The Compassionate Revolution

This book seeks to show how our capitalist system is dependent on the promotion of the three Buddhist principles – ‘Poisons’ of Greed, Hatred and Ignorance: Greed for profit at any cost ; Hatred of foreign obstacles to profit ; and Ignorance of the link between Western corporations and Third World dictators.In this first book Free to be Human. David Edwards showed how powerful state and business interests distort our understanding of many political, ethical and spiritual issues, ensuring that we remain passive, conformist and uninformed.Western activists need to recognize the truly revolutionary potential of the Buddhist conviction that compassion is the basis of all happiness. The antidote to exploitative social systems is rational awareness rooted in unconditional kindness and compassion for all. To the extent that we hate the architects of exploitation, we promote the very forces on which exploitation depends.By marrying the political arguments of activists like Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn with the compassion of Buddhist writers such as Aryasura, Geshe Gyeltsen and Stephen Batchelor, Edwards shows how we can instigate a compassionate revolution in which the only enemies and casualties are greed, hatred and ignorance.