What wisdom can Buddhism provide in today’s world? That’s the subject of Buddhist Economics, by UC Berkeley Professor of Economics, Clair Brown.

Professor Brown’s book opens with three Buddhist teachings: that people are caring, people are interdependent with people and nature, and all life is impermanent. Clair believes that if we take those three basic assumptions, we can turn free market economics on its head which is good for you, me and all our aunties and uncles.

Links

• Buddhist Economics: An Enlightened Approach to the Dismal Science
• Amartya Sen’s capability theory approach
• Jeffrey Sachs
• Barry Commoner
• Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered
• Jamie Dimon
• Larry Fink
• Clair’s articles on Lion’s Roar
• Buddha on the Board ebook
• Regeneration: Ending the Climate Crisis in One Generation
• Buddhist Economics – Clair’s website
• Buddhist Economics audiobook
• Episode two, with Mark Anielski

Hello.

Hello.

Welcome to Peripheral Thinking.

A series of conversations with entrepreneurs, advisors, activists, and

academics intended to inspire you with ideas from the margins, the periphery,

because that's where the ideas which will shape tomorrow, a hiding today,

on those margins, the periphery.

This week, I spoke to Clair, Clair Brown, professor, Clair brown, to you and me.

Uh, Clair's an academic working out of UC Berkeley in sunny, California.

Uh, She is an economist and practicing Buddhist and many

other beautiful things besides.

In this episode, we talk about Clair's book, Buddhist Economics, an

Enlightened Approach to a Dismal Science.

An economy, which is not measured in how we spend our income, as

things are measured today, but is organized in such a way as to help

you flourish in all your beauty.

I hope you enjoy this conversation, Clair, welcome to Peripheral Thinking.

it's wonderful to be here, Ben.

So I actually came to your work via Jeremy Lent and it was more kind

of diving into the references in his recent book The web of Meaning

and uh, kind of found you that way.

Yes.

Yes.

I know Jeremy will and we both live not far from each other in the Berkeley area.

And, we both think a lot about wisdom from other cultures and other places.

And so when he wrote his book, I we'd brainstorm quite a bit about Buddhism.

And what does it actually bring to our way of thinking in today's

world that we can use for wisdom?

Which then takes us neatly on to, um, the, the kind of thing, which was

specifically referenced a few times in, in Jeremy's, but which was your own book.

Uh, Buddhist Economics.

Yes.

Yes.

So that my book of course is mainly an economics book and then Jerry's

book is a book of philosophy.

And so you once asked me, why did I write my book?

What's it all about?

And so I wrote my book, Buddhist economics, because as an economics

professor at UC Berkeley, I was pretty disgruntled.

And mainly the students were also about the way they were learning economics,

especially introductory economics, because we have our two major economic

crisis, inequality and climate change.

And free market economics that they were learning.

They these major problems were ignored and we were teaching them how great

markets were and how they solved all our problems and optimized welfare and income.

And they just said this doesn't relate to anything.

I want to learn about economics.

And so I was walking with my dog one afternoon and I looked at him and he

looked at me and he sort of said to me, how would Buddha teach economics

says practicing Tibetan, Buddhist?

And I said, boy, is that a good question?

And so it got me to think about Buddhist economics.

And so would it be appropriate to give us a kind of a headline kind of idea

about how the Buddha would come at it?

In my book, I basically start off with just three Buddhist teachings

that are critical, that are really important to all Buddhists, no matter

what their lineage or school and that is that people are carrying their

altruistic as well as self caring.

And that people are interdependent both with all other people and with

nature and that thirdly, everything, all activity, all life is impermanent.

And if you take those three basic assumptions, you totally turn

free market economics on it.

Where people are selfish and don't care about others, where people are out to

maximize their income and their power and who they are, and not caring about

nature or other people because they see themselves as completely separate.

They're in cratic, they have their own freedom, which is very important to them.

And then economics always assumes that there's an equilibrium that there's

a, the market supply and demand will take you to the best possible

outcome and not your equilibrium.

And you just sit there.

I'm very happy and content, the world's great.

So when you can see that those are exactly opposite of the

Buddhist assumptions or worldview.

And so Buddhist Economics basically turns free market economics on its head and

presents a holistic approach to the world.

But I got to tell you it's based upon economics.

We already know Amartya Sen's, uh, economics about capability and human

freedom, which basically mimics Buddhist economics in many ways, because his

background is as a Hindu from India.

And then it takes the UN and Jeffrey Sachs's sustainable

development goals and integrate that.

So we know how to reduce inequality.

We know how to share prosperity.

We know how to care for each other.

And then it also takes climate science that says we care about nature.

And we're all part of nature.

Because actually interdependence is ecological law today, Commoner

told us that he said everything is connected to everything else.

There's one eco sphere for all living organisms and what affects one affects.

And so Buddhist wisdom became a law of ecology.

