The śramaṇa movement founded by Siddhārtha Gautama in the 5thcentury BCE was formed by a new age of urbanization, merchant expansion, commercial relations, and monetization. Our earliest traces of Buddhist life are full of references to trading caravans, merchant guilds, urban development, market towns, and new modes of production for profit (Benavides 2004). Such sources “tells us unambiguously that Buddhism was linked with economic advance and commercial expansion” (Bailey and Mabbett 2003, 63). Buddhism has thrived when there has been stable political conditions able to produce the economic propserity and material surplus necessary to sustain monastic populations. The long-term successes and failures of Buddhist missionary advances into Central, Southeast, East and Inner Asia attests to this trend (Heirman and Bumbacher 2007). ②

  Even so, Max Weber’s early analysis on the comparative sociology of Indian religions (1916), which supposedly denied the early Indian Buddhist tradition an economic life tout court, seems to have set a precedent for the sustained disregard for the study of Buddhism and economy. However, this oft-repeated characterization of Weber’s position misses the subtlety and specificity of his analysis entirely (Gellner 2011). The Buddha’s heterodox proposition was, in Weberian terms, a salvation religion that denied social responsibility and any kind of social ethic as “pernicious basic illusion”. Buddhist practitioners sought release from samsara by pursuing an “arhat ideal” thoroughly disconnected from the “world of rational action” and “any actively conceptualized ‘social’ conduct” (1958, 213). On the basis of the few master texts available to him, Weber observed that “the Buddhistic type of salvation” was sought “in a psychic state” quite removed from either inner-worldy or even extra-worldly activity (Weber 1958, 213). The Buddhist monastic order (Pāli. pabbajjā; Skt. pravrajyā) was for Weber a community of the homeless and thus a community of the “economy-less” (Weber 1958, 214).

  Of Mahāyāna movements that developed as a more popular lay religion around the turn of the Common Era, Weber noted that the holiness of monastic inactivity did not transition into a holiness of this-worldly work for the laity. In Weber’s comparative analysis, there was no doctrinal room in Buddhism for the sort of “methodological lay morality” that could act as the basis for developing “a rational economic ethic” that he detected most strongly in strains of Calvinism but also in Jainism(Weber 1958, 216–217). This was the “essential peculiarity” of early Buddhism: “the complete elimination of any form of inner-worldly motivation to conduct or rational purpose ［goal-directed action］ in nature” (Weber 1958, 222).

  As the product of a particular moment in ancient Indian history defined by upwards mobility and economic prosperity, Buddhism was originally a movement tied to merchants and farmers which provided an useful ideology for elites wanting to retain whatever privilege they had acquired through their wealth (Bailey and Mabbett 2003, 52). As Gregory Schopen has shown with unparalleled clarity and force, the archaeological, epigraphical, and even textual evidence is quite clear: even the earliest Indian Buddhists were hardly reluctant to engage in, or be formed by, their economic activity (Schopen 2004).

  Buddhism has, of course, continued to happen economically through to today. In the late and post-colonial period, scholars of Buddhism have explored icon commodification on the global market (Lopez 1998), practices serving as bourgeois markers of class (Rocha 2006), doctrines inspiring critiques of materialism (Pardue 1971), and the transit of Buddhism through the globalized religious marketplace (McMahan 2008; Obadia 2011). Mindfulness and other Buddhist technologies of the self have been widely commoditized in the self-help marketplace, circulating through corporate offices and Wall Street to Bay Area retreats and rave festivals.

