Tag Archives: Indian Buddhism

Volume 32 2025

Selling the Buddha’s Relics

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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 32, 2025

Selling the Buddha’s Relics Today

Conan Cheong and Ashley Thompson
SOAS University of London

On May 7, 2025, Sotheby’s Hong Kong will offer for sale “gem relics” of the Buddha that were dug up by British colonial landowner W. C. Peppé out of the Piprahwa stūpa in Uttar Pradesh, India, in 1898. In Buddhist contexts, they are considered śarīra—corporeal remains imbued with the living presence of the Buddha. Centering Buddhist ontologies of relics evidenced in epigraphic and ritual traces, this article calls attention to the ethical implications of placing such sacred remains on the art market. It situates the continued division of “gems” from “bones and ash” in colonial processes of extraction, classification, and revaluation through archaeological and museographic practice.

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Volume 31 2024

Economic Justice in the Buddhist Tradition

ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 31, 2024

Economic Justice in the Buddhist Tradition

Christopher Queen
Harvard University

Buddhism is widely associated today with progressive values and exemplary models of economic life. The idea of “Buddhist economics” was paired with the slogan “small is beautiful” by the economist E. F. Schumacher in 1973. Voluntary simplicity, renunciation, and a middle path between self-indulgence and self-denial are seen as keys to sustainable levels of acquisition and consumption. Buddhist kindness and compassion are thought to inspire charitable giving to the poor, and right livelihood to promote occupations of service to society. Yet the history of Buddhist economics does not always support these assumptions. Traditional beliefs in karma and merit-making do not align with modern ideas of justice. We examine the Buddhist record in areas of social equality, property, natural resources, products, wealth, income, jobs, and taxation. Each section surveys Buddhist economics in the Theravāda cultures of South and Southeast Asia; the Mahāyāna cultures that flourished in India, China, Tibet, and East Asia; and the modern period, marked by the rise of Engaged Buddhism in Asia and the West. At each stage we find distinctive teachings and practices in the economic sphere. Read article

Volume 30 2023

Indian Traditionalism in Eihei Dōgen’s Shoaku makusa

ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 30, 2023

Indian Traditionalism in Eihei Dōgen’s Shoaku makusa

Victor Forte
Albright College

Eihei Dōgen’s Shōbōgenzō fascicle Shoaku makusa (“Not Producing Evil”), was presented during the early period of his career, while leading a small group of monastic and lay followers at the Kōshōji temple in Kyoto. Derived from the early Buddhist universal precept and inspired by the Indian ideal of bodhisattvic moral freedom within the dharmadhātu, this work primarily served as a corrective for antinomian inherent awakening doctrine. The ethical implications of this corrective are best understood in the context of Indian Mahāyāna philosophy, an often-overlooked influence on Dōgen’s thought. Not only are such influences to be found in the Shoaku makusa fascicle, but throughout Dōgen’s career, in earlier works like the Shōbōgenzō zuimonki, and later fascicles like Sanjūshichihon bodaibunpō, “The Thirty-seven Factors of Awakening,” and Hotsu bodaishin, “Raising the Mind of Enlightenment,” which were also concerned with the meaning of moral practice from an Indian Buddhist standpoint.
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Volume 30 2023

Abandoning the Monastic Training Rules in the Pāli Canon

ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 30, 2023

The Function and Contemporary Role of sikkhāpaccakkhāna (Abandoning the Training Rules) in the Pāli Canon

Chandima Gangodawila
Ronin Institute

This article examines the intricacies of abandoning the monastic training rules (sikkhāpaccakkhāna) in key Pāli sūtta and Vinaya texts to better understand how these textual sources, in addition to early modern Sri Lankan monastics as well as the contemporary saṅgha, have understood the abandonment of the training rules not as a spiritual failure, but rather as a set of pragmatic monastic principles that emphasize the retention of monkhood and the continuity of the Buddhasāsana. To demonstrate this, I propose an innovative approach to examining the first pārājika (concerning sexual intercourse) in relation to the sikkhāpaccakkhāna by considering Pāli sūttas, Vinaya texts, and the example of noncelibate seventeenth-century Laṅkān gaņinnānse (non-bhikkhu monks). I conclude by arguing that the contemporary Sri Lankan saṅgha can use sikkhāpaccakkhāna to avoid falling into the first pārājika, which provides a basis for reordination and thus a more human-centered framework for supporting the stability and duration of the Buddhasāsana.
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Volume 30 2023

Review: Buddhist Visions of the Good Life for All

ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 30, 2023

Buddhist Visions of the Good Life for All. Edited by Sallie B. King. Routledge Critical Studies in Buddhism. Oxford and New York: Routledge, 2021, xvi + 256 pages, ISBN 978-0-367-56181-9 (hardback), $160, 978-1-00-310045-4 (e-book), $44.05.