And we realize today that, of course we're all interdependent with each other

and the health of the planet is our help.

So when you bring all those together and you basically have Buddhist economics.

I know your, your work grew a little bit from the initial kind of essay or

question, which was written by Schumacher.

Was there a kind of link?

Cause he, he has a, he has an essay in his book Small is Beautiful on Buddhist

economics, and so your work, a kind of an extension and an extrapolating of the

ideas, which he, he sets out a little?

Yes.

Schumacher is wonderful.

Let's say Buddhist economics coined the phrase.

And that was in the late sixties.

Although the essay book of essays came out in the early seventies.

And it has still today has a big impact.

His focus is especially on work.

And as he came up with the idea of Buddhist economics

based upon right livelihood.

So what is work?

How can we make work meaningful?

And he, in the way it fits into his ideas with small as beautiful is that he

says, we want to have minimal consumption for Maximo well-being and we don't

want any, we really never want waste.

And we want work to also not waste our time or anyone else's time,

but to really be productive in a way that benefits us and the world.

The only problem for me with Schumacher's essay is that it reflects

his time, of course, and gender roles.

And so gender roles where the men were all out working and the women were

carrying at home for taking care of them.

And it talks about that or how wonderful it is to have the women,

you know, caring for all of us at home and the men are out working.

And so that of course is no longer the case.

And, uh, but I really love his book.

It just skipped that part work roles and

I guess it's reflecting or reflecting a sort of time and

cultural context a little.

That's right.

Of course.

One thing, which is something else we touched on when we spoke previously was

it's just this kind of question about why economics is kind of relevant to me.

And I guess in a sense, you, as a sort of economics professor, it's

completely sort of natural to you.

If I think though, about lots of people who go to our listeners, for

example, these are the people who, you know, they're running their

own businesses, they're trying to make a positive mark in the world.

They're really oriented to to positive impact to trying to make positive impact.

They're curious, they're creative people.

How, how would we answer the question about why economics is relevant to,

to me and in, in the work that I do?

My guess is your listeners with their expertise and their worldview, they

already understand how important their economic system is and how it affects

their lifestyle, how they live, how it affects their companies, how it

affects everything they're doing.

And it definitely affects the opportunities and

options that are provided.

It affects, of course their work, their employees' work, their incomes.

It affects the community wellbeing.

It really affects also how whatever service or product they're

providing is used in the world.

And so what we care about is now with climate change, we also understand

how the economy is affecting the air we breathe, the water we drink.

It's really determining our quality of life today.

And my guess is your listeners understand that.

And I'm really hoping they want to explore deeper sort of how is, how is our economic

system actually working and what can we do to make it actually provide a better

outcome in terms of quality of life?

So picking up the first of the couple of themes that you were talking about there,

when you're introducing the book, this idea of kind of people being altruistic

and understanding our interdependence.

Now I think even if we just take those two things, of course, I think we

do understand of biologically, from a sort of biological systems, point

of view, how interconnected we are.

But I guess one of the things that I'm really curious about is that so much about

how we exist and function the world from really our kind of earliest schooling

in many respects actually reinforces the idea of a kind of separateness.

It reinforces the idea that competition is better or just a

kind of given over corporation.

And so I just I mean, just curious about your own sort of experience in

teaching these things, where people are on this sort of journey of being

able to understand and embrace the idea, say of indeed interdependence?

Are people kind of there, or are we still really battling up against

the ideas of competition and separateness, which actually are very

pervasive in our culture generally?

that's a great question, Ben, because I think one of the things that climate

change and global warming has been teaching us is interdependence.

Like before we were in the starting the eighties, we were told how great

markets were and how the role of government was just getting in the way.

And we wanted to reduce taxes and we went into government stop making

sort of the rules of the market.

And we turned it over to big business and inequality just skyrocketed

and it continued to skyrocket.

And all of a sudden to not only inequality, but carbon emissions.

It really started going up in the eighties and like 80% of all CO2 or

greenhouse gases in the atmosphere or from the eighties onward.

And so all of a sudden we realize we aren't getting

what we want from our economy.

Our society is suffering from enormous inequality and now from climate

change, and we're killing the planet.

So all of a sudden we started learning about interdependence and

we started listening to ecologist and the climate scientist, and

then even the round business round table talked about what, how do we

have to change our business plan?

And so in 2019, Jamie Diamond came out with the purpose of

a corporation is to promote an economy that serves all Americans.

Then COVID happened right after that a year later, It's has put a dent in

things because of course the economy fell off a cliff and we had bring it back.

The economy falling off a cliff was just one more example of interdependence

of global interdependence.

And then Larry Fink and BlackRock was also talking about how we have to

really change the way we do business.

And corporations really need to use ESG criteria for their operations, where ESG

is environmental, social, and governance.

And he said, and then some companies were pushing back and saying we

just want to maximize profits.

And Larry vanc this year pushed back and said, listen, the company's

using ESG to, to form their business models and their strategies.

