THE INFLUENCE OF THE BUDDHIST ECONOMIC THOUGHT ON SUSTAINABLE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

The spiritual approach of economics refers to Buddhist economics thought. Its main teaching aims to understand the confusion among what is harmful and advantages to sustainable economics and eventually attempts to create ethically mature human beings in society. The main objective of the article is to identify the basic concept of Buddhist economic thought for sustainable economic development. The study was utilized the content analysis provides an overview of Buddhist concepts for sustainable economic development practices using secondary resources such as books, articles, sutra, and other relevant documents. The study revealed that Buddhist economics has given the analytical approach encompassing the generally accepted economic concepts. Traditional Economics has studied concrete factors while Buddhist economic studied abstract factors. Buddhist economic approach to “Right Livelihood" is one of the requirements of the Buddha’s Noble Eightfold Path. Buddha has considered several important concepts for sustainable economics about the optimal pattern of consumption would be maximum well-being with minimal dependence on resources, importance to the protection of non-renewable resources, types of occupation or trade should be abandoned by human, employee employers’ relationship. There is limited knowledge and practice of the Buddhist concepts to economic development in society. The research finding revealed that spiritual development is a significant factor for sustainable development. This finding able to disseminate new knowledge and research finding will be useful to identify the Buddhist philosophy on sustainable economic development for future policymakers and economists.