Reviewed by Timothy Loftus

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Volume 29 2022

Review: Buddhist Philosophy of Life from the Vimalakīrti Sūtra

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Volume 29, 2022

Living Skillfully: Buddhist Philosophy of Life from the Vimalakīrti Sūtra. By Dale S. Wright. New York: Oxford University Press, 2021, 176 pages. ISBN 978-0-19-758735-5 (hard-back), $29.95/ 978-0-19-758737-9 (e-book), $19.99.

Reviewed by Christopher W. Gowans

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Volume 28 2021

Aquinas and Mipham on Military and Punitive Violence

ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 28, 2021

Aquinas and Mipham on Military and Punitive Violence: A Tribute to Michael Jerryson

Damien Keown
Goldsmiths, University of London (Emeritus)

The claim that Buddhism is exclusively a “religion of peace” has been shown to be untenable. Buddhism now faces the challenge of explaining how the pacifist spirit of its teachings can be reconciled with its well-documented recourse to military and punitive violence. Buddhism is not the only religion to face this challenge, and we first consider the Christian stance on violence as formulated by St. Thomas Aquinas before turning to the views of the Tibetan polymath Jamgön Mipham. We consider to what extent the views of the two thinkers are compatible and conclude with a suggestion as to how what Michael Jerryson calls “the quandary of Buddhism and violence” might be resolved.

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Volume 28 2021

Buddhist Ethics as Moral Phenomenology

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Volume 28, 2021

Buddhist Ethics as Moral Phenomenology: A Defense and Development of the Theory

Colin Simonds
Queen’s University at Kingston

This article defends and develops the categorization of Buddhist ethics as moral phenomenology. It first examines the use of the term in Western philosophical settings and compares it to how the term is employed in Buddhist settings. After concluding that Western ethical comportment and Buddhist moral phenomenology are commensurate terms, it explores how moral phenomenology has been understood in Buddhist contexts and considers the evidence scholars have used to make this interpretation. The article then looks to the Tibetan Buddhist tradition for further evidence of a moral phenomenological approach to Buddhist ethics and analyzes further proof of this interpretation. Finally, issues that emerge from a moral phenomenological approach to ethics are addressed from a Tibetan Buddhist perspective to strengthen this interpretation and offer moral phenomenology as a viable alternative ethical system.

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Volume 28 2021

Pāli Vinaya Conceptions of Sex and Precedents for Transgender Ordination

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Volume 28, 2021

On Pāli Vinaya Conceptions of Sex and Precedents for Transgender Ordination

Brenna Grace Artinger
Independent Scholar

In this article I evaluate ideas of sex and behavior in Pāli Vinaya texts in order to better understand the roles of such terms and their consequences on monastic inclusion. I then contend with the ramifications of such terms on present-day considerations of ordination for transgender individuals, and the ways in which Vinaya texts provide legal precedent for such possibilities.

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Volume 28 2021

The Existential and Soteriological Value of Saṃvega/Pasāda in Early Buddhism

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Volume 28, 2021

Aesthetic Emotions: The Existential and Soteriological Value of Saṃvega/Pasāda in Early Buddhism

Lisa Liang and Brianna K. Morseth
Dharma Realm Buddhist University

Across the globe, our continued existence in light of present conditions is uncertain. Rapid spread of disease and risk of complications endanger the human population. Such challenging circumstances may shock and devastate us, inducing mass panic and pandemonium amid the pervasive threat of pandemic. Yet according to Buddhist philosophy, existential unease can also spawn deep transformation. In this paper, we examine a pair of aesthetic emotions (saṃvega/pasāda) from the early Buddhist tradition that together hold the potential to induce critical reflection and productive engagement in response to existential threat. By referring to saṃvega/pasāda as aesthetic emotions, we intend to draw out their distinctive, often visually-oriented soteriological function. While initially disorienting and perhaps even paralyzing, saṃvega and pasāda are ultimately reorienting and motivating factors on the path to liberation from the suffering entailed by cyclic existence.

