Hungry Ghosts Are Busting Government—How Leaders Can Be Ghostbusters
From the Hungry Ghosts Scroll courtesy of the Kyoto National Museum. The scroll depicts the realm of the hungry ghosts, with this section showing Ananda, nephew and disciple of Shakyamuni Buddha, as a ghostbuster.
By Ginny Whitelaw
Originally published on Forbes.com on April 1st, 2025.
Hungry ghosts, as described in Buddhist texts, occupy the second lowest of six realms of human experience, right above the rage of hell, and well below the consciousness of a healthy human being, much less the bliss of heaven. Hungry ghosts are consumed with greed, often depicted as sorrowful, teardrop figures with tiny, little mouths and great, big bellies that can never get enough food.
The U.S. government is being busted by a couple of men who, for whatever other strengths they may have, are functioning as hungry ghosts. President Trump and Elon Musk are demonstrating an insatiable greed for power and its proxy, money. Both men show us that when greed goes unsatisfied or gets challenged, it lashes out in even more dangerous or outlandish ways. Both men vividly demonstrate that greed does not satisfy itself but only fuels more greed. Both show us that hungry ghosts drag those around them down to being hungry ghosts as well who can be held in check by the promise of more power and wealth or the fear of losing it.
While some of us are accustomed to thinking of heaven and hell as regards an afterlife, their use in Buddhism also applies to our life right now. They represent the peak and pit of human experience and, like six floors of a building, we’re capable of riding an elevator up and down to any of them. So, anyone can descend to the level of being a hungry ghost and, because greed feeds more greed, it can be hard to escape from that realm. Unlike in the comedy classic, Ghostbusters, there’s no magic energy device for busting the hungry ghost that can surface in us. But there is a key word that leaders do well to follow to bust the grip of being a hungry ghost, free up hungry ghosts around them and move to action to stem the damage from those who are still acting as hungry ghosts. That ghostbusting word is “enough.”
When There’s Never Enough
The first sense of “enough” that breaks the grip of greed is knowing what enough is. As humans, we come with a set of needs. Those needs have been characterized by Maslow, McClelland and others to include physical needs such as food and safety, social-emotional needs like love and belonging, and psychological needs like power, achievement and self-actualization. Getting our needs met to some level of sufficiency motivates our actions. If our needs are expressed in a healthy way, we know what enough is. To use food as an example, if we have a healthy relationship with food, we know when we’ve eaten enough. Natural, healthy needs have natural, healthy fill lines.
But the fact is, there are many ways our need system can get messed up and fill lines can fail us. One way this happens was researched by psychologist Arthur Janov to understand the roots of neurosis. He found that if infants and young children, who are dependent on others to get their needs met, go through extended periods of deprivation—lacking food, love, safety, whatever—they are prone to seal off that pain and substitute another need for it. So, for example, if a child doesn’t feel loved enough, they may substitute getting attention as a form of personal power and act out. Janov’s key finding was that, while real needs have natural fill lines, substitute needs do not because they were never what was really needed. The result is neurotic behavior—a hungry ghost—where there’s never enough.
Far from being rare, a never-enough mindset is often promoted or glamorized in leaders, as in never enough ambition, achievement, power, wealth, growth, or in the words of Frederick Seidel, “Too much is almost enough.” The problem is that when we go past healthy fill lines, unintended consequences build up, largely outside of conscious awareness. Just as the never-enough growth of cancer destroys the ecology of the body, so unbounded greed destroys the ecology of relationships, societies, governments and even the earth.
Eat Just Enough
I first heard this antidote to greed from one of my Zen teachers, Tanouye Roshi. He was referring, of course, to meeting all needs just enough and not just food. Looking at my own needs and how they were expressed in my life and leadership, I could see that I had a healthy relationship with most of them, but an outsized need for control and achievement. I was always trying to fix things and felt that no matter what I did, I was never achieving enough. In many ways, life rewarded me for this drive, but as a leader I could also see where it was holding me back. I was trying to control more than was controllable and doing too much myself rather than developing others. I also saw where my leadership was more about meeting my own hungry-ghost needs than simply being of service.
