variety is difference, a loss of primordial unity, a unity
that will be restored only when MAITREYA, the future
buddha, appears. When Maitreya returns, economic
transactions will disappear, being replaced by abun-
dance and leisure. Oneness will return as well: The body
from which the rice emerged will recover its original
form and the varieties of rice will be reunited.
It would be worthwhile to investigate the reasons
for the Buddhist concern with explaining the mecha-
nisms that give rise to the economic sphere. The causes
may be found in the social changes that took place
around the middle of the first millennium B.C.E. These
involved the disappearance of the old tribal order,
within which the Buddha himself was born, and its re-
placement by political centralization, taxation, profes-
sional armies, and urbanization. The economic and
technological counterpart of these developments in-
volved, between 600 and 500 B.C.E., the use of plow
agriculture, the widespread cultivation of rice, and the
introduction of coins. Cities were important in the
spread of Buddhism as well. This is significant for two
reasons. First, cities follow the abstract logic of com-
mercial exchange and labor specialization, unlike the
countryside, which is regulated by the rhythms of agri-
culture and thus by the seasons. On the other hand,
given the morbidity that accompanies urbanization, a
morbidity that would have been exacerbated by the
conditions of the eastern Gangetic plain, the urban
concentration of wealth and people must have led also
to the sense of malaise articulated in the first two of
the FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS(suffering and its origin).
Money and abstraction
The widespread use of money in north India since
around 500 B.C.E. is also significant because of the
connections between money and abstraction, as well
as the affinities between money and asceticism. Be-
cause money dissolves qualitative differences into
quantitative differences, it contributes to the flatten-
ing of reality, even while opening it up to analysis.
Inasmuch as it serves as the common denominator of
aspects of reality that otherwise would be seen as hav-
ing nothing in common with one another, money
contributes to a process of abstraction. It is through
money that the qualitative differences among tasks
and skills can be dissolved into quantity and can be
bought and sold as commodities. Therefore, in a so-
ciety in which certain forms of labor that are consid-
ered degrading are assigned to degraded people, this
process of commodification can be considered liber-
ating. In this respect, the economy of salvation un-
derlying a community of religious virtuosi that is open
in principle to everybody, as the Buddhist SAN ̇GHA
claimed to be, can be regarded as the counterpart of
the economy of more tangible goods.
Money, which is normally understood as that which
makes possible the satisfaction of desire, is the con-
densation of deferred satisfaction if the money is not
spent. But, generally, satisfaction is deferred for the
sake of a greater satisfaction, and this fact makes it pos-
sible to understand the connection between money
and sacrifice, on the one hand, and among ASCETIC
PRACTICES, money, and capital accumulation, on the
other. Early Buddhism can be understood, therefore,
both as a commentary and critique on the process of
deferral and on the new approach to labor. In this con-
text, the behavior of the followers of the Buddha can
be seen as the distillation of the new way of life. It is
true that monks and nuns explicitly distanced them-
selves from the economy, but this happened only to a
certain extent, and they engaged in elaborate ruses in
order to participate in the economy without having to
handle coins. In any case, the very existence of the
community of mendicants allowed the new economy
to show its strength, for it must be remembered that a
degree of abundance is a prerequisite for asceticism.
Indeed, increased production was required in order to
support not just isolated renouncers, but groups that
were sedentary for part of the year.Money, asceticism, and accumulation
How can one understand, from an economic point of
view, the coexistence of this economic growth, how-
ever unequal, and the most important prohibitions to
which monks were subject, namely the ones against
handling money and working? We can assume that
these prohibitions rendered visible the autonomy of
the economic realm, as well as the relatively new real-
ity of money as the embodiment of labor. Indeed, while
isolating the monks from the money economy, the Pali
canon shows a high regard for merchants. It is signif-
icant that the first to offer food to the Buddha after the
enlightenment were two merchants, both of whom are
said to have attained enlightenment without having be-
come monks. The Buddha reciprocated by mention-
ing a list of constellations and divinities that would
protect merchants who undertook long journeys. This
exchange seems to suggest the exchanges that were es-
tablished between monks and their wealthy support-
ers: While the latter provided the monks the materialECONOMICS