Buddhist Ken Wilber compares spirituality to the stock market. Wilber says that, over the long haul, there is a slow upward trend. Over the short haul, there can be considerable pain and suffering. This week, we discuss the parallels between spirituality and the stock market, and we introduce the Buddhist understanding of pain and suffering. Next week, we will expand on this theme.
Everyone experiences pain, notably birth, sickness, old age and death. Along the way, all of us experience other types of pain, including addictions, business failures, divorces, financial losses, mental health struggles, natural disasters and relationship problems. Whereas pain describes something that happens to us, suffering describes how we respond to our pain.
Many of us have been experiencing pain and suffering in the last few months.
Everyone Suffers
Jesus sought to relieve suffering. But contemporary Christianity sometimes embraces suffering, maybe even welcomes it. “God’s ways are not our ways. Pray better, or pray harder. Jesus suffered. Jesus suffers with you. His suffering was worse than yours. Maybe you deserve your suffering. Maybe your suffering lets God accomplish a greater good. Your suffering will be rewarded.”
Contemporary Christianity sometimes rationalizes suffering, too. “Your suffering must be God’s will. Someone else’s lack of suffering must also be God’s will.” But, practically, for many of us, none of these platitudes help to relieve actual suffering in the real world, here and now.
Before I adopted a Zen practice, I never understood the Buddhist emphasis on suffering. Then, I read a Buddhist book while I was suffering, and it all made sense.
The Buddha’s Four Noble Truths focus on suffering. Everyone suffers. Suffering comes from attachment, craving and ignorance. Suffering ends when we stop attachment, craving and ignorance. We stop attachment, craving and ignorance when we pursue the Eightfold Path, eight guidelines involving wisdom, ethical practice and mental discipline.
“Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water” is a famous Buddhist saying. The saying encourages us to focus on the present moment. In that way, we enjoy even the most mundane tasks, and we tolerate even the most unpleasant tasks. Similarly, the Hindu scriptures encourage us to focus on actions rather than the results of actions.
Ken Wilber Compares Spirituality and the Stock Market
Ken Wilber, a Buddhist philosopher, believes that human history shows slow but steady material, intellectual, and spiritual progress. In many ways, we experience less suffering than our ancestors. “It’s sort of like the stock market,” he explained. “You know that over the long haul there is a slow upward trend, even though there are great depressions and nightmares and all this kind of stuff.”
I spent 25 years working in the financial markets and 40 years investing in the financial markets. So, Wilber’s comparison of spirituality and the stock market resonates with me. More to the point, it helps to illustrate the difference between pain and suffering.
As I write this, the President imposed burdensome tariffs on our trading partners. He imposed tariffs during his first term, with little consequence, but these are more extreme and less defensible. (Every 100 years or so, a Republican President imposes tariffs. In 1930, tariffs deepened the Great Depression. Over 90% of economists believe that tariffs are NOT good for the economy.)
A bear market is defined as a 20% or more decline from a recent high. The NASDAQ was in a bear market, the S&P 500 was close to a bear market, and the Dow was approaching a bear market, before the tariffs were reversed. Worse, the scale of the tariffs and the reckless manner in which they were imposed (and reversed) has introduced a considerable amount of uncertainty.
Pain and Suffering
The markets do NOT like uncertainty. If investors can NOT confidently assess risk and value assets, then the stock market becomes “a random number generator, not a reliable measure of value.” In addition to short term damage to jobs, prices and stocks, uncertainty can erode long-term confidence here and abroad. Problems in the stock market are spilling over into the bond market.
Today, most of us are experiencing the pain of financial losses or the threat of financial losses. Some of us are also experiencing suffering. And there might be more pain and suffering ahead.
Investor Ray Dalio suggests that investors do NOT realize this “once-in-a-lifetime” breakdown of monetary, political and geopolitical orders. Perhaps we have not experienced a return to normal because we are establishing a new (post-tariff) normal, well below the normal that we experienced for the last 100 years. If so, stock prices might fall further as they adjust to this new normal.
As Wilber says, over the long haul, there is a slow upward trend. But how long is the long haul? In recent history, stocks quickly recovered from bear markets. However, in Herbert Hoover’s time (in which the Smoot-Hawley tariffs were imposed), the Dow did NOT return to its previous highs until 1954, a period of 25 years. Where will you be in 25 years? I’ll probably be dead.
This week, we discussed the parallels between spirituality and the stock market, and we introduced the Buddhist understanding of pain and suffering. Next week, we will expand on this theme.
How can the Buddhist understanding of suffering help us to cope with the pain that all of us experience in our everyday life?
Good question. More to come. Stay tuned.
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