ABSTRACT
Neoliberalism has sanctified the profit motive and projected even corporate greed as a virtue from which people all stand to benefit. The ‘growth’ economy has been characterised by a proliferation of desires and the sale of goods and services intended to meet them. The process has blurred, even welded together, the lines between needs, hopes, longings and aspirations in those who can afford these products. Hinduism, Buddhism and neoliberalism would concur with this understanding of desire. The two religions identify desire as a site of suffering. Their methods for addressing it range from crude instructions to simply transcend it, to nuanced teachings which invite people to comprehend the root of desire, its transitory nature and the fleeting satisfaction it often yields. Care, concern and reciprocity are evoked as also a measured temporality. ‘Attention’ is closely allied to communication in the sense of communing.
