Buddhism K – 2016

1NC K

1NC ImpactThis subjective attachment to material desire prevents the recognition of infinite interconnectedness---this fundamental failure is at the root of all violenceYeh ‘6 [“The Way To Peace: A Buddhist Perspective,” By Theresa Der-lan Yeh, International Journal of Peace Studies 11.1, Pub: Spring/Summer 2006, Acc: 7/4/16, http://www.gmu.edu/programs/icar/ijps/vol11_1/11n1Yeh.pdf]//SC

Albeit external verbal and physical wrongdoings as well as social injustice are causing conflicts and violence, Buddhism contends

that these behaviors and structures originate all from the state of human mind, since the violence and injustice are responses toward external stimuli produced by people’s inner mind operation. That is, the deeper causes of any conflict lie internally in the mental operations within each being. For example, confronted with the threat of physical and verbal harm, it is natural for us to feel fear, dislike, resentment, anger or hate. Out of this negative caste of mind, we would again resort to a violent response, and hence a conflict arises. Similarly, institutions or groups would respond to adversity with establishing policies or laws trying to protect whatever interest they perceive to be under threat or attack, which would cause conflicts since others’ interest and well-being might be undermined by these measures. In other words, physical and structural violence are the product of human mental status such as fear, anger, and hate, which are considered in Buddhism to be the internal causes to violence and conflicts. Even when no threat of personal safety or collective interest is in presence, conflicts may occur, from the Buddhist perspective, as a result of our two major mental attachments to, first, subjective views, opinions and, second, the desire for materials, relationships. The stronger the attachment is, the more obsessive one would be, the more extreme behaviors one would engage, and the more severe the conflict would become. The attachment to views refers to insistence on the correctness of one’s own views, ideas, and ways of doing things. It would elapse into prejudice, polarity,

negating other views and ways of life and ultimately negating people who are different from “us”. The Buddha sees this attachment to difference as one major cause of in-group and inter-group conflicts. Two thousand years later, this has also been identified by modern scholars as central to conflicts between ethnic, social, religious groups and individuals (Blumberg, 1998; Myers, 1999). The second major cause of conflicts, the attachment to desire, refers to want for material goods and longing for affection and belonging in human beings. It can easily go beyond the level of necessity and become greed. The greedy desire to have and to own drives individuals, groups, and nations into competition for what they want, followed by conflicts and even wars. As depicted in Vibhasa-sastra: For the sake of greedy desire, kings and kings are in conflict, So are monks and monks, people and people, regions and regions, states and states (The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha, Taisho 28: 1547). This competition is discerned by the Buddha as a

lose-lose situation: If we win, we incur resentment toward ourselves. If we lose, our self-esteem is hurt (Dhammapada, Taisho 4: 210). None benefits from this competition derived from greediness. Even winners accrue negative feelings from the lost party that inevitably plants seeds of future conflicts. The internal cause of violence and conflicts as analyzed through a Buddhist perspective, corresponds to many peace educators’ emphasis on intrapersonal peace building and the United Nations’ campaign for a culture of peace. The focus on individual and inner

transformation of attitudes on and interpretations of what happens externally, which in turn would motivate appropriate change in behaviors, is considered more effective in eliminating the causes

leading to violence and conflicts on all levels of human interactions. The Root Cause of Violence and Conflicts Behind the mental, behavioral and structural causes of violence and conflict, Buddhism goes even further to the ultimate fundamental cause leading to all the suffering inflicted by violence and conflict. Buddha attributes all our attachments, the resulting harming behaviors and the suffering hence

caused, to the human ignorance (avijja), that is, we can not see the world as it is and see our self as such. We are ignorant to the

cosmic reality that everything in the world is inter-related, interdependent. Not adopting the Buddhist worldview, we thought we are separate from others as an independent entity: our views are different from theirs; our properties are certainly

not theirs. Hence we develop our attachments to views and desires through the reinforcing notions of “me” and “mine.” We are not impartial in looking at things. We tend to focus on the harm that is done to us, instead of examining the whole event in its context with all the causes and conditions conducive to its happening. This ignorance to the principle of dependent origination alienates us from what really happens in the situation and the complex set of conditions around any given event, and thus rids us of the possibility of making correct assessment of the event and react accordingly in time. Without the lucidity to discern the causes, development and effects of specific events, we are inevitably causing conflicts and doing harm to others as well as ourselves all the time. Even wars between states come out of great fear and the collective ignorance (Thich Nhat Hanh, 2003). This ignorance is what Buddhism identifies as the very root cause of violence, conflict, and war, which prevents human beings to live a peaceful life.

1NC AltVote negative to commit to a dialectic of Buddhist peace---the universe is an interconnected series of systems and processes---only a theoretical shift that demands internal peace can ground society and politics in non-violenceYeh ‘6 [“The Way To Peace: A Buddhist Perspective,” By Theresa Der-lan Yeh, International Journal of Peace Studies 11.1, Pub: Spring/Summer 2006, Acc: 7/4/16, http://www.gmu.edu/programs/icar/ijps/vol11_1/11n1Yeh.pdf]//SC

This Buddhist way of looking at the world comes, in the opinion of Johan Galtung (1993: 23), a

Norwegian peace studies pioneer, closest to the one dynamic, complex peace theory he proposes, in which the world is “precisely a process based on diversity in symbiotic (mutually

influential) interaction.” In this world of multi-leveled plurality, according to Galtung, peace is not a stable, end state but a more interactive process of a series of changing and balancing acts, an on-going dialectic between our actions and the world. This contingent view of peace, as shared by many peace scholars and activists in the field, is similar to what Buddhist perceives peace to be. In fact, the complexity and the collectiveness in causes leading to peace or war have long been recognized in the morphological construction of those words. According to Sanskrit dictionaries (Hirakawa, 1997; Ogiwara, 1979), the words samnipata, samgri, and samgama, all refer to the concept of peace. These words share the root sam-vii meaning people do things together, which is also shared by the Sanskrit word referring to war (samit). On the basis of this morphological derivation, both peace and war

are produced by the collective, rather than individuals. No single nor simple explanation of what builds peace or create war would suffice. The view of peace as a collective product is well in line with the Buddhist worldview based on the principle of dependent origination which emphasizes the mutual influence of all the elements involved in any situation. With this interdependent frame of reference, Buddhists would prefer a holistic view of peace, instead of peace in separate contexts such as schools, families, or the environment. This is again very close to what many peace studies scholars have advocated as the ultimate vision of peace (Brock-Utne, 1997; Galtung, 1993; Galtung & Ikeda, 1995; Turpin & Kurtz, 1997). From the holistic perspective, the connection between the concept of negative and

positive peace becomes clear and imperative in the light of the Buddhist law of nature, dependent origination. Absence of war and direct violence only constitutes a temporary peace if there is no justice present in the socio-economic international structure. The injustice and the violence causing suffering in every other node in the web of existence would inevitably and eventually weigh the negative peace away. Though the negative peace is only

temporary, unstable and fragile, it is absolutely indispensable on the way to the positive peace. Since each human being and each level of systems are interconnected, to create a positive peace compels efforts of everyone at every level of human structures. The Buddhist view of the interconnected world demands that the ideal of world peace is less rhetoric at the negotiation tables among some “superpowers” in the international level than starting a personal transformation of one’s daily living. And this peacemaking effort is a continued striving at the every very moment because of the dynamic, constant changing nature of all the possible causal forces in this world.

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Alternative

Alt---2NCInternal reflection is a prerequisite to engaging political action---this is the only way to truly progress towards peace at any level---answers all of their defensive claims about how this debate affects the world writ largeYeh ‘6 [“The Way To Peace: A Buddhist Perspective,” By Theresa Der-lan Yeh, International Journal of Peace Studies 11.1, Pub: Spring/Summer 2006, Acc: 7/4/16, http://www.gmu.edu/programs/icar/ijps/vol11_1/11n1Yeh.pdf]//SC

To achieve peace within a person, the Buddhist approach is to observe and reflect upon the conditions in the external and mental operations, and then to decide on the most appropriate course of action as response to the outer and inner environments.

With the most adequate response, we would not do harm to ourselves as well as not harbor negative feelings and thoughts toward other. Before taking any external action to realize peace, the first step for any Buddhist would be to look at ourselves and the events happening around us carefully and honestly, “not sugarcoating anything about the realities of life, consciousness, or culture” (Sivaraksa, 1999: 42). The greater urgency placed by Buddhism upon the inner reflection finds its doctrinal basis on the Buddhist analysis of the roots of violence and conflicts within the mind. As the Buddha teaches, You should carefully guard your mind, Maintaining the mindfulness all the time, In order to cease conflicts (The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha,

Taisho 1: 26). This is the starting point for the Buddha’s disciples to live in peace since peace depends not so much on what happens to people, but on what attitude, comprehension, and response they give to the happenings. An understanding of the complex set of plural forces, causes and conditions that have brought the event into being and have shaped our immediate perception of, feelings for, and reaction to the event, only comes possible from the insight (vipassana) we develop from inner reflection in the light of the principle of dependent origination. As the Buddha testifies, Once I dwell in peace (= awakened to the universal), In adversity I react with no anger;

Living among angry people, I act with no anger (Dhammapada, Taisho 4: 210). With a clearer view of what happened through practice of inner reflection, we are empowered with proactiveness; that is, we no longer would respond compulsively, but would be capable of choosing a course of actions more appropriate and beneficial to all parties involved, with no anger or hate harbored within ourselves. Theresa Der-lanYeh 99 This approach does not only work on the personal level, many contemporary Buddhist leaders of peace movements give first priority to inner transformation within individuals on the path to peace in larger contexts. The Venerable Thich Nhat Hanh (1999: 159) encourages people who would like to engage themselves in peace activism to prepare themselves in advance by developing awareness and

mindfulness for practicing peace, that is, reacting “calmly and intelligently, in the most nonviolent way possible.” Inner practice on nonviolence is hence considered a prerequisite to peace workers and educators. Further relating the impact of individual practice to the whole picture, the Venerable Shih Sheng-yen (1999: 175) stresses the influence of few on many, in that “peace in society begins with peace within

oneself”, since the widening circle of influence of each individual would expand from their immediate sphere gradually to the larger contexts. Without this “internal disarmament” (as The Dalai Lama called it; see Hopkins, 2000: 194), our negative emotions derived from the ignorance to the true operating principle behind all phenomena (including our own feelings and thoughts), the fear, anger and confusion in the state of mind, would rise as reactions to the adversary conditions, and would prevent us from acting nonviolently and living harmoniously with other people in the world. In addition to ridding ourselves of the negative, non-peaceful feeling and thoughts within us, through the practice of reflection upon the dependently originated reality (i.e. seeing and experiencing the

interconnections and mutual dependence that run through everything in this world), concerns for other beings would evolve and slowly become as natural as concerns for self in the process. Such conceptions would facilitate the cultivation of four positive emotional faculties (Pali: appamañña or

Brahmavihara): metta (loving-kindness), karuna (compassion), mudita (sympathetic joy), and upekkha (equanimity). These pro-social qualities derived from the understanding of the interdependent reality would compel a natural drive for altruistic actions: The one who dwells in compassion would not have a conflictual volition; The one who dwells in loving-kindness would always act most appropriately (Dhammapada, Taisho 4: 210). Though internally generated, these positive, prosocial qualities contain an outward orientation. That is, the intrapersonal practice of insightful reflection is closely connected with the external practice of nonviolence and mutually enhances each other since the inner nonviolence and peace would be manifested in the five precepts, the fundamental code of conduct for all Buddhists to live in harmony with other beings in the world.

