Energia politika és spiritualitás

Kovács Ferenc Antal elöadása:2006 január 16.
Spiritualitás and economics konferencián.
http://ethics.bkae.hu/html/gek_konfer.htm

Mr.Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, esteemed dharma friends
At this symposium, instead of speaking without notes and using demonstration aids, projected slides, charts and diagrams, which I usually do, I decided to read my speech from the paper. The reason for this is that I want to be very careful when using terms, phrasings and expressions of the subjected field. I am neither a scholar of economics, nor qualified to teach others about buddhism. However, what I am trying to do is to speak about economic issues applying the teachings of buddhism within the framework of my specific area: energy and the environment.
It happened not very long ago that I learned about the buddhist approach to economics. Although new and unexpected, for me it was some kind of a realization of something that had been quite evident for a long time. Far from enlightenment, though, it seemed a rational course of events. In the mundane life I am a practicioner of traditional economics, so to say, a finance professional. Over the past 10 years, however, I could not help experiencing that such notions as expectation, projection, anticipation, assessment, risk, estimate, etc. that are very much part of our traditional tool set in our materially oriented business practices, in fact reflect very strong spirituality. For example: what is the true value of a company? Followers of buddhist teachings may reply that the value of a company, the way we calculate it using generally accepted methodologies, is not the real value! Instead, it is just our idea of it. And such ideas are created by finance professionals, like me in the state of brain-consciousness. But brain consciousness – buddhists would keep explaining – is only one among a number of possible forms of consciousness. Therefore, how can we be sure about the true value of the company? Experience tells us that actually we are not sure about it at all.
When reading buddhist texts sometimes I often feel as if someone, a great master of a discipline completely unrelated to buddhist teachings might have said exactly the same. It is known that Buddhism made impressions on many other fields of science, such as psychology, philosophy, quantum physics, etc. And great masters of these disciplines in our occidental world are famous doctors, musicians, scientists, or even they are professors of finance, corporate strategy and marketing gurus, etc. Ironically we could say they are intuitive buddhists, just they have not realized it. The fact that a buddhist approach to economics actually exists was not surprising.
My first encounter with buddhism took place more than 20 years ago in Northern Japan, and since then it has continuously been penetrating into my intellect, daily life and work.
That time, as a foreign student I happened to come across with a middle-aged bald man wearing the outfit of zen monks, who later invited me for dinner to his house. The house was actually a temple that belonged to the soto zen school. Later it turned out that with the monk’s family there lived a young man from Poland, a disciple who studied buddhims and practiced zazen. In his free time his main engagement was to translate the works of an ancient zen master into the Polish language. The disciple, Nyogen has been a close friend since. The ancient zen master he was translating was Eihei Dogen Kigen from the 13th century, who’s works later became my favourite buddhist readings.
While living in Japan I frequently visited zen temples. Attended early morning ceremonies and sit zazen with other laymen. Sometimes even participated in a sesshin to enjoy the unique experience of dokusan, when the zen master in a private encounter guides the desciple through the stages of zazen. Through these lectures and practices I learnt that zazen is not an idle inaction, or a kind of meditation. Zazen is an intense inner struggle, which requires much energy to gain control over the mind and to use it to penetrate into our discursive intellect. Rather than an intellectual game, zen has stayed with me over the years as a spiritual exercise.
But apart from being an intellectual game, what can be the effect of zazen for a laymen who is idling around chasing delusions in business?
Zazen places the center of gravity, the focus of the mind in the bottom of the hara, in the abdoman, somewhere between the navel and the pelvis. With the equilibrium of body and mind in the hara, instead of the brain, zazen helps fighting against delusions, helps perceiving the true nature of things but also helps improving spontaneity. In fact, improved spontaneity can be a great tool to improve our negotiation skills, teamwork and skills to manage organizations. Zazen can help better understanding the reality of a business situation simply by improving our consciousness! But here is the paradox! The objective of zazen is not in itself to improve human intellect! Rather, improvement of the state of our mind (we can call it intelligence, or wisdom) is the direct consequence of practice. There is a cause and effect relationship between improved consciousness and enriching the personality as well as strengthening the character – both these are invaluable assets for a businessmen.
The objective of practicing zazen is attaining enlightenment, or self-realization, which, according to buddhist teachings is the ultimate goal in human life. Practice is the actualization of our True-Nature. A buddhist master would say that humans, who constantly endavour to improve their own character can overall improve the business practices of firms, activity of organizations, institutions and public administration and will become more sensitive to the moral and ethical aspects of conducting business. Consequently, since firms, institutions, organizations and the public administration are spiritually driven entities, they will act depending on the state of mind of those who are managing them. Can we say that, similar to humans and the true nature of the self, the ultimate objective of a business is to perceive the true nature of wealth creation! And that wealth creation in a traditional, material sense is just one among many other forms of wealth creation.
Recent global efforts to address the problem of climate change can be a good example of creating wealth in a non-material sense.
Global climate change is a fact and is occuring due to human intervention into the environment. It is proven that climate change is caused by the increasing level of green house gas emissions. The consequences of climate change affect everyone on earth, no matter where we live and regardless how rich, or poor we are. Very interesting, say the buddhists: cause and effect…then the vision of oneness…and this all is occuring at the utmost peak and the utmost depth of the present: the being time…Three fundamental notions of buddhist teachings.
The United Nations and its member states decided to set up market based support systems, such as the Kyoto Protocol and the European Trading System to reduce green house gas emissions globally. As a result, improved technologies will be applied by manufacturing companies, power plant, cement and chemicals produders. In Europe, the goal is to reduce green house gas emissions by 2008 by 8% relative to the 1990 level. Another result is that corporations will own a necessary amount of emission quotas, which will create non-material wealth. Material wealth creation in a traditional sense, the profit will reduce, either because the companies have to replace obsolete technologies with expensive modern ones, or they have to purchase the missing amount of quotas in the market. And yet, we may say that the true value of the corporation can actually increase, because due to supporting the conditions of sustainable development its net real value incresed.
Climate change and diminishing oil and gas reserves have recently urged not only technology development, but switching from hydrocarbons to alternative fuel sources. The growing proportion of renewables in the energy mix has a number of effects on the economies that can be explained from a buddhist viewpoint. I would highlight two aspects of this problem solution. The first is increased diversity of energy sources. Instead of concentrating on oil and gas as primary energy resources, simply by increased usage of renewables, such as biomass, biogas, wind, geothermal power, etc. can increase security of the availability of energies. Also, such energy resources are available more evenly around the world, and because of the relative simplicity of such energy systems are more affordable for less developed economies. The second important point is that the energy systems overall become more evenly distributed, that is electric power will be generated by many smaller production units, instead of a limited number of large power plants. From our viewpoint it means enhancing local solutions to local problems.
There is one more important aspect of the global energy problem which I would like to mention here. And that is the expected fuel switch from hydrocarbons to hydrogen in households, transportation and stationary power generation may realistically not in the very distant future. Hydrogen based economies will require an increased sophistication of the whole energy system in terms of regulations, technology solutions and market mechanisms. A buddhist could say it will lead corporations, institutions and policy maker to an increased level of consciousness.
Whether the mindset of our institutions, governments and corporations can actually lead global energy politics to this more elevated, improved level of true value creation for the sake of sustainability is the real challenge to out joint consciousness?