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Volume 28 2021

Review: Wilfrid Sellars and Buddhist Philosophy

3 Comments
ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 28, 2021

Wilfrid Sellars and Buddhist Philosophy: Freedom from Foundations. Edited by Jay L. Garfield. Routledge Studies in American Philosophy. London and New York: Routledge, 2019, 254 pages. ISBN 978-0-367-11209-7 (hardback), $128/978-1-03-209415-1 (paperback), $39.16/978-0-429-02794-9 (e-book), $44.05.

Reviewed by Matthew T. Kapstein

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Volume 28 2021

Review: Mindfully Facing Climate Change

ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 28, 2021

Mindfully Facing Climate Change. By Bhikkhu Anālayo. Barre, Massachusetts: Barre Center for Buddhist Studies, 2019, 206 pp., ISBN 978-1-7067-1988-5 (paperback), $9.95. Open access e-book: https://www.buddhistinquiry.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/MindfullyFacingClimateChange.pdf.

Reviewed by Abhinav Anand

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Volume 26 2019

Disengaged Buddhism

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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 26, 2019

Disengaged Buddhism

Amod Lele
Boston University

Contemporary engaged Buddhist scholars typically claim either that Buddhism always endorsed social activism, or that its non-endorsement of such activism represented an unwitting lack of progress. This article examines several classical South Asian Buddhist texts that explicitly reject social and political activism. These texts argue for this rejection on the grounds that the most important sources of suffering are not something that activism can fix, and that political involvement interferes with the tranquility required for liberation. The article then examines the history of engaged Buddhism in order to identify why this rejection of activism has not yet been taken sufficiently seriously. Read article

Volume 26 2019

Buddhism and Capital Punishment: A Revisitation

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Volume 26, 2019

Buddhism and Capital Punishment: A Revisitation

Martin Kovan
University of Melbourne

The first Buddhist precept prohibits the intentional, even sanctioned, taking of life. However, capital punishment remains legal, and even increasingly applied, in some culturally Buddhist polities and beyond them. The classical Buddhist norm of unconditional compassion as a counterforce to such punishment thus appears insufficient to oppose it. This paper engages classical Buddhist and Western argument for and against capital punishment, locating a Buddhist refutation of deterrent and Kantian retributivist grounds for it not only in Nāgārjunian appeals to compassion, but also the metaphysical and moral constitution of the agent of lethal crime, and thereby the object of its moral consequences. Read article

Volume 24 2017

Canonical Exegesis in the Theravāda Vinaya

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Volume 24, 2017

Canonical Exegesis in the Theravāda Vinaya

Bhikkhu Brahmāli
Bodhinyana Monastery
Bhikkhu Anālayo
University of Hamburg

In the present paper the two authors examine dimensions of the canonical exegesis found embedded within the text of the Theravāda Vinaya. In part one, Bhikkhu Anālayo examines the word-commentary on the rules found in the Suttavibhaṅga. In part two, Bhikkhu Brahmāli takes up the function of narrative portions in the Khandhakas.

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Volume 24 2017

Guṇaprabha on Monastic Authority

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Volume 24, 2017

Guṇaprabha on Monastic Authority and Authoritative Doctrine

Paul Nietupski
John Carroll University

This essay is based on sūtras 70–102 in Guṇaprabha’s seventh century Vinayasūtra, his Autocommentary, and the associated sections in all Indian and Tibetan commentaries on the Vinayasūtra. In this excerpt Guṇaprabha and the commentators include remarks on the requirements for monastic community authority and references to relevant authoritative doctrines. The guidelines for monastic authority include applications of procedures in medieval Indian monastic life, including prerequisites and exceptions in the ordination process. The references to authoritative doctrine in Guṇaprabha’s and the commentators’ works include comments on the interface of ethics, concentration, and wisdom, and how ethical guidelines are based on the correct understanding of epistemological value as presented in canonical treatises on doctrine.

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Volume 24 2017

Ways of Forsaking the Order According to the Early Vinaya

ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 24, 2017

Quitting the Dhamma: The Ways of Forsaking the Order According to the Early Vinaya

Ven. Pandita (Burma)
University of Kelaniya

In this paper, I argue that in the early Vinaya, contrary to the commentarial tradition: (1) two ways of forsaking the Order, equally valid, co-exist; and (2) nuns who have left the Order may be re-ordained without guilt.

