Ethan's comments tonight about "shared visualization" and Jealous Gods in NYC resonates with what economists call "animal spirits"

The Intro to Vajrayana class is really getting onto something big and deep. One of the reasons I come to Ethan's classes is because he says that Buddhism can grow and evolve in our times by borrowing from what has been learned in other disciplines. Tonight, I was particularly struck by the remarks about "shared visualization" amongst the "jealous gods" in NYC!  The concept of shared visualization attracting people of like mind, and then creating an outer world just like they imagine because of the way they collectively act towards it really resonated with me. I work in change management in troubled organizations, so I see this playing out from people's heads all the time in real life.

After 20+ years in and around Wall Street, I really have come to understand "the Market" to be just this phenomenon.

Of course, "the Market" depends upon machines like CNBC, CNN, Bloomberg, Dow Jones, WSJ and FT, etc. and any number of others from Hollywood & Vine to pump up the dreams and visualization in the minds of all the players. F Scott Fitzgerald wrote about this sad ersatz and grasping aspect of American society. This was the great achievement of 20th Century Media post-Edward Bernays. It was just this proclivity in the USA on behalf of some to willfully and gleefully exploit the unconscious that drove Freud away from our shores after his groundbreaking lecture tour in 1910. He vowed never to return again, and maintained a very low view of Americans. He chose England over America when it came time for him to leave Vienna, despite the fact that England could have easily been over-run by the NAZIs too in short order. He was deeply troubled that American elites saw his work on the unconscious as a device of exploitation rather than a method of healing the suffering. We are all still living today with this poorly understood proclivity with nevertheless great well-entrenched freedoms to exercise it now just over 100 years later.  

The rapid expansion of MBA programs all over the US and the World starting in the 1980s until today now going all across Asia certainly mean there will be a lot who will share this "visualization" in the future, and will therefore treat the world with a mindset of lack. "Scarcity of resources" the textbooks say. These indoctrinated will also project it out there onto the whole planet with the destructive suffering inflicted on humanity, life, and environment that we are all rapidly coming to know.

There is a reason economists use the expression "animal spirits" to describe what overcomes "the Market" to pump itself up and then blow itself up, taking all the little people with it. This "System" repeating itself over and over again creates the very economic conditions out of which arise greed, hatred, and delusion! I like to add Hoarding to that list since hardly anybody ever mentions it! Hoarding by some of course creates conditions of lack for most. Lack of course breeds fear, and grasping, "hungry ghost", etc. Fear according to Augustine of Hippo is "the beginning of evil..." Following another line from tonight's discussion, Gingrich or Hitler may be but mere symptoms of that fear rising rapidly as a shared visualization in the most vulnerable. That would align with what Hannah Arendt observed about the easy out of blaming individuals for evil. Perhaps the term "wheels of samsara" really refers to the relentless churning of "the Market" with all its shared visualizations and delusions at the hands of the few most powerful pumping it up with cash and dreams!

The Prophet Mohammad saw this social destroyer aspect of "animal spirits" and "the Market" too, which is why he banned usury! It appears Jesus Christ also had money systems in his mind's eye when he allegedly threw over the symbolic money changers' tables in "the Temple". Bankruptcies, fire sales, and land grabs are after all the real objective behind these well orchestrated "shared visualization" and money pump and dump games played by Central Banks and "Multi-lateral" institutions all over the world (aka IMF, World Bank, WTO, etc.)!

I hope we can soon achieve a greater depth of understanding of this insidious "System" at work at the roots of hoarding and lack. Our meditation means we will "see things clearly as they are" after all! We can use our insights to remove this terrible contamination of causes and conditions that is within our power to remove. Contrary to Augustine of Hippo, the I Ching says rather than fear it is "indifference" that is the beginning of evil! Hannah Arendt echoed something similar 1500 years later. Indifference is one definitely to be avoided!

Some important lines seem to be coming together here from out of the various disciplines. The Fog may be lifting from the four corners in our times.

I certainly look forward to more Vajrayana! After all, "The future depends on what we do in the present." - Mahatma Gandhi