitted everything together as it were. I didn't have a kind of coherent view of what life was about. So that it wasn't grounded enough in something. And that started to have consequences. I started to notice it had certain consequences. So maybe, because I wasn't kind of grounded enough in that vision myself, I would just get swept along by others and what they thought or what they said. Or I'd just be swept along by my emotional reactions to things without it being kind of more deeply thought through. Or I just didn't know where I stood and an issue would arise and I just didn't know what to make of it or how to respond or where to stand. And I also noticed that, you know, as it got difficult, as it got kind of harder in that kind of way, there was this tendency just to kind of retreat into myself and I just kind of become, well, a bit more self-interested, just kind of retreat from those ideals into myself a bit more, yeah. So that's what I noticed in my family quite beautiful. So for me, it was a relief. It was a great relief a few years after that to come across the Dharma. And this immediately gave me practices and methods that I could use to kind of work on myself, that I could use to be more aware. I could use to transform negative emotions or anger or whatever it was. And also it was a relief because it suddenly gave me a basis, a kind of grounding for ethics, for kind of thinking through what I really thought and felt about different issues and different situations and different scenarios. It gave me some precepts that I could live by and I could take as guidelines. And those precepts, they just made sense. They made rational sense. They just seemed to be based on how things really were in the world. They just seemed to be based on something kind of real and rational and that I could, yeah, I could kind of accept and live by. So yeah, that was my experience that I tried to kind of be a force for good in the world, as it were. But I just came up against my limitations and I needed something that gave me the tools to kind of change myself and gave me a kind of a view, an underlying kind of grounding or philosophy, which kind of put everything into place in which enabled me to kind of think through issues for myself. But there's another reason I think why Buddhism says you have to start with the individual person. And that's because real change, you know, really deep and significant change in society actually starts with a change of consciousness. So I've been reading a book recently called The Unconquerable World by a chap called Jonathan Show, which I recommend. And it's all about how real big social changes start long before they're in the news and the politicians have got involved. They start with a kind of shift in consciousness. So the real revolutions, the ones that last, the ones that really change things are revolutions in awareness, revolutions in consciousness. And this is what Ambedka found, going back to Dr. Ambedka in India. He, yeah, he became a lawyer. He somehow, you know, overcame all his conditioning and all the disadvantages of his caste background and ended up being the law minister when India gained independence and brought in a new constitution which outlawed the caste system. So it's an extraordinary achievement. And, well, yeah, very, very significant change that took place thanks to him. But very soon after he'd done that, he felt it wasn't enough. He felt it was still limited. He felt all he'd done was, in a way, he'd kind of changed the balance of power. But there was a danger that it could just kind of swim back again. If things changed, it could just swim back again. It didn't go deep enough, yeah. What he realized was that caste, it wasn't just a law. Cast wasn't just something in a statute book. Cast was a state of mind. It was an attitude. It was something that was kind of in here and in here. And he realized that to really change the caste system, a revolution of the heart and the mind was needed on a much more deep level. And that's why he converted to Buddhism. That's why after it's a kind of extraordinary political achievement, he actually just kind of gave them up and converted to Buddhism because he thought that would give himself and his people a fresh start which is sort of just stacking outside the whole caste thing. And thousands of people, tens of thousands of people, hundreds of thousands of people followed him and converted to Buddhism as a way of escaping the caste system. And yeah, I've read accounts of people who are there and converted them that way. And what they often say is they felt free. They kind of got confidence in themselves. So it's like they just, yeah, they're kind of, they're just sensor themselves changed. They saw themselves differently. They just, they weren't, it was no longer possible to kind of oppress them. They just had a kind of inner confidence that they didn't have before. So it was a revolution in consciousness and awareness, in self-awareness, that then had all sorts of social implications because those people were just the men able to organise education for themselves, social projects for themselves and so on. And apparently there was quite a lot of evidence to show that the ex-untouchables who converted to Buddhism have done very, very well for themselves compared to other similar groups in terms of education, in terms of jobs, in terms of just how they've done in society, they've been able to do well and participate very well. So it was like that kind of inner change brought about a great outer change in their life and their prospects. So yeah, we start by developing ourselves and we try and develop the kind of qualities that we need to be a force for good in the world. And we also start with ourselves in a sense of, you know, real change is the kind of change in awareness. It's a change in consciousness which then can bring about real change in society, not just a kind of temporary shift in the balance of that. So that's the first thing we have to do for Buddhism to be a force for good in the world, is work on ourselves as it were. But it's not the only thing