This study tests the Buddhist hypothesis that observance of Buddhist Five Precepts leads to subjective wealth, and happiness. Gotama Buddha defined happiness as the result of subjective wealth: having wealth, using wealth, not being in debt, and engaging in a harmless profession. Four hundred residents of Bangkok participated in the study by responding to scales assessing the extent of their observance of the Five Precepts, subjective wealth, and domain satisfactions and life satisfaction. Regression analyses (...) were used to test the hypothesis. The results confirm that subjective wealth mediates the relationship between observance of the Five Precepts and happiness. Happiness begins by not transgressing upon oneself and violating others, and may depend less on what one has than on what one has left after paying off the bills. (shrink)

This study examines the relationships between violation of the Buddhist Five Precepts, money consciousness, and the tendency to pay bribes among organizational employees in Bangkok, Thailand. A total of 385 organizational employees in Bangkok participated in the study. Structural equation models were used to test the relationships. The fitted model shows a mediation effect of money consciousness on the relationship between violation of the Buddhist Five Precepts and the tendency to pay bribes. Results indicate (...) that the extent of violation of the Buddhist Five Precepts is associated with money consciousness to predict the tendency to pay bribes. Observing the Buddhist Five Precepts and not allowing money consciousness to influence behaviors may reduce ethical problems. (shrink)

Though premarital sex among Thai young adults resulted in a large number of abortions and child mothers, university students were less likely than vocational students and out-of-school adolescents to have premarital sex. The authors believe that the university students’ attitude against premarital sex is fostered through mother-daughter relationships and an observance of the Buddhist five precepts. To support this contention, the authors conducted a study among 198 female university undergraduate students and hypothesized that mother-daughter relationships were related (...) to an attitude against premarital sex through the mediation effect of an observance of the five precepts. Results supported the research model, affirming the role of mother-daughter relationships in fostering an attitude against premarital sex, and suggesting that the five precepts have a protective effect in guarding against adverse health and life-changing risks among Thai adolescents. (shrink)

This chapter examines a sampling of the beliefs and practices to ascertain whether there are emerging patterns that link the otherwise independent, globally dispersed movements of engaged Buddhism. The rise of socially engaged Buddhism since the middle of the last century has been intensively documented and analyzed by scholars for more than 30 years. The doctrines of suffering (dukkha) and action‐rebirth (karma‐sasāra), and the moral guidelines known as Five Precepts (pañcasila), may be taken as markers of the philosophical (...) breadth and depth of the new Buddhism, and of its readiness to enter into dialogue with philosophies and theologies beyond its borders. (shrink)

This study operationally defines Buddhist belief in merit , Buddhist religiousness and examines their relationships with life satisfaction. Four hundred Buddhist merit makers at a temple in Bangkok participated in the study. LISREL models show that Buddhist belief in merit predicts Buddhist religiousness and life satisfaction, and Buddhist belief in merit mediates the relationship between Buddhist religiousness and life satisfaction. The different conceptualizations of Buddhist religiousness and life satisfaction and their difference with (...) reference to the future and the present are discussed. Buddhist religiousness-life satisfaction nexus is then examined against western religiousness-life satisfaction relationship. (shrink)

