We Are the Economy
The Buddhist Way of Work, Consumption, and Money
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- 11,99 €
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- 11,99 €
Publisher Description
A no-nonsense Zen approach to our economic realities can change everything and help us regain our freedom.
Is it possible to be personally fulfilled, and also make a difference within our current financial system? If you're skeptical, business coach and Zen practitioner Kai Romhardt proposes a minimalist, awareness-based strategy that totally reconfigures our core economic relationships: work, consumption, and money.
How do we do that? We need to pause, breathe, and get in touch with our true intentions.
Too often, we think of the economy as something outside of us, as beyond the scope of our individual choices. We're unhappy with how things are going, with unthinking growth that polarizes our world and condenses wealth at the top, but we don't know what to do. Romhardt argues that individuals who wield a sharp Buddhist mindset can, in fact, create change through personal decisions: when we can see in to society, and in to our constructs, we become empowered to choose deeply real and purposeful lives.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Romhardt (Slow Down Your Life), a business analyst and Zen practitioner, proposes a "mindful economy" in this illuminating Buddhist-inspired vision of economic enterprise and cooperation. Romhardt applies mindful awareness to ideas of work, money, and consumption, critiquing negative habits that reinforce desire (such as focus on efficiency and rivalry) and exploring how to build positive habits to cultivate contentment, sustainability, and abundance through economic cooperation. For Romhardt, mindfulness allows the mind to see the world for what it is, and the practice of it leads to the questioning of habitual beliefs about oneself and the world. He explores how, what, how much, and why one consumes, connecting the dissatisfactions of a consumer-based economy to Buddhist teachings on interconnectivity and compassion. Included throughout are diagrams visualizing his critique of competition-based capitalism. To underscore Romhardt's belief that spiritual life is not separate from economic life, he focuses on everyday patterns of wholesome and unwholesome behavior and recommends mindful listening, walking meditations, and making smiling the default response to confrontation. Accessible for a wide audience, Romhardt's intelligent analysis demonstrates the perilous downside of rampant consumerism.