AT: NihilismOur alt’s not nihilism---we don’t cease action, we just realize that there’s nothing to attain beyond a dialectic of peaceDavis ‘4 [Bret W. Davis, 2004 (Department of Japanese Philosophy Kyoto University “Zen After Zarathustra: The Problem of the Will in the Confrontation Between Nietzsche and Buddhism” The Journal of Nietzsche Studies 28 (2004) 89-138, accessed through muse.edu]//SCThe Vimalakirti Sutra tells us that the Buddha Lands are not somewhere else, but rather "the various kinds of living beings are themselves the Buddha Lands of the Bodhisattvas"; it is only that these beings do not yet see the purity of this world due to the impurity of their way of seeing.24 In learning to see that "form is none other than emptiness" and that "emptiness does not represent the extinction of form," one ceases to "yearn for nirvana" and to "loath this world," and is able to "enter the gate of nondualism."25 Nagarjuna tersely asserts this doctrine of nondualism when he writes: "The limits (i.e., realm) of nirvana are the limits [End Page 97] of samsara. Between the two, also, there is not the slightest difference whatsoever."26 Jay Garfield gives the following helpful interpretation of these enigmatic yet crucial lines. "To be in samsara is to see things as they appear to deluded consciousness and to interact with them accordingly. To be in nirvana , then, is to see those things as they are—as merely empty, dependent, impermanent, and nonsubstantial, but not to be somewhere else , seeing something else.... Nagarjuna is emphasizing that nirvana is not someplace else. It is a way of being here."27 The way things are here and now , according to Buddhism, is neither existence nor non-existence, but rather the middle way of dependent co-origination. When this dynamic process of interconnected becoming is radically thought through , according to Nagarjuna, there is no (substantial) "thing" that comes into and goes out of existence. And this means that each and every phenomenal event is marked by —in the words of his famous eightfold negation—" non-origination, non-extinction ; non- destruction, non-permanence; non-identity, non-differentiation; non-coming (into being), non-going (out of being)."28 The "uncompounded" is thus not someplace else, but is this world of non-substantial becoming seen aright. According to Nagarjuna, the root of samsaric existence is the activity or disposition (Sk. samskâra) that compounds phenomena into reified forms, forms that we attach ourselves to and then suffer the loss (of control) of. The "wise one" who sees into this vicious circle, therefore, ceases to "act" in the sense of "to create compounds." But this cessation is presumably not a cessation of all "activity" as such; indeed, as Garfield puts it, by ceasing the activity of reification " we can achieve... a nirvana not found in an escape from the world but in an enlightened and awakened engagement with it."29 The right effort to attain nirvana is thus not a will to nothingness, but leads rather to the realization that there is nothing to "attain."30 Thus asamskrta refers not to an eternal realm outside the conditioned world of becoming, but to a more originary way of perceiving and dwelling in the world of dependent co-origination. This nondualism of samsara and nirvana, however, is not a simple identity. It is neither a dualism (since nirvana is not some other place outside this world), nor is it a sheer nothingness , a negation of existence as such. Yet the world reaffirmed is not simply the same as the initial world of "attachment" (P./Sk. upâdâna). Rather, nirvana implies a different way of being-in-this-world. Yet how can we characterize this

difference? Negatively speaking, we may assume that enlightened action would not be driven by attachment, craving, or, presumably, the will to power. In following the return movement in Buddhism back toward a reaffirmative characterization of being-in-the-world, we must not loose sight of the importance of this initial moment of negation. The negation of these modes of "willful" being-in-the-world marks the radical difference between an enlightened "re-affirmation" and an ignorant craving for and attachment to life. Nirvana, as a "blowing out of the flame of craving and attachment," demands first of all a radical negation of the will . A reaffirmation of the world of activity [End Page 98] is made possible , however, only by way of a second —equally necessary— negation, namely, a negation of any sublated craving for and attachment to transcendent repose in the realm of nirvana. The event of nirvana thus paradoxically completes itself only in a movement through its own negation. Saigusa Mitsuyoshi writes that this dialectical movement toward reaffirmation through double negation can already be found in the early sutras. The Suttanipâta, for instance, often instructs us not only to discard "this world," but also to discard "that world" of the beyond. Saigusa interprets the first negation to signify the "negative" moment of nirvana, the "going forth" (Jp. ôsô) from this world of craving and ignorance, and the second negation to indicate a "positive" moment of "returning" (Jp. gensô) to compassionate activity within the world of conditioned existence. This movement of return, he adds, is not that of a one-dimensional circle, but rather that of a three-dimensional spiral.31 This dynamic dialectic of reaffirmation through double negation is clearly developed in the Mahayana tradition, as succinctly stated in the key phrase of the Heart Sutra: " form is emptiness; emptiness is form." Phenomenal beings (forms; Sk. rûpa) are emptied of any reified substantial essence (Sk. svabhâva); yet emptiness essentially empties itself into and as the eventful suchness of phenomenal be-ings in their dependent co-origination.

AT: Too SmallIt’s all interconnected which means interpersonal demands for peace are keyYeh ‘6 [“The Way To Peace: A Buddhist Perspective,” By Theresa Der-lan Yeh, International Journal of Peace Studies 11.1, Pub: Spring/Summer 2006, Acc: 7/4/16, http://www.gmu.edu/programs/icar/ijps/vol11_1/11n1Yeh.pdf]//SC

Also derived from the principle of dependent origination and the interconnected worldview is a holistic view of peace and the micro/macro linkage between violence at all levels, which has perhaps the most potential among all Buddhist contributions in influencing peace research and peace activism. While peace studies has been characterized as interdisciplinary since its inception, the boundaries or conceptual frames of different academic disciplines inevitably compartmentalize the study of peace. And the study of violence at different levels has never been balanced in

significance to the public as well as financial funding received. For example, criminal violence is more extensively investigated than violence against women and children, while the latter, in turn, has accrued more attention than the consequences of various forms of violence upon the collective public health (Turpin & Kurtz, 1997). In the Buddhist conception of peace, all causes of violence and peace are interrelated and mutually influential; and the interrelations between violence at all levels are assumed and hence demands a multi-lateral comprehensive approach to stopping violence and promoting peace at all levels. One recent common trend in research on peace and violence is to explore the links between interpersonal, collective, national, and global levels of violence. An increasing number of scholars (Alexander et al., 1987; Brock-Utne, 1997; Galtung & Ikeda, 1995; Kurtz & Turpin, 1989; Reardon, 1993) have attempted to posit a relationship between the causes of peace and violence at the micro level and those at the macro level. Their work has certainly further illuminated the micro-macro linkage between different levels of peace and violence.

AT: Peace ImpossibleA process-oriented paradigm that rejects violence and cultivates peace at the mundane, interpersonal level is a critical first step and solves overallYeh ‘6 [“The Way To Peace: A Buddhist Perspective,” By Theresa Der-lan Yeh, International Journal of Peace Studies 11.1, Pub: Spring/Summer 2006, Acc: 7/4/16, http://www.gmu.edu/programs/icar/ijps/vol11_1/11n1Yeh.pdf]//SC

The Buddhist principle of dependent origination mandates a world composed of dynamic exchanges and interconnections among all entities existing in the world. The complex web of causes and conditions in any given event engenders a focus on process and causes, over a focus on end results. In the past, peace used to be reified as an absolute ultimate: transcendent, idealistic, and thus unreal, unattainable. People worshipped peace with awe but

knew deeply in their hearts that peace is unlikely to be realized in this world. Nowadays, most peace researchers agree that peace is no more a stable state to be reached at the end of the tunnel, but a composite of dynamic interactions demanding continued striving because of the constantly changing conditions of all forces/factors involved. Therefore, in efforts to build peace, seemingly not directly relevant factors and conditions conducive to peace could be just important as conflict resolution or other direct intervention measures in dealing with conflicts. This new way of looking at peace building and peacekeeping is in perfect accordance with the Buddhist worldview, as substantiated by the Sanskrit morphology of words referring to peace and war as collective products. The positive orientation and the shift to cultivating causes of peace and preventing causes of violence bring a new focus to peace work. By working with everyday, mundane issues regarding interpersonal relations, human rights and the environmental concerns, peace activists are advancing on both the direct and indirect causes of peace; in other words, they are creating peace and furthering the realization of a culture of peace at every moment. Even if peace makers seem to do little about the immediate and direct violence in their surroundings, this process-oriented perspective empowers those who strive for peace, especially in those war-torn regions of the world such as Croatia, Israel (“Peace: How realistic is it?”, 2003), and Northern Ireland (Stewart, 2002), where people might feel helpless, powerless when only small changes toward peace can be produced in a conflict and violence-ridden environment.

AT: Realism/State KeyIt empirically works, including in the context of engaging China---Tibetan governance provesYeh ‘6 [“The Way To Peace: A Buddhist Perspective,” By Theresa Der-lan Yeh, International Journal of Peace Studies 11.1, Pub: Spring/Summer 2006, Acc: 7/4/16, http://www.gmu.edu/programs/icar/ijps/vol11_1/11n1Yeh.pdf]//SC

This absolute insistence on non-violence in the face of violence has incurred criticism of Buddhism being passive pacifism which could not prevent human suffering. Yet a very recent event may add a more positive angle to the nonviolence principle in practice. For the first time

in ten years, China resumed dialogue with a delegation from Dharamsala’s Tibetan Government-in-Exile in September 2002. The Dalai Lama has long insisted on peaceful means in dealing with China on the sovereign of Tibet. His unwavering commitment to non-violence has accrued worldwide respect and sympathy for the Tibetan people. Instead of expressing anger and determination in seeking revenge, the Dalai Lama found common ground with the Chinese by recognizing that the Chinese are just like him — wanting no suffering but happiness, and they are also conditioned by the principle of dependent origination as the Tibetan people (Chappell, 2003). His insight into the current situation and his capacity to empathize with the perpetrators have enabled him to find alternative ways of responding to the harms and damages done to the Tibetan people. The Dalai Lama advocated a “Middle Way” for Tibet: not full independence but self-governed by a democratically elected government, as well as vision of Tibet as a Zone of Ahimsa (Herskovits, 2002: 5). The latter

refers to “a sanctuary of peace and nonviolence where human beings and nature can live in peace and harmony” (the Dalai Lama, 1989). In this vision of Tibet, based on the guideline of ahimsa (non-harming), no manufacture, testing or storage of armament is permitted. The entire land is to become designated a national park where animals, plants and natural resources in the ecosystems are protected against exploitation. No technologies producing hazardous wastes would be developed (Powers, 2000). And this persevering effort is finally met with a positive reaction from the other overwhelmingly powerful party, as the leading representative of the delegation visiting China “said he was impressed by the flexibility of the Chinese” (Herskovits, 2002). 104 The Way to Peace: A Buddhist

Perspective What the Dalai Lama practices and achieves not only demonstrates a realistic alternative to the international politics but also provides a living proof of the feasibility of the Buddhist principle of peace in today’s world that is very different from the one Buddhism evolved. From the intrapersonal to the international, Buddhist approaches to peace at different levels can be well situated in an integrated model of peace building and peace keeping in the contemporary world (the Dalai Lama, 2001, 2002). As the integrated peace is often

criticized to be too much an umbrella term spanning too wide a spectrum, the feasibility to achieve such a vision of peace is doubted. The Buddhist approaches to peace can substantiate this model of peace by proving that nonviolence does work and can strengthen the beliefs that

absence of violence is never productive without non-violence practiced at all levels of human activities.

AT: Perm/CedePol/State KeyTheir Western state-centric theory is mutually exclusive with our Buddhist ethics and continually displaces responsibility for violence onto macro-level institutions---the notion that politics can cultivate peace ignores that politics emerges from our actions as an additive community of individuals---only fostering peace and harmony at the individual level can solve violenceMoore ’15 [“Political Theory in Canonical Buddhism,” Matthew J. Moore – Department of Political Science, Cal Poly State University, Philosophy East & West 65(1), Pub: January 2015, Acc: 7/4/16, pp. 36–64, University of Hawai‘i Press, http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1026&context=poli_fac]//SC

It is important to appreciate just how different the Buddhist theory of politics is from more familiar Western theories. While it is certainly true that we see bits and pieces of

this theory in the Western tradition, no one Western theory includes all of them, or puts them together in this way. thus, for example, we certainly see a deflationary attitude toward politics in some Western thinkers, such as with thoreau’s point that he came to the world to live in it rather than to improve it,69 and in augustine’s pessimism about the possibility of avoiding evil when involved in politics.70 yet both thoreau and augustine argue that there are some circumstances—rare for thoreau, common for augustine—under which one must nonetheless take an active role in the political life of the community. We see nothing like this in the Pāli canon texts. Someone has to run

the society, but it needn’t be you, and in fact there will always be someone else eager to do it, usually for all the wrong reasons. More common in the Western tradition is the idea that participation in government is pragmatically necessary, morally obligatory, and/or the only path to full development of one’s capacities. We see this theme in the earliest works, such as in Plato’s implicit argument in the Republic that no class of citizens can fully develop its nature without the cooperation of the other classes through politics, and

in aristotle’s overt argument in the Politics that individual perfection and the good life can be achieved only in the polis.71 That same theme recurs throughout the Western tradition, in augustine’s argument that christians have a moral duty to participate in politics despite the likelihood that they will

sin in the process,72 in locke’s assumption that political participation is the only rational course of action,73 in marx’s assertion that human beings can only achieve their full potential through active participation in a democratic and egalitarian society,74 in arendt’s valorization of the life of action in the public sphere,75 in the value pluralists’ 76 argument that plurality requires a kind of constant political engagement, and in the civic republican emphasis on self-cultivation through political participation. It is virtually always true that the cure proposed for anomie, alienation, sectarian conflict, disempowerment, and other political ills is . . . more politics! Given the Western tradition’s emphasis on more and more politics, it is tempting to treat the Buddhist argument that politics isn’t so very important as being an irresponsible quietism or the response of an elite that can shelter itself from the consequences of bad policies. Indeed, slavoj Žižek argues just that.77 yet this response misses the fact that the Buddha’s depreciation of politics

successfully captures the experience of many modern-day citizens. The Buddha’s advice is to participate in the political system in whatever ways are required and/or typical—obey the laws, pay your taxes, and vote for the candidates you think will enact the best policies.