Most of the religions of the world are based on some fundamental moral principles of good conduct/virtues and prohibits its followers to do anything which is not good for the welfare of the society as a whole. This fundamental moral principal of good conduct, in Buddhism, is known as Pancha Shila. Pancha Shila is the basic assumption of moral activities for both households as well as for renunciates. It forms the actual practice of morality. Each time the precepts are (...) upheld, the moral volitions are strengthened, until morality becomes a habitualtrait through the condition of repetition. For the smooth functioning of a society, every Buddhist has to follow the five moral precepts i.e. abstaining from killing, abstaining from stealing, abstaining from sexual misconduct, abstaining from falsehood, abstaining from taking intoxicants. Jainism, Christianity, Hinduism and Islam too accept such ethical codes with little modification. These are called cardinal virtues. Jaina concept of Pancha Mahavrata is very close to Buddhist concept of Pancha Shila. In Jainism these are; Ahimsa, Satyam, Asteyam, Brahmacharyam, Aparigraha. Mahatma Gandhi too accepted these five cardinal virtues given by Jainism but he added two more in it which are; Fearlessness and Faith in God. The five precepts of Buddhism offers the moral conducts following which everyone can avoid evil deeds and can contribute in making this world a better world for present and future generations. The precept of abstaining from killing leads to the respect for other’s life. The precept of abstaining from stealing leads to the respect for other’s property. The precept of abstaining from sexual misconduct leads to the respect for one’s own dignity and dignity of other’s especially women. The precept of abstaining from falsehood leads to the respect for honesty. The precept of abstaining from taking alcohol leads to innumerable number of good qualities like respect for a clear mind, respect for modesty of other human beings, respect for money, respect for one’s own dignity, respect for other’s life and so on. The five precepts of Buddhism make a person disciplined, which is one of the most important ingredients for the development of overall personality of a person. A developing country cannot become a developed one unless its citizens are disciplined. If we analyze the five precepts given by Buddhism then, we find that the solution for most of world problems lies in it. If everyone follows five precepts then, I think this world will be transformed into a better place, a place where people have respects for other’s life and property, where everybody’s interest will be taken care of, where people will have an altruistic approach towards society. In short, this world can be transformed into a heaven. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 22 (2002) 236-239 [Access article in PDF] Book Review An Introduction to Buddhist Ethics: Foundations, Values and Issues An Introduction to Buddhist Ethics: Foundations, Values and Issues. By Peter Harvey. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. xx + 478 pp. In my 1993 review article on Damien Keown's brilliant book The Nature of Buddhist Ethics (see Buddhist Studies Review 10, 1 [1993], 95-108), (...) I praised Keown's volume as one of the very most important research studies on Buddhist ethics to have been [End Page 236] written in the last half of the twentieth century. It ultimately became the grounding basis for the highly successful online Journal of Buddhist Ethics, and has helped to reawaken interest in an exciting but often overlooked aspect of the Buddhist tradition. I have no doubt that Peter Harvey's new work will do for the beginning of the new century precisely what Keown's did for the end of the previous one. In a few words, it is a scholarly masterpiece, a splendid in-depth tour of the entire Buddhist ethical tradition.Because of our shared interest, I had known that Peter Harvey was working on a comprehensive study of Buddhist ethics for some time prior to its publication, but as late as August 1999, I had not seen any part of it in manuscript form. While attending the International Association of Buddhist Studies meeting in Lausanne, I got my first chance to see the foundation of this book—its bibliography. Knowing that I am a bit of a bibliophile, Peter rather matter-of-factly handed me a copy of the bibliography and asked what I thought of it. It would be sorely understating the case to call it anything short of overwhelming, and while its totality would have been impractical to include in the book, it surely whetted my appetite for the book that is under review here.Harvey says in the introduction that "The schools of Buddhism have rich traditions of thought on ethics, though this is often scattered through a variety of works which also deal with other topics. This book aims to be an integrative over-view of ethics in the different Buddhist traditions, showing the strong continuities as well as divergencies between them" (1). In so doing, he has given us a volume that can easily serve as a stand-alone text for any university course on Buddhist ethics. The book is really divided into two major parts: Chapters 1-3, which introduce the reader to the foundation of Buddhist ethics, both Hinayana and Mahayana; and chapters 4-10, which cover the applications of Buddhist values to a wide variety of issues, some of which are both volatile and controversial. The book concludes with a glossary, list of references, list of useful addresses (some of which lead the reader into the Internet), and several valuable indexes.In the first portion of the book, chapter 1 considers "The Shared Foundations of Buddhist Ethics." It is a concise and clear survey of basic Buddhist ideas, culminating in a discussion of the place of ethics on the Buddhist path, a consideration of wise and skillful actions, and the means for distinguishing between good and bad actions. Moreover, the first chapter leads directly into the second, "Key Buddhist Values." Here the reader is taken through a very thorough consideration of the lay precepts—and especially the five precepts—and of monastic values. From this solid base, Harvey expands outward into a consideration of interpersonal relationships and social ethics. Unlike most studies of Buddhist ethics, Harvey gives ample attention to Mahayana ethics (in chapter 3, "Mahayana Emphases and Adaptations"). He considers the ethics and precepts of the bodhisattva, the role of compassion, wisdom, and skill-in-means, including such controversial topics as compassionate killing, compassionate stealing, noncelibacy, and lying. He also leads us through some specific sectarian applications of Buddhist ethics by considering Tantra, Pure Land, Zen, and Nichiren. Throughout, Harvey offers his readers a helpful mix of primary and secondary [End Page 237] literature, as well as a consideration of ancient and... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Theravada Buddhism and The British Encounter: Religious, Missionary, and Colonial Experience in Nineteenth Century Sri LankaTerry C. MuckTheravada Buddhism and The British Encounter: Religious, Missionary, and Colonial Experience in Nineteenth Century Sri Lanka. By Elizabeth Harris. London: Routledge, 2006. 274 pp.Of all the facets of the multifaceted interactions among Buddhists and Christians, the one sure to generate the most heat is mission: Christians spreading the gospel, Buddhists spreading (...) the dhamma, Christians preaching and Buddhists preaching at the same time in the same places. This is the central topic of Elizabeth Harris’s Theravada Buddhism and the British Encounter: Religious, Missionary, and Colonial Experience in Nineteenth Century Sri Lanka. By throwing light on this crucial encounter, Harris greatly reduces the heat generated by these competing missions and makes greater understanding possible. At least, that would be one hoped-for outcome.Harris challenges the standard postcolonial critique (SPC) of what happened to Sri Lankan Theravada Buddhism and Sri Lankan Theravada Buddhists when Christian missionaries, riding on the coattails of the Portuguese, Dutch, and British colonialists, invaded the peaceful and pristine island of Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, in the seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. SPC posits Western colonial missionaries gaining power through their political proxies, shaping Western understandings of Theravada Buddhism to fit their Puritan and rationalistic preconceptions, and then attempting to destroy this made-in-the-West Buddhism, using aggressive and triumphalistic mission tactics that not only failed, but generated such a backlash that still, today, Buddhist-Christian relationships in Sri Lanka are poisoned almost beyond remedy.Harris challenges the SPC not by denying the obvious truths embedded in the various elements of this version of the sad story, but by convincingly showing us that the SPC is only one side of a very complex story. The SPC, Harris argues, needs to be complexified by realizing that not all British in nineteenth century Ceylon fit the stereotypical missionary model, that Sri Lankan Buddhists had agency in shaping what became known as Protestant Buddhism in the twentieth century Buddhist revival, and that the Buddhist mission effort that corresponded to the Christian mission effort led to a system of competing mission efforts that must be factored into any attempt to understand the influence of the nineteenth century on the twentieth—and the twenty-first.British ChristiansHarris uses three paradigms to show the diversity of British interlocutors with Sri Lankan Theravada Buddhism and Buddhists. The first paradigm is an early (1796–1830), middle (1830–1870), late (1870–1900) periodization that corresponds to parts 1, 2, and 3 of the book. By means of this paradigm Harris shows that development took place in British understandings of Buddhist precept and practice. The earliest observers made mistakes, even when they based their observations on texts and [End Page 188] practicing Buddhist informants. As with most such developments, the changes and depths of understanding were uneven, with later commentators sometimes repeating the howlers and biases of the earliest commentators, even as they in some areas went far beyond them in depth of understanding. Later was not always better, but it usually was.The second paradigm one might call vocational. The British did not all come to Ceylon for the same reason. Some came as political overseers for the colonial government. Some came as merchants, looking for a way to turn the island’s abundant natural resources into pounds in their bank accounts back home. Some came simply as “tourists” looking to find out more about what was in the nineteenth century a very exotic culture indeed to European eyes. Some came as missionaries to spread the Christian gospel story. And a trickle of scholars seeking data for research topics gradually turned into a fairly broad stream by the end of the century. Each of these five groups came asking slightly different questions. Because Buddhism was so ubiquitous among the people of Ceylon, Buddhism was always part of the answer to the different questions politicos, businesspeople, travelers, Christians, and professors asked, but the different questions produced different products: statements of public policy vis-à-vis Buddhism, Southeast Asian versions of Weber’s observations about religion and economics, diaries and travelogues, theologies of religion, and... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Great Awakening: A Buddhist Social TheoryChristopher IvesThe Great Awakening: A Buddhist Social Theory. By David R. Loy. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2003. 228 pp.In recent decades, the Dalai Lama, Thich Nhat Hanh, the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, the International Network of Engaged Buddhists, and other "Engaged Buddhists" have been responding to a range of social, political, and economic issues. To date, however, they have not coupled (...) their wide-ranging and sustained praxis with an equal measure of systematic, rigorous theory. Granted, facing such urgent problems as war, poverty, and environmental degradation, few if any of us would urge them to put their activism on hold until they clarify their theoretical foundations. Yet given how these Buddhists have diverged on such issues as abortion, homosexuality, intoxicants, possible legitimate uses of violence, and sexual contact between Buddhist teachers and students, further theoretical labor would sharpen their praxis and develop Buddhist social ethics.In this respect, David Loy's The Great Awakening deserves a close read. Though not pursuing the degree of systematic theorizing implied by the subtitle, A Buddhist Social Theory, Loy takes a significant step in that direction. After expounding on Buddhist dukkha (suffering) and linking it to "social dukkha" (ch. 1), Loy offers discerning treatment of poverty (ch. 2), globalization (ch. 3), corporations (ch. 4), the "war on terror" (ch. 5), crime and punishment (ch. 6), violence (ch. 7), technology (ch. 8), and worldviews that exacerbate or help resolve our environmental crisis (ch.9). [End Page 170]Drawing on two of his previous books, Nonduality and Lack and Transcendence, Loy deploys the constructs of nonduality and lack to grapple with these issues. Working over the "three marks of existence" (suffering, impermanence, and no-self), Loy sketches adroitly how the vague recognition that we lack any substantial self or soul leads us to engage in fearful "reality projects," attempts to "ground" ourselves "by modifying the world" (p. 164) or by objectifying ourselves as something real in the world (p. 22). This response to "lack" is exacerbated by dualistic ways of knowing: "The sense of duality between ourselves and the world feeds our insecurity and therefore our preoccupation with power, which we seek in order to secure ourselves. The unfortunate fact that we never feel secure enough is experienced as a lack of sufficient power" (p. 29). Overall, Loy's presentation of the cause of suffering (dukkha) in terms of lack, fear, reality projects, and dualism augments well the traditional Buddhist focus on clinging and ignorance of impermanence.Loy develops his analysis by expounding on the three types of suffering outlined in the Pali canon and their connection to social dukkha. He amplifies the construct of the "three poisons" (greed, ill will, and delusion) by highlighting their "institutionalization" and the ways in which capitalism promotes and spreads these mental states (pp. 80–86). And, proceeding along this trajectory, he expands the scope of the traditional antidotes to the three poisons: "Collectively as well as individually, institutionally as well as personally, greed must be transformed into generosity, ill will into loving-kindness, ignorance into wisdom" (p. 29). Loy also deploys Buddhist critiques of dualistic conceptualization to point out that the problem of poverty concerns not only the lack of material things needed for physical well-being but several other dimensions: "the craving for wealth as haunted by fear of poverty, global poverty as necessary to monetarize and commodify the 'undeveloped' world, and poverty as a necessary benchmark for the wealthy to appreciate their own achievements" (p. 196).Other parts of the book deserving close attention are Loy's social interpretation of the five precepts (p. 38), his sketch of the common ground between Christianity and Buddhism (pp. 117–119), and his presentation of karma, about which he writes, "we construct ourselves by what we choose to do. My sense of self is a precipitate of my habitual ways of thinking, feeling, and acting. Just as my body is composed of the food I eat, so my character is built by my conscious decisions" (p. 7). And contrary to those who construe contemporary Engaged Buddhism as the first form of Buddhism to engage itself significantly with sociopolitical problems, Loy astutely... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Great Awakening: A Buddhist Social TheoryChristopher IvesThe Great Awakening: A Buddhist Social Theory. By David R. Loy. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2003. 228 pp.In recent decades, the Dalai Lama, Thich Nhat Hanh, the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, the International Network of Engaged Buddhists, and other "Engaged Buddhists" have been responding to a range of social, political, and economic issues. To date, however, they have not coupled (...) their wide-ranging and sustained praxis with an equal measure of systematic, rigorous theory. Granted, facing such urgent problems as war, poverty, and environmental degradation, few if any of us would urge them to put their activism on hold until they clarify their theoretical foundations. Yet given how these Buddhists have diverged on such issues as abortion, homosexuality, intoxicants, possible legitimate uses of violence, and sexual contact between Buddhist teachers and students, further theoretical labor would sharpen their praxis and develop Buddhist social ethics.In this respect, David Loy's The Great Awakening deserves a close read. Though not pursuing the degree of systematic theorizing implied by the subtitle, A Buddhist Social Theory, Loy takes a significant step in that direction. After expounding on Buddhist dukkha (suffering) and linking it to "social dukkha" (ch. 1), Loy offers discerning treatment of poverty (ch. 2), globalization (ch. 3), corporations (ch. 4), the "war on terror" (ch. 5), crime and punishment (ch. 6), violence (ch. 7), technology (ch. 8), and worldviews that exacerbate or help resolve our environmental crisis (ch.9). [End Page 170]Drawing on two of his previous books, Nonduality and Lack and Transcendence, Loy deploys the constructs of nonduality and lack to grapple with these issues. Working over the "three marks of existence" (suffering, impermanence, and no-self), Loy sketches adroitly how the vague recognition that we lack any substantial self or soul leads us to engage in fearful "reality projects," attempts to "ground" ourselves "by modifying the world" (p. 164) or by objectifying ourselves as something real in the world (p. 22). This response to "lack" is exacerbated by dualistic ways of knowing: "The sense of duality between ourselves and the world feeds our insecurity and therefore our preoccupation with power, which we seek in order to secure ourselves. The unfortunate fact that we never feel secure enough is experienced as a lack of sufficient power" (p. 29). Overall, Loy's presentation of the cause of suffering (dukkha) in terms of lack, fear, reality projects, and dualism augments well the traditional Buddhist focus on clinging and ignorance of impermanence.Loy develops his analysis by expounding on the three types of suffering outlined in the Pali canon and their connection to social dukkha. He amplifies the construct of the "three poisons" (greed, ill will, and delusion) by highlighting their "institutionalization" and the ways in which capitalism promotes and spreads these mental states (pp. 80–86). And, proceeding along this trajectory, he expands the scope of the traditional antidotes to the three poisons: "Collectively as well as individually, institutionally as well as personally, greed must be transformed into generosity, ill will into loving-kindness, ignorance into wisdom" (p. 29). Loy also deploys Buddhist critiques of dualistic conceptualization to point out that the problem of poverty concerns not only the lack of material things needed for physical well-being but several other dimensions: "the craving for wealth as haunted by fear of poverty, global poverty as necessary to monetarize and commodify the 'undeveloped' world, and poverty as a necessary benchmark for the wealthy to appreciate their own achievements" (p. 196).Other parts of the book deserving close attention are Loy's social interpretation of the five precepts (p. 38), his sketch of the common ground between Christianity and Buddhism (pp. 117–119), and his presentation of karma, about which he writes, "we construct ourselves by what we choose to do. My sense of self is a precipitate of my habitual ways of thinking, feeling, and acting. Just as my body is composed of the food I eat, so my character is built by my conscious decisions" (p. 7). And contrary to those who construe contemporary Engaged Buddhism as the first form of Buddhism to engage itself significantly with sociopolitical problems, Loy astutely... (shrink)

