Materialism beats Buddhism (video)

Bhikkhu Bodhi (Buddhist Publication Society via Access to Insight); Iconic Tik Toks; Key of Awesome; Ashley Wells, Dhr. Seven (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

The Vital Link

Bhikkhu Bodhi

As Buddhism has begun to gain a firm foothold in the West, its fate in its traditional Asian homelands has been moving in the opposite direction, toward atrophy and decline.

Already in several Asian Buddhist countries Buddhism has been forcibly suppressed, while even in those countries that have preserved their political integrity the Dharma no longer occupies the same sovereign place in people's hearts it held in an earlier era.

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Although devotion and a sense of Buddhist personal identity still remain strong, throughout the breadth of Buddhist Asia, cultural and ideological forces of great power have been unleashed that daily challenge the influence of the Dharma as the key to meaning and value for those who profess it as their light and guide.

Among the changes taking place in current patterns of thinking, perhaps the most detrimental to the Dharma has been the rise to prominence of a materialistic world-view that focuses upon the present life as the only field for human endeavor.

This paradigm or view need not be assented to intellectually, with full awareness of its implications, for it to become a major determinant of our attitudes and conduct.

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Often a curious ambivalence prevails in our minds, where one part of us professes our confidence in the lofty principles of the Dharma, while with the other we think and act as if the present life were the sole occasion for happiness and the achievement of worldly success were the true mark of the accomplished individual.

The rapid spread of this materialistic outlook has in turn brought about a far-ranging secularization of values that invades every part of our lives.

This transformation of values gives precedence to goals and attitudes diametrically opposed to those advocated by the Dharma. And under its impact the scales have tipped far away even from a reasonable balance between material and spiritual goods.

Now we see acquisitiveness replacing contentment as the reigning ideal, competition taking the place of cooperation, speedy efficiency the place of compassionate concern, and selfish indulgence the place of abstinence and self-control.

The attempt to live simultaneously by two conflicting sets of principles — those being ushered in by secular materialism and those grounded in the Dharma — generates a... More