  This all runs against the presumptions of a post-Protestant privilege usually accorded the transcendent over the material in the study of religion to this day(Coleman 2004; Meyer 2008). It is quite clear that Buddhists have been active participants in the modern capitalist integration of Asia and have not just received but also given shape to what Weber was fond of calling the capitalist “process of rationalization as a world historical process.” Even Slavov Žižek is lately fond of arguing that certain mainstream Buddhist practices (New Age turns to Asiatic spirituality) that aim to “accept social reality as it is”—such as “the case of a Western Buddhist unaware that the ‘truth’ of his existence is in fact the social involvement which he tends to dismiss as a mere game”—are in fact paradigmatic symptoms of our late-capitalist condition (Žižek, 2001; Møllgaard 2008). Were Weber alive today, Žižek often remarks, he would ignore Protestantism and would be writing a book called The Taoist （or Buddhist）Ethic and the Spirit of Global Capitalism.

  My point here is as unassuming as it is underexplored: Buddhism happens economically. This is as true of the earliest recorded years of Gautama’s community, Tang China, post-colonial Burma, imperial Japan, and Soviet Siberia as it is of contemporary Buddhist life in Qinghai or Santa Monica. While still a marginal topic in Buddhist Studies, the centrality of matters economic to the substance and continuity of the Buddhaśāsana has hardly been lost on Buddhist intellectuals in Asia facing the socioeconomic restructuring associated with transitions to global free market capitalism.a One relatively recent manifestation of those concerns—as fascinating for its interpretative creativity as for the breadth of its global exchange—is a movement that self-identifies as “Buddhist Economics.”

  Dissenting European economists and Theravādan Buddhist intellectuals first dove into a revisionist reading of the Pāli canon and of traditional folkways in Southeast Asia using the rubric of “Buddhist Economics” beginning in the 1960s. What I am calling Theravādan-based Buddhist Economics is widely known through the works of Buddhadāsa Bhikkhu , A.T. Ariyaratne (Ariyaratne 1999), Sulak Sivaraksa (Sulak Sivaraksa, Kotler, and Bennett 2009), Padmasiri De Silva (De Silva 2002; De Silva 1998), H.N.S. Karunatilake (Karunatilake 1971), and Ananda W.P. Guruge (Guruge 2008). However, two authors in particular are responsible for delineating a Buddhist Economics. The first is E.F. Schumacher, who first coined the term in the 1960s. The second is Venerable Payutto, ③ Thai monastic scholar who infused Schumacher’s rather romantic reflections with the gravitas of scriptural citation. Because of Payutto especially, even Buddhist readers outside the Pāli-centric Theravādan fold have been inspired in recent decades to re-read their own canonical and exegetical traditions to decide if the Buddha had indeed taught on matters economic, and then what he meant (and then what he really meant) when he did.

  Very broadly, this movement sought to define and then resist what it considered “Western” epistemes then guiding the material, social, and even ethical reorganization of Southeast Asia. Their critiques targeted models of “Western development” (capitalist and Marxist) as well economics itself, all of which was rejected for being Eurocentric, overly objective, hyper-specialized, and based in a reductive notion of the human and of human desires. The concern of this movement has been to address the ethics of development, the presumptions of economics as a field of knowledge, and to propose more holistic ways of measuring the success or failure of economic activity.

  Some Tibetan monks and laypeople are completely unfamiliar with this topic and believe that Buddhist Economics was just a creation of my garbage mind. I don’t blame them; their world is like a small waterwheel. ④

  Since Payutto, many Theravāda scholars and Euro-American commentators have sought to elaborate on the idea of a canonically based Buddhist Economics fit to challenge the damaging influence of Modern Economics. Rooted in the Pāli canon and post-colonial sociopolitical and environmental concerns in South and Southeast Asia more widely, Theravāda Buddhist Economics has been the project of intellectuals who, according to some of their critics, too often projected urban, middle-class values “upon a ‘fantasy’ of pre-colonial village life that never really existed” (Deitrick 2007, 183). Such an assessment fails to account for the sophistication of some of their readings of economics and of canonical literature. Still, it is true that in the hands of monastic scholars such as Venerable Payutto in Thailand or intellectuals of the Sarvōdaya Śramadāna movement in Sri Lanka, Theravāda Buddhist Economics has remained a rather static juxtaposition of tradition with the West. In that way, regardless of the sophistication of their canonical scholarship, Theravāda Buddhist Economicshas remained firmly in the tradition of Schumacher.