The inner ecology: Buddhist ethics and practice -- A Buddhist perspective on animal rights -- Pollution and the environment: some radically new ancient views -- Animals for dinner: a Karmic tale -- Our relationship with nature: a Buddhist exploration -- Environmental issues: a Buddhist perspective -- Human spiritual potential and the environmental crisi -- The need for ethical guidelines to protect us from the very real dangers of a technological world -- Looking at hi-tech through the (...) lens of the five moral precepts -- Science and Buddhism: a critical comparison -- Genetic engineering: a Buddhist assessment -- Redesigning the world: ethical questions about genetic engineering -- Some ethical challenges posed by the Internet and digital social media: a Buddhist perspective -- Where are we going - digitally? (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:DHARMA AND DESTRUCTION: BUDDHIST INSTITUTIONS AND VIOLENCE Christopher Ives Stonehill College Photographs ofgentle monks in saffron, the cottageindustry ofbooks on mindfulness, and the Dalai Lama's response to the Chinese invasion of Tibet have all helped portray Buddhism as the "religion of nonviolence." This representation ofBuddhism finds support in Buddhist texts, doctrines, and ritual practices, which often advocate ahimsa, nonharming or non-violence. The historical record, however, belies the (...) portrayal of Buddhism as a "religion of nonviolence." By reinterpreting early doctrines of ahimsa, Buddhist thinkers have legitimated violence in particular situations, practitioners have committed acts of violence, and Buddhist institutions have lent support to other institutions—social, political, and governmental —engaged in violence. In this paper I will examine Buddhist perpetration andjustifications ofviolence,1 with particularfocus on Japan, arguing that, historically, Buddhists' desire for institutional security has taken precedence over total rejection of violence. 1 I have restricted my discussion to the killing of other human beings. I do not consider suicide andthe killing ofnon-human animals. For a discussion ofBuddhism, (self-)sacrifice, and suicide in relation to Girard's theory, see Charles D. Orzech, '"Provoked Suicide' and the Victim's Behavior." 152Christopher Ives Non-violence The doctrine of ahimsa figures prominently in early and Theravadan Buddhism. The first ofthe five moral precepts (panca silani) in Buddhism is ahimsa, and in the Dhammapada the historical Buddha purportedly states, All are afraid of the rod. Of death all are afraid. Having made oneself the example, One should neither slay nor cause to slay. (Ross 202) The Buddhaalso sketches the consequences ofhurting orharming (himsa): Who with a rod does hurt Beings who desire ease [of nibbana], While himself looking for ease— He, having departed, ease does not get. Theravadan monastic codes and practices, such as the uposatha biweekly confession of moral transgressions and recitation of the 227 rules in the Patimokkha (Skt. Pratimoksa), are closely tiedto ahimsa. One ofthe Patimokkha's four "offenses of defeat" (parajika dharmas), for which the punishment is immediate expulsion of the monk or nun from the order, is killing another human being (Prebish 11). Mahayana texts continue this exhortation against violence. For example, in the Dasabhimika-sutra we read that a Buddhist "must not hate any being and cannot kill a living creature even in thought."2 Early Buddhist texts include depictions ofthe ideal Buddhist king, the cakravartin-raja or "monarch who turns the wheel [of the Dharma],"3 as an exemplar of nonviolence. Contemporary Buddhist activist Sulak Sivaraksa expresses it, this king is a "an ideal ruler, a world-conquering monarch, who subdued the earth through righteousness rather than war" (Sulak 129), and whose ten main duties include striving for peace and ruling with nonviolent benevolence (129). For well over 2000 years 2 Cited in Har Dayal, The Bodhisattva Doctrine, p. 199; quoted by Kraft, 5. In much ofthe first section of this paper I am indebted to Ken Kraft's introduction to his volume. 3 The metaphor ofturning the wheel refers to the historical Buddha's teaching ofthe Dharma and the later propagation of it by others. Dharma and Deconstruction153 Buddhists have lifted up Indian king Ashoka (c. 272-236) as an instantiation of this ideal. The early Buddhist doctrine of ahimsa should not, however, be construed as compassionate altruism. Luis Gómez and other scholars have delineated how ahimsa at first did not express some sort of underlying altruistic concern for the well-being of others. Vegetarianism and other ways of avoiding himsa, harming or violence, derived from ancient Indian ritual taboos againstblood and otherbodily liquids (Gómez 36). Buddhists ethicized and psychologized earlier notions of physical pollution, and advocated abstention fromviolenceprimarily as ameans ofself-cultivation, as a way to keep the mind pure, like an unstained cloth (36). (Scholars have even argued that the positive expression oíahimsa, the practice ofdirecting metta (loving-kindness) to others, originally had as much or more to do with the spiritual benefits accrued by the person directing the metta as it did with the well-being of the person receiving it. Only later was ahimsa furtherreinterpreted as positive regard forothers, as seen in the bodhisattva ideal of Mahayana Buddhism. Violence in Buddhist History At numerous times over... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Finding Safe Harbor:Buddhist Sexual Ethics in AmericaStephanie KazaWhen the Buddha left home in search of spiritual understanding, he left behind his wife and presumably the pleasures of sex. After his enlightenment, he encouraged others to do the same: renounce the world of the senses to seek liberation from suffering. The monks and nuns that followed the Buddha's teachings formed a kind of sexless society, a society that did (...) not reproduce itself biologically.1 By abstaining from sexual relations, Buddhist monastics intended to reduce attachment and model an alternative to lay life. Buddhist society would continue via transmission of the teachings, a spiritual form of continuity not dependent on sex.But of course, the Buddha was teaching ordinary people with ordinary appetites for sexual contact. And these appetites could really get in the way of spiritual progress; thus we find no shortage of Buddhist commentary on sexuality and its ramifications. And despite 2,500 years of wisdom on this subject, Buddhist teachers and students are still blundering into sexual contacts that undermine their own progress and often the progress of others. Clearly this is not a human fallibility that can be corrected by setting up some simple rules. In fact, sexuality is one of the most deeply hard-wired neurological drives of the human organism, not easily uprooted even for lofty spiritual ideals.From a Buddhist perspective, working with sexuality is working with attachment. How can we understand that attachment in its biological origins? In A Natural History of Sex, Adrian Forsyth describes in vivid detail the ecology and evolution of mating behavior in the animal kingdom.2 In sixteen chapters that cover every biological strategy you can imagine—from incest to role reversal, infanticide to sex change—the author shows how costly sex can be to individual organisms. Though sex is not the only means of reproduction, it certainly involves the most complex behaviors, anatomical variations, social choices, and in a few cases, the risk of death. What can possibly merit such a great investment in momentary pleasure (if indeed it is pleasurable for some animals)? The evolutionary answer is, genetically variable offspring. Variation is the key to surviving calamity as a species. If all animals of a species were genetically identical, they would be terribly vulnerable to single events that exploited their weaknesses. But with variation, there is always a chance that some will make it [End Page 23] through and go on to survive the new conditions (post-earthquake, fire, icestorm, plague, etc.).Seen from the long view of evolution, sexuality is the key to survival of the species. So it is not surprising that sexual conditioning affects the entire human brain, a fact well known to human adolescents. To see how much conditioning must be addressed by Buddhist practice, we can look briefly at the neural map of the human brain. The part of the cortex that responds to touch is wrapped around the cerebrum, with specific areas registering touch in the different parts of the body. The area taken up by the genitals is about as large as the rest of the chest, abdomen, and back put together. It is equivalent to the area used for the hands or the lips, two parts of the body where touch is crucial for finding and managing food. Rita Carter, in Mapping the Mind, points out that "connections from the sex-sniffing, sex-seeking and sex-reactive areas of the limbic systems radiate to almost every corner of every cortical lobe, feeding the urge to our conscious minds."3 Sexual activity involves not only touch and high-level visual recognition but also emotion, thought, and, in the frontal lobes, morality—some of our most sophisticated and abstract thought processes.It is clear that sexuality presents no small challenge to religious practice. How has Buddhism attempted to work with this deep biological conditioning? The central guidelines for Buddhist ethics can be found in the five foundational precepts. Practicing the precepts is seen as a way to reduce suffering and to deepen one's capacity for achieving enlightenment. The first two precepts deal with not killing and not stealing, the third precept deals with not engaging in... (shrink)