we can do. It's not just about working on our own, we can work with others too. So the second thing is to join or create spiritual community, yeah. So yeah, in our entry right now, we've always had a very strong emphasis on joining and creating spiritual community, Sanga. And basically this is because it's hard to develop yourself in isolation. We need help, other people need help, so we can help each other. And this helping each other to kind of grow, sharing our vision, sharing our experience, supporting and encouraging each other, that's what Sanga is basically. And as Sanga develops, it takes or it can take various forms, Buddhist centers, retreat centers, study groups, work projects, communities and so on. It can take all sorts of different forms. So in other words, if you kind of join a Sanga and start to kind of build Sanga with other people around you, you're already starting to change the world. You're creating a small corner of the world where spiritual values are being lived out, are being actualized, yeah. It might not be perfect, in fact it won't be perfect, but you know, it'll be something, it'll be something where those values are actually being brought into the world. Values like generosity, values like authentic communication and ethics and so on. So it's not just talk. You know, you're actually, you're already doing something. You're already kind of creating something. You're already kind of changing a little corner of the world in its own way, yeah. Apparently in activist circles, they talk about the politics of prefiguration, the politics of prefiguration, which means that, yeah, the way you campaign and the way you live your life, it's about you're doing it already. The way that you do it is about bringing those values that you want to see in the world into being, yeah. So you're not just waiting for the government to change or the revolution to come or in Buddhist terms, you're not just waiting for the pure land to be established. You're already doing it in the way that you live your life and share your life with other people, yeah. And in a way, yeah, that's what Sanga is about. You're kind of already doing it. You're already kind of modeling the kind of values you want to be in the world through the Sanga between you, yeah. And the way Sanga actually used to talk about this is he talked about creating the nucleus of a new society. So in the early days of Sri Ratna, this was the kind of language that we were trying to create the nucleus of a new society. So the Sanga, places like this, were the nucleus of a new society. And yeah, they were the nucleus of a new society because it was the kind of the heart or the hub or the supportive basis from which one could reach out into the world. So that was the kind of third thing. So firstly, developing oneself, secondly, building Sanga, and then thirdly, from, you know, based on that inner practice and based on that kind of supportive basis, the nucleus, then reaching out into the world. So again, Sanga Ratna used to talk about creating the new society. That was the language of the early days of the movement, that they, that was the vision. You know, they just, they wanted to help create a new society, a better society as it were. And yeah, you reached out by encouraging and helping others also to develop themselves and to join the spiritual community. And you're also reached out by in various ways, trying to bring those values, those spiritual values, into the world. So maybe through being a parent, the way you bring up your family, maybe through social action, maybe through your work, in the workplace, trying to kind of bring your values into being, you know, through being a citizen in various ways, taking part in society, through how you are out in the world, trying to kind of give expression to those values. So that was the theory. We start by developing ourselves, then we develop Sanga, and then we reach out into the world. And in a way, those kind of things all support each other. You transform yourself in order to go out into the world, but actually going out into the world is a kind of practice. It's actually a means by which you learn about yourself, you learn what kind of qualities you've got and what qualities you need to develop. And so that helps you transform yourself. So it's transforming self and transforming world. And there's a kind of relationship between them. That's it. So yeah, that's the theory. And then I wanted to talk a little bit about how have we done? How's the tree about the Buddhist community done? And it's first 40 or so years. Have we been a force of a good in the world? And in a way, that's what the book's about. So this is just a kind of brief concept. So firstly, under the heading of developing individuality, have we done? Well, yeah, we've got... So, tree ratna started 40 something years ago in a little basin room, about 12 people in a meditation class. And 40 something years later, as an order with over 1,500 people, there's lots and lots of people practicing in our community. And definitely my experience is as a growing maturity of practice. I've been ordained 16 years. And every two years, we have an order convention. In the summer, all the members from all over the world meet for a week or two and you're sort of on retreat together. And it's kind of interesting being on the convention. It's a bit like a kind of benchmark or a kind of test of what's going on in the order, if you like. And definitely my experience is I just experience it kind of getting better. And every two years, we're a bit more mature. Collectively, there's a bit more maturity. And you just see individuals growing and developing and becoming more themselves and practicing. You just see just practicing in different ways, in different styles, different temperaments, kind of filling out in that kind of way. So yeah, I've got confidence in this personally. I think this is happening, but we are. There's lots of people kind of working on themselves and becoming impressive human beings and having more and more to kind of give to the world. I think it's happening and I'm confident