The Buddha on Wall Street: What’s Wrong with Capitalism and What We Can Do About It

Jul 6, 2026

A critical evaluation of today’s economic order through a Buddhist lens, arguing that the structures of corporate capitalism lead to oppression, violence, and exploitation rather than authentic well-being. The work challenges how “goods” are counted in GDP and contests definitions of human flourishing that lack a firm ethical foundation. It frames Buddhism as a comprehensive message relevant to global crises and presents the possibility of benign alternatives grounded in ethics, meditation, and wisdom.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryReligion & Spirituality

FormatPDF

Pages250

Reading Time10 h 30 min

Preface

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Invisible hand

The gift relationship

The decline of community

Work

Nature and the environment

The waste economy

The attention economy

The happiness industry

Inequality

The corporation

Buddhist voices

Concluding thoughts

Shopping

Note on classical, neoclassical, and neoliberal economics

Endnotes

References

‘The Buddha on Wall Street is an original, insightful, and provocative evaluation of our economic situation today. If you wonder about the social implications of Buddhist teachings, this is an essential book.’ – David R. Loy, author, Money, Sex, War, Karma: Notes for a Buddhist Revolution ‘Many Western Buddhists regard Buddhism as primarily a path to personal insight and inner peace, thus as a virtual escape route from the madness of the modern world. Yet deep within the Dharma are the seeds for a new vision of human relatedness, a web of ideas about how our social and economic systems can promote authentic well-being rather than the oppression, violence, and exploitation so widespread today. Vaḍḍhaka Linn here boldly uses the lens of Buddhism to closely examine the dominant structures of corporate capitalism. He lays bare the pernicious consequences of these structures and draws forth from the Dharma its suggestions for creating benign alternatives conducive to true human ɻourishing. This book helps us to better see the Dharma as a comprehensive message that has much to oʃer to the emergent global community in its broadest dimensions. It should also help Buddhists to understand more clearly the potential relevance of Buddhism to the crises of our age.’ – Bhikkhu Bodhi, editor, In the Buddha’s Words ‘Buddhism arose at a time of rising inequalities, partly as an answer as to how to behave in, understand, and remedy such times. The Buddha on Wall Street is an invaluable guide to how this time, faced again with crisis, there are alternatives to believing there is no alternative.’ – Professor Danny Dorling, School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford, and author, Inequality and the 1% ‘Slavoj Zizek has written that Western Buddhism is the “perfect ideological supplement” to capitalism. Zizek the provocateur thinks Western Buddhism is complacent about the terrible harms of unbridled neoliberal capitalism. Vaḍḍhaka Linn’s essay makes the argument for an activist Buddhism that responds to Zizek’s challenge.’ – Professor Owen Flanagan, Department of Philosophy, Duke University, and author, The Bodhisattva’s Brain: Buddhism Naturalized ‘Do ever greater income levels lead to greater human fulɹlment? Vaḍḍhaka Linn does an outstanding job exposing the false accounting of social ills that make it into a list of goods as measured in GDP statistics. More fundamentally, he questions any deɹnition of well-being that does not rest on a ɹrm ethical foundation, developing a refreshing Buddhist critique of the ends of economic activity.’ – Dominic Houlder, Adjunct Professor in Strategy and Entrepreneurship, London Business School The Buddha on Wall Street What’s wrong with capitalism and what we can do about it Vaḍḍhaka Linn Published by Windhorse Publications 169 Mill Road Cambridge CB1 3AN UK [info@windhorsepublications.com](info@windhorsepublications.com)[ ](info@windhorsepublications.com)[www.windhorsepublications.com](www.windhorsepublications.com) © Vaḍḍhaka, 2015 The right of Vaḍḍhaka to be identiɹed as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Cover design by Sagarapriya Cover image © Navid Baraty Typesetting and layout by Ruth Rudd From Dana Gioia,‘Shopping’, Pity the Beautiful. Copyright © 2012 by Dana Gioia. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, Inc. on behalf of Graywolf Press, Minneapolis, Minnesota, [www.graywolfpress.org](www.graywolfpress.org). From Bill Yake,‘Inside Out’, Unfurl, Kite, and Veer. Copyright © 2010 by Bill Yake. Reprinted by permission of Radiolarian Press, Astoria, Orgeon British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Paperback ISBN: 978 1 909314 44 3 ebook ISBN: 978 1 909314 61 0 Electronic edition 2015 Windhorse Publications would be pleased to hear about your reading experiences with t

FAQs

为什么作者认为经济问题不仅是经济学家的事？

作者强调经济影响生活的各个方面，需要包括佛教徒在内的每个人关注，并以伦理、禅修与智慧构成的价值体系来回应现代新自由主义资本主义的市场至上观。

作者如何批判GDP统计及“社会病症被当作好事”的做法？

作者质疑把社会问题“算进”GDP等指标形成的虚假账目，并指出任何不以伦理为基础的幸福或福祉定义都无法真正支撑人的圆满。

这本书提出的核心替代方向是什么？

通过从佛法中提炼出促进真实人类兴盛的思路，作者主张用佛教来理解并回应当代危机，从而创造更有益的替代方案，而不是接受“没有替代”的论调。

Jul 6, 2026

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