Ending Poverty in America

Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi

Americans routinely hail their country as the greatest nation on earth, a land of boundless opportunity providing everyone the chance to fulfill their dreams of freedom, prosperity, and success. Reality, however, does not quite live up to this rhetoric. Over the past three decades, U.S. poverty rates have actually increased and by 2010 over 46 million people in this country, approximately 1 person in 7, could be considered poor. In flat contradiction to its self-image, the U.S. now ranks lowest among industrialized nations on many critical indicators of economic and social well-being.

According to a briefing from the Institute of Policy Studies, among all economically advanced countries, the U.S. has the highest rates of relative poverty and child poverty. It also has one of the largest margins of income inequality and the smallest number of social services provided to its citizens. Contrary to the creed of neoliberal economic theory, those countries in which the government devotes more funds to social services are consistently more successful in reducing poverty and inequality than those that adopt a “Wild West” version of corporate capitalism.

Politicians have treated poverty as if it were a taboo topic not to be spoken about in polite company. While long hours in Congress are devoted to debating how to avoid a fiscal cliff, barely a glance is given to those who have fallen off the poverty cliff and face a daily struggle just to survive. Talk about reducing the economic burden on the middle class and protecting small businesses is considered respectable, but acknowledging the existence of an underclass can raise shrieks about “class warfare,” as if it were the poor that are attacking the rich.

Bussing for a More Just Budget

Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi

On his PBS program Moyers & Company, Bill Moyers recently featured a segment about the “Nuns on the Bus” tour that took place this summer when a group of Catholic nuns boarded a brightly lettered bus and zigzagged their way across nine states, from Iowa to Washington, D.C. The nuns had set out on a two-week journey of faith and compassion, seeking to draw national attention to the plight of the poor. Their purpose was not so much to inspire people to acts of private charity as to ring the bell for social justice. Their specific target was the federal budget passed this spring by the House of Representatives, crafted by Wisconsin congressman Paul Ryan, a Tea Party hero now the Republican candidate for vice-president.

The ostensible objective of the House budget is to forge “a path to prosperity” by cutting government spending and thereby getting the federal deficit under control. But was this the real aim the budget’s proponents had in their hearts? Budgets are usually written in an arcane jargon that only trained economists can understand, but the nuns had evidently done their homework and had realized what the budget would do. They could see that behind its claim to serious fiscal responsibility, the budget would actually bolster the wealth of the ultra-rich while passing on the bill to just about everyone else.

Stealing Bread from a Poor Man’s Lunchbox

Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi

A week ago, the House Agricultural Committee drafted a version of a farm bill that’s tantamount to stealing bread from a poor man’s lunchbox. Largely the work of Tea Party conservatives, the bill is framed on the premise that the most urgent task facing this nation is to reduce the budget deficit. To accomplish this, the bill would lower farm expenditures by $35 billion over the next decade, slashing $16 billion off the Supplementary Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), popularly known as food stamps. In effect this means that the bill gains 46% of its savings—almost half—by depriving the poor of the federal help they need to ensure their lunchboxes aren’t empty.

If the House Committee’s version of the bill prevails, up to three million people would lose their SNAP benefits. Nearly 300,000 children would also be ineligible for the free lunch program, which in many cases provides their only substantial meal of the day. These cuts would have a painful impact on working class families, an impact that hits especially hard when  jobs are scarce, wages are low, and the long drought is driving up food prices.

My Keynote Address at UN Vesak Celebration

Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi

I have been extremely busy reviewing the proofs of my translation of the Anguttara Nikaya, which Wisdom Publications intends to publish in the fall. Wisdom is offering a very generous discount of 40% on pre-publication orders placed before August 15th. So, if you are interested, don’t delay!

Because I’m now committed to reading through almost 2,000 pages of proofs, and then (after proofing) making up indexes for the book, I haven’t been able to devote time to this blog. But on May 7th, in the window between first and second proofs, I gave the keynote address at the United Nations Celebration of Vesak, held at the General Assembly Hall of the UN Headquarters in New York. This was the second time that I gave the keynote at this function. The first was in the year 2000, the first time the UN commemorated Vesak. This time the talk was shorter–just ten minutes–since there were some fourteen delegations each allotted six minutes. It was particularly interesting seeing the three-minute videos each delegation had prepared about Buddhism or Buddhist remains in their country.

Sri Lanka’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations has put up the text of my talk here. The crowding of words in this online version was not in my original document, but must have resulted from the image processing of a printout. However, the document is still readable. The texts of several other talks are available on the website.

Once my proofing and indexing of the Anguttara Nikaya is finished, I will have more time to devote to this blog. There are a number of issues concerning social justice, food justice, food sovereignty, and Buddhist engagement that I intend to explore. Meanwhile Charles Elliott, a BGR board member and environmental attorney, will be blogging.

Budget Slashing and Food Aid: Taking the Long View to Help the Hungry

Charles W. Elliott

The United States federal budget is in the news, and once again partisan U.S. political battles over the role of government, budget priorities, and fiscal policy place the world’s poor in the crosshairs. Often, behind the dry budgetary text are the cries of hungry children and the desperation of the poor.

How the richest nation in the world addresses the problem of hunger is not merely an obvious moral issue. Food security plays an important role in global stability and, therefore, our own national security. As U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack recently said: “Our national security depends on feeding a growing world.” So does our domestic security. President John F. Kennedy wisely said: “If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.” In the practice of giving, we serve even our own enlightened self-interest.

