BEATING THE POISONED DRUM

The precautionary principle, particularly Nassim Taleb’s “non-naive” version that explicitly stresses the avoidance of ruin, may be the only guiding principle Buddhism can adopt if it wants to thrive in the West. Skilful means, reinterpreted as karmic risk-taking, can’t be left to conventional cost-benefit analysis, especially analysis by committee. Buddhist activism is the fastest way to ruin; the principles underlying the activist mentality depend on a disowned obsession with linearity.