They are actually performing much better.

And investors want that investors are demanding.

So your company is to be a good capitalist company.

Larry being said, you need to follow ESG, which also points out interdependence.

I curious about that.

Cause I know there was a, there was another one of his

cars the Larry, thank you.

Talking about the chief executive of BlackRock B the investment firm.

So he publishes his letter each year.

Doesn't he?

And I know there was one, another one kind of recently, but I think at the

same time, and I know this is a little bit off the topic of your book, but just

curious about it in terms of the same time as he's talking about those ideas.

He's also saying they're not going to diverse divest from fossil

fuels as my kind of understanding.

And I just curious about, what you think is going on to the extent to which they

really are advocating for change or the extent to which they're talking about

something which feels like, a kind of topical thing to have a point of view on

Yeah, I think this is a great question, especially for entrepreneurs listening

in, because they need to really grapple with this question of, okay.

Here's what I'd really like my company beat to be doing, to caring for

all the stakeholders of Carrie, not for our workers, for our community,

for environment, as well as for the people who loan us money, and

our shareholders are still there.

I want everybody to do well as we produce a product or service that helps the world.

But then they say what's the right path for that?

So one of the problems I have with BlackRock Talk to them about it.

The people in the sustainability section, they come back and say we're

just doing what our clients want.

We're just, if they want, they don't want to divest from

fossil fuels, then we don't.

And I say no, just a second I've seen what you're doing.

You're not teaching them.

We have all these studies that show that actually divestment from

fossil fuels makes fiduciary sense.

And you need to really educate them on that.

And that's when they back off, because to be honest they love just following what

they think their clients are demanding.

Whereas I think our leadership, our entrepreneurial leadership is

going really in the right direction.

Many, Many of them are educating the public.

They're educating their customers or clients about, this is really helping you,

and it's also helping the world around you and they bring in stakeholders to

be part of the decision-making process.

So that's really much better than just slouching off and saying, oh whatever.

I think the market wants, I'll give them.

Because the role of a successful entrepreneur in my mind and the studies

show this with case study after case study is if they take a leadership and

educating your stakeholders and their, especially the people who are their

customers, then they do much better.

They do much better as an employer, they do much better with the bottom line.

I was reading some uh, research this morning actually, which is

by a guy who's involved in in in supporting regenerative businesses.

And so it was that being a, a kind of new version or a new

iteration of these kinds of ideas.

But one of the things he was talking about, which I need to look at

again, which is all about the kind of from a statistical point of view

actually was how much more resilient companies are, which are actively gave

away a proportion of their profit.

Even not as significant as part of a kind of ecosystem.

So if you were part of, 10, 20 or 50 organizations that all committed to

giving just say 1% of your profits to the group each year, and that, that

was distributed to everybody in the cooperative, each of those businesses has

a kind of much higher rate of success.

And so there's just idea of kind of sharing proceeds in order to

to, to lend resilience feels like quite an important one, I think.

But again, it's just I guess, getting into sort of different ideas about

how things, how businesses might be run and how they might be organized.

That's a great example of way a company can be very clever in thinking of

ways of sharing and ways of sharing in a way that gets more buy-in

from their various stakeholders.

And it gives them some good PR and it a good outreach to the community so

that, people are really clever or your listeners are very clever and talented.

And I just think that often we just need the time to sit back

and have these discussions and think about, oh, what could we do?

How can we do something that's out thinking outside the box that helps us all

Taking the time to to be able to reflect I don't it's I know in your

book, actually in the internet, There's a a sort of a plea and instruction,

a kind of orientation to actually start this with some meditation.

And that being a kind of a sort of key sort of requirement in

a way for for the practice.

And so you said that, that your, your own route to this came after starting

to study and practice Tibetan Buddhism.

Is that right?

Oh yes.

That was, very important to me, although that was not at least a

dozen or 15 years ago, but I think for your listeners often, the first thing

when I wake up in the morning, I just pause and breathe, and give gratitude.

And then I just try to give myself a little bit of time while I'm being

quiet and not exactly meditating, but more like contemplating.

Okay, so I have this wonderful day ahead of me and I know I

have a huge number of demands and stresses and problems will come up.

But let me just think about, remind myself, what do I really care about?

What do the end of the day, how do I want to feel about what I've done?

I, for me is a professor and writer I'll think, you know, I really want to

have provided help to my students and give them new insight, or I want to

be able to write something on a blog or whatever I'm writing that provides

some help to the rest of the world.

And to keep thinking in these broader terms about what can I do

to help the world be a better place.

And for me with my activism, because I'm a eco a Buddhist eco activist, I do

a lot of political work in California.

I'll also think, okay, what can we do today in a specific event that we're

doing to really push ahead and get the power from big oil back to the people?

So just stop using fossil fuels.

Just think about it in that way.

At the beginning of the day, I think really helps us throughout

the day to stay more focused in to maintain our priorities.