But don’t expect politics to dramatically improve the society. Change ultimately comes additively, from the many personal transformations of individual citizens. Yes, it matters what happens in the world of politics, but what happens in the mind of each individual matters more, not just for each individual personally (contra Žižek), but for the society as a whole. to paraphrase

rousseau, good laws cannot make good citizens, and bad citizens cannot make good laws. only improving citizens can create improving laws. although patterns of political participation and engagement vary widely among societies, this idea—that one should not expect fundamental social change to be led by the political system—is a familiar feature of the politics of many contemporary democracies. to the extent that this deflationary view reflects the views of (some) modern citizens, the Buddhist theory of politics seems to be a better fit for them than much of the Western theory tradition, whose optimism about politics strikes many modern citizens as quaint.

Framework

K 1 st Our ethic of transcending desire comes first. Any political or alternative framework perpetuates a divisionary binary and makes all harms possiblehooks 2006 [bell hooks, Buddhism and the Politics or Domination, Mindful Politics, 2006]//SC

A similar door has opened in Buddhist settings, especially among prac-titioners who have taken to heart the practice of compassion in a culture of domination. A prophetic aspect of Buddhist practice is the challenge to move past dualism, the binary either /or thinking that dominator culture socializes everyone to see as normal . In World as Lover. World as Self, Joanna Macy expressed the nature of this movement beyond dualism when describing how we are all transformed by cultivating compassion and insight: "You have to have compassion because it gives you the juice, the power to move. When you open to the pain of the world you move, you act. But...it can burn you out so you need the other—you need insight into the radical interdependence of all phenomena . With that wisdom you know that it is not a battle between good guys and bad guys , but that the line between good and evil runs through the landscape of every human heart." Thich Nhat Hanh and the Dalai Lama arc such powerful presences in the United States in part because of the ways they teach us to forgive, to move past blame . For people of color, or any victims of dominator culture, the movement past blame can allow for a profound release of rage. For unenlightened white folk, trapped by guilt or the fear of being blamed, it can be the release that allows an understanding of accountability to emerge. The concept of not having an enemy is one that many citizens of our nation cannot accept, because so much of our political organizing— whether by the radical right or the radical left— has been galvanized less by a love of justice and more by a hatred of enemies . Most folk I know would rather denounce George Bush than examine the ways we all participate in the perpetuation of domination culture, of imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarch y . More than ever, as our nation begins to project a politics that has all the ingredients of twentieth-century fascism (religious, patriarchal, fear- based, nationalist, and racist, supported by ruling-class right-wing ideol-ogy, much of which is expressed via fundamentalist Christianity) engaged Buddhist practice offers both a place of refuge and a place of alternative possibility. All that we do to break away from the idea of the separate ego and to acknowledge our interdependence is already a radical step away from race, nationality, religious affiliation , sexual preference, class posi- tionality, and educational status as fixed markers in life.

GenealogyChinese policy is historically rooted in Buddhist methods of international engagement---our acceptance of this foundational aspect of governance is important for recognizing different interpretations of how religion affects politics DuBois ’11 [“The Relation Between Religion and Government in China,” Pub: 05/23/2011, Acc: 7/4/16, Thomas David DuBois – Senior Research Fellow, Australian National University, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/thomas-david-dubois/china-religion_b_864469.html]//SC

What is easily forgotten when considering Chinese policy today is that for millennia, China was a profoundly religious state. Two centuries before Rome became an empire, China’s Han dynasty had already tied itself to the idealistic rhetoric of Confucianism — the idea that personal morality is the ultimate source of political authority. For six centuries — from the 1300s until the last emperor

was dethroned in 1911 — the texts and ideals of Confucius were not only synonymous with civilized culture, they were also the foundation of actual government —

court ritual, the official bureaucracy, and the extensive code of laws were all grounded in Confucianism. China conducted diplomacy with neighboring courts in Korea, Siam, Vietnam and Burma through the language of Confucian moral hierarchy. Officially at least, the Chinese emperor was unique in the world, and regarded lesser kings of neighboring states as something akin to junior partners. Foreign diplomats were to approach the Chinese emperor as humble servants coming to pay tribute to a cultural and moral superior. China took this aspect of diplomacy very seriously. A severe

breach of protocol could spark a real crisis. Japan severed diplomatic contact with China for most of two centuries rather than accepting even the appearance of subservient status. Disagreements over terminology and protocol repeatedly derailed the crucial moments of diplomacy between China and Britain in the years before the Opium War. But some of these same Confucian emperors also carried on a double life as Buddhist monarchs. The Qianlong emperor, who ruled for most of the 1700s, took this Confucian hierarchy deeply to heart, and without question saw his own august self as the greatest of the world’s rulers. At the same time, Qianlong was also the center of a distinct but equally coherent system of Buddhist diplomacy, one based on the ideal of enlightened “wheel turning”

kings who would advance the progress of the Buddha’s teaching throughout the world. During China’s middle ages, a time when Confucianism had fallen out of political favor, it was Buddhism that served as the language of international relations. Buddhist exchanges created and strengthened alliances between kingdoms across northern China, the Korean peninsula and Japan. Even after Confucianism had supplanted political Buddhism in East

Asia, political Buddhism remained vibrant in Central Asia, where incarnated Buddhas and lamas held real power, and supported a succession of Mongol khans who ruled as wheel turning kings. Later dynasties, especially the territorially vast Qing, spanned these two worlds. Emperors like Qianlong ruled their Chinese subjects as Confucian monarchs, but in their dealings with the lamaist belt of Tibet, Mongolia

and Manchuria, they skillfully employed the idiom of Buddhist kingship. The point is that for centuries, Chinese politics were deeply grounded in religion — sometimes more than one at a time. Religion was part of the government — it was never intended to be independent. Religions that were not tethered to state control were banned by law, and persecuted without mercy. It is not difficult to see

the influence of this long history on religious policy in China today. While Communist Party members are themselves supposed to be atheist, ordinary citizens are allowed to practice religion within certain strict parameters. The Chinese government

recognizes Buddhism, Daoism, Christianity and Islam (it does not consider Confucianism a

religion), but these official religions are essentially branches of the government, rather than independent organizations. As the successor of the imperial state, the current Chinese government claims for itself the authority to name religious leaders, including the Dalai and Panchen Lamas. Conversely, it rejects the authority of the Vatican to appoint bishops for the Catholic Church in China (which has anywhere from six to twelve million members, depending on who is doing the counting). As a result, both Tibetan Buddhists and Chinese Catholics have two sets of leaders, one set appointed by Beijing, and another shadow clergy chosen outside China’s borders. Unsanctioned religions — like the house churches or Falungong — are still perceived as a direct threat to public order, and treated accordingly.

AT: Util GoodSeparating economic activities from moral responsibility allows the worst forms of corporate violence---Buddhist ethics are key to hold us accountable for our actionsChangkhwanyuen ‘4 [“Buddhist Analysis Of Capitalism,” Preecha Changkhwanyuen, The Chulalongkorn Journal of Buddhist Studies 3.2, Pub: 2004, Acc: 7/4/16, http://www.stc.arts.chula.ac.th/CJBS/Buddhist%20Analysis%20of%20Capitalism.pdf]//SC

Economic activities may not directly involve morality but their existences and operations in society inevitably cause winners, gainers, and losers, social

impact. Some economic activities might be immoral but not illegal, might lead to someone’s happiness, but make many more difficult to raise their children in good moral standard. The denial to consider economic activities in moral sense is rather avoiding questions than answering ones. Thus, the problem is

not yet solved and we must consider this. For example, hypothetically one country does not have law on environment, and one business person sets up a factory causing waste water and dust. She or he is aware of the damage and treatment method but does not want to invest too much because it will decrease the profit. Population around the premise do not file a complaint although want to do so. However, if they file a complaint, there is no law to enforce the situation. Such business person is well aware that the factory causes trouble to community but

ignores. In this case, economic activity has negative impact to society with full intention. It is not illegal, but immoral. The immoral action does not depend on the cause, regardless it is business

related or not. If it is wrongdoing, it is essentially immoral without justification by the matters of economy, politics, or any issues. Violator must be responsible for such very own action. End does not determine morality of action. For example, if moral responsibility leads to the decrease of profit, one still must commits to responsibility. The decrease of profit does not make business person out of moral responsibility. If one considers whether the economic activity causing immorality is immoral or does immoral operation exist, many examples can be seen such as the existence of economic activities related

to morality. This means the two matters sometimes relate, and thus cannot be completely separated. As a human, one should not be morally ignorant. Buddhism holds all economic activities as they are with full intention. With full attention, they are karma; action. Karma can be good or bad. Economic activities take place in society and have impacts to society. Any activities taking place in society and having impacts to society are obliged to be morally responsible. Why could economic activities be activity without moral responsibility? Being morally irresponsible or separated from morality is also desirable for many in other realms. Despite the deeper desire not to be responsible, everyone still must uphold the responsibility. People in economic realm do not have any good reason to separate completely morality and economy. Any claims cannot

justify the argument not to be morally responsible to society. Moral responsibility should not be only considered in negative action, i.e. committing wrongdoing, but also positive action. This is because in business operation, it requires people and society. Fairness in operation and fairness to society and people must be considered because the growing profit is essentially from resources and people of such society. Low average profit is a form or extortion, i.e. unfairness too.

AT: PredictabilityOnly uncertainty allows a space to start overSlabbert 2001 [Taoist teacher and philosopher, Jos, “Tao Te Ching: How to Deal With Suffering,” http://www.taoism.net/theway/suffer.htm) It is only when you become less ambitious that your "core" is filled; that you acquire true substance which is of a spiritual nature. It creates the kind of constructive confusion in you that is a prerequisite to spiritual development. It is only when your certainty based on illusion is taken away from you, when you have step ped over the precipice to realize that there is no foothold beneath you, that you are able to truly develop . Spiritual development is not made for those who cling to security . Nor is it for people who cling to the illusionary security provided by their possessions. It has an exacting price. You lose much of what you desire and know. You often quite simply have to start all over again as your old values are replaced by an emptiness which offers no support in the banal world of competition . You need courage to face a world of no illusion, but it is the only way to eliminate unnecessary suffering .

Links

1NC Heg/Diplo LinkThe fundamental flaws in the 1AC’s model of Western diplomacy are at the root of contemporary conflict---the Judeo-Christian interpretative matrix of international relations is mutually exclusive with genuine harmony and non-violence---endorsing our Buddhist ethic is keyHong ’14 [“How Would the Buddha Handle North Korea? Mindfulness in Diplomacy,” Pub: 10/24/2014, Acc: 7/4/16, Seok-Hyun Hong – Chairman and CEO of the JoongAng Media Network, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/seokhyun-hong/how-would-the-buddha-hand_b_6027544.html]//SC

Today’s diplomacy is dysfunctional, and it seems as if the more we try to fix things without negotiations, the more serious the problems become. Recently the challenges in places like Iraq or Syria have grown so dire that we have to wonder whether we simply have the fundamentals wrong. It may seem odd that this age of global integration would give birth to serious diplomatic tensions and occasionally to brutal conflicts. Part of the problem can be traced back to fundamental assumptions in the Western diplomatic tradition that have dominated international strategy since the seventeenth century. The Western frame of mind that informs international relations assumes rivalry to be an essential principle. Throughout Western diplomatic history it has been assumed that one side must win over others through a winner-take-all struggle for hegemony. But is such a vision appropriate for this age of the global community and of shared concerns such as climate change? Do all our exchanges have to take place in a Hobbesian world of all

against all? My experience in diplomacy suggests that the Eastern philosophical traditions of Daoism, Hinduism

and above all Buddhism offer alternative approaches to diplomacy that have come of age. Buddhism places emphasis on harmony, rather than rivalry, and offers concrete strategies for engagement that help us to respond to the diplomatic challenges of an interconnected world. The Buddhist approach does not naïvely assume that humans will always cooperate. Rather, it provides insights into the potential for true progress in all circumstances, a potential one can only grasp when one sees the duality and complexity of relations. There are deeper patterns in human relations that go beyond the simplistic impressions of good and evil that we find everywhere in the media, depictions that often apply and exploit an unstated religious framework in a Judeo-Christian interpretive matrix. Many assume that diplomacy is a ruthless game of hegemony in which one just gives lip service to harmony as a strategy for justifying one’s actions. But what if harmony was actually the goal of diplomacy? To be sure, the concept of harmony among nations is not foreign to the Western diplomatic tradition. The historical diplomatic aim of achieving a “concert of Europe” would seem to appeal to just such a longing for peaceful, cooperative order. Despite the appealing metaphor, though, we would better understand this term as a euphemism, a pleasant name for the disposition of the affairs of small

countries by the great powers, to the advantage of the latter. In the words of one historian,

the “concert of Europe” implied a harmony that “really meant that the smaller nations were coerced into carrying out what the great powers had agreed upon among themselves.” Buddhism regards such hegemonic approaches to international relations as simply less effective in assuring security than simple dignity and a commitment to harmony. There is a deeper order beneath the surface of things and our sense of harmony, played out through small symbolic steps, can change the very nature of the debate in a positive direction.   The game of chess has come to symbolize diplomacy in the Western tradition. Just as in the game of chess, the Western strategist assumes a zero-sum framework wherein you must take the opponent’s pieces and eventually checkmate his king. (Tellingly, the English word “checkmate” derives ultimately from a Persian expression that means “the king is dead.”)