  An extremely interesting and as yet unstudied contemporary formulation of Buddhist Economics from well outside the Schumacher-Payutto Theravāda fold comes to us in the work of Shérab Tendar (Tib. Shes rab bstan dar, 1968- ) from the eastern Tibetan regions of the People’s Republic of China.Otherwise known as Gyadröl (Tib. Rgya grol), Shérab Tendar is a prominent and controversial monastic scholar from Qinghai Province who publishes and lectures on topics as diverse as the history of logic in the Géluk sect and the authenticity of the Snow Lion. His most famous subject (and infamous, if measured by the volume of discussion it has generated in Tibet) is Buddhist Economics (Tib. Nang bstan dpal ‘byor rig pa). Shérab Tendar often mentions that reading Schumacher and Payutto’s essays in (sometimes partial) Chinese translation inspired him to find currents of economic thought in his own Tibetan tradition.⑤ (He consistently points to Schumacher as the first “commentator” (Tib. gleng mkhan) on the topic and to Ven. Payutto for making Buddhist Economics well known around the world (for example: Shes rab bstan dar 2012, 1:1–2).Shérab Tendar’s contribution to Buddhist Economics has been to mine the vast canons of the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. This has resulted not only in assembling what he considers the Buddha’s Mahāyāna and Tantric teachings on virtuous economic behavior. Also, and much more controversially for contemporary Tibetan audiences, he has worked to describe the contours of a traditional “field of knowledge” (Tib. rig gnas) on economic behavior (Tib. dpal ‘byor kun byod)in Tibetan scholasticism.

  For the sake of brevity, in what follows I provide a summary of Shérab Tendar’s version of Buddhist Economics drawing primarily on two introductory essays and one interview.All three are included in a fairly long 2012 collection entitled Buddhist Economics. These three pieces have circulated widely on their own in Tibetan language and Chinese language journals and have been re-posted and commented upon countless times in the blogosphere. The two essays (in their 2012 versions) are called “A Brief Description of Buddhist Economics” (Nang bstan dpal ‘byor rig pa mdo tsam gleng ba) and “Another Explanation of Buddhist Economics” (Nang bstan dpal ‘byor rig pa bskyar du gleng ba). The interview is entitled, rather plainly “An Interview on the Topic of Buddhist Economics” (Nang bstan dpal ‘byor rig pa’i skor gyi bcar ‘dri). To illustrate the sort of Tibetan texts Shérab Tendar evokes as authoritative sources for his Mahāyāna and Tantric Buddhist Economics, I will also reference a fourth piece entitled “A List of Titles Which Concern the Sources for Buddhist Economics from the Buddhist Śāstras” (Nang ba’i bstan bcos las byung ba’i dpal ‘byor rig pa’i skor gyi dpe cha’i mtshan tho).

  Like Payutto, Shérab Tendar acknowledges that the economic teachings of the Buddha are not recorded in any one place but are scattered throughout the sūtras,śastras, vinaya, tantras and their authoritative Tibetan commentaries. Like his Theravāda counterparts and unlike Schumacher, Shérab Tendar’s concern is to establish the scriptural authority of Buddhist Economics; or, in emic terms, an identifiable and unbroken “scriptural tradition” (Tib. gzhung lugs) of the Buddha’s teachings on matters economic. As he says in the introduction to his book-length Buddhist Economics：

  The Teacher greatly illuminated those ［topics］ directly in numerous pronouncements, which in turn make up the scriptural tradition of Buddhist Economics. Therefore, the concept (Tib. tha snyad) of Buddhist economics is not contained in the main body of any one text. Instead, its foundations are dispersed across ［the Buddha’s］teachings(Shes rab bstan dar 2012, 1:1).

