Louis van Loon is a founding director of the Buddhist Retreat Centre in Ixopo, South Africa, where he regularly conducts courses and retreats. By profession a consulting engineer, he also lectures on Buddhism at the University of Durham and has participated in numerous conferences dealing with religious perspectives on contemporary ethical problems. The present essay was originally written as a Buddhist contribution to a study programme entitled “Affluence and Poverty and the Word of God,” organised by the Missiological Institute at the Lutheran Theological College in Mapumulo, Natal, South Africa.