1NC Econ Engagement LinkInternational economic engagement is a parasitic form of capitalism that manipulates the spatial gap of political restrictions to absorb resources from countries with cheap labor and materials only to withdraw and leave the nation stranded without recourse except Western loans---this model of economics is unsustainableChangkhwanyuen ‘4 [“Buddhist Analysis Of Capitalism,” Preecha Changkhwanyuen, The Chulalongkorn Journal of Buddhist Studies 3.2, Pub: 2004, Acc: 7/4/16, http://www.stc.arts.chula.ac.th/CJBS/Buddhist%20Analysis%20of%20Capitalism.pdf]//SC

The figures of economic growth are the measure of overall economic improvement. The true believers in the numbers as the real economics growth authentically believed overall economic growth will benefit down to all lower strata of society. But the growth is possibly limited to those business operators and affects minutely to the lower strata. If this is the case, most people are the labour of such business operators owned by foreign investors. The figures might not essentially mean national economic growth but capital owner’s nation. The figures can also be temporary and illusive owing to the fact that economic system relying foreign investors is rather uncertain as investors can relocate their investment anytime at their will. Any variances happened to main business enterprise can effect deeply and consequently to its local affiliate company. Such economic growth is not economic security, unlike self

reliance. Foreign investment is the symbol of slavery, of subjugation, of incapability of being oneself, and is equal to being in debt or even worse. In deeper sense, such investment is profit making process without being responsible for waste and environmental damage. Such businesses will be costly for waste treatment and resource costs if operated in their own countries.

The investment in under-developed countries is the mean to avoid environmental regulations. This also reduces usage of investors’ national resources by using target country’s resource with cheaper cost. Moreover, foreign investors create the competition among target countries in reducing cost of resource and labour, or force by capital dependency. This then comes along with local promotion of consumption in order to turn the target country into market. Finally investment of capital will be pulled back to the original

country. The picture of development and growth is thus temporary. When money is absent, economy will consequently fail. Then foreign loan is then introduced to the production and vicious consumption cycles until the local resource vanishes and foreign investment is ultimately withdrawn to other locations. Eventually the country falls. This form of capitalism is not sustainable economy.

1NC QPQ LinkManipulation and coercion other others manifests itself in environmental degradation and dualistic world-views – replicates violenceSivaraksa 98 (Sulak Sivaraksa is an activist, economist, philosopher and the founder and director of the Thai NGO “Sathirakoses-Nagapradeepa Foundation” , “Buddhism and Human Freedom”, Buddhist-Christian Studies , Vol. 18, (1998), pp. 63-68, University of Hawai'i Press, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1390436 )

Human beings aspire to freedom, but the concept itself has many different ¶ meanings. The perception of freedom prevalent in modern society is of a ¶ freedom from external limitations or restrictions, including freedom from ¶ limitations or restrictions placed by our fellow humans or nature. Seeing ¶ freedom in this way conditions the way we see other aspects of life-hap- ¶ piness, for example. If we see freedom as the ability to control or manipu- ¶ late circumstances , free from restrictions, by amassing a wealth of material ¶ possessions or controlling nature, then we will believe happiness depends ¶ on the amount of material

possessions or control we have. ¶ This kind of perception has reached an end point in environmental degradation and deterioration and the inability of resources to support an ¶ increasing population at certain standards of living . It has also led to a situ- ¶ ation in which most people recognize that we are forced to compromise ¶ with other people and nature in order to survive. A happiness dependent ¶ upon manipulating nature without restraint leads to a dangerous situation ¶ as world resources are depleted, the environment is damaged and our sur- ¶ vival itself becomes threatened. This necessity has led to a kind of compro- ¶ mise: we agree to forgo some personal pleasure, possession, or control in ¶ order to allow the world to continue. We agree to this compromise, but we ¶ are not truly happy with it. It is a sacrifice made to survive and not a viable ¶ way of living.

1NC Human Rights LinkThe affirmatives Western conception of “human rights” universalizes the world into one reality this assumption perpetuates their harms by disregarding difference and dignity Hershock, 2000 [Peter D. Hershock, Peter D. Hershock, Coordinator of the Asian Studies Development Program, degrees from Yale University (B.A., Philosophy) and the University of Hawai’i (Ph.D., Asian and Comparative Philosophy) and has focused his research on the philosophical dimensions of Buddhism and on using Buddhist conceptual resources to address contemporary issues, including: technology and development, education, human rights, and the role of values in cultural and social change, Philosophy East and West, Vol. 50, No. 1 (Jan., 2000), pp. 9-33, “Dramatic Intervention: Human Rights from a Buddhist Perspective”, JSTOR]//SCGranted, however, the difficulty of reconciling the many extant and quite disparate views of human being, it is perhaps not surprising that efforts at reaching a universal rights accord have tended to focus on establishing agreement about the existence of a common ground on which everyone involved can comfortably place at least one foot. For the most part, it has been assumed that this shared ground consists of the "real" world of "objectively" observable facts-the world most precisely described for us by Western science and most effectively shaped through its related technologies. That is, it is assumed that as we all breathe the 'same' air, drink the 'same' water, sleep under the 'same' stars, and suffer the 'same' ignominies of hunger, sickness, old age, loneliness, and death as members of the species Homo sapiens, we live in essentially the 'same' world and can be minimally defined through our coexistence in it. The Buddhist teaching of interdependence and its corollary that all experience is karmic in nature jointly suggest that this is a dangerously misleading assumption. The scientifically 'real' and 'objective' world is-like all other worlds-an expression of certain consistently held values, a cultural artifact, and not truly neutral ground. In a now almost cliched formulation, all 'facts' are theory-laden, and un- critically assuming the contrary is to indulge in a very consequential form of prejudice. At the very least, it is to commit ourselves to realizing only a certain kind of human being-the kind that consists of being "thrown" (to use Heidegger's wonderful term) into a world already shaped by historical and natural forces with which each of us as individuals is only accidentally and so meaninglessly related. It is also to restrict ourselves to imagining only certain kinds of human rights-those which can be borne by such "thrown" individuals. Contemporary cultural relativism is not a way out of this prejudice. While the relativist denies that there is a single, true conception of human nature and strenu- ously allows for differences in how cultures conceive what it is to be human and so what it might mean to enjoy human rights, he or she typically does so on epistemic grounds. The belief that we live in the 'same' world and have essentially the 'same' nature, albeit differently conceived and developed, is seldom critically addressed. The Buddhist teaching of interdependence instructs us to refrain from seeing any- thing as essentially 'this' or 'that', as either having or not having some set of fixed characteristics, or as independent of who we are and our intentions. Indeed,

the Mahdyana teaching of emptiness urges us not to see all things as somehow vacuous but rather diligently to relinquish those horizons for relevance by means of which we identify, and hence limit and segregate, things as such. This teaching applies as much to human nature as to the world as a whole. Whereas the cultural relativist accepts a multiplicity of (perhaps) equally apt views of human being and the world in which it takes place, the consistent Buddhist denies that there either 'is' or 'is not' something called "human nature" or "the world" about which we all have separate, if often closely related, views. To the contrary, the Buddhist sees all 'natures' as disambiguations of what is originally neither 'this' nor 'that'-as creations, and not discoveries. Buddhism shifts the issue, then, from either asserting one essential view of human being or accepting all views of human being as equally valid to doing our best to discern which view or views are most conducive to resolving our conflicts, troubles, and suffering. Seeing all things as interdependent and all experience as karmically conditioned is to see the world in which we actually live-the world in which we articulate who we are-as irreducibly meaningful. That is, the world in which we are most uniquely present can be reduced not to a bare assemblage of objective or factual states of affairs but to a horizonless field of dramatic interdependence. It is a world for which we are intimately responsible, which already expresses or evidences our patterns of valuation, and to which we may always and creatively contribute. In such a world, it is not possible in any nontrivial sense to see ourselves as autonomously existing individuals. We are, and have always been, given-together. And thus, our most basic right is not "to be let alone" but rather to see the exact nature of our always shared responsibility and to realize the greatest virtuosity possible in responding to our situation as needed. In his prefatory remarks, Thurman goes on to suggest that the Western discourse on human rights may well be a desperate attempt to suture "the mortal wound to human dignity inflicted by modernity's metaphysical materialism, psychological reductionism, and nihilistic ethical relativism" (Thurman 1988, p. 149). I would go one step further and claim that there is a sense in which the dominant tradition of Western rights discourse is self-defeating, presuming the very condition it ostensibly works to correct. That is, Western rights discourse situates us in an institutionally mediated and yet essentially abstract space and time where our most unique char- acteristics and desires simply don't matter, are of no particular value. Thus, it pro- motes precisely the kinds of profound disregard for the difference and dignity of others that constitute the primary rationale for universal rights in the first place. In the interest of providing some justification for this claim, I want to review briefly the genesis of rights discourse in the West as a way of revealing its metaphysical con- tingency and opening a critical perspective on its claims to universality.

2NC Human Rights LinkHuman rights are a conditional harmony that presupposes catastrophe as the mechanism of recognizing interconnection---this is sadistic and fails to grasp universal peace---the alt solvesHershock, 2000 [Peter D. Hershock, Peter D. Hershock, Coordinator of the Asian Studies Development Program, degrees from Yale University (B.A., Philosophy) and the University of Hawai’i (Ph.D., Asian and Comparative Philosophy) and has focused his research on the philosophical dimensions of Buddhism and on using Buddhist conceptual resources to address contemporary issues, including: technology and development, education, human rights, and the role of values in cultural and social change, Philosophy East and West, Vol. 50, No. 1 (Jan., 2000), pp. 9-33, “Dramatic Intervention: Human Rights from a Buddhist Perspective”, JSTOR]//SC

As formulated in contemporary political and moral discourse, human rights accords are intended to bring about globally consistent conditions under which it is possible to minimize the sum total of unnecessary suffering. Human rights can thus be seen as a kind of insurance against certain of the most common ways in which our integrity and dignity as human beings can be and have been compromised, often quite systematically. Because the possibility of such insurance is itself technologically conditioned-the possibility, for example, of realizing adequate food, clothing, shelter, medical attention, information, access to media, and participation in national and international political and economic practices for each and every individual-the promotion of human rights has been inextricably bound up with establishing the base conditions of self-determination and so with development imperatives of one sort or another. By contrast, from the sort of Buddhist perspective I've been articulating here, human rights should enhance our capacity for making the most dramatically meaningful use we can of karmically conditioned and therefore unavoidable trouble or suffering. That is, human rights should not have the primary function of promoting minimal universal standards on the presumption of our equality, but that of estab- lishing and sustaining the conditions under which our diversity might flourish and, thus, under which each one of us might-in our local setting-develop our greatest creative and responsive virtuosity. In a very real sense, this suggests the need for skepticism about the long-range benefits promised by ubiquitous development and the "technopian" path to controlling the root conditions of suffering.