I think for all of us, one of the hardest things is setting priorities and then

maintaining them so that we get so pushed around by everything that's happening.

But that we really do need to remind ourselves I don't

have time for everything.

I really do need to maintain and stay focused on my pop priorities.

And we know they change a little bit from person to person, but

they basically have to do with the well-being of our companies or our

work or our students or our customers.

And we want to stay focused on that because otherwise we end up

having our energy go into activities that we don't really care about.

And at the end of the day, we're all exhausted rather than feeling like,

Hey, that was a pretty good day.

I did what I'd hoped to do.

The thing that was coming to mind as you were talking there, I think it is

it Suzuki Roshi, the kind of famous quote, the most important thing is

to know the most important thing?

I love.

And I think in a sense, it's what you're talking to there.

The ability to know that and to kind of remain calm and focused and

remembering that while the, the winds of your kind of life blow on by.

Yes.

Yes, that's right.

And also to remember that everything's impermanent.

So that was helps actually, when things are really bad, I, especially around

my students, when things are bad, Hey, you know what, give it a day.

Things will be totally different.

And when young people realize that, they have a much easier time in life,

and then for those of us, who've been around the block a few times,

remembering impermanence really helps remind us that change is fine.

Change is, is actually a very positive part of life.

And we want to welcome.

And not fear it.

We also want to be ready for it.

And that we want to know change is part of life is flexible.

We have to be ready for that.

Especially as business leaders or as intellectual leaders or whatever.

We want to be ready for change and integrated into the way we're thinking and

acting so that it's not, it's a positive force and not the destructive force.

Before you wrote the book you were running a class on, on

Buddhist economics, is that right?

So what I did was.

I was thinking about what would Buddhist economics be?

It was writing about it, but I didn't really have enough time.

This is a great way of thinking about priorities.

So I was having lunch with a colleague, a psychology professor, and she

looked at me and she said, you've got to create a way that you would

be working on Buddhist economics.

And she said, as professors, if we ever want to have time to

work on something, we teach it.

And I said, oh, of course, because once I'm teaching something and I

have a class, I have to go to it.

I have to prepare for it, then of course I have time.

And so I set up a seminar at Berkeley, which is a wonderful

place to teach because we're very open-minded to new thinking.

Um, I set up a seminar called Buddhist economics.

And I went in to talk to him, my vice chair, I wanted to teach it.

And he looked at me and he said, now a lot of schools you'd go that.

And they say, no, I'm sorry.

We don't do that.

He looked at me.

He said well, that sounds so interesting.

Tell me about it.

And so I've been teaching it for at least eight, about eight years now,

I'd say but it took me a while of course, to prepare it and get it ready.

I think what happens oftentimes is when people get into the kind of rough and

tumble for want of a better phrase in their kind of work, when they're kind

of running their companies, the how quickly you people forget these things.

And I guess also conscious of the idea that so much of the other language

around work and business talks to more of that sort of the competition, more

of that kind of me versus you idea.

Were there particular aspects of what you were teaching that helped

people connect back to those kinds of ideas, that kind of people okay.

Are altruistic nature, connect back to their understanding

of kind of interconnectedness.

Were there specific questions that you were raising in there, which helped

people reconnect to that, or do you find that, that was information that

was readily available to everybody.

They just needed reminding of it?

Oh boy, that's a great question.

And I think actually, Ben, it's got a generational divide.

I think that when I give talks to audiences that are older, they have a much

harder time figuring out they, they under, especially the women are good on altruism.

They understand caring for other people, the men a little bit less so, and

I'm talking about people over 50 say.

But, but they do have more trouble connecting with nature, um, sort

of the ecological viewpoint.

And so the day I think the people over 50, even though that generation

actually caused most of the problem in terms of greenhouse gas emissions.

And it's it's a dilemma.

Now with global warming, they'd been learning very quickly

about the interdependence.

And I actually say one of the things that's helped the older

generation understand interdependence is having grandchildren.

So that won't say once I see people and I start asking them about the

quality of life for their grandchildren, they really start to get it.

Oh my gosh.

And then they, when they, when you tell them about how much their generation put

into the atmosphere, greenhouse gases, they're shocked, they're appalled.

And so you can put it in terms of their own life and what they've

done and what they care about now.

That when I go into my classroom where people are basically 18 to

22 or so, they have a much easier time to understand your dependence.

It's like, oh, of course.

They're still much more networked.

They're still understanding how their health affects other people

and how other people affect them.

They're much more understanding of ecology because they've all been learning it.

And so they're much more or less set in their ways, let's say.

And most of them, at least the students that I see at Berkeley, they cared deeply

about inequality and they care especially deeply about the climate crisis.

And they want to do something about it.

If anything, they're actually a bit impatient with the faculty

is like we gotta be doing more.

Every single class should be talking about climate and what to do about it.

