THE COMPASSIONATE REVOLUTION
by Edwards, David

Radical Politics & Buddhism

author of Free to be Human

"This is a book to jolt us from our complacency, but it also offers a path out of the nightmare. Compassion offers the happiness that greed falsely promises, so the personal solution to our anger and despair turns out to be also the only salvation for our heartless modern society. . . . This is an important book for anyone who cannot yet understand the relevance of Buddhism for the deep crisis in our civilisation, or vice versa. Tolstoy, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, the Dalai Lama: the compassionate revolution has been going a long time, but we need contemporary voices, such as David Edwards. His questioning and yearning are surely widespread. " ? Indra's Network (Journal of the Netowrk of Engaged Buddhists)

In his first book Free to be Human, David Edwards showed how the mass media, controlled by powerful business interests, distort our understanding of many personal, ethical and spiritual issues, ensuring that we remain passive, conformist and uninformed - and willing to accept the irrational values of corporate consumerism. In The Compassionate Revolution he builds on the argument, showing how our capitalist system is dependent on the promotion of the three Buddhist 'Poisons' of Greed, Hatred and Ignorance: greed for profit at any cost in terms of human suffering; hatred of foreign obstacles to profit; and ignorance of the cosy link between Western corporations and Third World dictators, helping to protect Western profits.

Western dissidents need to recognize the truly revolutionary potential contained in the Buddhist conviction that "compassion is the basis and cause 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 Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman with the compassionate awareness of Buddhist writers like Aryasura, Geshe Gyeltsen and Stephen Batchelor, Edwards shows how we can instigate a compassionate revolution in which the only enemies and causalties are greed, hatred and ignorance.

May 1998