In Good Citizens: Creating Enlightened Society, Thich Nhat Hanh lays out the foundation for an international solidarity movement based on a shared sense of compassion, mindful consumption, and right action. Following these principles, he believes, is the path to world peace. The book is based on our increased global interconnectedness and subsequent need for harmonious communication and a shared ethic to make our increasingly globalized world a more peaceful place. The book will be appreciated by people of all faiths and (...) cultural backgrounds. While based on the basic Buddhist teachings of the Four Noble Truths and the Eight-Fold Path, Thich Nhat Hanh boldly leaves Buddhist terms behind as he offers his contribution to the creation of a truly global and nondenominational blueprint to overcoming deep-seated divisions and a vision of a world in harmony and the preservation of the planet. Key topics include the true root causes of discrimination; the exploration of the various forms of violence; economic, social, and sexual violence. He encourages the reader to practice nonviolence in all daily interactions, elaborates on the practice of generosity, and teaches the art of deep listening and loving speech to help reach a compromise and reestablish communication after misunderstandings have escalated into conflicts. Good Citizens also contains a new wording of the Five Mindfulness Trainings (traditionally called "precepts") for lay practitioners, bringing them in line with modern-day needs and realities. In their new form they are concrete and practical guidelines of ethical conduct that can be accepted by all traditions. Good Citizens also includes the complete text of the UN Manifesto 2000, a declaration of transforming violence and creating a culture of peace for the benefit of the children of the world. It was drafted by numerous Peace Nobel Prize recipients and signed by over 100 million people worldwide. Coinciding with a US presidential election year, Good Citizens reaches across all political backgrounds and faith traditions. It shows that dualistic thinking--Republican/Democrat, Christian/Muslim--creates tension and a false sense of separateness. When we realize that we share a common ethic and moral code, we can create a community that can change the world. (shrink)

Some twenty-five centuries after the Buddha started teaching, his message continues to inspire people across the globe, including those living in predominantly secular societies. But what does it mean to adapt religious practices to secular contexts? Stephen Batchelor, an internationally known author and teacher, is committed to a secularized version of the Buddha's teachings. The time has come, he feels, to articulate a coherent ethical, contemplative, and philosophical vision of Buddhism for our age. _After Buddhism, _the culmination of four (...) decades of study and practice in the Tibetan, Zen, and Theravada traditions, is his attempt to set the record straight about who the Buddha was and what he was trying to teach. Combining critical readings of the earliest canonical texts with narrative accounts of five of the Buddha’s inner circle, Batchelor depicts the Buddha as a pragmatic ethicist rather than a dogmatic metaphysician. He envisions Buddhism as a constantly evolving culture of awakening, its long survival due to its capacity to reinvent itself and interact creatively with each society it encounters. This original and provocative book presents a new framework for understanding the remarkable spread of Buddhism in today’s globalized world. It also reminds us of what was so startling about the Buddha’s vision of human flourishing. (shrink)

Originally published in 1962. This book discusses and interprets the main themes of Buddhist thought in India and is divided into three parts: Archaic Buddhism: Tacit assumptions, the problem of "original Buddhism", the three marks and the perverted views, the five cardinal virtues, the cultivation of the social emotions, Dharma and dharmas, Skandhas, sense-fields and elements. The Sthaviras: the eighteen schools, doctrinal disputes, the unconditioned and the process of salvation, some Abhidharma problems. The Mahayana: doctrines common to all (...) Mahayanists, the Madhyamikas, the Yogacarins, Buddhist logic, the Tantras. (shrink)

This article provides a philosophical overview of some of the central Buddhist positions and argument regarding animal welfare. It introduces the Buddha's teaching of ahiṃsā or non-violence and rationally reconstructs five arguments from the context of early Indian Buddhism that aim to justify its extension to animals. These arguments appeal to the capacity and desire not to suffer, the virtue of compassion, as well as Buddhist views on the nature of self, karma, and reincarnation. This article also (...) considers how versions of these arguments have been applied to address a practical issue in Buddhist ethics; whether Buddhists should be vegetarian. (shrink)

PYRRHONIAN BUDDHISM: AN IMAGINATIVE RECONSTRUCTION -/- Author: -/- Adrian Kuzminski 279 Donlon Road Fly Creek, NY 13337 USA -/- Description of Pyrrhonian Buddhism: -/- The ancient Greek sceptic philosopher, Pyrrho of Elis, accompanied Alexander the Great to India, where he had contacts with Indian sages, so-called naked philosophers (gymnosophists), among whom were very probably Buddhist mendicants, or sramanas. My work, entitled Pyrrhonian Buddhism, takes seriously the hypothesis that Pyrrho’s contact with early Buddhists was the occasion of his rethinking, in (...) a Greek philosophical idiom, of what he experienced in those encounters. This has major implications for our understanding of both Buddhism and Pyrrhonism. -/- Pyrrho’s rethinking of Buddhism, I argue, enabled him to introduce into Greek philosophy and culture several key Buddhist notions. These include the primacy and interdependence of immediate phenomenal experience (which the Buddhists called dependent origination), the suspension of judgment about beliefs lacking phenomenal verification (reflecting the scepticism of the Buddha about ‘unanswered’ or ‘metaphysical’ questions), and the promise of personal enlightenment said to follow such suspension, which Pyrrho called ataraxia, and the Buddhists called bodhi. -/- Pyrrho, like Socrates, wrote nothing, but the movement he founded—Pyrrhonism--became an important tradition in Western philosophy. When the texts of later Pyrrhonian philosophers, particularly Sextus Empiricus, were redicovered during the Renaissance, they sparked a reexamination of the foundations of knowledge, thereby helping to prompt the modern scientific revolution. -/- The notion that early Buddhism played a pivotal role in the birth of ancient Greek Pyrrhonian philosophy remains provocative, but has found increasing support in recent years. An earlier work of mine, Pyrrhonism: How the Ancient Greeks Reinvented Buddhism (Lexington Books, 2008), was, as far as I know, the first book-length comparison of the common features of the two traditions. My current work, Pyrrhonian Buddhism, seeks to broaden and deepen this comparison. It argues that ancient Greek Pyrrhonism is best understood as a fully developed but hitherto largely unrecognized Western version of Buddhism. -/- The Introduction reviews our current understanding of Pyrrhonism in light of recent scholarship on ancient Greek-Indian cultural exchanges, and outlines the methodology I employ. -/- Part I of the book offers re-readings of the classic Pyrrhonian texts, with parallels to Buddhism in mind, including Diogenes Laertius (Chapter One), Sextus Empiricus (Chapter Two) and Timon and Aulus Gellius (Chapter Three). -/- Part II enlists the rubric of the Three Turnings of the Wheel of Dharma to illuminate the fundamental points of comparison between early Buddhism and ancient Pyrrhonism. -/- The First Turning (Chapter Four) centers on the Buddhist insistence on the dependent origination of the objects of immediate consciousness, which can also be found in the understanding of immediate experience expressed in the phenomenalistic atomism of the Pyrrhonists. The Second Turning (Chapter Five), as posed by the ‘unanswered questions’ of the Buddha and the ‘emptiness’ of the Madhyamaka, finds its Pyrrhonian correlation in the suspension of judgment over ‘indeterminate’ beliefs. And the Third Turning (Chapter Six), reported as bodhi in Buddhism and ataraxia in Pyrrhonism, is shown in both traditions to follow liberation from suffering and existential angst, caused by what the Buddhists call our attachments and the Pyrrhonists call our beliefs. -/- Other Writers/Commentators: -/- Aspects of the Pyrrhonian/Buddhism question have been addressed by Edward Conze, Everard Flintoff, Thomas McEvilley, Jay Garfield, Mathew Neale, Ethan Mills, Christopher Beckwith, and Robin Brons, among other recent writers. The book-length studies on the issue (since my earlier work) are by Beckwith (Greek Buddha) and Neal (Madhyamaka and Pyrrhonism). Other writers/scholars with relevant expertise include C. W. Huntington, Jr., Charles Goodman, Stephen Batchelor, Dan Lusthaus, Rupert Gethin, and Mark Siderits. -/- . (shrink)