So that they're really, I think, on the forefront of demanding that we

recognize interdependence and deal with it right now, in terms of stopping

and mitigating the climate crisis.

If the kind of language of the last 70 years, which of course has

not got as anywhere useful, has just always been around kind of

financial growth above all else.

What are some of the other kind of ways of thinking or ways of measuring that I

might bring into how I'm kind of reviewing progress or thinking about how things

are developing on a personal level?

Are there some guides that take me beyond those old measures,

which haven't served as well?

Yes.

That I think that's a really important question because companies that

want to do better need to think that it's actually possible and

have a business model that works.

So I think the first thing we have to just step back and say is, look,

maximizing profits is not my goal.

My goal is to make adequate profits for future sustainability of my company.

I want to keep my company healthy financially and going through.

But I'm not trying to just do what we think of is maximizing revenues

and especially net revenue or profit.

So I want my company to be healthy financially, and I want to be able

to pay myself and my workers, livable wages, and I want to be able to

ensure that we're not polluting the environment or causing any harm.

And we all want to really work together as stakeholders.

That means employees, the community, my customers, to basically think

about how to use our product or service to fit their needs and

not some made up or abstract need.

Because I'm out in the field a lot and talk to entrepreneurs and companies

and so forth, and it's like, one of the things that's really important is to be

out in the field and to find out, oh, what do my customers, what, how are they

actually using my product or service?

And how would they improve it?

What would they do differently?

So you want to get feedback.

One of your goals should be a sustainable company, but also trying to figure

out what your customers really want.

What can you do to maximize their enjoyment or use of your product?

Because if you can do that, then you'll succeed in your company will

succeed, but you're not going to do that sitting around the table.

So the interdict tendance really demands that you be out in inter

interconnected and working with your community, your stakeholders, and

especially your customers, because then, that feedback is invaluable.

But it never stops.

It's not like there's an end point.

Remembering permanence means things will be changing.

And we certainly saw that during the pandemic, they changed very rapidly.

But even when there's new pandemic things will change.

People's needs will change.

Your customer base might even be changing.

And you want to know that and stay on top of that.

And what I found is really interesting is that you don't

need to visit every customer.

And economics and in our development engineering, when we go out into the field

to see how people are actually using a new technology, say that we've developed and

we're trying to prototype it and make it better, you actually just need a little

bit of input, out of say a hundred people, you talk to say 15 you know, a lot.

And so you can selectively just get feedback and think about that.

But mainly you're out in the field making contact and listening

and that's just invaluable.

It's such a kind of funny thing in a way this whole, the whole idea around

impermanence, because of course, you know, that everything is always changing

and everything has a time to die are two of the sort of few ever-present

rules which affect our lives, in, in all its kind of realms, whether

it's at work or wherever it may be.

But of course so much talk in again, the kind of business literature or

thinking about kind of business schools, even actually and it goes much kind of

broader than that, this idea that somehow we can exert control over our kind of

environment, whether that environment is our immediate environment, or of

course, with much bigger consequences control over the environment on a

kind of much, much bigger scale.

And it just feels to me that people really don't understand or actually are

quite scared of what the implications of really embracing impermanence might be.

That's a great question because I think the entrepreneurs that I talk to

would state it slightly differently.

They don't think of it as in permanence, because that's somewhat

of an abstract idea, but in their daily business dealings, in, in

their thinking about what's the right strategy, what's our next step.

When they're talking to their managers and your employees, when they go out into

the field and talk to their suppliers or their customers, they think much more.

I think the ones who are successful and are good listeners basically

think, oh my gosh, that's a great idea.

are, then they hear a problem and they think, oh, let's

talk about how to solve this.

What do we need to change?

So they see change as new ideas or solutions to something that's happening.

And that's really just impermanence in action.

But they view it, I think in a positive way as how to go forward and better.

One of the things which I guess happens, which of course is just a kind of symptom

of how our crazy minds work is we're also quite bad at letting ideas go.

So we may be, and maybe I'm just talking about myself.

So it's the slightly kind of puppy dog thing, conversation sort of sparks

a new idea or through conversation through dialogue with the kind of

market wherever it might be, you kind of, uh, start exploring a kind

of new idea, but the extent to which we don't let something else go to

create space for that to thrive.

What we're inadvertently doing is creating layers of complexity in our work.

And I just I was curious that around again, this idea of kind of

impermanence, Yes, it's kind of new ideas maybe mean old ones die, but

it's, I guess it's it's gonna, yeah.

It's how we sort of school people or the extent to which we sort of school people

on kind of understanding more broadly what the idea of impermanence might mean.

Wow, that's deep.

I love it.

So let me just step back.

So, of course we have economic theories about destruction in

order to create for innovation.

And in E in Buddhism, we have a wonderful phrase called monkey

mind, which is our mind just gets jumbled up with a zillion ideas and

thoughts and how to calm it down.

And some of these go together from what you're saying.