  Thus turning to the Tibetan canon and their commentarial traditions, Shérab Tendar’s various recovery operations explore all or some of nine subtopics: the nature of wealth (dpal ‘byor gyi ngo bo); the connection between people and wealth (mi dang dpal ‘byor bar gyi ‘bral ba); connections between society and wealth (dpal ‘byor dang spyi tshogs bar gyi ‘bral ba); the beneficial power of wealth (dpal ‘byor gyi phan nus); meaningful wealth (don dang ldan pa’i dpal ‘byor); meaningless wealth (don dang mi ldan pa’i dpal ‘byor); how to generate wealth (dpal ‘byor sgrub stangs); connections between wealth and behavior (dpal ‘byor dang kun spyod bar gyi ‘bral ba); and the essential meaning of wealth (dpal ‘byor gyi don snying).

  Readers will already have noted the slip in language here between economy, economics, and wealth. The semantic ambiguity which comes from translating foreign terms like “economics” into cultural spheres with already developed literary and religious fields on closely related concepts (such as wealth generation) produces precisely the generative ambiguities Shérab Tendar exploits in order to find a “Buddhist Economics”in his Mahāyana and Tantric scriptural tradition. For these reasons, below I translate Shérab Tendar’s statements on Buddhist wealth, economy, and economics strategically to highlight certain key differences in the Tibetan. As we shall see, Shérab Tendar’s ideas actually acquire their force (and controversy) by creatively exploiting minimal differences between, for example, the desired outcome of a Nāga offering ritual and the disciplinary focus of a contemporary social science.

  In the first place, Shérab Tendar’s Buddhist Economics is rooted in expansive notions of causality(similar to those developed in Payutto’s canonically-based work, but less so in Schumacher). If we set out to model the acquisition or loss of wealth, Shérab Tendar remarks in a familiar refrain, we are remiss to ignore karma from previous lives, the ultimate source for causes and conditions of richness and poverty. The “inner condition”(Tib. nang gi rkyen) of wealth is generosity and morality, while the inner condition of poverty is stinginess and non-virtuous actions like robbing (Shes rab bstan dar 2012, 1:10).Since the point of mundane economic behavior is to become prosperous, in addition to making the right kind of effort at acquiring wealth (running a business or participating in a wage-labor economy without harming others, for example), we need also to account for the imprints of virtuous actions from previous lives to come to fruition as wealth in this life and the potential of virtuous actions in this life to produce wealth in the future lives(Shes rab bstan dar 2012, 1:10).

  But why focus on the acquisition of wealth in the first place ？ Like Payutto, Shérab Tendar’s reading of his canonical tradition has convinced him that the Buddha not only accepted but also insisted that his followers engage in discipline deconomic behavior as part of their practice of self-cultivation. They must do so depending on their position in the fourfold-saṃgha (as monks, nuns, laywomen, or laymen). For example, lay Buddhist political leaders require wealth to properly assist their subjects:

  Though you may be a leader who is a Dharma practitioner without ［personal］ desire for wealth, you are not allowed to think that wealth may be ignored ［for the sake of others］. The reason for this is that your aim in becoming a leader is the happiness of your followers. Wealth is the principal condition for your follower’s happiness. Without wealth you cannot venerate the Triple Gem and you cannot give ［charity］ to people in positions lower than yourself(Shes rab bstan dar 2012, 1:11).

  Quoting the Buddha who said that none of his patrons would ever become poor, Shérab Tendar argues that matters economic are foundational to Buddhist life since: first, by definition patrons require wealth to make donations to the monastic order; second, the Buddha himself was concerned with the wealth of patrons; and third, we are urged in the scriptures to accumulate and use wealth “according to the Buddha’s underlying intention” (Shes rab bstan dar 2012, 1:13).

