Topics Include: 1) The unfulfilled promise of the 19th Century. 2) The tragedy of the 20th Century. 3) The paradox of the 21st Century: immense wealth and grinding poverty, advances in healthcare in the face of high death rates from treatable diseases, billions spent on weapons with so many malnourished in the world, rapid economic growth in a world of diminishing resources. 4) A Theravadin response to the crisis of the world. 5) The first lesson: understanding phenomena at their deepest levels. The problem of egotism and selfishness. 6) A comprehensive view of problems as resulting from multiple levels of causality. 7) The primal importance of the Mind as the primary causal factor in our experience. The illusion of self as the basis for greed, hatred, and delusion. 8) The triumph of science and technology for the control of the external world vs. our inability to understand ourselves. 9) The power of the three defilements: greed, hatred, and delusion and their integration into the institutional structure of society. 10) The impact of the modern global economic order in the development of materialist consumer culture. 11) The underlying assumption: consumption is the key to happiness. 12) Applying Buddhist principles: Ignorance: the assumption that material consumption is the basis for happiness.
March 11, 2023
50 min.