that it will continue to happen in the future. So yeah, I think pretty good marks there. Number two, creating a spiritual community. Well, again, it's amazing to see what's been achieved in those 40 or so years. The movement started in a tiny little basement room, apparently four meters square, little tiny room in a basement in London. And these days, the centers, I think over 25 countries all over the world, hundreds, well, well over 100 centers of groups and the pre-centers and all that kind of stuff. So it's an amazing story of growth and inspiration and things kind of spreading out across the world. And I think it's fair to say that our community is known in the Buddhist world at being good at Sangha, at being good at spiritual community, not just the kind of forms of the institutions, but also being good at friendship and communication and having a kind of, yeah, kind of tightly knit sense of community and friendships and just people who've shared their lives over many, many years now, and they just really kind of strongly connected with each other as it were. I think we've been good at that. And yeah, that has also kind of expressed itself in various kind of institutional ways. So we used to talk about something called the Three Seas, which was centers, communities and co-ops. And yeah, I just wanted to mention that I think in the last 10 years, there has been a decline in communities and what used to be called co-ops. They're now called to invest while I be with businesses. So businesses and communities. And yeah, definitely 10 years ago or so, maybe a bit more, there was a kind of definite move of people moving out of them and away from them in some kind of way. So there's lots of reasons for that. And everyone's individual reason would be different. But I think partly, partly some of the people in those communities, in those businesses, they've just been in them a long time and they wanted to change, in a way, for enough. Or they wanted to develop new skills. They've been working in a certain business and they wanted to develop new skills. Or they wanted to live a different kind of life. But sometimes communities can be quite big, busy places actually. And perhaps some people, as they got a bit older, wanted a quieter life. Maybe, to be honest, some of them weren't very good places. They didn't quite work. There wasn't quite the right mix of people. People had a bit of a bad experience of someone. Some of them were good and did really work. But I think there's a thing about a community or a business like that, that it's got to constantly be passed on. And the kind of spirit of it has to be constantly passed on. Otherwise, you can just kind of get lost. And you end up with a bunch of people. They're kind of working together. They're kind of lost while they were kind of doing it. And then it sort of lost its spark and it doesn't work anymore. So I think we've had to learn about passing things on. Yeah, so there's been a little bit of a decline in that area, I would say. More recently, there's been a bit of consolidation. So I was hearing the other day that the London Buddhist Center, which is, in a way, our biggest center, their communities are all kind of filling up again. And they're starting expanding communities evenly. And in Cambridge, there's loads of communities connected to wind-tooth evolution. And they're all full again, apparently. And there's breathworks, which is a new, right, livelihood venture, teaching people to meditate to help them with chronic pain. Apparently, they've got 150 people in training to learning to be breathworks trainer, who aren't all three round of Buddhists, but most of them aren't. So definitely that, to me, shows an interest in then wanting to work as Buddhists and maybe work with other Buddhists. So yeah, we've done well, but maybe not full marks in this area. There's kind of learn that some of our institutions have sang out a little bit of fragile. They need looking after. They need kind of care. Otherwise, they can kind of disappear quite quickly, actually. Yeah. Third area, how we've done, reaching out into the world. Well, again, there's lots of centers in lots of countries. There's-- we're reaching a lot of people. So we have done well. I think it's an extraordinary story, how we've grown, and we've managed to teach the Dharma to lots and lots of people across the world. Different cultures, different ways of life. And again, I think it's fair to say that tree retina has got a reputation, a good reputation in the Buddhist world for that emphasis on spreading the Dharma. We really encourage people to kind of get out there and offer the Dharma to people. And there's also been a strong emphasis in India on social work. So I've been talking about Dr. Anbedkar and this movement there. Our movement is very big in India, working amongst those people, doing all sorts of kind of social work, health work, literacy work, teaching karate to kids to kind of help them be confident, running hostels for kids who've lost their parents. Lots and lots of social work has been going on. And there's a big charity that we run called Karanar Trust, which funds a lot of that work. And apparently, the Buddhist commentator Stephen Bachela said that Karanar is probably the biggest Buddhist social project in Europe. So again, we've done pretty well, although I think it would also be fair to say that in our first 40 or so years, most of the emphasis has been on the first two things. So getting individuals practicing and developing themselves and building Sanko. And I think it would be fair to say that this kind of reaching out into the world, certainly in the sense of kind of doing social work hasn't been so emphasized by us. There are exceptions to that. So for example, there's a thing called Clear Vision, which is done loads of education work. There's breath work that I've mentioned. Well also, there's just lots of order members who work in the world, they have jobs out there which they'll be doing informed by their practice when teachers, social workers, fundraisers and artists. There's loads of people out there doing