The alternative must come first, the proper mindset and conception of rights is crucial to the realization of proper human rights, anything else turns their caseHershock, 2000 [Peter D. Hershock, Peter D. Hershock, Coordinator of the Asian Studies Development Program, degrees from Yale University (B.A., Philosophy) and the University of Hawai’i (Ph.D., Asian and Comparative Philosophy) and has focused his research on the philosophical dimensions of Buddhism and on using Buddhist conceptual resources to address

contemporary issues, including: technology and development, education, human rights, and the role of values in cultural and social change, Philosophy East and West, Vol. 50, No. 1 (Jan., 2000), pp. 9-33, “Dramatic Intervention: Human Rights from a Buddhist Perspective”, JSTOR]//SCIn his paper on the rights-related thought of Sulak Sivaraksa and Phra Dham- mapidok (Pryudh Prayutto), Soraj Hongladarom (1994) remarks that it is Sulak's belief that "without any attachment to the individual self, without the consciousness of 'Me' and 'Mine' ... there is no motive to violate any of the rights enshrined in the UN Declaration" (p. 4). For Sulak, the need for formal human rights legislation can be traced to "the imposition of the ideas of consumerism, greed, and exploitation of the environment ... perpetrated by power holders who are ... mere pawns of Western governments and multinational corporations" (p. 6). Thus, it is natural for Sulak "to see that human rights suffer as a result of the imposition of Western ideas rather than that human rights result because of such imposition" (p. 6). Turning to Phra Dhammapidok's views, this radical perspective becomes even more pointed. According to Dhammapidok, the Western conception of human rights has three major flaws: first, it "resulted from a background and basic attitude of division and segregation, struggle and contention"; second, such rights "are a purely human invention and do not exist as a natural condition [and so] are not 'natural rights'"; finally, the concept of human rights is "a purely social convention, dealing with social behaviour ... [and] does not consider the quality of mental motivation" (cited in Hongladarom 1994, p. 8). Dhammapidok's contemporary Thai Buddhist conviction is that properly Buddhist human rights should not be formulated on the assumption of divisiveness, dissension, and mutual disregard; they must take into account intention or karma; and they must be directed toward promoting the fullest spiritual development of the individual. Very much in keeping with the wider net cast by the Mahayana, Dhammapidok significantly blurs the boundaries of 'individ- uality' by also insisting that a proper concept of human rights must recognize social kamma (karma), or the kamma created by a society as a whole. That is, human rights must attend to the karma being established on the basis of commitments to particular kinds of development and technological bias, and to the ways in which this karma conditions the realization of full and dignified personal and spiritual evolution. As Hongladarom summarizes: if human rights "are applied without the right conditions of the mind, then they will only lead the people astray, and will not be effective toward realizing perfection at all. The right condition of the mind is then of primary importance" (p. 10). But with its critical emphasis on the universality of human rights, on the a priori nature of the rights-bearing individual, and on the importance of clearly demarcating the private and public spheres to insure against any untoward or coercive imposition of particular ideals or values on the subjective individual, Western rights discourse necessarily fails to meet this primary condition. Indeed, as mentioned in the introduction, while compassion may generally be confirmed a "great idea," from the liberal democratic perspective on rights it must remain strictly an optional one.

Their justifications matter and also skew their policy towards norms founded on universality. This masks difference and destroys any potential solvency, only the alt solves Hershock, 2000, [Peter D. Hershock, Peter D. Hershock, Coordinator of the Asian Studies Development Program, degrees from Yale University (B.A., Philosophy) and the University of Hawai’i (Ph.D., Asian and Comparative Philosophy) and has focused his research on the philosophical dimensions of Buddhism and on using Buddhist conceptual resources to address contemporary issues, including: technology and development, education, human rights, and the role of values in cultural and social change, Philosophy East and West, Vol. 50, No. 1 (Jan., 2000), pp. 9-33, “Dramatic Intervention: Human Rights from a Buddhist Perspective”, JSTOR]//SC

To say that all this reduces to an argument about justifications and not norms is to miss a crucial point. It may be that truly Buddhist human rights and those promoted in much of the ongoing discourse about rights will turn out to be formally similar. But precisely because their bases or justifications are not identical, we should not take this formal similarity as proof of their essential sameness. In practice, justifications of human rights are means for realizing their normative ends. That is, how we justify a right or rights can be seen as expressing the deep intentional structure of the norms they establish-the structure of their genesis, the conditions of their arising. Given this, in spite of apparent formal similarities, rights conceived on the basis of seeing human being in terms of universally autonomous selfhood will establish a very different karma and thus the disparate experiential and dramatic consequences from rights generated out of an understanding of human being in terms of meaningfully narrative interdependence. Disagreements about justification are thus inevitably disagreements about the meaning of norms as well, whether or not this is convenient or rationally comfortable to admit. Where our primary concern is to articulate the minimum conditions of our equality, human nature can only be seen as generic. What is excluded, as in scientific research, is all that is unexpected, uncontrollable, exceptional, and unrepeatable. With respect to human nature, this represents a rejection of any elitist con- ception of human being. And in light of such aberrations as the rise and spread of Nazi fascism, there are good reasons to endorse a moderately skeptical view of elit- ism. But, as suggested earlier, such skepticism practiced too blindly leaves us liable to rejecting the explicitly dramatic dimension of our relationships-in narrative terms, we are reduced from concretely and complexly diverse characters to strictly generic protagonists and antagonists. We may achieve universal equality to some degree, but only through the atrophy or loss of all that is virtuosic and intrinsically meaningful. Being seen as equal is, in the end, to be treated generically. And that, damaging as it is to our presuppositions, is the root condition of a life experienced as basically meaningless. As Kothari, Tilakaratna, Ames, Sulak, and Dhammapidok all implicitly confirm, rights discourses founded on the assertion of both individuality and equality are self- defeating in the sense that they at once cultivate tendencies to recognize and deny the meaningful fecundity of our differences . Moreover, because they undermine the uniqueness of our interrelationships, such discourses promote the absence of inti- mately realized compassion or care for one another. In fact, by focusing on minimal entitlements-a minimal and universal inventory of what we can call our own- such discourses cannot but promote the institutionalization

of selfishness . Nothing could be more diametrically opposed to the values underlying the Buddhist conception of ideal personhood. If human rights are conceived in terms of establishing the conditions under which each of us in our unique way is able to express our buddha-nature-our character as bodhisattvas or enlightening beings- then they must serve to promote not minimal standards but the pursuit of virtuosity. The proper orientation of rights conversations would thus be toward developing an appreciation of contributory uniqueness and a cultivation of the harmonic possibil- ities opened up by our very differences. Far from encouraging either the universal realization of generic equality or a sterilization of our differences, human rights so conceived would foster a conservation of diversity and the dramatic possibilities it afford.

2NC Growth/HegThe search for economic growth and hegemony creates inner angerDaisaku 7 [Buddhist philosopher and president of Soka Gokkai International, Ikeda, “Restoring the Human Connection: The First Step to Global Peace,” http://www.sgi-usa.org/newsandevents/docs/peace2007.pdf])//BB

The world of anger is an integral aspect of human life, and in any age, ¶ unless properly positioned and restrained, it will run amok and wreak ¶ havoc. No human society has ever been completely free from strife, but ¶ there are particular characteristics of contemporary civilization, with its ¶ extremely high degree of capitalist and technological development, that ¶ cause the potentials inherent in human life to manifest themselves in ¶ uniquely problematic ways . ¶ As mentioned earlier, a rampant world of anger causes a corresponding ¶ diminution of “the other.” The attenuated presence, verging on absence, of ¶ the other is an increasingly striking characteristic of modern society, ¶ particularly in advanced industrial societies. ¶ In 1930, John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946), known as the founder of ¶ modern economic theory and a man with a unique and critical perspective ¶ on civilization, published the essay “The Economic Possibilities of our ¶ Grandchildren.” In it, he critiqued two “errors of pessimism” arising in ¶ relation to the economic depression that was then enveloping the world. ¶ These are “the pessimism of the revolutionaries who think that things are ¶ so bad that nothing can save us but violent change, and the pessimism of ¶ the reactionaries who consider the balance of our economic and social life ¶ so precarious that we must risk no experiments.”13¶ Keynes argued that, with appropriate government intervention and ¶ 13 adjustment, it should be possible to resolve the problem of unemployment ¶ and restart economic growth. “[A]ssuming no important wars and no ¶ important increase in population,” he wrote, “the economic problem may ¶ be solved, or be at least in sight of solution, within a hundred years.”14¶ Certainly with regard to the advanced industrial societies, Keynes’ ¶ prediction of a solution to the economic problem has been largely on the ¶ mark. ¶ People, according to Keynes, have both “absolute needs,” which must be ¶ met if we are to survive, and “relative needs,” which are felt only to the ¶ degree that we seek to surpass and excel over our peers. The former have ¶ natural limits, while the latter do not. A person pursuing relative needs ¶ finds them expanding ceaselessly ; they are, in Keynes’ words,

“insatiable.” ¶ This constant desire to be superior to others embodies the destructive ¶ essence of the world of anger . ¶ Ensuring that absolute needs are met, especially in developing countries, is ¶ the greatest, most crucial challenge facing the world. But as the example of ¶ developed countries shows, people will not necessarily be satisfied when ¶ their absolute needs are met. The classical ideal that people will behave ¶ with decorum once their basic needs have been met has not proven ¶ universally true in practice. ¶ A society in which most people have been driven by the imperatives of ¶ survival (absolute needs) may respond to sudden sufficiency with ¶ disorientation, giving rise to growing numbers of what Max Weber called ¶ “sensualists without heart”15 and a general skepticism about the value of ¶ hard work itself. ¶ In human society, and in a capitalist society in particular, there is a strong ¶ tendency for people to attempt to assuage this insecurity by accumulating ¶ material wealth, especially in the form of money. Money can of course ¶ 14function as a means of meeting the absolute needs of daily life. But when it ¶ comes to relative needs, money, as capital, can easily become an end in ¶ itself, locked into a spiral of ceaseless increase and accumulation. ¶ Keynes described the plight of people caught up in this spiral: ¶ The love of money as a possession—as distinguished from the love ¶ of money as a means to the enjoyments and

realities of life—will ¶ be recognized for what it is, a somewhat disgusting morbidity, one ¶ of those semi-criminal, semi-pathological propensities which one ¶ hands over with a shudder to the specialists…16¶ Karl Marx (1818–83), for his part, is well known for his detailed and ¶ precise analysis of what he termed “commodity fetishism”—the state of ¶ people enthralled by the love of money. ¶ The present generation corresponds to the “grandchildren” in the title of ¶ Keynes’ essay, and evidence of the obsession with monetary values that he ¶ dubbed the “love of money” is everywhere. Monetary values have ¶ ruthlessly trumped and displaced all others, whether social values or the ¶ values of daily life. ¶ Nearly all of the disturbing problems plaguing Japan in recent ¶ years—repeated incidents of corruption involving major corporations, ¶ insurance fraud, bid-rigging scandals, a money-game culture whose ¶ influence reaches even young people and children—have arisen from this ¶ love of money. It seems that the life-state of the world of anger, together ¶ with its neighboring world of hunger (a state controlled by untrammeled ¶ desire), has indeed swollen to a height of 84,000 yojanas. Its rampancy ¶ makes even Keynes’ description—“semi-criminal, ¶ semi-pathological”—appear understated. ¶ 15The inhabitants of the world of anger—always seeking to surpass, unable ¶ to countenance inferiority—are incapable of any sense of fulfillment. They ¶ cling to the insatiable pursuit of money to compensate for the perpetual ¶ instability of their standing in the world. ¶ Our present-day system of values is said to be diversifying, but it is in fact ¶ becoming more solely focused on money, which penetrates all realms of ¶ society and daily life. Within our collective sense of ourselves there is a ¶ progressive and fundamental process of decay. This, many point out, is the ¶ true face of contemporary society. ¶ Even if one warns against the dangers inherent in the love of money, ¶ history has proven the impossibility of eliminating currency from human ¶ society as a medium of exchange. Any attempt to forcefully restrict the ¶ workings of money will be met with a fierce counterreaction, as the ¶ decisive failure of the experiment of communism in the twentieth century ¶ proved. And, of course, any return to the premodern model of a communal ¶ society in which monetary values rank below those of class and caste (as ¶ was the case in Edo-period Japan where classes were ranked in descending ¶ order as samurai, farmer, craftsman and merchant) would be unthinkable ¶ for people who have known modern freedoms. ¶ We therefore seem to have no

choice but to learn to live with, train and ¶ tame the capitalist system. As individuals and

as societies, we need to ¶ develop the capacity to control money and capital rather than sinking into ¶ commodity fetishism . Just as we need to position the worlds of anger and ¶ hunger properly within the interrelated context of the ten worlds, it is ¶ necessary to reposition economic values within the various hierarchies of ¶ values integral to the processes of life. ¶ In last year’s proposal, I quoted Michel de Montaigne (1533–92) posing the ¶ question, “When I play with my cat, how do I know that she is not passing ¶ 16time with me rather than I with her?”17 In the same way, we need to ask ¶ ourselves as a matter of urgency—as a first step toward the revival and ¶ recovery of our humanity—whether, when we are playing with money and ¶ capital, we are not in fact being played by it. ¶ “Our problems are man-made, therefore they may be solved by man.”18¶ John F. Kennedy (1917–63) spoke these words at a time when the world ¶ faced nuclear saturation, and we cannot afford to regard them as mere ¶ political rhetoric. ¶ Is capitalism moral? ¶ Here I would like to discuss the issues raised by the French philosopher ¶ André Comte-Sponville in his recent work Le capitalisme est-il moral? (Is ¶ Capitalism Moral?). This title is of course intentionally ironic as most ¶ people would regard capitalism as entirely unconcerned with questions of ¶ morality, and to look for morality in capitalism is as meaningless, as the ¶ expression has it, as looking for fish in trees. ¶ Comte-Sponville distinguishes four different orders or domains within ¶ human society: ¶ • The first is the technological-economic-scientific order, which revolves ¶ on the axis of that which is possible versus that which is not possible. ¶ • The second is the legal-political order, whose axis is the legal versus the ¶ illegal. ¶ • The third is the moral order, whose axis is good versus evil and obligation ¶ versus injunction. ¶ • The fourth is the ethical order, the order of love, whose axis is joy versus ¶ 17sorrow. ¶ For those upholding a faith, the next order would be that of the ¶ supernatural or divine—a fifth order with which Comte-Sponville, an ¶ atheist, does not concern himself. ¶ Comte-Sponville stresses that these are distinctions, not divisions, and that ¶ we in fact live within the simultaneous overlapping of these four orders. ¶ What is crucial are the interrelations among them. Each is directly ¶ controlled by the order immediately above it: the ¶ technological-economic-scientific by the legal-political, the legal-political ¶ by the moral, etc. ¶ Society is disrupted when the functional lines

