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For the ongoing conflicts and wars, acts of terrorism, exploitation
of various social groups, social injustices etc. that hinder social
welfare, human beings themselves are responsible. According to Buddhism
all such social crises are ultimately traceable to the moral depravity
of man. Social Welfare could be promoted not merely by dealing with
the symptoms °f deep-rooted psychological insanity that find
expression in the social behaviour of mankind, but by treating the
internal sources of such insanity. Buddhism offers the most experimentally
testable and systematic path for the gradual elimination of the
roots of evil conduct in human beings. Its impact on social welfare
could be tremendous. It has much greater value than all the effort
that people make to deal with the material conditions of human beings.
The Buddhist approach to social welfare is sometimes viewed as
ineffective because Buddhism does not seek to redress the suffering
of people through violent demonstrations, vociferous protest movements,
and incitement of people to violence and armed conflict. Instead
Buddhism advocates pursuing the gentle way of appealing to the moral
sentiments of people and educating people in what is right and wrong,
just and unjust, fair and unfair. The Buddha set the first example
of promoting social welfare by such means. Other ways of attempting
to promote social welfare sometimes produce more suffering than
they eliminate. Buddhism does not take the position that the end
justifies the means and adopt any means to achieve a desirable end.
It adopts only non-violent and peaceful means. Hence Buddhism considers
as its most usable tool of social change the effort to educate and
enlighten people on the realities of life. It does not appeal to
people's basec emotions and incite them to violent responses, but
encourages people to deal with the most perplexing crises and challenges
of life with mindfulness, equanimity and insight. It is this approach
to social welfare that is needed today, in which there's a tendency
to proliferate collective enmity and anger in the-name of achieving
social justice.
It was noted that those who have removed the defilements in their
minds and attained perfect freedom of mind through insight need
no further incentive to devote themselves to social welfare in the
Buddhist sense. By virtue of the fact that they have already transformed
themselves into persons who are free from greed, hatred and delusion
and possessed of the wholesome qualities of mind such as kindness,
sympathetic concern for the suffering of other beings, compassion,
uanimity, mental composure and insight their commitment to social
welfare becomes effortless and spontaneous. Their conduct conforms
to the two most basic principles of morality, namely the principle
of doing no harm and the principle of promoting beneficence.
However those persons who are not so fully liberated need an incentive
to motivate themselves to perform acts of social welfare. It is
this aspect that is covered by the Buddhist concept of the performance
of meritorious deeds (punna). Acts of punna are acts of social welfare
productive of happy consequences to the agent. On the part of the
doer they involve the sacrifice of one's possessions and energies
for the welfare of others. Since these acts involve the negation
of the ego with the intention of promoting the welfare of another
they are effective in cleansing a person's mind by reducing greed,
hatred, enmity miserliness etc.
By the performance of acts of punna and the avoidance of acts of
papa one contributes to social welfare while gradually transforming
oneself in such a way that noble qualities of mind conducive to
produce the maturity and insight that bring full liberation of the
mind could sooner or later be attained. Until such time as one attains
the final liberation, acts of punna protect a person from falling
into unhappy rebirths and furnishes one with all the desirable material
conditions of living. Buddhism provides a great incentive to believers
by emphasizing the effects of punna deeds to engage in acts of social
welfare. >
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