stuff, which is just more and more informed by their experience of practicing with Dharma over many years. So yeah, there's a kind of lot going on, but maybe there's room for more of an emphasis on our Dharma practice transforming society. Okay, third question, how can we develop on this? How can we continue to be a force of a good in the world? Yeah, basically I've started kind of getting inspired by this recently, 'cause I think it's time for us to, yeah, just start thinking a bit more expansively again. We've got this kind of basis of all these people practicing and developing maturity at practice. We've got this kind of solid basis in terms of there's a really kind of strong sanger between us across the world. So I think there's a really good foundation for us kind of being able to do more in the world, in the future, yeah? And yeah, I've been thinking a bit recently about the image of Buddhism in our culture, just the idea people have out there of what Buddhism is. And in many ways, I think it's a very positive image. I think Buddhism has a good press in our society. But I also kind of wonder whether it's a bit of a limited image. I wonder whether a lot of people, the way they see Buddhism is a bit kind of about me, a bit individualistic, a bit even a bit escapist. Buddhism is about switching off. It's about being calm. It's about not being stressed and so on. Not that there's anything wrong with those things, but that's not all Buddhism is, yeah? So that's the image of Buddhism in the culture, I think. And yeah, I recently, I've been wondering, is there a kind of danger that we start to kind of go along with that? We start to kind of subtly be kind of taken in by that, by ourselves and not have enough emphasis on, well, actually, that's part of what Buddhism's about, but it's also about getting out there in the world and having a positive impact on the world. So yeah, I think we need that kind of vision, that kind of bold and more expansive vision. Partly for our insects, partly to kind of keep us spiritually on our toes, as it were, spiritually kind of alive and vibrant and energetic and so on. And I think we also need it because we need to attract people that are gonna be inspired by that, you know, maybe young people, maybe idealistic people, people are kind of really up for helping to change the world and that kind of thing. That's, I think, the kind of people we need in our community. But also, yeah, we want that emphasis because the world needs it. It's not just about what we need, it's also the world needs an emphasis, or you know, the Dharma has so much to offer the world. I remember when I taught at the Birmingham Buddhist Center, I remember after 9/11 happened, a few weeks after that, I distinctly remember attendance at classes at the Buddhist Center went up. A lot of people were coming along to the Buddhist Center and, well, basically, people were kind of shaken by what was going on in the world and they were kind of questioning things. And it was very noticeable, but for a few weeks, kind of the classes kind of got bigger and bigger. And, well, in a way, the world, there are various kind of big problems in the world at the moment. There's economic crisis, there's ecological things going on. All that is gonna start affecting people more and more and I think there will be people out there who are just, yeah, kind of shaken and questioning things in that kind of way. And yeah, I just really believe that the Dharma has got something to say about that. It's got something to kind of offer. It's got a perspective which could be really valuable in society and we should just, like, kind of be getting it out there as much as we can. So, I just want to say a little bit about how we might do that in the future. How could we kind of get the Dharma out there a bit more strongly? And particularly, ideas about how the Dharma could transform or help transform society, help make a better society. So, well, one thing is maybe through the media, yeah? So, we do this a little bit. A guy called Vishwapani, an order member called Vishwapani just thought for a day on Radio 4. And he does it really well. You know, you just have two minutes. But he manages to kind of, you know, take a topical issue and kind of convey something about the Dharma perspective on that. So, yeah, I just think we should always be alive for those opportunities just to kind of get the message out there in that kind of way. Maybe as we get more experienced and more mature, we should be looking to influence policy makers, people who are kind of influential in society. A little bit example of this actually goes back to the '70s, I think it was, when there was a big debate about blasphemy law in this country, there was a kind of incident where a newspaper was prosecuted under the blasphemy law. And Sangerajto wrote a kind of little booklet about called Buddhism and blasphemy, basically arguing for the blasphemy laws to be abolished because he believed in, you know, complete freedom of speech about religion. And this booklet apparently was quite influential. But it didn't, the law, I think the law still stands, isn't it? But apparently the booklet was quoted in debates and they have some comments. And it was like he spotted an issue going on in society and he thought, all right, Buddhism's got something to say about this, which is valuable. And he kind of managed to get it out there. So I think, again, it'd be great for us to be a kind of alive to those kind of possibilities. Maybe another way to work is to kind of help people who are activists, people who are idealistic and trying to make a positive effect on the world. An example of this is eco-darma. So we've got this retreat center in Spain called eco-darma. And one of the things they do, it's not the only thing they do, but one of the things they do is they run retreats for activists. They get people going to them from all over Europe, apparently, you know, ecological activists, global anti-globalization activists, people like that. And they just get them on retreat. And just kind of start giving them the support to work on themselves