between these different ¶ orders are blurred. Marx, according to Comte-Sponville, clearly confused ¶ the first and third when he attempted to moralize economics. The result ¶ was “the shift from the Marxist utopia of the nineteenth century to the ¶ totalitarian horror of the twentieth century of which we are all aware.”19¶ For us today it is equally a mistake to try to moralize capitalism. ¶ Capitalism revolves on its own axis, pursuing without cease that which is ¶ possible and that which is profitable. This is its essential nature. Values ¶ such as the assurance of employment and employee benefits will naturally ¶ take second place to the pursuit of profit. Further, those living under the ¶ sway of the technological-economic-scientific order may be nuclear ¶ technocrats who, in pursuit of the possible, would strive to enhance the ¶ destructiveness and lethality of weapons with no thought to the horrors ¶ resulting from their use. Or they may be bio-technocrats who, in pursuit of ¶ the possible, would engage without hesitation in human cloning and ¶ germline genetic engineering, which can undermine the fundamental ¶ conditions for human dignity. Comte-Sponville lambastes these as ¶ “technically competent wretches.” ¶ 18t is not my intention to paint all engaged in the economic and scientific ¶ fields with the same broad brush. There are, needless to say, many ethical ¶ businesspeople and scientists. But so long as the basic axis is that which is ¶ possible versus that which is impossible, there is a persistent danger that ¶ the human element will be overlooked. ¶ Looking at our world today, we see clear signs that such negative ¶ potentialities are being realized . A purely egocentric life-state,

inflated to a ¶ height of 84,000 yojanas, marginalizes the existence of the other. Human ¶ beings, however, can exist only through their interrelations: Where there is ¶ no other, there can be no self. Humanity, in a word, has been driven ¶

completely from the stage. This kind of estrangement can make young ¶ people, especially, vulnerable to those who would manipulate and prey on ¶ their need to believe. ¶ This is the crisis that contemporary civilization confronts . The internal ¶ logic of the technological-economic-scientific order is incapable of ¶ restraining those most responsible for the crisis—“technically competent ¶ wretches.” This restraint must be applied from without, principally from ¶ the second, legal-political order.

Impact

1NC VTLOur economic market cultivates more desire for materialistic values---wrecks value to lifeZsolnai 7 (Laszlo Zsolnai is a professor of business ethics and director of the Business Ethics Center [1] at Corvinus University of Budapest, Society and Economy , Vol. 29, No. 2, SUSTAINABILITY AND SUFFICIENCY: ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT IN A BUDDHIST PERSPECTIVE (August 2007), pp. 145-153, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41472078) //RMThe prospect theory developed by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky un- ¶ covers the basic empirical features of the value function of decision-makers. The ¶ central finding of prospect theory is that the value function is concave for gains ¶ and convex for losses (Kahneman - Tversky 1979). ¶ A salient characteristic of people's attitudes to changes is that losses loom ¶ larger than gains. "The aggravation that one experiences in losing a sum of money ¶ appears to be greater than the pleasure associated with gaining the same amount. ¶ Indeed, most people find symmetric bets of the form (. x , 0.50; -x, 0.50) distinc- ¶ tively unattractive. Moreover, the aversiveness of symmetrically fair bets gener- ¶ ally increases with the size of the stake. That is, if* >y > 0, then (y, 0.50; -y, 0.50) ¶ is preferred to (jc, 0.50; -x, 0.50)" {ibid.: 279). ¶ The main statement of prospect theory is that the value function is steeper for ¶ losses than for gains. This means that decision-makers are more sensitive to losses ¶ than to gains. Experiments show that the ratio of the slopes in the domains of ¶ losses and gains, the "loss aversion coefficient", might be estimated as about 2 : 1 ¶ (Tversky - Kahneman 1992). ¶ Since humans (and other sentient beings) display loss sensitivity, it does make ¶ sense trying to reduce losses for oneself and for others rather than trying to in- ¶ crease gains for them. Losses should not be interpreted only in monetary terms or ¶ applied only to humans. The capability of experiencing losses, i.e., suffering, is ¶ universal in the realm of both natural and human kingdoms. Modern Western economics cultivates desires. People are encouraged to develop ¶ new desires for things to acquire and for activities to do. The profit motive of com- ¶ panies requires creating more demand. But psychological research shows that ma- ¶ terialistic value orientation undermines well-being. "People who are highly fo- ¶ cused on materialistic values have lower personal well-being and psychological ¶ health than those who believe that materialistic pursuits are relatively unimpor- ¶ tant. These relationships have been documented in samples of people ranging ¶ from the wealthy to the poor, from teenagers to the elderly, and from Australians ¶ to South Koreans." These studies document that "strong materialistic values are ¶ associated with a pervasive undermining of people's well-being, from low life ¶ satisfaction and happiness, to depression and anxiety, to physical problems such ¶ as headaches, and to personality disorders, narcissism, and antisocial behavior" ¶ (Kasser 2002: 22)

2NC---VTLBuddhist ethic is key to value to lifeZsolnai ‘11 [Professor and director of the Business Ethics Center at the Corvinus University of Budapest, Laszlo, “Ethical Principles and Economic Transformation – A Buddhist Approach,” p. vi]//SC

Today happiness is a top priority in economic, psychological and sociological research. In the last several decades the GDP doubled or tripled in Western coun- tries but the general level of happiness – the subjective well-being of people – remained the same. Happiness research disclosed evidences, which show that the major determinant of happiness is not the abundance of material goods but the qual- ity of human relationships and a spiritual approach to material welfare. Buddhist countries perform surprisingly well in this respect . There is a growing interest in Bhutan, this small Buddhist kingdom in the Himalayas, where the King of Bhutan introduced the adoption of an alternative index of social progress, the so-called Gross National Happiness (GNH). This mea- sure covers not only the material output of the country but also the performance of education, the development of culture, the preservation of nature and the extension of religious freedom. Experts attribute to the adoption of GNH that while Bhutan’s economy developed, the forestation of the country and well-being of people also increased. Thai Buddhist monk and philosopher, P. A. Payutto once said that one should not be a Buddhist or an economist to be interested in Buddhist economics. Buddhist ethical principles and their applications in economic life offer a way of being and acting, which can help people to live a more ecological and happier life while contributing to the reduction of human and non- human suffering in the world .

2NC---R/CThe ego is the root cause De Silva, 98 (Padmasiri de Silva, Research Fellow in the Philosophy Department at Monash University, Environmental Philosophy and Ethics in Buddhism, pg 37-38)//DH

The Buddhist analysis of ego-centricism may be explained in relation to a number of doctrinal strands. The roots of unwholesome motivation are greed, aggression, and delusion; and non-greed, non-aggression and non-delusion are the roots of wholesome motivation. Of these, as mentioned earlier, what is referred to as delusion is basically an existential confusion about the usage of conventional terms like the “self” and “ego”. What we call the ego instincts in Buddhism is one of the forms of craving. The three forms of craving are the craving for sensuous gratification, craving for egotistic pursuits and the craving for self-annihilation. The craving for egotistical pursuits has its deeper spring in the dogma of personal immortality. This is the belief in an ego entity independent of the physical and the mental processes that constitute life. The ego illusion (atta-ditthi) may also be related to an annihilationist belief, where the ego-entity is associated with the mental and physical processes that are assumed to come to an end at death. Such annihilationist views may be closely related to hedonistic and materialistic lifestyles, destructive behavior and even suicide. The Buddhist middle path accepts only the processes of physical and mental phenomena, which continually arise and disappear. This process, which is referred to as dependent origination, provides the basis for understanding the nature of the human-social-nature matrix within which we live. The ego illusion is not merely an intellectual construction, but is fed by deeper affective processes. Human traits like acquisitiveness, excessive possessiveness, the urge to hoard and acquire things more than needed, the impulse to outdo other, envy, and jealousy are reciprocally linked to the belief in an ego. Beliefs influence desires and desires influence beliefs. Some of the social, economic and political structures that people build collectively may turn out to be more subtle expressions of their ego, while other human creations may be expression caring and sharing. Apart from the tendency to construct a pure ego and the related expressions of excessive craving, there are also more subtle conceits(mana) which are only transcended at a later stage on the path to liberation from suffering. The Buddha in fact mentions twenty forms of wrong personality beliefs (de Silva, 1992b, 119-27).

Mindfulness overcomes all sufferingSivaraksa 98 (Sulak Sivaraksa is an activist, economist, philosopher and the founder and director of the Thai NGO “Sathirakoses-Nagapradeepa Foundation” , “Buddhism and Human Freedom”, Buddhist-Christian Studies , Vol. 18, (1998), pp. 63-68, University of Hawai'i Press, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1390436 ) If Buddhists understand structural violence and its roots in dosa, hatred, ¶ and learn how to eliminate it mindfully and nonviolently, Buddhism will ¶ not only be relevant to the modern world but also be a source of libera- ¶ tion. In a parallel with structural violence and dosa, consumerism is linked, ¶ directly and indirectly, with lobha, greed, and raga, lust. One can see this ¶ clearly in advertising and the mass media, which exploit women's bodies ¶ to seduce people into attempting to meet artificially created needs. ¶ Again, modern education deals almost exclusively with the heads and ¶ not the hearts of students; cleverness is recognized and rewarded materi- ¶ ally, and generosity or awareness of social evils is not necessary for suc- ¶ cess. Indeed, it may be an impediment. Students are led to pursue wealth ¶ and power, rather than to understand that these do not lead to happiness, ¶ especially where, as in modern society, wealth and power rest on mass ¶ poverty and ecological destruction. This is indeed the fostering of avijja, ¶ ignorance, and moha, delusion,

rather than real education. ¶ If Buddhists are to make a meaningful contribution to world peace and ¶ liberation of the modern world from violence and oppression, they must ¶ confront these three root causes of evil: greed, hatred, and delusion, not ¶ only in the individual person but also in their social and structural dimen- ¶ sions. All practicing Buddhists, not only specialists, must develop the right ¶ mindfulness that allows them to deal with these issues at their deepest ¶ levels.¶ Bhavana, mindfulness, and samadhi, concentration, indeed bring libera- ¶ tion from the mental sufferings caused by greed, hatred, and delusion, ¶ mental sufferings which corrupt the mind and cause people to commit ¶ all forms of evil. Bhavana can be cultivated at any moment, within any ¶ activity in daily life: breathing, eating, drinking, washing the dishes, gar- ¶ dening, or driving the car (this may be especially useful when driving in ¶ Bangkok traffic). Bhavana and samadhi directly cultivate seeds of peace ¶ within the mind, developing peace and happiness that can then be shared ¶ with others.

Solves the root cause of warDharmakosajarn 11 (Dr. Phra Dharmakosajarn, Venerable Professor at Mahachulalongkornrajvidyalya University, Chairman at ICDV & IABU, Rector at MCU, Buddhist Virtues in Socio-Economic Development, p.71, May 2011, BG)

The solution for this suffering lies in the practice of spirituality . Buddhists Middle Path¶ balances both spirituality and materialism to lead the contended life on the principles of sharing¶ and caring.

Buddhist virtues, precepts and principles focus on establishing peace and harmony through spiritual and socio-economic development in the society . The

virtue regulates the behavior, strengthens the meditation, meditation in turn develops wisdom. The Virtue tend to elevate the man which all can cultivate irrespective of creed, color, race, or sex, the earth can be transformed into a paradise where all can live in perfect peace and harmony as ideal citizens of one world . The Buddhists four sterling virtues act as building blocks of spiritual and socio-economic development are- Metta, Karuna, Mudita, Upekka, which are collectively termed as Brahamaviharasin Pali are means to develop friendship, harmonious relationship, removing discord, establishing peace within oneself. The first sublime state is universal love (Metta). It is defined as the sincere wish for the welfare and genuine happiness of all living beings without exception (Ven. Narada¶ Thera, 1997). The second virtue is Compassion (Karuna). It is defined as that which makes¶ the hearts of the good quiver when others are subjected to suffering or which dissipates the suffering¶ of others. It removes the woes of others. The third virtue is Sympathetic joy or appreciative joy¶ (Mudita), which tends to destroy jealousy, its direct enemy. The fourth virtue is Equanimity (Upekka).¶ It is discerning rightly, viewing justly or looking impartially, that is without attachment or aversion, without favour or disfavor. These virtues are the foundations of socio-economic development.