So that first of all, just because we hear of a new idea doesn't

mean we should implement it, but namely that we should explore it.

And I absolutely agree with you that within a company you need to say, okay,

does this idea replace something we're doing, or does it just improve it?

And it's like, okay, it takes it to the next step.

How does this really fit in?

And does this really fit into our business?

Is it really something we, we can do well?

And so there are all these different layers as you pointed out, and that's

where good leadership comes in.

It's like, okay, you're an entrepreneur, you're the leader.

You have to really take everybody through all those steps to come out

with what you're going to do, and do in a way that's actually successful.

But also in our own work, in our technology labs, we do rapid prototyping,

meaning that we'll come in, we'll start working on an idea and keep

thinking about it, going keep going out to the field and changing it.

Because one of the things I do like about impermanence is

we're never at a final solution.

There's no.

And so the other thing I think is leaders is that we need to constantly

remind ourselves this is a process.

And sometimes we're going to do better than others.

It's like, that mainly we want to learn from when things don't go so

well, I won't you to have to call it failures, but you know, we have some

better ideas and some worse ideas.

We have some better days and worse days.

But mainly I think it's just to not get stuck, as you mentioned, not get stuck

on any of those, just keep going ahead.

And as I mentioned earlier, Hey, and one of the great things about

impermanence is to mark and be much better when you're having a really bad.

I, I like what you're saying, the idea that the kind of rapid

prototyping of course, is a kind of manifestation of of embracing

the idea of kind of impermanence.

So just really stepping into that place of a sort of constantly iterative

process, constantly sort of learning, constantly adapting, constantly

evolving, and that, that kind of flow.

I really like the kind of picture that you're painting with that

Oh, that's really well put.

Thank you.

Thank you for putting it all together like that.

Yes.

that's one of the things that she would just sorta talking about with

that, which sort of touched on is the kind of is leadership actually.

And so the individual the kind of role of the individual in all of this and I, the

kind of values that the leader brings.

in, In the book when you're talking in the Buddhist Economics book, to what extent

does it start to talk around kind of the importance of personal practice in there?

Oh, yes.

The book touches quite a bit on personal practice, personal lifestyle.

And I think that's because one of the things I like about Buddhist

economics is that it's got a S it cares about the human spirit, as well

as physical health and mental health.

It cares about the health of the human spirit, which is an

important part of our lives.

Um, and our human spirit needs nourishment, just like

our bodies and minds do.

And we're pretty good at nourishing our bodies and minds, but I think we're

less good at thinking about nourishing our spirit, which makes us human.

And so we do care about how we live.

Personally, we care about our carbon footprint.

We care about our wasteful consumption.

But mainly that's because it affects our own quality of life.

Who we are and how we live and how we relate to others is really

important to us and it should be.

But at some point, one of the main lessons of the book is, look, please live well.

We all want to live well.

And there is quite a bit of discussion about what does that

mean and how you might bring meditation or a sitting practice

into your life, and how to deal with.

We all have bad habits of mind, habits of body, whatever.

And so one of the things that Buddhism teaches us is how to overcome these

glaciers or basically bad actions of how we think or speak or act.

But that once we're working on that, that's well and good, but that's

not actually helping the world.

That's helping our quality of life and most likely the people around us.

But one of the big lessons of the book is everything's on two levels, our

personal level, and then the societal or economic level where to, we really

do have a moral responsibility given the climate crisis to become active in

changing the world that we can do that both with our work with our jobs, but

we got, have to go outside of that.

We really do need a system transformation.

And so a lot of the book focuses on how do we change our system to stop the climate

crisis and also to share prosperity, which we're not doing that very well either.

So we're destroying the planet.

We need to be healing the planet, and we need to be sharing prosperity

instead of causing enormous hardship globally to people who don't have enough

to eat or a place to live or enough to get into education and healthcare.

So, so we need to think about that, globally.

I read the article of yours that you wrote on for the publication Lion's

Roar is the Buddhist publication where you're talking about the

importance of a kind of activism.

And I, one of the ways that I'd come to your work via Jeremy was

cause I know you were talking about the, kind of guiding question.

If the, If the Buddha taught economics, what would he teach?

And an expiration of mine is if the put Buddha ran a business,

how would the business be?

It I've always just instinctively come back to this thing that, well

surely if he ran a business, it would be an activist organization.

I mean, it would be active.

It would be in pursuit of kind of change.

It would be a kind of campaigning organization.

And so you have spoken quite a lot about this this kind of

need for activism at its heart.

And for you, this is very broadly about activism in the sphere of climate.

Is that right?

Yes.

Yes.

But to be honest, Ben, I really haven't thought about it from

a business perspective, which I saw your ebook on about it.

Buddha were on the board, how would you, which is great.

I love that perspective and that thinking, because I agree with you

individuals work together in groups.

And I always think more of NGOs or some kind of environmental justice

organization or some kind of group that's whole being whole reason for

having that group is climate activism.