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Volume 23 2016

Grief, Impermanence, and Upāya

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Volume 23, 2016

“To Whom Does Kisā Gotamī Speak?” Grief, Impermanence, and Upāya

Richard K. Payne
Institute of Buddhist Studies, at the Graduate Theological Union

This article develops a perspective on the nature of Buddhist pastoral care by considering the needs of the bereaved. Differentiating the interpretive frameworks of different audiences and understanding different contexts of interpersonal relations are necessary for effective pastoral care. A distinction between the goal of realizing impermanence and the goal of resolving mourning is heuristically useful in theorizing Buddhist pastoral care. The discussion also seeks to underscore the value of upāya as a positive moral injunction on teachers, indicating the need to properly match their audience and to employ the textual tradition responsibly.

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Volume 22 2015

The Four Realities True for Noble Ones

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Volume 22, 2015

The Four Realities True for Noble Ones: A New Approach to the Ariyasaccas

Ven. Pandita (Burma)
University of Kelaniya

Peter Harvey recently argued that the term sacca of ariyasacca should be interpreted as “reality” rather than as “truth,” the common rendition. In this paper, although I basically agree with him, I see quite different implications and come to a wholly new interpretation of the four ariyasaccas.

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Volume 22 2015

Holistic Eco-Buddhism and the Problem of Universal Identity

ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 22, 2015

Nature’s No-Thingness: Holistic Eco-Buddhism and the Problem of Universal Identity

Marek Sullivan
University of Oxford

“Holistic eco-Buddhism” has been roundly criticized for its heterodoxy and philosophical incoherence: the Buddha never claimed we should protect an “eco-self” and there are serious philosophical problems attendant on “identifying with things.” Yet this essay finds inadequate attention has been paid to East Asian sources. Metaphysical issues surrounding eco-Buddhism, i.e., problems of identity and difference, universalism and particularity, have a long history in Chinese Buddhism. In particular, I examine the notion of “merging with things” in pre-Huayan and Huayan Buddhism, suggesting these offer unexplored possibilities for a coherent holistic eco-Buddhism based on the differentiating effects of activity and functionality.

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Volume 22 2015

The Metaphysical Basis of Śāntideva’s Ethics

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Volume 22, 2015

The Metaphysical Basis of Śāntideva’s Ethics

Amod Lele
Boston University

Western Buddhists often believe and proclaim that metaphysical speculation is irrelevant to Buddhist ethics or practice. This view is problematic even with respect to early Buddhism, and cannot be sustained regarding later Indian Buddhists. In Śāntideva’s famous Bodhicaryāvatāra, multiple claims about the nature of reality are premises for conclusions about how human beings should act; that is, metaphysics logically entails ethics for Śāntideva, as it does for many Western philosophers. This article explores four key arguments that Śāntideva makes from metaphysics to ethics: actions are determined by their causes, and therefore we should not get angry; the body is reducible to its component parts, and therefore we should neither protect it nor lust after other bodies; the self is an illusion, and therefore we should be altruistic; all phenomena are empty, and therefore we should not be attached to them. The exploration of these arguments together shows us why metaphysical claims can matter a great deal for Buddhist ethics, practice and liberation.

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Volume 21 2014

Compassion in Schopenhauer and Śāntideva

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Volume 21, 2014

Compassion in Schopenhauer and Śāntideva

Kenneth Hutton
University of Glasgow

Although it is well known that Schopenhauer claimed that Buddhism closely reflected his own philosophy, this claim was largely ignored until the mid-late Twentieth century. Most commentators on Schopenhauer (with some recent exceptions) since then have mentioned his Buddhist affinities but have been quite broad and general in their treatment. I feel that any general comparison of Schopenhauer’s philosophy with “general” Buddhism would most likely lead to general conclusions. In this article I have attempted to offer a more specific comparison of what is central to Schopenhauer’s philosophy with what is central to Mahāyāna Buddhism, and that is the concept of compassion.

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Volume 21 2014

Bhikkhave and Bhikkhu as Gender-inclusive Terminology in Early Buddhist Texts

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Volume 21, 2014

Bhikkhave and Bhikkhu as Gender-inclusive Terminology in Early Buddhist Texts

Alice Collett
York St John University

Bhikkhu Anālayo
University of Hamburg

In what follows we examine whether the use of the vocative bhikkhave or the nominative bhikkhu in Buddhist canonical texts imply that female monastics are being excluded from the audience. In the course of exploring this basic point, we also take up the vocative of proper names and the absence of the term arahantī in Pāli discourse literature.