AT: Extinction 1 st Spiritual suffering outweighs extinctionSlabbert ‘01 [Jos, Taoist teacher and philosopher, “Tao Te Ching: How to Deal With Suffering,” http://www.taoism.net/theway/suffer.htm]//SC

Most forms of our suffering are the results of inventions of our own minds, and our inability to deal with our thoughts and emotions. The greatest tragedy is to suffer unnecessarily, as so many people do. You have probably seen it or experienced it, haven’t you? People who have everything - wealth, health and good friends - and they nevertheless turn what should be paradise into their own personal hell. There is a restlessness in people that comes from neglecting the spirit, and which can only be satisfied in the sphere of the spirit. As long as this aspect of the human being is neglected, the human will never come to peace, and will suffer in many ways. No amount of material wealth, success and status will satisfy this need. In fact, material wealth and success often prevent the development of the spirit . It is only when the needs of the spirit are satisfied that most of the unnecessary forms of suffering will cease.

And it’s inevitable absent the altLoy ‘10 [David R. Loy is a professor, writer, and Zen teacher in the Sanbo Kyodan tradition of Japanese Zen Buddhism, 2010, “Healing Ecology,” Journal of Buddhist Ethics, Volume 17, http://blogs.dickinson.edu/buddhistethics/files/2010/05/Loy-Healing-Ecology1.pdf]//SC

¶ Does this solution involve “returning to nature”? That would be ¶ like getting rid of the self: something neither desirable nor possible. We ¶ cannot return to nature because we have never left it. Look around yourself: even if you’re inside a windowless room, everything you see is derived from nature: not only wood from trees, but plastic from oil and ¶ concrete from sand and stone. The environment is not merely an “environment”—that is, not only the place where we happen to be located. ¶ Rather, the biosphere is the ground from which and within which we ¶ arise. The earth is not only our home, it is our mother. In fact, our relationship is even more intimate, because we can never cut the umbilical ¶ cord. The air in my lungs, like the water and food that enter my mouth ¶ and pass through my digestive system, is part of a greater holistic system ¶ that circulates through me. My

life is a dissipative process that depends ¶ upon and contributes to that never-ending circulation. The same is true ¶ collectively. Our waste products do not disappear when we find somewhere else to dump them. The world is big enough that we may be able to ignore such problems for a while, but what goes around eventually ¶ comes around. If we befoul our own nest, there is nowhere else to go. ¶ According to this understanding, the problem is not technology ¶ itself but the obsessive ways that we have been motivated to exploit it . ¶ Without those motivations, we would be able to evaluate our technologies better, in light of the ecological problems to which they have contributed, as well as the ecological solutions to which they might ¶ contribute. Given all the long-term risks associated with nuclear power, ¶ for

example, I cannot see that as anything but a short-sighted solution to ¶ our energy needs. In place of fossil fuels, the answer will have to be renewable sources of natural power (solar, wind, and so forth), along with ¶ a reduced need for energy. As long as we assume the necessity of continuous economic and

technological expansion, the prospect of a steep ¶ reduction in our energy needs is impossible, but a new understanding of ¶ our basic situation opens up other possibilities. This points to a very ¶ simple (although not necessarily easy) solution to our energy problems: ¶ instead of asking “how can we get all the energy we need?” I propose ¶ that we turn that around by determining how much renewable energy is ¶ available and restructuring human civilization accordingly. But - this is my last point—how does such an understanding resolve the ¶ basic anxiety that haunts us now,

when we must create our own meaning in a world where God has died? Like it or not, today our individual ¶ and collective self-consciousness distances us from pre-modern ¶ worldviews and the “natural” meaning-of-life they provided . Nor would ¶ we want to return to such constrictive worldviews—often maintained by ¶ force—even if we could. But what other alternatives are possible for us? ¶ This is really to ask what collective parallel might correspond

to ¶ the individual awakening that Buddhism promotes. “ The Buddha attained individual awakening. Now we need a collective enlightenment to ¶ stop the course of destruction” (Thich Nhat Hanh). I conclude with some ¶ reflections on what a collective enlightenment might mean. ¶ ¶ Perhaps the important issue is how we understand evolution, ¶ which seems quite compatible with Buddhist emphasis on impermanence (process), insubstantiality, and interdependence. If religions are to ¶ remain relevant today, they need to stop denying (or ignoring, or minimizing) evolution and instead refocus their messages on its meaning. According to Brian Swimme the greatest scientific discovery of all time is ¶ that if you leave hydrogen gas alone (for fourteen billion years, plus or ¶ minus a few hundred million years) “it turns into rosebushes, giraffes, ¶ and humans.” I believe that is also an important spiritual discovery, and ¶ furthermore it seems to me that even fourteen billion years is a short ¶ period of time [!] for the cosmos to develop from the Big Bang to a Buddha or an Einstein—unless hydrogen gas is something quite different from ¶ the reductionistic way it is usually understood. ¶ What we normally think of as evolution is only one of three progressive processes: the fusion of Big Bang particles into higher elements ¶ (in the cores of stars and supernovas), followed by the origination of selfreplicating life and the evolution of plant and animal species, and last ¶ but not least the cultural developments necessary to produce highlyevolved human beings such as Śākyamuni Buddha and Einstein. The later ¶ (“higher”?) processes depend upon the earlier ones: life as we know it ¶ requires elements such as carbon and oxygen, and of course human culture is the development of a particular species that depends upon many ¶ other species to survive and thrive.¶ How shall we understand these three “nested” processes? Theists ¶ tend to see a Being outside these processes who is directing them. Many ¶ scientists see these developments as haphazard, including the evolution ¶ of life due to random DNA mutations. Is there a third alternative? According to the evolutionary biologist Theodore Dobzhansky, evolution is ¶ neither random nor determined but creative. Of what? The tendency towards increasing complexity is hard to overlook, and greater complexity ¶ seems to be associated with greater awareness. From a Buddhist perspective, this opens up interesting possibilities. Can we understand this groping self-organization as the universe struggling to become more selfaware? Is my desire to awaken (“the Buddha” means “the awakened ¶ one”) the urge of the cosmos to become aware of itself, in and as me? ¶ In The Universe Story Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry offer a similar claim: “The mind that searches for contact with the Milky Way is the ¶ very mind of the Milky Way galaxy in search of its inner depths.” What ¶ does this imply about Walt Whitman, for example, admiring a beautiful ¶ sunset? “Walt Whitman is a space the Milky Way fashioned to feel its ¶ own grandeur.” Is that how Buddhist enlightenment should be understood today? What did Śākyamuni Buddha realize when he looked up and ¶ saw the morning star? How did Dogen describe his own awakening? “I ¶ came to realize clearly that mind is no other than mountains and rivers and the ¶ great wide earth, the sun and the moon and the stars.”¶ Every species is an experiment of the biosphere, and according to ¶ biologists less than one percent of all species that have ever appeared on ¶ earth still survive today. Our super-sized cortex enables us to be cocreators (“created in the image of God”), and with us new types of “species” have become possible: knives and cities, poetry and world wars, ¶ cathedrals and concentration camps, symphonies and nuclear bombs. As ¶ these examples suggest, however, there is a problem with our hyperrationality. Nietzsche’s Zarathustra says that “man is a rope across an ¶ abyss”: are we a transitional species? Must we evolve further in order to ¶ survive at all? In Thank God for Evolution Michael Dowd describes our collective problem as “systemic sin”: “The fundamental immaturity of the ¶ human species at this time in history is that our systems of governance and economics not only permit but actually encourage subsets of the ¶ whole (individuals and corporations) to benefit at the expense of the ¶ whole.” Again, we bump up against the delusion of separate selves that ¶ pursue their own benefit at the cost of the whole. In Buddhist terms, I ¶ wonder if such delusions are haunted by too much dukkha dis-ease, ¶ which motivates us (both individually and collectively) to do too many ¶ self-destructive things.¶ Perhaps figures like the Buddha and Gandhi are harbingers of ¶ how our species needs to develop, in which case the cultural evolution ¶ that is most needed today involves spiritual practices that address the ¶ fiction of a separate self whose own well-being is distinguishable from ¶ the well-being of “others.”†¶ Perhaps our

basic problem is not self-love but a profound misunderstanding of what one’s self really is. Without ¶ the compassion that arises when we realize our nonduality—empathy ¶ not only with other humans but with the whole biosphere—it is becoming likely that civilization as we know it will not survive the next few ¶ centuries . Nor would it deserve to. If my speculations are valid, it remains to be seen whether the Homo sapiens experiment will be a successful vehicle for the cosmic evolutionary process.¶ To conclude, does this give us another perspective on our collective relationship with the biosphere? Is the eco-crisis a spiritual challenge that calls upon us to realize

our nonduality with the earth?¶ Remember what was said earlier about the bodhisattva path. Although living beings are innumerable, the bodhisattva vows to save them ¶ all. This commitment flows naturally from realizing that none of those ¶ beings is separate from oneself. ¶ This suggests a final parallel between the individual and the collective . Will our species become the collective bodhisattva of the biosphere? Today humanity is challenged to discover the meaning and

role it ¶ seeks in the ongoing, long-term task of repairing the rupture between us ¶ and mother earth. That healing will transform us as much as the biosphere.

AT: Cap GoodChangkhwanyuen ‘4 [“Buddhist Analysis Of Capitalism,” Preecha Changkhwanyuen, The Chulalongkorn Journal of Buddhist Studies 3.2, Pub: 2004, Acc: 7/4/16, http://www.stc.arts.chula.ac.th/CJBS/Buddhist%20Analysis%20of%20Capitalism.pdf]//SC

Western capitalism believes that consumption means happiness and more consumption means the acceleration of production and more capital accumulation. It in turn leads to better technology development, and less waste, and finally sustainable development. Buddhism, in contrary, does not consider the worldly sensory pleasure as a true and ultimate happiness, but well-being of physical and mental health. It does not depend on more consumption, or passionate consumption. According to Akkanya Sutra of Tripitaka, Lord Buddha mentions that the resources in the world are limited, when one consumes only according to one’s needs, there will be no trouble. But greed makes human accumulate, and more greedy persons make resource scarce. There will be some cheating for other’s belongings leading to even more scarcity and depletion of natural resources. People then compete, exploit, and quarrel more for resources and profit. Capitalist belief on consumption, even leading to better technology to produce with less energy and better efficiency of resources, still leads to more variety and quantity of products. Consequently it leads to more natural resource usage, more waste and garbage. The growing number of population, when roused to consume more, results in more damage to natural resources in multiplying rate. The decrease of natural resources in relation with the increase of population outruns any good clean and efficient technology and increase more waste causing by changing in technologies. Technology changes are as fast as new product lines occurring annually. This type of consumption, apart from the fact that it destroys natural resources, is considered by Buddhism as the destruction of human mind by stimulating mind to pursue the infinite worldly passion. The type consumption damage health from what are consumed. Destruction may be caused by the state of overworking to maintain and increase economic and social status for consumption which is praised as a symbol of wealth. Over consumption may cause health damage, and also debt which negatively affects surrounding people. Mentally, it may cause anxiety to find items to enhance status, and more items for higher status. Once it is short of items, comes the suffering. This suffering is continuing, and then returns to damage physical health. Persons in over consuming society, instead of more happiness, are indeed stressful, regardless the rich and the poor. The rich competes to maintain their status, while the poor stressfully struggles for more expensive consumption. But the labour cost is relatively reduced in comparison of living cost. As long as one sees material happiness as an essence, this state is inevitable.

