ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 13, 2006
Saving Zen From Moral Ineptitude: A Response to
Zen Social Ethics: Historical Constraints and Present Prospects
John C. Maraldo
University of North Florida
The four articles on the historical constraints and present prospects of a Zen social ethics are ethical essays in an exemplary sense: although they reflect on what Zen social ethics actually is or has been, their primary concern is with what a Zen social ethics could be or should be. Insofar as the papers are descriptive, they describe a lack or a failure of ethics in the Zen tradition, the failure for example to avert complicity in Japanese militarism and the suffering caused from it. Even where they point to ethical resources within the Zen tradition they do so in the awareness that such resources were not explored, much less utilized, in the past. Yet…