  To that end, in additions to discussing the karmic roots of wealth familiar to us from generalist discussions in Theravāda Buddhist Economics, Shérab Tendar dwells extensively on the role of wealth and its appropriate usage amongst householders and monastics in light of topics such the role of economy in government and the requirement that Buddhists make as much wealth as possible to contribute to broad welfare of society (presumably through activities like paying taxes and buying commodities). Returning to the Buddhist community specifically, Shérab Tendar writes that the Buddha’s economics message is targeted mainly to patrons of the teachings and to lay members of the fourfold saṃgha who are devoted to the Buddha dharma. Unlike regular householders, those who have taken on the upāsaka (male) upāsikā (female)vow of the “four roots” have a requirement to accumulate wealth for the sake of benefiting others and for making offerings to the Triple Gem. ⑥ Unlike regular householders, those lay disciples may not accumulate their wealth by means of wrong livelihood such as selling animals, selling weapons, selling liquor, or selling poison(something Payutto also notes in his presentation).

  Riffing on another major topic in Payutto’s Theravāda Buddhist Economics, Shérab Tendar dwells at length on the role of wealth and of economic behavior in monastic communities, those members of the fourfold saṃgha whose:

  Responsibility (las ‘gan) ［…］ is to be satisfied with little desire and with the renunciation of contemplative meditation. For that reason, they must abandon the wealth and desires of householders. If they accumulate wealth than they break many rules ［of the vinaya］. For that reason, the Buddhist teachings say that wealth is like a nest of poisonous snakes or embers in the ashes of the fire: this all pertains to the monastic community (Shes rab bstan dar 2012, 1:15).

  And what of accumulating and using wealth in the monastic community？ Quoting the Buddha’s pronouncements from the vinaya, Shérab Tendar states that monks may do business but only for the sake of the Triple Gem and the saṃgha (and not even for the benefit of others) (Shes rab bstan dar 2012, 1:15).

  On the basis of these sorts of general discussions, Shérab Tendar begins framing his Mahāyāna and Tantric Buddhist Economics by describing the position of the so-called Hīnayāna school (to which, for Vjrayana Buddhist scholars such as himself, Payutto’s Theravāda tradition belongs).For example, rewording the great 18thcentury Géluk school polymath Jamyang Shépa’s Decisive Analysis of the Perfection of Wisdom, ⑦ Shérab Tendar notes that Arhats—realized practitioners of the Hīnayāna are the who have followed either the Śrāvaka or Pratyekabuddha path—have developed renunciation and so have no attachment to wealth, “like a carnivorous animal in front of grass” (Shes rab bstan dar 2012, 1:15). Even so, he stresses, the motivation of such beings is still to “see ［wealth］ as an object of abandonment and also as a means to a temporary goal; these two are not contradictory! ［…］ In order to achieve the final goal, the environment and wealth are very important” (emphasis mine, Shes rab bstan dar 2012, 1:16).

  Turning to what he sees as the Mahāyāna message on wealth and economic behavior, Shérab Tendar similarly divides his analysis between the laity and monastics.Rather than Right Livelihood (Skt. samayagājīva; Tib. yang dag pa’i las kyi mtha’), here the economic behavior of both issubsumed under the topic of the perfection of generosity (Skt. dānapāramitā; Tib. sbyin pa’i pha rol tu phyin pa), and more specifically, under the three types of giving usually described in Tibetan commentaries on the bodhisattva path (ie. giving material benefit, fearlessness, and Dharma instruction).A bodhisattva householder, Shérab Tendar is at pains to note, must actively seek wealth in order to practice the generosity of giving material things for the benefit of other beings. This is, of course, a requisite practice in the Mahāyāna tradition for the accumulation of merit necessary to accomplish a Buddha’s Form Body (Skt. rūpakāya; Tib. gzugs sku).

  However, Shérab Tendar notes that this sort of generosity is reserved only for the laity, as it is clearly stated in Indic canonical works such as Candrakīrti’s Entrance to the Middle Way (Skt. Madhyamakāvatāra; Tib. Dbu ma la ‘jug pa): “most of the three perfections, such as generosity and so forth, was advice the Tathagāta gave to lay practitioners” (Shes rab bstan dar 2012, 1:16). Even though her or his mind is unsullied by attachment to wealth for themselves, a bodhisattva nun or monk must maintain appearances and renounce accumulating wealth. Instead, they may practice the generosity of giving Dharma teachings to others and giving fearlessness to other beings (by saving the lives of animals destined to be butchered, for example).

