Winston L. King<\/a>
\nVanderbilt University<\/a><\/p>\n
Is a viable and authentic Buddhist ethic possible without the prospect of rebirth governed by one’s karmic past? This paper explores traditional and contemporary views on karma with a view to determining the importance of this doctrine for practical ethics in the West. The Therav\u0101da emphasis on the personal nature of karma is discussed first, followed by a consideration of the evolution of a social dimension to the doctrine in the Mah\u0101y\u0101na. The latter development is attributed to the twin influences of the Bodhisattva<\/em> ideal and the metaphysics of N\u0101g\u0101rjuna and Hua Yen. Following this survey of traditional perspectives, attention is turned for the greater part of the paper to a consideration of the relevance of the notion of karmic rebirth for Buddhist ethics in the West. The notion of “social kamma<\/em>” advanced by Ken Jones in The Social Face of Buddhism<\/em> is given critical consideration. The conclusion is that a doctrine of karmic rebirth is not essential to a viable and authentic Buddhist ethic in the West. A Buddhist Ethic Without Karmic Rebirth?<\/p>\n By Winston L. King<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":317,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2401],"tags":[2677,2724,2594,2783,2826,2592],"class_list":["post-94","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-volume-01-1994","tag-kamma","tag-karma","tag-mahayana","tag-nagarjuna","tag-rebirth","tag-theravada"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5X8HA-1w","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/buddhistethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/buddhistethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/buddhistethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/buddhistethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/317"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/buddhistethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/buddhistethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/buddhistethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/buddhistethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/buddhistethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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