Preface Part One Buddhism and Phenomenology Ch.1Buddhism and Phenomenology Ch.2 Husserl and Merleau-Ponty Part Two The Four Basic Buddhist Models in India Introduction Ch.3 Model One: The Five Skandhas Ch.4 Model Two: Pratitya-samutpada Ch.5 Model Three: Tridhatu Ch.6 Model Four: Sila-Samadhi-Prajna Ch.7 Asamjni-samapatti and Nirodha-samapatti Ch.8 Summary of the Four Models Part Three Karma, Meditation, and Epistemology Ch.9 Karma Ch.10 Madhyamikan Issues Ch.11 The Privilaging of Prajna-paramita Part Four Trimsika and Translations Ch.12 Texts and Translations Part Five (...) The Ch’eng Wei-Shih Lun and the Problem of Psychosophical Closure: Yogacara in China Ch.13 Ch.14 Seven Trajectories Ch.15 The Legend of the Transmission of the Ch’eng Wei-Shih Lun Ch.16 Alterity: Parinama Ch.17 Why Consciousness in Not Empty Ch.18 On Rupa Ch.19 Externality Ch.20 The Four Conditions Ch.21 Mirror Knowing: Soteric Alterations Ch.22 Language, Avijnapti-Rupa and Vijnapti-Rupa Ch.23 Is What is Ultimately Real Itself Ultimately Real? Conclusions Appendices Bibliography Index. (shrink)

In traditional and popular accounts, Zen Buddhism is depicted as a practice that rejects literary study and intellectualization in favor of a direct experience of enlightenment that is beyond words. Indeed, the Zen school has traditionally defined itself as a "separate transmission outside the teachings, not dependent on words and letters". Even when regarding the tradition's literary output, Zen literature is famous for its antinomian dialogues replete with outrageous antics, frequent non sequiturs, and crude, illiterate utterances that appear to validate (...) the perspective that Zen simply rejects logical thinking, rational discourse, literary cultivation, and any systematic means of study. While it is... (shrink)

Buddhism originated and developed in an Indian cultural context that featured many first-person practices for producing and exploring states of consciousness through the systematic training of attention. In contrast, the dominant methods of investigating the mind in Western cognitive science have emphasized third-person observation of the brain and behavior. In this chapter, we explore how these two different projects might prove mutually beneficial. We lay the groundwork for a cross-cultural cognitive science by using one traditional Buddhist model of the (...) mind – that of the five aggregates – as a lens for examining contemporary cognitive science conceptions of consciousness. (shrink)

The research method of Buddhist ethics is contemporary ethical theory, which focuses on precepts (Sila) and disciplines (Vinaya) in experience, rather than transcendental moral ideals (Nirvana or wisdom). Precepts are seen as external norms, while disciplines are internal norms. The former belongs to rule ethics and the latter belongs to virtue ethics. Although the exposition of duty and responsibility can be discovered in Buddhist ethics, there is no sufficient reason to interpret Buddhist ethics as deontology. (...) Views on the consequences of actions can also be found in Buddhist classics, but it is hard to say that Buddhist ethics is the theory of consequences or utilitarianism. The method of rule ethics in the discussion of Buddhist ethics has failed, and Buddhist virtue ethics is a feasible alternative. However, previous research on Buddhist virtue ethics was not perfect, and the teleology of Aristotelian was reasonably criticized. Influenced by caring ethics, emotionalism virtue ethics is a more suitable way to understand Buddhist ethics. The moral reason for Buddhism is a whole argumentation system, including moral rules and moral virtues. (shrink)

Indian Buddhist sources speak of five sins of immediate retribution: murder of mother, father, an arhat, drawing the blood of a buddha, and creating a schism in the monastic community. This category provides the paradigm for sinfulness in Buddhism. Yet even these sins can and will, be expiated in the long run, demonstrating the overwhelmingly positive nature of Buddhist ethics.