  We will recall that one of the ways Shérab Tendar argues for the centrality of matters economic in Buddhist life is by drawing attention to ways the scriptures urge the fourfold-saṃgha to accumulate and use wealth “according to the Buddha’s underlying intention”. Unfortunately, the Buddha’s intention, never mind his underlying intention, is hardly mutual and consensual! Deciding what the Buddha meant (and what he really meant) is the foundational problem of all Buddhist exegetical traditions, and is the foundation of the so-called “ten fields of knowledge” (Tib. rig gnas bcu). These solidified in the Tibetan tradition into five major and five minor fields on purported Indic models in the latter half of the seventeenth century. ⑧ While not included explicitly in the usual ten, Shérab Tendar maintains that there is indeed a “field of knowledge” (T. rig gnas) about economics (Tib. Dpal ‘byor rig pa) in Indian Buddhist scholasticism, but that this was lost in Tibet:

  Some have said, “Even Buddhism has a field of knowledge about economy？”They are surprised and stare, and may have doubt ［thinking that］ whoever is delivering such a message is lying. They think that Buddhist Economics simply a mimics a modern subject and that there is no such subject in Buddhism. Because of that, they dislike whoever delivers such a message (Shes rab bstan dar 2012, 1:33).

  To his own mind at least, Shérab Tendar’s Buddhist Economics does indeed possess a “textual tradition” (Tib. gzhung lugs) that “is clarified” in that received tradition in three parts: 1) the manner of accomplishing wealth; 2) the manner of acquiring wealth; 3) connections between wealth and human beings. Shérab Tendar is keen to collect these teachings together not only to provide guidance in matters economic for his readers, but also to correct the “wrong view” that rejects the idea that the Buddha gave economic teachings and, more egregiously, that Buddhism is itself an obstacle to economic prosperity in Tibet today (for example: Shes rab bstan dar 2012, 1:5).

  In his first essay on the topic, Shérab Tendar’s makes a very interesting argument that a Buddhist field of knowledge on economy is discernable in texts usually associated with two of the “five major fields of knowledge” (Tib. rig gnas chen po lnga): craftsmanship (Skt. śilpa; Tib. bzo rig pa) and medicine (Skt. cikitsā; Tib. gso rig pa). For example, quoting The Ornament to Mahāyāna Sūtras (Skt. Mahāyāna Sūtra Ālaṃ kara; Tib. Mdo sde rgyan) Shérab Tendar points out that by perfecting skills in arts and crafts and in medicine, a layperson especially will accumulate wealth for services rendered and “having become rich, the world will respect you and you can then benefit others by means of wealth” (Shes rab bstan dar 2012, 1:28). In later works he argued that even minor fields of knowledge, such as tailoring, astrology, grammatology, and incense making where all ultimately teachings on economic behavior (Shes rab bstan dar 2012, 1:37).

  Having defined his Buddhist Economics as both a pragmatic model for action and a field of knowledge describing the meaning and ultimate goals of economic behavior,Shérab Tendar makes the interesting move to include varieties of tantric ritual aimed atattracting and increasing wealth in his discussion. In “A Brief Description of Buddhist Economics” Shérab Tendar identifies the ritual propitiation of a small cluster of wealth deities who are the primary tantric arm of his field of knowledge on economy. These include, among other beings,Pongsel Drölma (Tib. Phong sel sgrol ma), Namsé (Tib. Rnam sras), the many manifestations of Dzambhala (Tib. DzaM b+Ha la; and the collection of Norjinma (Tib. Nor sbyin ma) deities (Shes rab bstan dar 2012, 1:25).The proper propitiation of these buddhas manifested as wealth-granting yakṣa-spirits are critical, Shérab Tendar concludes, since by their propitiation people receive wealth and longevity “like rainfall ” (Shes rab bstan dar 2012, 1:25). More generally, turning to tantric practice such as making requests to Tārā and reciting her mantra is a particularly skillful form of economic behavior aimed at quickly growing one’s “collection of excellences” (T. legs tshogs) in order to create the causes of accumulating future wealth.