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Volume 20 2013

The Gurudharma on Bhiksunī Ordination

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Volume 20, 2013

The Gurudharma on Bhikṣuṇī Ordination in the Mūlasarvāstivāda Tradition

Bhikṣuṇī Jampa Tsedroen and Bhikkhu Anālayo
Academy of World Religions & Center for Buddhist Studies,
University of Hamburg

This article surveys the stipulation on bhikṣuṇī ordination made in the different Vinayas as part of a set of eight principles to be respected (gurudharma), and explores the possibility, indicated by the formulation of the relevant gurudharma, that a legally valid Mūlasarvāstivāda bhikṣuṇī ordination could be conducted by bhikṣus only.

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Volume 20 2013

Consequentialism, Agent-Neutrality, and Mahāyāna Ethics

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Volume 20, 2013

Consequentialism, Agent-Neutrality, and Mahāyāna Ethics

Charles Goodman
Binghamton University

Several Indian Mahāyāna texts express an ethical perspective that has many features in common with Western forms of universalist consequentialism. Śāntideva, in particular, endorses a strong version of agent-neutrality, claims that compassionate agents should violate Buddhist moral commitments when doing so would produce good results, praises radical altruism, uses a critique of the self to support his ethical views, and even offers a reasonably clear general formulation of what we call act-consequentialism. Meanwhile, Asaṅga’s discussions of the motivation behind rules of moral discipline and the permissible reasons for breaking those rules suggests an interesting and complex version of rule-consequentialism. Evidence for features of consequentialism can be found in several Mahāyāna sūtras as well. In reading these sources, interpretations that draw on virtue ethics may not be as helpful as those that understand the texts as committed to various versions of consequentialism.

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Volume 20 2013

Making Suffering Sufferable

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Volume 20, 2013

Suffering Made Sufferable: Śāntideva, Dzongkaba, and Modern Therapeutic Approaches to Suffering’s Silver Lining

Daniel Cozort
Dickinson College

Suffering’s positive side was elucidated beautifully by the eighth century Mahāyāna poet Śāntideva in his Bodhicāryavatāra. Dzongkaba Losang Drakpa, the founder of what came to be known as the Gelukba (dge lugs pa) order of Tibetan Buddhism, used Śāntideva’s text as his main source in the chapter on patience in his masterwork, Lam rim Chenmo. In this article I attempt to explicate Śāntideva’s thought by way of the commentary of Dzongkaba. I then consider it in the context of what Ariel Glucklich has called “Sacred Pain”—the myriad ways in which religious people have found meaning in pain. I conclude with some observations about ways in which some Buddhist-inspired or -influenced therapeutic movements such as Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction and Positive Psychology are helping contemporary people to reconcile themselves to pain or to discover that it may have positive value.

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Volume 19 2012

Parental and Spousal Consent in Early Buddhism

ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 19, 2012

Did the Buddha Correct Himself?

Ven. Pandita (Burma)
University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka

In this paper, I look at two related issues in Vinaya, (1) the requirement of parental consent for all candidates wishing to join the Order and (2) the additional requirement of spousal consent for female candidates but no such requirement for male candidates, and I try to prove that both these regulations stemmed from the same principle.

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Volume 19 2012

If Intention Is Karma

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Volume 19, 2012

If Intention Is Karma: A New Approach to the Buddha’s Socio-Political Teachings

Ven. Pandita (Burma)
University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka

I argue in this paper that early Buddhist ethics is one of absolute values and that we can consistently use those absolute values to interpret some early teachings that seemingly show an ethic of context-dependent and negotiable values. My argument is based on the concept of intention as karma, the implications and problems of which I have also discussed.

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Volume 18 2011

Śāntideva on Justified Anger

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Volume 18, 2011

Bile & Bodhisattvas: Śāntideva on Justified Anger

Nicolas Bommarito
Brown University

In his famous text the Bodhicaryāvatāra, the 8th century Buddhist philosopher Śāntideva argues that anger towards people who harm us is never justified. The usual reading of this argument rests on drawing similarities between harms caused by persons and those caused by non-persons. After laying out my own interpretation of Śāntideva’s reasoning, I offer some objections to Śāntideva’s claim about the similarity between animate and inanimate causes of harm inspired by contemporary philosophical literature in the West. Following this, I argue that by reading Śāntideva’s argument as practical advice rather than as a philosophical claim about rational coherence, his argument can still have important insights even for those who reject his philosophical reasoning.