Many forms of Buddhism, divergent in philosophy and style, emerged as Buddhism filtered out of India into other parts of Asia. Nonetheless, all of them embodied an ethical core that is remarkably consistent. Articulated by the historical Buddha in his first sermon, this moral core is founded on the concept of karma--that intentions and actions have future consequences for an individual--and is summarized as Right Speech, Right Action, and Right Livelihood, three of the elements of the Eightfold Path. Although they (...) were later elaborated and interpreted in a multitude of ways, none of these core principles were ever abandoned. The Oxford Handbook of Buddhist Ethics provides a comprehensive overview of the field of Buddhist ethics in the twenty-first century. The Handbook discusses the foundations of Buddhist ethics focusing on karma and the precepts looking at abstinence from harming others, stealing, and intoxication. It considers ethics in the different Buddhist traditions and the similarities they share, and compares Buddhist ethics to Western ethics and the psychology of moral judgments. The volume also investigates Buddhism and society analysing economics, environmental ethics, and Just War ethics. The final section focuses on contemporary issues surrounding Buddhist ethics, including gender, sexuality, animal rights, and euthanasia. This groundbreaking collection offers an indispensable reference work for students and scholars of Buddhist ethics and comparative moral philosophy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Walking the Bodhisattva Path/Walking the Christ PathU.S. Conference of Catholic BishopsCatholics and Buddhists brought together by Dharma Realm Buddhist Association, the San Francisco Zen Center, and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) met 20-23 March 2003 in the first of an anticipated series of four annual dialogues. Abbot Heng Lyu, the monks and nuns, and members of the Dharma Realm Buddhist Association hosted the dialogue (...) at the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas in Talmage, California. The community had transformed their Confucius Hall into a chapel, with a large, newly constructed wooden cross on a wall above an altar facing out from a raised platform, so the Catholic delegation would have a space for worship. A special poster announcing the theme of the conference, "Walking the Bodhisattva Path/Walking the Christ Path," showing a Buddhist dharma wheel at one foot of a bridge and a Celtic cross at the other foot, had been created by the hosting community.The daily schedule for the dialogue did not interfere with the monastic routine at the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas, which included early morning chanting (4:00-5:00 am), daily rituals in the Buddha Hall, and the single large meal for monastics before noon to which all participants were invited. Catholics and Buddhists meeting in the dialogue began each day with an optional forty-five minutes of quiet sitting together in the monastery meditation hall, each following their own form of meditation and prayer. There was a Eucharist on Friday and Saturday evenings for the Catholics and to which the Buddhists were invited, and additional meals of breakfast and supper throughout the meeting at the City's Jyun Kang Restaurant.Fourteen Buddhists and fourteen Catholics participated in the formal discussions. Each participant spoke on what it means to them to follow Christ or the way of the Bodhisattvas or enlightened beings. In addition to speaking, each participant distributed a short passage, usually from a traditional text, on this topic. Several passages from Master Dogen's Shobogenzo and the Gospel of John were among those shared by the group. Other passages shared were taken from the Avatamsaka Sutra and the Shurangama Sutra and from the other gospels and the writings of Zen master HakuinZenji, the Dalai Lama, Korean Zen Master I-sahn Hye-yeon, the teachings of Master [End Page 247] Hsuan Hua, Shantideva, Origen, St. Ignatius, St. Benedict, the author of The Cloud of Unknowing, St. John of the Cross, and Chiara Lubich. A minute of silence separated the fifteen-minute segments for each presentation. With so large a group, most of the time in the formal sessions involved listening to series of presentations; however, during discussion periods the participants asked several challenging questions of one another.Some participants noted the tension they felt between belonging to a particular religious group and the need to let go of any consequential narrowness. The goal of the discussion was to promote understanding of the differences and similarities between Christianity and Buddhism. At one point, the participants noted several concerns about mutual enrichment: whether Buddhist methods can be separated from Buddhism and Christian methods from Christianity, and what specific aspects of Christian practice truly enrich Buddhists and which Buddhist practices likewise enrich Christians. Several times participants discussed their understanding of terms such as transformation, grace, the incarnation and the passion of Jesus, discernment of spirits, prayer, Buddha-nature, and related terms. There was consensus that Buddhists and Catholics can practically help one another regarding mental cultivation and religious precepts. They expressed this consensus in their choice of the topic forthe next dialogue, "Transformation of Hearts and Minds: Chan/Zen-Catholic Approaches to Precepts."The group agreed to reconvene in 2004 to respond to six presentations, three from each side, on different aspects of this topic.Chairing the sessions were Rev. Heng Sure for the Dharma Realm Buddhist Association, Rev. Taigen Dan Leighton for the San Francisco Zen Center, and Bishop John Webster for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Their three organizations are the sponsors of the Northern California Chan/Zen-Catholic Dialogue. Chan and Zen are respectively the Chinese and Japanese terms for the meditation school... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Monasticism, Buddhist and Christian: The Korean ExperienceJames A. Wiseman OSBMonasticism, Buddhist and Christian: The Korean Experience. Edited by Sunghae Kim and James W. Heisig. Louvain Theological and Pastoral Monographs 38. Leuven: Peeters; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008. 201 pp.In order to evaluate Monasticism, Buddhist and Christian properly, one must know something about its origin. The principal editor, Sunghae Kim, is director of the Seton Interreligious Research (...) Center in Seoul, a center that regularly sponsors interreligious dialogues at a scholarly level. In addition to those dialogues, the center also organizes a series of monthly lectures for the public at large, held each year around a specific theme. The chapters of this book were, with one exception, originally given in the 1995 lecture series and later translated from Korean into English. For that reason, most of the material will already be quite familiar to specialists in the Buddhist and Christian traditions and will at times seem to offer generalizations that would be accurate enough for presentations to the general public but would need various qualifications and nuances to meet the more rigorous standards of scholars.The first two chapters are broadly introductory. In the first, Sunghae Kim gives a brief overview of the renunciatory life in six major religions (Hinduism, Buddhism, Daoism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam). She concludes that “in terms of strict renunciation of possessions, family, and pursuit of the ego, Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, and Daoism stand out” (p. 35), with Buddhism and Christianity in particular being characterized by highly developed forms of monasticism per se. Bernard Senécal, a Canadian Jesuit who teaches Buddhist studies at Sogang University in Seoul, wrote the following chapter, “Korean Buddhism Today and Its Encounter with Christianity,” specifically for this book. The eight chapters that follow are the heart of the book. Jaemoon Yun, the abbot of the Korean Buddhist monastery in Chung-ju, has chapters on the history of the Buddhist monastic precepts, on nonpossession and the use of property in the saṅgha, on the organizational structure of the saṅgha, and on the homeless life and the Buddhist practice of compassion. Following each of these four chapters is one by the Benedictine monk Thomas Timpte on the corresponding topic in Christian monastic life as found in the Roman Catholic Church. A short final chapter by Younghae Yun, a professor of Buddhist studies and comparative religion at Gongguk University in Kyeong-ju, highlights a few characteristics of Buddhist and Christian life. Rather than comment on material from each chapter, I [End Page 228] will discuss in this review three points that struck me as particularly interesting and/or controversial.At the beginning of the first of his four chapters, “The History and Spirit of Christian Monastic Rules,” Thomas Timpte rightly devotes several pages to clarifying terminology. The details need not concern us here, but in general monks and nuns in the Catholic Church make public profession of the “evangelical counsels” of poverty, celibacy (sometimes called chastity), and obedience; in addition, they practice some degree of enclosure (“separation from the world”) and (except for the relatively few who are hermits) live in community. Timpte notes that although there have been men and women who practiced the evangelical counsels since New Testament times, the formal institution of Christian monastic life arose in the eastern part of the Mediterranean only around the year 300. For that reason, he argues that monasticism cannot be considered central to the Church in an institutional sense, whereas monasticism was an essential part of Buddhism from the beginning, the Buddha himself and his earliest followers all having been monks. This is one of the points about which Younghae Yun disagrees with Timpte, for the Buddhist scholar claims that even though Buddhist monks and nuns, like their Christian counterparts, take vows (precepts), and in some sense live apart from society at large, such a way of life itself “is neither essential nor central” in Buddhism (p. 185). Younghae Yun bases his argument on the fact that the Buddha considered such practices as only “a means to achieve enlightenment” and that enlightenment itself is not the true raison d’être of Buddhism but is rather a way of facilitating... (shrink)

Identity and Experience: The Constitution of the Human Being According to Early Buddhism. Sue Hamilton. Luzac Oriental, London 1996. xxxi, 218 pp. £30.00. ISBN 0 898942 10 2. The Five Aggregates: Understanding Theravada Psychology and Soteriology. Mathieu Boisvert. (Canadian Corporation for Studies in Religious Writings, Wilfrid Laurier University Press, Waterloo, Ontario, 1995. xii, 168 pp. $24.95. ISBN 0-88920-257-5.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 21.1 (2001) 107-108 [Access article in PDF] Sixth International Conference of the Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies John Berthrong Boston University The society's sixth international conference, held 5-12 August 2000, was an exceptionally successful event for the five hundred plus participants. In great measure the success was due to the conference's scenic and user-friendly location at the Pacific Lutheran University, Tacoma,Washington, and to the untiring (...) work of Professor Paul Ingram and his staff. The spirit of Mount Rainier towered over the whole event, reminding us that both Buddhism and Christianity have a stake in global healing.One of the most enjoyable aspects of the conference was how well the various panels, presentations, plenary programs, and workshops matched the announced theme of the conference. Although I cannot speak for all the participants, in my extensive sampling of the events, care was given in addressing the question of global healing from a diverse set of spiritual perspectives and academic disciplines.Whether you attended the section on meditation or the erudite papers on orthodoxy, the presenters strove to show how their work could be understood as a way to promote global healing.Nowhere was this attention to the theme of the conference more clearly demonstrated than in the evening plenaries. I confess that I am not a fan of evening meetings. However, in each case the various panels presented their analysis as a gift to the larger mosaic of the conference. The evenings began with Dr. A. T. Ariyaratne and Dr. Cecil Murray addressing nonviolent struggle for economic justice. This was followed by presentations on the Earth Charter; gender, justice, and oppression in Buddhism and Christianity; and consumerism and ecology. I would also be remiss if I did not note that we were treated to wonderful musical performances not only at the opening and closing ceremonies but during all the other plenaries as well.One of the most noteworthy features of the work of the society over the last two decades has been its conviction that erudite scholarship and the actual profession and practice of religion are not mutually exclusive. Furthermore, the society was founded on the belief that dialogue between Buddhists and Christians is a good thing in and of itself. The workshop on the interior dialogue of meditation was a gentle refutation to those in the academic world who maintain that only analysis of isolated religious practices or texts makes any sense. The society has always urged its members to bring their practices as well as their ideas to the dialogical encounter. [End Page 107]Music played a moving role in the life of the conference. The plenary sessions took place in the magnificent new music center at PLU, wherein resides a huge concert organ.We were literally moved by the organ's powerful rendition of the classic works of the Western religious musical tradition. Matching the organ was the gentle call of the shakuhachi. An organ and a shakuhachi may seem mismatched in theory and performance--much less sheer volume for the bamboo flute--but they blended into a symphony of shared sacred music.Having praised the thematic attentiveness, musical brilliance, and spiritual depth of the conference, I must likewise highlight the academic integrity of the papers. Many of the professorial types mentioned over and over again how pleased they were with the thoughtfulness of the academic presentations. Here we need not only to thank the authors but also the conference planning committee for its ability to select the best representatives of erudite, informed, and engaged models of academic scholarship. Those who were not present will simply have to wait for many of these fine papers to be published in various scholarly journals. Another helpful detail was the conference bookstore, which stocked many of the recent publications of the participants.The only criticism I heard during the whole conference was that it was, alas, a bit too long. In this busy world it is difficult for most people to block out a whole week for one conference. I mention this only in... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 21.1 (2001) 133-134 [Access article in PDF] Book Review Buddhism in Taiwan: Religion and the State, 1660-1990 Buddhism in Taiwan: Religion and the State, 1660-1990. By Charles B.Jones. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1999. 233 pp. Charles Jones spent over three years living in Taiwan pursuing the research for this book and for journal articles about religion on the island. He is currently on the faculty (...) of the Department of Religion at the Catholic University of America. Jones primarily focuses on the history of Chinese Buddhism as an organized religion in Taiwan from the mid-1600s to the late 1980s. This is a much needed study as most literature on Chinese Buddhism is based on Mainland Chinese Buddhism. Only in the last decade has there been a shift to focus on Taiwan Buddhism as a separate entity rather than seeing it only as an extension of Mainland Chinese Buddhism.The book is nicely organized into three major historical eras. Part 1 is titled "The Ming and Qing Dynasty (1660-1895)." This section, only one chapter, mainly focuses on the arrival and early development of Buddhism in Taiwan. Part 2 is titled "The Japanese Colonial Period (1895-1945)." This section, two chapters, of course focuses on the advent of Japanese Buddhism on the island along with its impact on Taiwan's Buddhism. Part 3 is titled "From Retrocession to the Modern Period (1945-1990)." This is the largest section of the book, with four chapters. I found this section to be more detailed and interesting than the previous two sections. I will spend the remainder of this book review commenting on this last section.In part 3 of his book, Jones begins with a chapter on the retrocession (the period at the end of World War II when Japan was forced out of Taiwan) and the arrival of the Mainland Buddhist monks to Taiwan. This chapter shows the emergence of an organized Buddhism that started to develop under the oversight of the Buddhist Association of the Republic of China (BAROC), which had begun previous to World War II in Mainland China but relocated to Taiwan with the national government in 1949. Also of interest in this chapter is the discussion of the power struggles within Buddhism between a traditionalist faction led byYuanying, and a reformist faction led by Taixu. In the end, the struggle was resolved in favor of the traditionalists; this has led to Taiwan Buddhism tending to incline toward conservatism.Chapter five focuses entirely on the Buddhist Association of the Republic of China (BAROC). It is neatly organized into two major sections, "The early period, 1949-1960," and "The middle period, 1960-1986." In the early period section, Jones does a good job explaining the BAROC's organization, mission, and activities. Included as well is a small but fascinating discussion on "The vitality of the nun's order after 1952," in which Jones tries to answer the question of why nuns have increasingly come to predominate numerically over monks, a situation that exists only in Taiwan and Hong Kong.The second half of the chapter, "The middle period, 1960-1986," focuses on the leadership of the BAROC under Baisheng. From 1960, when Baisheng became president of BAROC, until his death in 1986, Baisheng remained a controlling presence in BAROC affairs, despite the fact that he did not hold the presidency continuously [End Page 133] during this period. Also in this section, Jones highlights the internationalism ofTaiwan Buddhism under the leadership of Baisheng, which was seen in the ordinations of foreign monks and in the involvement of BAROC in international Buddhism organizations. This chapter also covers the continual struggle to regain possession of Japanese-era temples.Chapter five ends with a section called "Criticisms of the BAROC." The largest criticism leveled against the BAROC was that it failed to become the unifying force for Taiwan Buddhism that it might have been, a problem related to its elitist attitude at the national level, where only a very small closed group of people had the actual decision... (shrink)