And so you're taking it a step further, which I really like of this idea of,

Hey, what about every company thinking about activism and joining with other

companies or with other communities or with groups to care right now about

the fact that we only have till 2030 to bring down carbon emissions, 50%.

How can we stop destroying the planet with greenhouse gas emissions?

That's such an important question.

So I really appreciate your you're lifting it up to the company level.

And probably I should ask you, what would Buddha say on that one?

Yeah, I mean, it's good know.

And in fact, part of my, kind of the kind of motivation and

reasons for these podcasts is for me to explore that question.

And cause you know, the things that we've spoken about, whilst abstract

terms, what does interdependence mean?

What does a kind of an altruistic heart mean?

What does impermanent mean for organizations, for businesses,

particularly in terms of how they function, how they act, the

decisions that you would make, the kind of work that you would do?

When we were speaking earlier about the kind of Buddhist economics kind of

reference in, in Small is Beautiful, you were explaining there that there was a

kind of link there to right livelihood.

That's sort of kind of limited in describing the kind of

work that you would do.

It did clearly articulate to the kind of work that you wouldn't do.

But is the kind of edge really of what I'm exploring, this thing around activism.

Like if your organization was an activist organization what would it do?

What would it focus on?

And it feels to me that the big problems of our day, yes, you would

make decisions around what the differential pay rates were in terms

of the kind of lowest earning employee to the highest earning employee.

I think there would be clear sort of guidance around that.

But yeah, just curious then where this comes back to the activism point.

But it's something that I'm exploring more than it's something

I have be answer to today.

Right, yeah.

I liked the way you put it well.

You explore within your own.

And just as we have two major global crises of inequality in the climate

global warming within the company, you can also look at questions of

equity and then you can also want to lower your carbon footprint.

So you have scope one scope, two emissions that now every company supposed to

be measuring and they are, but then you have to also look at scope three.

And this is finally getting out of your own company and asking, our product or

service what's its carbon footprint.

How's how has our product or service actually affecting the wellbeing of

the planet as well as with people?

And so that's like the first step of getting outside of your own

company and thinking about sort of your impact and what you can

do globally as enact inaction.

And then you can take it a step further, I think, and say, okay, who among in

our industry, can we join forces with, to actually focus even more powerfully

on stopping using fossil fuels, stop and whatever it's, it depends upon what

industry you're in, but how can we connect with other like-minded companies and

work with them in a way that actually creates change in terms of first of all,

we've got to stop destroying the planet.

And then we got to start thinking about healing, the planet.

And just like the individual, just so I say, hey get up, get off the

sofa, go out and join a group.

And you really only need to work on one major problem, or you

don't have to totally solve the climate crisis cause you can't.

But your company along with other companies can make a huge impact in one

area, you, there is a certain area which you know, will as an entrepreneur and

you can then focus on that area and as I tell individuals, Hey, you know what?

We all have skills and talents.

There's an enormous synergy.

So if we come together, we can actually have a huge impact,

because the synergy is so powerful.

And what I like about what you're doing is it's, that's the message to

companies too, which I hadn't really thought about before, but it's the

exact same power that come from.

Combining skills and talents and energy and a lot of know-how and

applying it to something that people are passionate about.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Uh, And so I, in terms of, as you were kind of mentioning there,

um, on those kinds of instances.

So your kind of invitation, your request always to people is to get

involved in whatever way that is.

If it's connecting with the local organization or whatever, it might

be, bringing to bear your kind of talents, your skills just to be active,

to be contributing to this work.

And I guess with students and people you're working with these people are

in that place, they are in the kind of active place they are contributing.

To what extent do they, are you feeling that kind of more and more people need the

push or is the kind of movement to people getting involved in doing that work?

Is that kind of very much in play?

Oh, Ben, what have found all the time is everybody says, how do I do that?

Because the people who are already doing it, it's just part of their lives.

And it's already, their practice or way of being is to be activist in

something while they're working and, having their own personal lives.

But so many times when I'm speaking, people say, oh, I don't see.

How I don't understand how I would do that.

And I hear this even globally from global audiences.

I said, you know what, once you're determined to do it, you'll actually

find the right organization.

You can go online.

But first of all, sit back and say, okay, what are my skills and talents?

What do I have to offer?

Everybody has skills and talents and something to offer you start there.

And then you say, okay, what do I really care about?

What's really important to me?

Like for me, it's phasing out oil and gas production in California.

And, but it could be something else.

It could be electric vehicles, electrifying buildings.

It could be public transportation or a walkable city, or ride getting

bicycles for everyone to ride, whatever there's something that's related

that you care about, and know about.

And so once you do that, then it's amazing how once you're motivated and have an

idea of here's what I have to offer, and here's what w what I really care about.

Amazing how all of a sudden you realize there's already a group there's already

a group, or you could bring together, or there is already a group you could join.