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Volume 18 2011

The Buddha and the Māgadha-Vajjī War

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Volume 18, 2011

The Buddha and the Māgadha-Vajjī War

Ven. Pandita (Burma)
University of Kelaniya

According to an account recorded in Mahāparinibbānasutta, the Buddha had to meet a royal minister named Vassakāra when King Ajātasattu ordered the latter to visit the Buddha and inform him about the king’s plan to subdue the Vajjīs. After hearing Vassakāra, the Buddha spoke on seven Conditions of Welfare (satta aparihāniyā dhammā), which would ensure the prosperity of the Vajjīs as long as its citizens observed them. Vassakāra shrewdly inferred from the Buddha’s discourse how to defeat the Vajjī people and later actually forced them into submission. Regarding that event, there are some perplexing questions:

  1. Why did King Ajātasattu choose to consult a wandering ascetic on a significant matter of state like fighting a war?
  2. Vassakāra discerned how to defeat the Vajjīs from the Buddha’s exposition of the Seven Conditions of Welfare. So did the Buddha intend to help Ajātasattu defeat the Vajjīs? If not, what was his purpose in expounding the seven Conditions of Welfare to Vassakāra?
  3. If the Buddha really did not accept any kind of violence, as the tradition would have it, why did he not openly speak against it?

This paper will attempt to answer these questions and will argue, in the conclusion, that this event shows the Buddha’s disapproving attitude toward a political role of the Buddhist Order.

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Volume 15 2008

Implications of the New Dating of the Buddha

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Volume 15, 2008

Cooking the Buddhist Books: The Implications of the New Dating of the Buddha for the History of Early Indian Buddhism

Charles S. Prebish
Utah State University

On the surface, new dating for the Buddha’s death doesn’t seem terribly earthshaking, either for Indian Buddhist history or for ancillary studies such as a consideration of Upāli and his lineage of Vinayadharas. Yet it is. If there is a new date for the Buddha’s demise, virtually everything we know about the earliest Indian Buddhism, and especially its sectarian movement, is once again called into question. Dates for the first, second, and third canonical councils—once thought to be certain—must now be reexamined. Kings who presided at these events must be reconsidered. Most importantly, the role of the great Indian King Aśoka, from whose reign much of the previous dating begins, needs to be placed under the scrutiny of the historical microscope again.

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Volume 03 1996

Development of Buddhist Economic Ethics

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Volume 3 1996

Continuity and Change in the Economic Ethics of Buddhism:­ Evidence From the History of Buddhism in India, China and Japan

Gregory K. Ornatowski
Boston University

This paper offers an outline of the development of Buddhist economic ethics using examples from early Theravāda Buddhism in India and the Mahāyāna tradition as it evolved in India, medieval China, and medieval and early modern Japan, in order to illustrate the pattern of continuities and transformations these ethics have undergone. By “economic ethics” the paper refers to four broad areas: (1) attitudes toward wealth, i.e., its accumulation, use, and distribution, including the issues of economic justice and equality/ inequality; (2) attitudes toward charity, i.e., how and to whom wealth should be given; (3) attitudes toward human labor and secular occupations in society; and (4) actual economic activities of temples and monasteries which reflect the lived-practice of Buddhist communities’ economic ethics.

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Volume 03 1996

Review: Indo-Tibetan Scholasticism

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Volume 3 1996

Buddhism and Language: A Study of Indo-Tibetan Scholasticism. By José Ignacio Cabezón (Foreword by Frank E. Reynolds), SUNY Series, Toward a Comparative Philosophy of Religions, Frank E. Reynolds and David Tracy, editors. Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1994, xiii + 299 pages, ISBN 0-7914-1900-2 (paper).

Reviewed by Mark Siderits

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Volume 01 1994

The Problem of Buddhist Environmental Ethics

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Volume 1 1994

Causation and Telos: The Problem of Buddhist Environmental Ethics

Ian Harris
University College of St. Martin

Environmentalist concerns have moved center stage in most major religious traditions of late and Buddhism is no exception to this rule. This paper shows that the canonical writings of Indic Buddhism possess elements that may harmonize with a de facto ecological consciousness. However, their basic attitude towards the causal process drastically reduces the possibility of developing an authentically Buddhist environmental ethic. The classical treatment of causation fails to resolve successfully the tension between symmetry and asymmetry of relations and this has tended to mean that attempts to inject a telos, or sense of purpose, into the world are likely to founder. The agenda of eco-Buddhism is examined in the light of this fact and found wanting.

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