  For Shérab Tendar, then, the defining feature of a Buddhist field of knowledge on economy proper is pragmatic instructions on how to generate wealth. Responding to critics who claimed that he was proposing that Buddhism was only concerned with business or, more egregiously, that he was inventing a “scriptural tradition” based on foreign ideas, Shérab Tendar argues in a widely-shared interview on his work that like medicine or logic, economics are hardly sustained topics in any one sūtra but, cumulatively, amount to a field of knowledge since they describe the meaning of this particular subject (Shes rab bstan dar 2012, 1:38):

  The conclusion of Buddhist Economics is showing that through economic behavior we can engage in Buddhist practice. That is economic behavior that is in harmony (mthun pa) with the Dharma. We should object to economic behavior that is not in harmony with the Dharma (Shes rab bstan dar 2012, 1:112).

  Neither Schumacher, Payutto nor Shérab Tendar presume to quantify Thailand’s GDP growth, predict an upcoming recession in Burma, or quantify first quarter aggregated production in Qinghai of china. Curiously, this seems to be ignored by swaths of scholar-practitioners around the world keen to help construct an alternative economic model to late capitalism based on, say, selective quotations from the Pāli canon or vague references to Buddhist virtues (the work of László Zsolnai is dynamic example: 2011; 2013; László Zsolnai and Ims 2006; László Zsolnai 2015).

  Instead, Buddhist Economics (at least in the widely circulated iterations I have briefly introduced above) provide scripturally sourced models of activity which react to the Buddha’s enduring message and the threatening forces of modernization, whether these are construed as the influence of the West, Western economics, materialism more generally, or the accusation that Buddhist ideology and institutions obstruct economic development. Buddhist Economics propose alternative scales of value⑨ for creating hierarchies of desired worlds and for measuring the outcomes of activities aimed at securing human (and, in Payutto’s case, ecnvironmental) well-being.

  For example, Shérab Tendar writes in “A Brief Description of Buddhist Economics” that:

  We must see that behavior is a very important subject in the study of ［Buddhist］ economics. The reason is that between wealth and human value (Tib. mi’i rin thang) we must always hold human value as the most important. We should never believe it is lower. If we do, humans become a slave to wealth and thus lose their freedom, lose their happiness, lose their joy, and stop thinking about the benefit of others (Shes rab bstan dar 2012, 1:21).

  As a conclusion to that same essay, Shérab Tendar laments the deplorable effects of the “contagion of wealth” (Tib. dpal ‘byor gyi nad gzhi) in today’s competitive, anger and desire-ridden global marketplace (Shes rab bstan dar 2012, 1:31). Buddhist Economics contains very important perspectives to help correct the dominant “Western economics” (Tib. nub phyogs kyi dpal ‘byor rig pa) which leads only to producing unhappiness for oneself and others in this life and the next (Shes rab bstan dar 2012, 1:31).

  Elsewhere, while once again defending his claim that there is a distinct field of knowledge on economy in Buddhism, Shérab Tendar makes the distinction between normative economics and Buddhist Economics quite clear:

  “Economics” is the name for the investigation of topics such as research into the individual causes ［of economic development］ (Tib. dngos pa’i rgyu char zhib ‘jug), participation in production in relation to economy (Tib. thon skyed kyi khrod du dpal ‘byor gyi ‘brel ba), the way to accomplish ［wealth］ (Tib.sgrub stangs), making use of profit (Tib. bed spyad), and so forth ［…］ ［Buddhist Economics describes］ the way to accomplish wealth (Tib. dpal ‘byor sgrub stangs), the way to employ wealth (Tib. dpal ‘byor spyod stangs), and the relationship between humans and wealth (Tib. dpal ‘byor dang mi’i bar gyi ‘bral ba) (Shes rab bstan dar 2012, 1:36).

