1. The logical case for going forth from the money-making life
One customer wants to build a mansion. Another customer wants to build a homeless shelter. According to the twisted logic of the market, if these demands are both backed by adequate funds, then both projects get an equal place on the schedule.
Some questions, according to the logic of the market, must never be asked. Is the demand reasonable? Is the demand merciful, humane, noble, just?
According to the logic of the market, the sole relevant question is, "Does the purchaser have adequate funds?"
The market is a system for fulfilling customer demand without ever asking whether what the customer demands is good, logical, reasonable, merciful, loving or sane.
The first thing logic and reason demand is that we logically assess the goal of what we are doing. The market refuses to do this reasonable, logical thing. All demand is presented on the same plane.
There is no reason, no logic, no sanity to a system that aggregates all demand without logically assessing whether it is reasonable demand.
We are fools if we devote our capacity for reason and logic to a system that itself is not ruled by reason and logic.
The enlightened one is right when he demands that we get up and walk away from the illogical system of commerce, and go forth into a different life. The enlightened one rightly demands that we give up the senseless, irrational life where our minds are ruled by forces beyond our control, by untamed desires expressed in the whims of the market. The enlightened one rightly demands that instead we scientifically investigate mental states and understand their origin, understand how they affect us, and understand how to destroy mental states that produce suffering.
The life of commerce is an unenlightened life, a life based to its core on deliberate refusal to investigate the causes and effects of actions.
The market aims to fulfill craving. The enlightened one aims to extinguish craving.
The mind enslaved to the market aims to fulfill demand without understanding the causes of demand. The enlightened one aims to understand causation and remove the causes of suffering.
The market does not investigate whether fulfilling a demand will lead to suffering, or to liberation from suffering.
The life of the market and the life of the enlightened one could not be more opposed.
The Buddha teaches the path to the end of suffering. This is the logical path for suffering beings to follow.
Please, don't waste your time serving an irrational system.
Go forth.
Be rational.
2. The practical case for going forth
In your meditations on the impermanence of aggregates, I'm sure you run through the possible ways in which aggregates that give rise to consciousness can decay. The organ that circulates nutrients can fail (circulatory failure). Cells can multiply and expand and use up nutrients, destroying other organs (cancer). These are just two common ways aggregates can fail. There is a long list. All aggregates are impermanent. All are destined to decay and decompose into their constituent elements.
My question is, do you perform these same meditations on aggregates which comprise the system of governance and commerce? The state is an aggregate of component elements, and is therefore also impermanent. Commerce relies on peace, which can fail. Governance relies on allegiance to authority, which can fail. Here too there is a long list.
When we meditate deeply on the impermanence of aggregates that give rise to consciousness, we will quickly see the futility of putting faith and hope in the permanence of impermanent aggregates. Our priorities will shift. Contemplation of impermanence compels us to reassess what is truly important (e.g. awareness and loving kindness in the present moment) and what is trivial (e.g. vanity over the body and material things).
Studying the dhamma and meditating on the nature of aggregates can't help but lead us to the conclusion, "Dhamma is true and real and right." So, the next logical question is, why am I not devoting my serious moral and intellectual energy to what is true and real and right? Why am I still wasting time working for a system that by its very nature denies the noble truth of suffering?
The system of governance and commerce is impermanent. If people understood this fact and meditated deeply upon it, we would go forth and devote the intellectually and morally serious part of life to meditating and learning dhamma instead of striving to increase our rank and role in an impermanent system.
This is where propaganda comes in. The system of governance and commerce persuades you to devote serious intellectual and moral energy to the system. How? By maintaining the illusion that it is permanent.
If people understood things rightly, monks would go forth in droves. Birth would cease. Craving would cease. The system of governance and commerce would begin to decay. Propaganda prevents this by maintaining an illusion of permanence.
Every empire in history brainwashes its subjects into thinking that working for the empire and fulfilling its goals and aims is a worthwhile use of time and energy. Please, friends, don't fall for the scam! Don't allow the brainwashing to seduce you into devoting the intellectually and morally disciplined part of your life to a system that lacks intellectual and moral discipline.
Of course systems of governance and commerce exert a lot of power over us. They can prevent us from devoting our entire lives to dhamma. They can take their share of our lives by conscription, by threat of starvation and imprisonment. These are valid reasons for acquiescing. But belief that the system of governance and commerce is permanent is not a valid reason for acquiescing, because it is false.
The problem is that acquiescing based on the threat of imprisonment and starvation seems servile and cowardly, so we are tempted to believe the propaganda that tells us acquiescence is a virtue. We should not yield to this temptation. The propaganda is false.
Monks who go forth from the life of commerce and governance into the life of awareness and loving kindness are virtuous. Commercial people who devote our lives to a system that lies about its permanence are complicit with the lies.
Monks who go forth from the life of commerce and governance into the life of awareness and loving kindness devote the morally and intellectually serious part of their lives to something worthy of this seriousness, something true and right, not to a false system that lies about its permanence.
The enlightened one teaches us to leave our ranks and roles in this world behind, go forth, and devote the higher part of ourselves to awareness and loving kindness rather than greed and profit.
However (and this is a big however) the reality of monasticism doesn't correspond to the ideal. Monasteries, in one of the world's greatest ironies, have "permanence departments" that invest in the productive apparatus of capitalism and fund monks from dividends and interest.
There is no way to completely escape from the system. But, it is possible to shift our priorities. It is possible to be realistic about what is genuinely worthy of our attention, and what steals a share of our attention only by the necessity of circumstance.
There is no perfect escape. I am still compelled by circumstances to work for the system. But I no longer deceive myself with illusions the system tries to foist on me, that it is permanent, just, noble, efficient. Now I recognize that it is necessity, not virtue, that compels me to acquiesce. Now I live as simply as I can, to minimize the time I must sell to the system that destroys my Buddha nature and turns me into a commodity.
By Peter Carson