And I won't tell you how many people have emailed me after having this kind of talk.

And they come by and say, no idea, absolutely no idea that this was,

I had anything to do it with.

Thank you.

Because you were right within a month, I reached out to organizations.

I started brainstorming.

I started thinking about it, and I'm now working with this terrific group.

And they'll tell me what it is.

It's never the same thing, as everybody's so different, which I love.

But once you're motivated, and once you decide this is a priority in

your life, and you do have time, then it's amazing how well it flows

into becoming a party relight.

And this becomes a really meaningful part of your life.

I found that without my climate activism, I'm not even sure I would have the

ability to have hope and enjoy life right now with the news being so bad.

And yet whenever I'm feeling down and out, I think of something that I'll be

doing, or I go out and do something.

If I am not working right then, to work with other people and then look

back and say, look what we've done.

Okay.

It makes a difference, and it's something that we'll keep doing.

We still have a lot of work to do, but the rewards are enormous, both

personal, but especially societal.

And so everybody can do it.

It's just a matter of giving yourself the time and space.

And the motivation.

Thank you for that.

I guess I recently read Paul Hawken's book Regeneration, which is a hugely

comprehensive guide pointing to the many, many, many, many things that you

might do and ways of getting involved and it really super guide really,

or at least a source material to answer the question what could I do?

What might I do?

Yeah.

I did ask to work.

That's one great idea, Paul, by the way, is a Buddhist.

And there's so many resources online that once you start searching, you'll

say, oh my gosh, look at all this going on, which is also informative

and helpful to your own thinking.

But let me just add one more thing that I think is essential besides

information and resources is courage.

That right now we do live in a time of crisis.

It's an existential crisis and also big business and big oil has way too

much power over all of our lives and what's happening, and it takes courage.

And that's one of the things where your organization working with

other organizations, gains air power and people working within a

climate activist organization gains their power so that we really need

courage though, to come together.

Because we need courage to demand the change courage, to really work hard,

even when we have a lot of setbacks.

And the nice thing about working with others is that you have each

other's back and you can get through downsides, but celebrate upsides.

And also you do need courage everyday to realize life has lots of ups and downs.

It's all impermanent and we can make a difference.

So I also like to always say, we also need courage to enjoy life.

It's a really important part of who we are that we live not to

just worry, but we live to enjoy.

And so I really remind people that courage in being, being a fearless

warrior in that sense of helping the world it's really important to your

own well-being and your own happiness and your own way to enjoy life.

When you say to people you know, you kind of need courage.

what's, people's kind of response to that?

Oh, they're energized by it.

They love the, oh, of course.

Okay.

We can build our courage in, especially because we're courage

with working with other people.

Um, And as you mentioned, we get courage from taking action, having sub successes,

but you even get courage from failure.

Okay, that really irritated me.

And that gives you some new energy and more courage to keep going.

That I think courage is, especially from our interactions with

other people and organizations.

That's really critical.

Yeah, so it comes all the way back to the interdependence point.

There you go.

Okay.

Brilliant Clair, thank you very much for that.

We're really appreciate it.

So where, where can people find more about uh, your work and the book?

What's the best place for them to hunt you down in the kindest possible way?

Oh, great.

There's a website called buddhisteconomics.net.

And unfortunately, my book is now out of print.

Although you can find a few used copies, but it's available on Kindle.

So my students, especially reading it on Kindle

And Audible, I will add.

So enjoy, I hope people will read it and we keep up these discussions had been

thank you so much for peripheral things.

Oh no, thank you.

I really appreciate you taking the time.

I'm really curious, particularly as a lot of the sort of systems that we've

depended on as they crumble as they creak as they're sort of revealed for what they

are, I know Jeremy has a great line in his book around as these things crumble,

people start to look around for new ideas.

And, you know, one of the things you were kind of referencing at the

beginning as a lot of the neoliberal ideas are kind of exposed for what

they are, this whole devotion to free markets and all of those things.

As people increasingly realize that those things don't work, that they

start to look around for new ideas, new ways of making sense of the world.

And I hope with that, that people come to the idea of Buddhist economics as

a way of starting to fill that hole.

Yes.

We definitely know the system we want to create and we can create it.

And that's what's I think the main lesson is we don't have to

stick with this outmoded system.

That's been killing the planet and we can move forward to a better

world and we can do it together.

I hope you enjoyed that conversation with Clair.

If you did, maybe check out the conversation with Mark Anielski.

He's also an economist who paints a picture of a richer, fuller,

more inspiring way to live.

You may enjoy that one too.

And if you like the conversation, please share it.

Share it with friends, share it with foes, share it with anyone who you

think may benefit from listening too.

And if you like what we're doing, go check out the website.

You'll find everything about the Peripheral Thinking podcast

on buddhaontheboard.com.

Go look for Peripheral Thinking there.

Until next time, thanks again for your time.

Thanks again for listening.