A Planet Under Pressure

Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi

From March 25th to March 29th, a “Planet Under Pressure” conference was convened in London as a prelude to the Rio+20 convocation due to take place in June this year. The conference brought together scientists, economists, and policy experts to explore the formidable challenges we face as a global community. These challenges span multiple dimensions—scientific, social, economic, environmental, and educational—but they are intimately interconnected and the hub on which they all converge is the task that engages Buddhist Global Relief. This is the need to produce sufficient food to feed a global population that by mid-century is likely to hit nine billion people, and to do so on a planet going through cataclysmic changes.

Although at present the world produces a surplus of food, close to a billion people, mainly in the global South, struggle daily with the ordeal of chronic hunger and malnutrition. The industrialized North, in contrast, faces a problem of a different sort. Here, millions consume to excess foods loaded with fats, sugars, and salt. The result is high rates of chronic illnesses such as cancer, diabetes, and heart disease. These conditions prevail most among the poor, for it is those who cannot afford nutritious food that are compelled to resort to cheap, calorie-laden substitutes detrimental to their health.

The problem we must solve, and solve with utmost urgency, is increasing agricultural productivity while at the same time ensuring greater equity in the distribution of food, especially for those at risk. If, despite a surplus of food production, a billion people still go hungry today, our task will be so much more difficult in 2050, when there are two billion more bellies to feed. Not only will the numbers of people rise, but the planet will also continue to heat up, resulting in diminished agricultural yields. To shift the arc away from crushing malnutrition will require drastic changes in the prevailing food system, which is currently geared more toward profits than toward health and food justice.

Helping Hungry Kids in Haiti

From BGR Executive Director, Kim Behan:

I would like to share the heartfelt communications from Margaret Trost, Founder of the What If? Foundation, on the occasion of the anniversary of the food program we support in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The need for these meals is still great, and many of the children coming to the food program are still living permanently in tents together with their families. For many of these children the meal they receive here is their only meal of the day.

It commonly happens that when the news disappears from the headlines, funds that would be donated to help people trapped in a crisis dry up along with the help those donations facilitate. But Buddhist Global Relief remains firm in its commitment to the poor children of Haiti. We have been supporting and renewing the food program in Port-au-Prince for the past few years and plan to continue to support it into the future. If you wish to show your own concern for the children of our island neighbor in the Caribbean, you can donate to BGR or directly to the What If? Foundation.

With metta,
Kim Behan

Hunger in America—And What Can Be Done About It

Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi

During the years I lived in Sri Lanka, when local people would strike up a conversation with me, they would usually begin by asking what country I’m from. When I told them “America,” almost invariably they would exclaim, with a sigh of admiration, “America—that’s a rich country!” Judging from the impressions conveyed by our forms of popular entertainment, their assessment of our standard of living might have seemed reasonable; but such judgments would have been flawed, based on a narrow reading of appearances. When we dig beneath the surface, we find that there is a dark underbelly to American life that rarely appears in our TV programs or movies, and remains hidden even in the mainstream media. This is the magnitude of poverty in our land. It’s a fact we don’t like to admit, for it amounts to a betrayal of our country’s promise and a negation of the dream that inspires people around the world. Yet to get back on track we have to face the truth and bring the full weight of our moral consciousness to the task of correcting our deviation from our professed ideals.

Tackling Childhood Malnutrition

Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi

The prestigious international relief organization Save the Children has just issued a report on the danger of chronic childhood malnutrition, entitled  A Life Free from Hunger. The report says that chronic childhood malnutrition puts almost half a billion children at risk of early death or permanent damage over the next 15 years. According to Carolyn Miles, President and CEO of Save the Children, malnutrition afflicts one in four children around the world and takes the lives of 300 children every hour.

Chronic malnutrition means lack of proper nutrition over time. Because chronic malnutrition is a persisting condition, it rarely captures headlines or attracts public attention in the way that acute malnutrition does, as seen during a food crisis. Yet chronic nutrition is far more widespread, and its consequences much deadlier. Even when it does not directly result in death, it weakens young children’s immune systems, making them more likely to die of childhood diseases like diarrhea, pneumonia, and malaria. It leads to 2 million child deaths a year, three times as many as result from acute malnutrition. It also leaves children more vulnerable to extreme suffering and death when an emergency food crisis hits.

Why Does BGR Focus On Global Hunger? Part 1

Buddhist Global Relief was born in response to an essay I wrote in 2007 for Buddhadharma magazine about the need for Buddhists in the U.S. to be more vocal advocates of social and economic justice in today’s world. I saw this task, not as a “politicization” of Buddhism, but as a natural extension of the Buddha’s mission of saving sentient beings from suffering. Too often, I felt, we use the notion of “benefiting all sentient beings” as an excuse for inaction. We think it’s sufficient to subscribe to such vague and sentimental slogans while investing most of our energy in a private spiritual quest aimed at personal fulfillment.

This call for greater engagement is in no way intended to devalue the role of contemplation, meditation, and Dharma study. These constitute the core of the classical Buddhist quest and are central to my own life as a monk. But, I felt, a balance between contemplation and ethical action is critically necessary, and under present circumstances, responsible ethical action entails more than simple adherence to precepts of abstinence and restraint. The very foundations of civilization are in danger, being eroded by a free-for-all economy driven by greed and religious fundamentalism driven by dogmatism and hate. To usher in a more just and equitable social order we are called to act: to act from the ground of the wisdom and compassion generated by our practice, to act on the basis of what I call “conscientious compassion,” a compassion that takes responsibility for the fate of humanity and sentient life on earth.