Seeing Through the Illusions of Capitalism: The "Diamond Sutra"

 

After reading the Bhagavad Gita with great interest, I started reading another ancient scripture, the Buddhist scripture called the Diamond Sutra. It’s one of the most important texts of the Mahayana school of Buddhism, the most influential branch of Buddhism in China. I tried reading the version of the Diamond Sutra in ancient Chinese, translated from Sanskrit in the 400s and had quite a lot of trouble breaking down the ancient phrases. A recent introduction, Jingangjing Shuo Shenme (which translates to What the Diamond Sutra Discusses About), helped me begin to understand the Sutra. I think that out of all the schools of philosophy from different religions across the globe, that contained in the Diamond Sutra may be some of the most relevant to the era of the Anthropocene. The Anthropocene (perhaps better described as Capitalocene) shows the fatal consequences of a wrong understanding of the relationship of self and world. The Diamond Sutra offers many useful ideas for correcting our understanding of this relationship. 

The full title of the Diamond Sutra, Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra, translates to “The Perfection of Wisdom Text that Cuts Like a Thunderbolt”. Here the word “Vajra,” diamond or thunderbolt, refers abstractly to any powerful weapon. In the title, it serves as a metaphor for the type of wisdom that shatters illusions to get to ultimate reality. Although it’s considered one of the most sacred texts of Mahayana Buddhism, the philosophy of the Diamond Sutra goes beyond the religious realm; it provides answers to metaphysical questions through the words of Buddha, the enlightened one. The Sutra is addressed both to Buddhists and to people of other beliefs. The end of the book suggests “universal free distribution” and the Diamond Sutra has been translated and spread to every part of the world for over a thousand years. 

The Diamond Sutra was written in a similar style as the Bhagavad Gita: it mostly consists of a series of dialogues between two figures, one a mortal figure who asks questions and the other a sacred figure providing answers. The whole book revolves around the idea of śūnya, or śūnyatā, which is a term usually translated as emptiness, vacuity, and sometimes voidness. Buddha suggests that ultimately the existence of everything, all phenomena (dharma), happens from a series of caused events that can be traced all the way back to the ultimate arising/origination (pratītyasamutpāda). It’s like a chain of existence: “if this exists, that exists; if this ceases to exist, that ceases to exist.” This philosophy denies the idea of the Christian God, which exists independently from the rest of the world. Likewise, it also denies the sense of “total/isolated self” like the one Descartes suggests in his famous words “I think therefore I am”. The idea of the absence of self/ego is called anātman, which is the final realization for one who is on the path of bodhisattva. It is an extremely determinist - one would even call it nihilist - view of the world, however, it has no pessimist connotations. Quite the contrary, from absence of subjective ego/free will, every particle in the universe is connected and full of potential. It shocked me when I realized how many similarities this theory shares with post-modern existentialist philosophy. 

The idea of śūnya continues into the application of our daily lives. We are all enslaved by the illusions of our existence. We become attached to illusory understandings of our relations with other beings; accordingly we seek pleasure (raga) and avoid pain (dvesha) in counterproductive ways. And by not realizing our ignorance of the reality (moha), together these three “poisons” are the reason why we suffer. 

The ideas in the book definitely work against the grand machine that defines the modern world — capitalism. The rule of economy has two components: limited resources and infinite desire. I always found it counterintuitive that such an unbalanced equation can even function? Capitalism is a mechanism that turns illusory desire - or the "Three Poisons" - into real profit. One can only wear a certain amount of clothes at a time, and under good care, clothes can endure a very long time; but instead we consume fashion every season as if we need to purchase them continuously to survive like we do with food and water. Marketing and advertising businesses evoke consumers’ desire, and turn that into tangible revenue. With only a finite population, the real estate developing companies are constantly producing more and more homes, and the market almost always profits from them. And the stock market is the most straightforward demonstration of how we can turn the illusory confidence of buyers into real capital. (In fact, however, the imagined reality of capital is the greatest of illusions.) But that’s too good to be true. Capitalism seems to be a Pandora’s Box that once it opens it can’t be closed. We are so used to having 2% of real GDP growth and 1.2% increase in inflation each year, that if the economy were to stop growing, we are persuaded it’d bring catastrophe. The machine is fueled by desire so it’ll never stop expanding, even if it means the harm of others. That’s how most of the world tragedies (slavery, colonialism, etc.) took place. 

The Diamond Sutra’s philosophy might be useful to combat the illusions of capitalism. On the level of individual experience, the Sutra suggests that everything is void, illusory as “a soaked reflection in the water”, and it ceases its existence “as fast as lightning.” Therefore we shouldn't grow attached to these objects, as we “reside nowhere and liberate the heart”. If we can realize the core idea of śūnya, we will break free from the “Three Poisons”, and achieve peace. We will no longer fight over a piece of land, because we realize no attachment to it; we will no longer compare ourselves to others as we realize anātman — our egos are illusions. 

The Diamond Sutra provided me a new perspective on philosophy. Its wisdom goes beyond Buddhism as a religion. It is extremely personal, as it explains how individuals should approach those metaphysical questions, but it does not mention any macroscopic possibilities, like what the Buddha would think about how a society should function or what states should prioritize their resources to do. This leads us to think about what would happen if individuals no longer regard themselves as individuals, but as dharmas following their chains of causality. Perhaps in such a time of global crises and foreseeable destruction caused by our own desires, we as humankind should realize that capitalism is no longer a reasonable model for us to live by. We are in desperate need of a new set of ideologies to drive our actions in order to redeem ourselves, and the first step would be to realize that there is no such thing as “ourselves” - as what Buddha says in the Diamond Sutra - but we are everything and everything is śūnyatā.

(XL)

Image source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a2/Diamond_Sutra_of_868_AD_-_The_Diamond_Sutra_(868)%2C_frontispiece_and_text_-_BL_Or._8210-P.2.jpg