The beauty and freedom of seeing that a fill line is missing and a need is off scale is that we can start to see through it. It’s like having a car where we know that the gas gauge is broken. We learn not to trust the gauge and adjust around it or see beyond it. Being able to see beyond our needs and serve the situation is a crucial flip in Zen Leadership from “It’s all about me” to “I’m all about it.” It orients us toward serving others or serving the situation and busts us out of the realm of being a hungry ghost.
If we sense that one or more of our needs has no fill line, it’s a good bet that it pulls our decisions and behaviors toward serving itself. We might ask ourselves: How do I know that I don’t already have enough wealth, power, achievement, or fill-in-the-blank? If the truth is we don’t know or we feel there’s never enough, it’s most likely a substitute need and the “gas gauge” is broken.
To break the grip of a need that makes everything about itself and make this flip toward greater service, questions we might ask ourselves in facing an important decision or situation are:
Assume I do have enough wealth, power, achievement, or whatever is the unfillable need, what would I be free to do?
What price am I paying or are others paying if this unfillable need drives my behavior?
If I were dead, yet still able to act, what truly serves the situation?
Questions like these help us see through our own hungry ghost, attain a more neutral, bird’s-eye perspective on the situation and orient us toward adding value. This flip makes leadership expansive, purposeful and in service of something greater, which is also a human need, often called spiritual or self-transcending.
Lead Knowing What Enough Is
Just as never-enough-ness can be glamorized for leaders, it can be cherished in the competitive world of business and politics and richly rewarded from the stock market to the ballot box. Yet greed not only begets more greed in ourselves but infects those around us. It also throws systems wildly out of balance, as unintended consequences pile up until something breaks.
So, while greed can pay off in the short term, longer term it feeds a boom-bust cycle, which is how complex systems of competing forces—i.e., polarities or paradoxes—manage themselves when not managed wisely. Since Barry Johnson’s work nearly 30 years ago, leaders have been skilled in the art of managing paradox by knowing what enough is, both what’s enough of a good thing and enough sign of trouble that it’s wise to change course.
For example, a classic paradox in organizational life is between money and people, because, of course, an organization needs both to be healthy. Focusing purely on money can lead to disengagement and burnout, especially if people perceive leaders as lining their own pockets while asking others to sacrifice—i.e., the hungry ghost at work. On the other hand, focusing only on employee health and development could cost more than the company can afford. Obviously, there’s a sweet spot between these extremes based on knowing what’s enough money, what’s enough on the people side, and what’s enough of a warning sign that either side is sinking into danger.
As leaders mature, knowing what enough is enables them to bust their own hungry ghosts and makes them fit to lead complex systems and organizations. Moreover, only leaders who have made the flip from “It’s all about me” to “I’m all about it” can authentically ask others to do the same.
Enough is Enough
A final sense of “enough” brings us full circle to our political situation in the U.S. Most of us have full-enough lives with plenty to do without getting involved in politics. But at what point in watching the work of greed and vengeance do we say “enough?” At what point have we seen enough slide toward authoritarianism and disrespect of human beings? What do we take as the warning sign that moves us to do something: contact our people in Congress, work with our companies to take a stand, build coalitions, contribute funds, protect the vulnerable, join a protest, organize our community, or engage in some form of nonviolent resistance that is true to us?
Many have already reached the point of enough and are bravely doing what they can to bust the ghosts of greed. According to social scientist, Erica Chenoweth, nonviolent resistance is historically far more successful than its violent cousin and a surprisingly small percentage of the population is sufficient to reach a tipping point for change. Her research shows only 3.5% or, in terms of the U.S. population, about 12 million ghostbusters is enough.
Ginny Whitelaw is the Founder and CEO of the Institute for Zen Leadership.