AT: Globalization GoodGlobalization forces ontological estrangement – creates forms of greed and consumerism that preclude individual liberationSivaraksa 2 [Sulak Sivaraksa is known in the West as one of the fathers of the International Network of Engaged Buddhists (INEB), 2002, “Economic Aspects of Social and Environmental Violence from a Buddhist Perspective,” http://muse.jhu.edu.proxy.lib.umich.edu/journals/buddhist-christian_studies/v022/22.1sivaraksa.html] //RM

As the culture of economic globalization, consumerism directly nourishes the unlimited greed of soulless transnational corporations. It will take quite a talent to miss this observation; markets dependent on consumption and controlled by powerful corporations cannot do otherwise. The consumers cannot be expected to know what they want; the demand must be manipulated or generated. The Unconscious of the consumer must be "told" what to purchase. Therefore, whereas the political and economic dimensions of globalization are marginalizing many people worldwide, particularly the poor, consumerism seeks the active participation of all classes. As a form of greed, consumerism obscures the path to personal liberation. ¶ ¶ In many respects, consumerism is able to dominate much of contemporary society because individuals have become alienated from their culture and from each other. The sense of community that led people to share scarce resources and work cooperatively has been supplanted by the vile maxims of the masters of mankind, by an anger or competitiveness that causes people to seek acquisitions at the expense of their neighbors. In sum, consumerism is a consequence of using greed and violence to regulate socioeconomic relations.¶ ¶ At the most profound level, consumerism owes its vitality to the delusion of the autonomous individualized self; a self that exists independently of social relations and of human relations with nature: a human person is thrown into the world. For the Buddha, it was clear that the "self" constituted only a pattern of persistently changing experiences that had no more substance or permanence than those experiences.¶ ¶ We are deluded into seeking some transcendental subject, something that defines experience yet lies beyond the experience. We are exhorted to know ourselves and yet the "self" in this dualistic system remains unknowable. For the Buddhists, this delusion is the fundamental cause of suffering. Ontologically, we become estranged aspects of our experiences of others and ourselves. Hence we are precluded from any meaningful conception of identity. ¶ ¶ Consumerism provides an artificial means of defining our existence by suggesting [End Page 53] that identity is realized through the process of acquisition. Put differently, consumerism is a perverse corollary of the Cartesian proof of personal existence: "I shop, therefore I am."¶ ¶ I have often referred to consumerism as a demonic religion because of the manner in which individuals become mired in a cycle of behavior that is fundamentally self-defeating: the insatiable desire for goods ultimately leads to despair or boredom.¶ ¶ However, the Buddhist practice of mindfulness may help the individual to realize gradually that "I breathe, therefore I am." In other words, bhavana will help us synchronize our heads with our hearts. The primary result will not be greater intellectual power, which is amoral and compartmentalized. Rather, we will achieve real understanding, or prajna. The less selfish we are, the more our prajna will merge with karuna, or compassion. Prajna and karuna are important for leading an alternative lifestyle, for overcoming consumerism. The two foster spirituality, which goes hand in hand with the engendering of

harmony within ourselves, our society, and our natural habitat. In turn, this would help bring about social justice, fraternity, and ecological balance.

AT: Religious WarsSubjective attachments to the material world and desire are the root cause of conflict---that’s Yeh

Not a link to the alt’s endorsement of Buddhist peace theory, just a generic link to religion/Buddhism generally

Buddhism doesn’t link to this argument---empiricsZsolnai ‘11 [Professor and director of the Business Ethics Center at the Corvinus University of Budapest, Laszlo, “Ethical Principles and Economic Transformation – A Buddhist Approach,” p. 9]//SC

While Western economics emphasizes self-interest and material development, Buddhist economics stress es interconnectedness and “inner development”. It would also place an emphasis on culturally appropriate economic approaches . A Buddhist approach involves an emphasis on sustainable development, where both human beings and living creatures can realize their potential, and where inner development and economic development are compatible, all in the context of a just society and a healthy ecosystem.¶ Buddhist economics sees little problem with activities that are beneficial to oneself, to one’s business and to one’s country, but only in circumstances of non- harmfulness to others. Establishing mutually beneficial transactions rather than exploitative ones is important. One distinguishing feature of Buddhism is that its

adherents have never engaged in a religious war. Its emphasis on peace and non- harm needs to be translated into modern economics. Non-harm means respecting all human beings and all other creatures and developing a sense of respect for all life.

Not a religion, it’s an ethical philosophy based on psychologyDaniels ‘11 [PhD in Economics, Senior Lecturer, Griffith School of Environment, Peter, “Ethical Principles and Economic Transformation – A Buddhist Approach,” p. 37]//SCThe analysis is not presented as dogmatic or inflexible discourse but, in line with the open and tolerant nature of Buddhist thought is simply intended to con- tribute to the much-needed innovation and efforts for creating new more adaptive socio-cultural visions for the future. Here, the contribution is based on the fusion of Eastern and Western knowledge and “wisdom”. Buddhism is often considered more a psychology or philosophy – an ethical system circumscribing a view and way of life – rather than a religion in the conventional sense (Banjaree 1978; Nelson 2004). This proposition is typically based on Buddhism’s appeal to reasoning and a logical, if somewhat metaphysical, explanation of the nature of reality. These explanations form the foundation for universal principles that provide quite comprehensive guide- lines for everyday behavior and can be “ empirically tested ” by the adherent . Hence,

Buddhism facilitates thought and learning rather than the unquestioning acceptance of dogmatic rules from a supreme theistic authority .

AT: Desire InevitableWe don’t have to win that people won’t want things anymore --- only that the alternative provides a path to understanding that we cannot control whether or not we get the things we want, which in turn eliminates the drive to achieve things we desire which is the internal link to our impacts

And new neuro and behavioral science disproves your argumentTideman ‘11 [Founder and managing partner of Global Leaders Academy in the Netherlands and a Senior Fellow of the Garrison Institute in New York, Sander, Joel, “Ethical Principles and Economic Transformation – A Buddhist Approach,” p. 144]//SC

The new neuro and behavioral science is revelatory because it provides empirical evidence derived from a biological basis for the notion that human nature is not driven by greed and egoism alone; at least equally important are principles of fairness, cooperation and altruism . Since neoclassical economics consider itself to be a science concerned with “hard data”, the fact that there is hard biological basis for these principles helps to uproot the long held yet untested assumptions of classical economics on selfishness and rationality (Beinhocker 2006; Gowdy 2008). The wiring of the human brain indicates that motives of fairness and degrees of altruism are more natural to the human mind than selfishness and individuality . Most signifi- cantly,

neuro- and behavioral economics have established that the so called “ rational self-regarding actor model” needs to be replaced by a framework that accounts for our irrational, emotional and pro-social behaviors (Gintis 2000; Beinhocker 2006; Gowdy 2008).

AT: Predictions GoodPredictions remove us from the present – even if they accurately save the future, we can’t enjoy it when we get thereWatts 1951 [Alan, dean of the American Academy of Asian Studies and research fellow at Harvard University, The Wisdom of Insecurity, pg 34-6]//SC

This is the typical human problem. The object of dread may not be an operation in the immediate future. It may be the problem of next month’s rent, of a threatened war or social disaster, of being able to save enough for old age, or of death at the last. This “spoiler of the present” may not even be a future dread. It may be something out of the past, some memory of an injury, some crime or indiscretion, which haunts the present with a sense of resentment or guilt. The power of memories and expecta- tions is such that for most human being s the past and the future are not as real, but more real than the present. The present cannot be lived happily unless the past has been “cleared up” and the future is bright with promise . There can be no doubt that the power to remember and predict, to make an ordered sequence out of a helter-skelter chaos of disconnected moments, is a wonderful development of sensitivity . In a way it is the achievement of the human brain, giving man the most extraordinary powers of survival and adaptation to life. But the way in which we generally use this power is apt to destroy all its advantages . For it is of little use to us to be able to remember and predict if it makes us unable to live fully in the present. What is the use of planning to be able to eat next week unless I can really enjoy the meals when they come? If I am so busy planning how to eat next week that I cannot fully enjoy what I am eat ing now , I will be in the same predicament when next week’s meals become “now.” If my happiness at this moment consists largely in reviewing happy memories and expectations, I am but dimly aware of this present. I shall still be dimly aware of the present when the good things that I have been expecting come to pass. For I shall have formed a habit of looking behind and ahead, making it difficult for me to attend to the here and now. If, then, my awareness of the past and future makes me less aware of the present, I must begin to wonder whether I am actually living in the real world . After all, the future is quite meaningless and unimportant unless, sooner or later, it is going to become the present. Thus to plan for a future which is not going to become present is hardly more absurd than to plan for a future which, when it comes to me, will find me “absent,” looking fixedly over its shoulder instead of into its face. This kind of living in the fantasy of expectation rather than the reality of the present is the special trouble of those business men who live entirely to make money. So many people of wealth understand much more about making and saving money than about using and enjoying it. They fail to live because they are always preparing to live. Instead of earning a living they are mostly earning an earning, and thus when the time comes to relax they are unable to do so. Many a “successful” man is bored and miserable when he retires, and returns to his work only to prevent a younger man from taking his place. From still another point of view the way in which we use memory and prediction makes us less, rather than more, adaptable to life. If to enjoy even an enjoyable present we must have the assurance of a happy future, we are “cry ing for the moon .” We have no such assurance. The best predictions are still matters of probability rather than certainty, and to the best of our knowledge every one of us is going to suffer and die. If, then, we cannot live happily without an assured future , we are

certainly not adapted to living in a finite world where , despite the best plans, accidents will happen , and where death comes at the end .

AT: Empirics GoodNot offense – we are empirically verifiablePuntasen ‘7 [Apichai Puntasen is Dean and professor of  Faculty of Management Science at  Ubon Rajathanee University , Society and Economy , Vol. 29, No. 2, SUSTAINABILITY AND SUFFICIENCY: ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT IN A BUDDHIST PERSPECTIVE (August 2007), pp. 181-200, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41472080]//SCThis is a challenging concept. The Buddha told them how to deal with confus- ¶ ing information through personal investigation as well as through evidence ac- ¶ ceptable to the majority of people with the average level of sanity. So, it is not ¶ enough just to be told by believers but it must be a belief in something that has ¶ been proven to be correct from personal experiences. Because of this elaborate ¶ method of proof, Buddha-Dhamma is

neither a religion, nor a philosophy. Its actual status is a tested theory or a theory that has already been proven through ¶ empirical evidence . ¶ The epistemology of Buddha-Dhamma contains three parts. First of all is ¶ Pariyatti, which is the theoretical concept. Second is Pattipatti, which is how to ¶ apply the theory. The last one is Pattivedha, proven results through evaluation ¶ that confirms the theory (Phra Brahmagunaphorn 2005: 105). The knowledge that ¶ can be trusted is the one originated from a theory or a conceptual framework. After then, such concept must be put into actual practice. Finally, the result of the ¶ practice must be evaluated and shown that it confirms or at least it is consistent ¶ with the said theory.¶ Buddha-Dhamma is different from a mechanistic science, which studies matter ¶ and energy. Buddha-Dhamma is a mind-based science that goes beyond these. ¶ Mechanistic science deals with typical behaviour while Buddha-Dhamma deals ¶ with atypical behaviour. In this mind-based science, the "truth" can vary according to different levels of mind development. This concept can never be understood ¶ by physics because it is based on a different plane of reality, and physics does not ¶ recognise the existence of the "mind"; they only understand matter and energy. ¶ Although mind is also a form of energy, it can be developed to reach different lev- ¶ els of understanding. This is why the "truth" can vary based on different levels of ¶ mind development. The scientific part of this mind-based science is that persons ¶ with the same level of mental development will perceive the same "truth". There- ¶ fore it is not merely an individual perception. Also there are many known and ¶ proven methods of mind development and sikkhãttaya is the method suggested by ¶ the Buddha himself. It has been proven to work for everyone, so far (Puntasen - ¶ Prayukvong 2007). ¶ This "truth" could be "absolute truth" if the mind has been developed to the ¶ highest level. But at different levels, the truth can vary from one person to another. ¶ The development of the mind requires the condition of a cleanness or a purity of ¶

the mind generated by sila, a calm mind generated by samãdhi and a clear mind ¶ generated by pañña. Most of the time human minds are controlled by different de- ¶ grees of defilements caused by anger, greed and delusion. At the highest level of ¶ development of the mind, pañña, a person will understand clearly that peace and ¶ tranquility or sukha is the opposite of pain or dukkha.

AT: Reincarnation Isn’t RealReincarnation is real – most comprehensive studies and can’t be explained by other phenomenaWilliams ’14 [Kevin Williams, article on Dr. Stevenson, 2014 copyright Near-Death Experiences, Accessed: December 5, 2014, http://www.near-death.com/experiences/reincarnation01.html]Ian Stevenson (1918-2007) was a psychiatrist who worked for the University of Virginia School of Medicine for 50 years. He was Chair of the Department of

Psychiatry from 1957 to 1967, the Carlson Professor of Psychiatry from 1967 to 2001, and a Research Professor of Psychiatry from 2002 until his death. He was also the founder and Director of the   University of Virginia's Division of Perceptual Studies investigating parapsychological phenomena such as   reincarnation ,   near-death experiences,   out-of-body experiences,   after- death communications,   deathbed visions,   altered states of consciousness and psi. He became internationally recognized for his research into reincarnation by discovering evidence suggesting that memories and physical injuries can be transferred from one lifetime to another. He traveled extensively over a period of 40 years, investigating 3,000 cases of children around the world who recalled having past lives. His meticulous research presented evidence that such children had unusual abilities, illnesses, phobias and philias which could not be explained by the environment or heredity.