Stop trying to become "better" by suppressing or hiding parts of yourself, and learn what it means to be fully human with this accessible guide to the core ethical teachings of Zen Buddhism. In Opening to Oneness, Zen teacher Nancy Baker offers a detailed path of practice for Zen students planning to take the precepts and for anyone, Buddhist or non-Buddhist, interested in deepening their personal study of ethical living. She reveals that there are three levels of (...) each precept: a literal level (don't kill, not even a bug), a relative level that takes moral ambiguity into account (what if it's a malaria-spreading mosquito?), and an ultimate level-the paradoxical level of nonduality, in which the precepts are naturally expressed from a state of oneness. Full of nuance, skepticism, intelligence, and compassion, ten chapters addressing the grave precepts approach them mostly from the literal and relative levels, including instructions for how to practice these precepts individually and in pairs or groups. The next part of the book takes a deep dive into looking at the precepts from the ultimate perspective, largely through an exploration of the precept writings of Dogen, the thirteenth-century religious genius who founded the Soto Zen school. At once comprehensive and innovative, Opening to Oneness will take its place alongside classics like The Mind of Clover, The Heart of Being, and Being Upright as a cherished guide to Zen Buddhist ethics. (shrink)

Buddhists endorse the concept of human actions and their consequences as they uphold the doctrine of karma. However, they deny the existence of a ‘permanent self’. Few questions arise in this regard. If a permanent self does not exist then who guides a person to decide the course of an action? How does a person choose to perform an action of the many alternatives in a situation? Who takes responsibility for the consequences of an action? This paper attempts to answer (...) these questions by reinterpreting the Buddhist’s ‘no-self’ theory from epistemological and logical perspectives. This paper argues that Buddhists while rejecting the existence of a ‘permanent self’ affirm the existence of impermanent psychophysical entities (five skandhas). The mereological sum of these psychophysical entities is known as a ‘person’ who performs actions. A person becomes morally responsible for the consequences of an action justifying the Buddhist doctrine of karma. (shrink)

Buddhism did not begin twenty‐five centuries ago as a philosophical system. Yet, insofar as its founder Gautama Siddartha made claims about the nature of self and reality, the seeds of philosophical reflection, analysis, and argument were already planted. The Buddha himself may not have been a philosopher in the strictest sense of the term: the earliest texts give us less of a philosophical system than a set of practical sermons, intriguing metaphors, and provocative parables. At around the time of (...) the Buddha, however, a tradition of Indian thought that can be loosely identified as “Hindu” was already well underway, as can be seen in sections of some later Vedas and especially the early Upaniṣads. As the Hindu philosophers sharpened their own skills and became more systematic in their rationales, the Buddha's followers found themselves in philosophical competition with not only a set of indigenous beliefs, but increasingly also with sophisticated analyses supporting those beliefs. (shrink)

'Ethics' was not developed as a separate branch of philosophy in Buddhist traditions until the modern period, though Buddhist philosophers have always been concerned with the moral significance of thoughts, emotions, intentions, actions, virtues, and precepts. Their most penetrating forms of moral reflection have been developed within disciplines of practice aimed at achieving freedom and peace. This Element first offers a brief overview of Buddhist thought and modern scholarly approaches to its diverse forms of moral reflection. (...) It then explores two of the most prominent philosophers from the main strands of the Indian Buddhist tradition – Buddhaghosa and Śāntideva – in a comparative fashion. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Is Buddhism Indispensable in the Cross-Cultural Appropriation of Christianity in Burma?La Seng Dingrin, Former Faculty MemberIs Burmese Theravāda Buddhism dispensable for the cross-cultural appropriation and mission of Christianity in Burma?1 According to the traditionally held Burmese2 Protestant Christian assumption—inherited from Adoniram Judson—the answer is yes,3 for the simple reason that Burmese Buddhism and Christianity are totally different from one another, and there is "no point of contact" between the (...) two. Whereas Christianity is theistic, Buddhism is nontheistic; whereas the former is a religion of grace (humans are believed to be saved only by faith in Jesus Christ through God's grace), the latter is a philosophy that recommends self-effort in achieving liberation. Some non-Buddhists consider Burmese Buddhism "idolatrous"4 because Buddhist devotees venerate images of the Buddha and other sacred objects. Hence it is perceived that Buddhism is not at all related to Christianity and not indispensable to Christianity. This paper suggests the opposite by examining principal Burmese Buddhist terms used by Adoniram Judson (1788–1850) in two tracts written in Burmese: "A View of the Christian Religion" (Tract No. 1) and "The Golden Balance" (Tract No. 3).Adoniram Judson was America's first overseas missionary translator in Burma. He was a graduate of Brown University (1804–1807) and of Andover Theological Seminary (1808–1810). Judson, together with his wife, Ann Hasseltine (1789–1826), arrived in Rangoon, Burma, on 13 July 1813 and served there for nearly four decades as the first missionary of the newly established Baptist Board of Foreign Missions for the United States. Judson acquired a good knowledge of the Burmese vernacular and some knowledge of Pāli, the canonical language of Theravāda Buddhism. In 1840, he finished the translation of the Bible; in 1849, he produced the English-Burmese and Burmese-English dictionaries.5Judson wrote at least eight tracts in Burmese.6 Of the eight, six, including "A View of the Christian Religion," were published in The Septenary or, Seven Manuals.7 This tract, written in July 1816, was again published in Tracts in Burmese, vol. 1 (1860)8 and included four chapters: "Historic," "Didactic" (or "Practical"), "Preceptive," and "Devotional." Its English translation was published in The Life of Adoniram Judson.9 [End Page 3]Judson wrote "The Golden Balance" in March 1829.10 This tract compared Christianity and Burmese Theravāda Buddhism in order to show that the former was the better and a true religion. It was included in two collections of tracts in Burmese: an untitled collection11 and Tracts in Burmese, vol. 1 (1860). Regardless of place of publication and edition, their contents and structures remain unchanged.Judson wrote "A View of the Christian Religion" and "The Golden Balance" during the reigns of King Bodawpaya (r. 1782–1819) and King Bagyidaw (r. 1819– 1837). The first Anglo-Burman War (1824–1826), in which the Burmans suffered defeat at the hands of the British, preceded the production of "The Golden Balance." It was also the time when successive Burman kings had been patronizing Buddhism, encouraging Pāli monastic scholarship and the translation of the Pāli canonical texts into the Burmese language. The production of the tracts was made when foreigners were granted religious freedom to worship according to their own customs, but no Burman would be allowed to change her or his religion, or to be anything else than a Buddhist. Judson was writing the tracts to those Burmese Buddhists, particularly Mon and Burman, who only knew Mon and Burmese, and had had very little contact with Christianity.12Though all of Judson's eight tracts are worthy of study, only the two are chosen because (1) they are more theological in nature than the others, which contain mere Burmese translations of certain scriptural texts, and (2) they, in particular "The Golden Balance," contain Judson's view of Burmese Buddhism. There are at least eighty principal Burmese Buddhist terms that Judson uses in the two tracts13; twenty-four are pure Burmese, and fifty-six are pure and phonetically adapted Pāli. Out of eighty terms, I choose three for my philological study due to the constraints of... (shrink)