and develop those kind of inequalities to make that kind of work sustainable and to avoid burnout or to avoid anger or to avoid cynicism and so on. So a real kind of connection maybe, to be made there, yeah. And yeah, another area is just always looking for kind of opportunities to kind of connect with the people in society, trying to kind of get it tuned into what's going on out there. What are people concerned about? What are people suffering? What's kind of bothering people? What are people interested in? And can the darma help with that? Can the darma speak to that? If we got something to say, which would be kind of interesting and relevant and helpful to people in that area. A little recent example of this, which is inspiring, is a man called Sabote, an ordinary book of Sabote, has discovered a bunch of gypsies in Hungary who have, it's a bit of a complicated story, but they've got connections with the eggs on top gypsies in India. And their gypsies in Hungary, and apparently there's a kind of rise of fascism, fascist groups in Hungary who are out to get their gypsies. So he's been kind of getting going over there, talking to the gypsies and teaching them the darma. So they're interested in Buddhism because they've heard about Dr. Ambedka using Buddhism to kind of uplift people. So they've been interested in Buddhism. Some, how on earth they found each other, I don't know, but this is what's going on. It's very inspiring. He's sort of found a way to kind of connect with a particular kind of group in society. Apparently he was in a meeting there fairly recently. They had a big public meeting because this far-right group had just got elected in the town or something like that, and they were anticipating trouble for them. And so the young guys apparently were saying, well, we've got guns. Let's just go and shoot the fascists. And he was able to kind of intervene and say, no, don't do that. If you do that, you'll make it worse for yourselves. And kind of bring in some darmic ideas and teachings and kind of avert that and try and help them find a more creative, constructive way of dealing with the problem. So that's a very sort of dramatic example. But I think there are probably all sorts of examples in our society where we could just kind of work out what's going on for people and try and kind of connect the darm to that. A little area I've been thinking of recently to do with this is to do with consumerism. And there's a growing body of research around happiness. So there's a growing body of psychological research into happiness. And I'll tell you a kind of interesting statistic. Apparently, the way how happy people rated themselves in America peaked in 1957. So they've been doing surveys asking people how happy they came here. It peaked in '57, and it's been going slowly down ever since. Consumption has more than doubled since 1957 in America. So happiness peaked goes down consumption doubles. And people's rating of what they need to be happy doubled from 1986 to 1994. So less than 10 years, people's perception of what they needed to be happy doubled. And apparently, there are similar results over here in Europe as well. So that's-- in a way, that's a kind of a little-- that's a consumer society in a nutshell, isn't it? We have more. We think we need even more, and we're less happy. That's what's going on in our society for many, many people. And I think a lot of people know this. Kind of deep down, they kind of know that it isn't working. And it's not right. But we're just sort of caught up in it somehow. And the interesting thing about this research, this psychological research, which is a kind of growing body of research, is that they're just looking at this, quite-- you know, trying to look at it very objectively, and looking at the kind of detail, the kind of conditioning that leads people into kind of thinking that money or status or certain goods are going to make them happy. So they're just exploring how we're conditioned to kind of various things that go on, which make us start to believe that those things will never happen. So I just read a book with a high price of materialism, which is a very good overview of this research. So yeah, I just saw that is a really fascinating area. And it's so kind of what they're discovering. It's so kind of in line with the Dharma and with Buddhist values. And maybe that's the way we could make a connection. And maybe we could be teaching the Dharma in a way that's just kind of helping people work with that conditioning and helping people develop more kind of contentment. I mean, there's not time to kind of go into the work out the details right now. But just kind of-- yeah, just actually-- you know, what Buddhism could offer there is it actually could give people the practical tools to work with that and to start to live a different kind of life and to start to develop a deeper contentment. So yeah, just kind of getting the Dharma out there, which started to change the world. We don't have to live in a world that spends $435 billion every year on advertising. They kind of get used to these things and think they're inevitable, but they're not. It doesn't have to be like that. And the more we can kind of get those ideas and those practices out there, the more we can help people to change their lives and the more we change society. I'm just going to finish with a quote from Sangha Akshata, "Reflecting on the evils of life in a more concrete sociopolitical sense doesn't incite me to emancipate myself from it all. It incites me to try and create a viable alternative in the form of a whole movement, a whole new society, within which there will be the possibility of a more decent human life, let alone anything spiritual." I won't say it makes me feel disillusioned that things go on in society as they do. It just makes me feel angry and therefore all the more determined to create a better alternative. Thank you. We hope you enjoyed this week's podcast. Please help us keep this free. Make a contribution at freebuddhist.io.com/donate. And thank you. 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