  Thus Shérab Tendar, a great theorist in his own right and a very thorough interlocutor of Payutto and Schumacher, Buddhist Economics is a thing quite apart from economics proper. Scholars of modern Buddhist thought in Asia, ought to recognize these differences and engage Buddhist Economics accordingly.

  And here we come full circle to recovering the study of Buddhism and economy from Weber’s shadow, something my analysis on the economy-lessness of Buddhist Economics now seems to affirm. However, as Stanley Tambiah was at pains to point out, Weber saw the unending impulse to create rational structures as working at cross-purposes with “some of the most cherished values of individual freedom, creativity, intimacy and so on” (Tambiah 1990, 145). Western civilization was beset by irreconcilable tensions between enduring ethical values (Wertrationalität) and the cold instrumental logic of formal rationality (Zweckrationalität): Weber saw progressive “disenchantment” leading to a dark future in ways that dovetailed with Marx’s diagnosis of the “alienation” of modern industrial capitalism (Tambiah 1990, 145). Similar concerns beset Schumacher and were taken up by Payutto and Shérab Tendar in their own ways. In some ways, Buddhist Economics rereads the Buddhist canon in order to re-enchant not abstracted models of production and consumption, but rather cold and Eurocentric epistemes that underlay such modeling. Perhaps Weber would be heartened by their effort, if affirmed by the other worlds they desire？

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  ① Shes rab bstan dar 2012, 1:20.

  ② More immediate cooperating factors in Buddhist success outside India included a command over coveted adminitrative skills (like writing), medicine, and later, the ritual reproduction of political authority based on a sacralized model of feudal kingship from post-Gupta India (Davidson 2002).

  ③ Important surveys of limited scholarship on the topic of economy and Buddhism are found in: Benavides 2004; Benavides 2005; Harvey 2000; Guruge 2008; and Deitrick 2007.

  ④ Shes rab bstan dar 2012, 1:40.

  ⑤ Shérab Tendar also references certain tracts on Buddhist Economics by Han Chinese Buddhist scholars as marginally inspiring his work, but as yet I have not been able to identify them.

  ⑥ The “four roots” are to refrain from killing, lying, stealing and sexual misconduct. The other primary commitment of an ordained lay disciple is to avoid intoxicants.

  ⑦ Tib. Phar phyin skabs brgyad pa'i mtha' dpyod bsam 'phel yid bzhin nor bu'i phreng mdzes skal bzang mig 'byed. See: ’Jam dbyangs bzhad pa’i rdo rje 1974.

  ⑧ These usually include: 1) The “five major fields of knowledge” (Tib. rig gnas chen po lnga): craftsmanship (Skt. śilpa; Tib. bzo rig pa); logic (Skt. hetu; Tib. gtan tshigs) grammar (Skt. śabda; Tib. sgra); medicine (Skt. cikitsā; Tib. gso ba); and the inner field of knowledge (Skt. dharma; Tib. nang don rig pa); and 2) The “five minor fields of knowledge” (Tib. rig gnas chung lnga): synonyms (Skt. abhidhāna; Tib. mngon brjod); mathematics and astrology (Skt. jyotiṣa; TIb. skar rtsis); performance and drama (Sky. nāṭaka; Tib. zlos gar); poetry (Skt. kāvya; Tib. snyan ngag); composition (Skt. chanda; Tib. sdeb sbyor).

  ⑨ I’d like to thank Professors Simon Coleman, Pamela Klassen, Monique Scheer and all the participants at the “Scales of Value” workshop at Tübbingen Univerity in May 2014 for sharing their insights on the potential of this term in the study of religion.