Like his fellow first-generation Peripatetic Theophrastus, Aristoxenus wrote an extraordinary number of works. Many concerned music; one on Socrates contained evidence independent of Plato and Xenophon. At least five concerned Pythagoreanism: The Life of Pythagoras, On Pythagoras and His Associates, On the Pythagorean Way of Life, Life of Archytas, and the Pythagorean Precepts. This last one, as Carl Huffman...

Abstract This article seeks to determine if Buddhism can best be understood as primarily a functionalist tradition. In pursuing this, some analogies arise with various Western strands?particularly James? ?pragmatism?, Dewey's ?instrumentalism?, Braithwaite's ?empiricism?, Wittgenstein's ?language games?, and process thinkers like Hartshorne and Jacobson. Within the Buddhist setting, the traditional Therav?da framework of sila (ethics/precepts), sam?dhi (meditation) and pañña (wisdom) are examined, together with Therav?da rituals. Despite some ?correspondence? approaches with regard to truth claim statements, e.g. vipassan? ?insight? and (...) Abhidharma analysis, a more profound functionalism seems present. This is even more clear with the Mah?y?na. Apart from the basic and explicit Mah?y?na underpinning of up?ya, the M?dhyamika, Tantras and Ch'an (Zen) schools are clearly functionalist. Moreover, despite initially seeming more ?absolutist? in their positions, other strands like the Pure Land and Nichiren faith traditions, and Dharmakirti's Vijñ?nav?da epistemology can also be tied into this functionalist setting. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist and Catholic Monks Talk about CelibacyThomas Ryan, CSPThe electronic sign at the Minneapolis–St. Paul airport was flashing "Orange Alert" as a dozen Buddhist monks arrived in their burnt orange robes from around the country for three days of dialogue on celibacy with a similar number of Catholic monastics come together from various monasteries at St. John's Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota. As he opened the October 26–29, (...) 2006, meeting, Rev. William Skudlarek, executive director of Monastic Interreligious Dialogue (MID), said, "You (Buddhists) have been at this for some five-to-seven hundred years longer than we have. We have something to learn."This was the second Monks in the West interreligious dialogue. The first took place in 2004 at the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas in northern California. On the Catholic side, the participants came from the Benedictine, Cistercian, and Camaldolese monasteries. On the Buddhist side, they came from the Theravada, Mahayana, and Tibetan traditions. Through the event, participants began the day with an hour of quiet sitting in meditation and joined the monastic community at St. John's for their rhythm of daily prayer.The first session dealt with theory, the "why" of celibacy. Buddhist participants explained that their teachings focus on seeing how suffering is created and cured. Attachments give rise to suffering, so advancement in the spiritual life requires letting go of one's attachments. Attachment to desires, among which are sexual desires, is a hindrance to spiritual progress. "Raging desire takes away choice, freedom," said Rev. Kusala Bhikshu, a Buddhist chaplain at UCLA, in his opening presentation. "The senses must be controlled in order to be free."Brother Gregory Perron from St. Procopius monastery in Indiana spoke of how monastic life demands a profound understanding and acceptance of solitude. "Celibacy is a tool," offered Perron, "a skillful means like intentional simplicity of life, by which our heart is burrowed out and the core of our being laid bare. By embracing it, the monk accepts the aloneness that characterizes every human being."In response to Buddhist reflections on the illusory nature of the body, Catholic participants pointed out Christianity's remarkably positive evaluation of the [End Page 143] body in the doctrines of the Incarnation, the bodily Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus, and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Both sides acknowledged balancing points of reference as well, such as, in Christianity, Paul's "Who will rescue me from this body of death?" (Rom 7:24). Though humankind ranks eighth from the bottom in Buddhism's thirty-two-realm cosmology, that level is the only one where spiritual growth can happen. Thus human form is in the end praised by the Buddha.In the second session, the participants moved from theory to practice. Rev. Jisho Perry from the Shasta Buddhist Abbey in California said that "the whole thrust of training is not to give in to desire that arises." He described the Buddhist method of accepting sexual feelings without either acting on them or repressing them, but just letting them pass through. "The right use of will is willingness, not willpower—the willingness to sit there and let that feeling pass through," he said.Fr. Skudlarek expressed appreciation for this Buddhist approach to transforming the sexual energy. "I never got a sense in our training of accepting the feeling with awareness and letting it pass without acting on it. You had to fight it! And the more you resisted, the stronger it got!"Rev. Heng Sure, who teaches at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, presented celibacy as the first step in a three-step process that goes from celibacy to stillness to insight. "It should not be seen just as a difficult adjunct to the spiritual path, but as essential to it," he said. The practice of meditation represents daily periods when the senses are stilled and not allowed to pursue sense objects. "Something happens to the energy in the stillness; the pressure goes away." In married life, he explained, spiritual practice is "partial and piecemeal," making celibacy a more effective means to move toward insight and the peace and happiness that flow from it. In the discussion, Benedictine Fr. Mark... (shrink)

_Environmental Ethics in Buddhism_ presents a logical and thorough examination of the metaphysical and ethical dimensions of early Buddhist literature. The author determines the meaning of nature in the early Buddhist context from general Buddhist teachings on dhamma, paticcasamuppada, samsara and the cosmogony of the Agganna Sutta. Consequently, the author shows that early Buddhism can be understood as an environmental virtue ethics. To illustrate this dimension, the Jatakas are used as a source. These are a collection of (...) over five hundred folk tales, which also belong to early Buddhist literature. This work gives an innovative approach to the subject, which puts forward a distinctly Buddhist environmental ethics that is in harmony with traditional teachings as well as adaptable and flexible in addressing environmental problems. (shrink)

Douglas Duckworth’s Tibetan Buddhist Philosophy of Mind and Nature introduces a thematic way to understand the terrain of Buddhist philosophy of mind. This book is exciting for scholars who work on Buddhist philosophy, philosophy of mind, and especially Buddhist philosophy of mind or phenomenology. This wide appeal emerges from Duckworth’s own skepticism of sectarian lines between Madhyamaka and Mind-Only traditions. While guiding us through contentious topics, Duckworth shows us how these philosophies have an underappreciated affinity as (...) they “orbit a common ground” of nonduality. This review will focus its praise, summaries, and comments on the five chapters... (shrink)

In Taking the Path of Zen , Robert Aitken provided a concise guide to zazen (Zen meditation) and other aspects of the practice of Zen. In The Mind of Clover he addresses the world beyond the zazen cushions, illuminating issues of appropriate personal and social action through an exploration of the philosophical complexities of Zen ethics. Aitken's approach is clear and sure as he shows how our minds can be as nurturing as clover, which enriches the soil and benefits the (...) environment as it grows. The opening chapters discuss the Ten Grave Precepts of Zen, which, Aitken points out, are "not commandments etched in stone but expressions of inspiration written in something more fluid than water." Aitken approaches these precepts, the core of Zen ethics, from several perspectives, offering many layers of interpretation. Like ripples in a pond, the circles of his interpretation increasingly widen, and he expands his focus to confront corporate theft and oppression, the role of women in Zen and society, abortion, nuclear war, pollution of the environment, and other concerns. The Mind of Clover champions the cause of personal responsibility in modern society, encouraging nonviolent activism based on clear convictions. It is a guide that engages, that invites us to realize our own potential for confident and responsible action. (shrink)

Despite the recent upsurge of interest in comparative political theory, there has been virtually no serious examination of Buddhism by political philosophers in the past five decades. In part, this is because Buddhism is not typically seen as a school of political thought. However, as Matthew Moore argues, Buddhism simultaneously parallels and challenges many core assumptions and arguments in contemporary Western political theory. In brief, Western thinkers not only have a great deal to learn about Buddhism, they have a (...) great deal to learn from it. To both incite and facilitate the process of Western theorists engaging with this neglected tradition, this book provides a detailed, critical reading of the key primary Buddhist texts, from the earliest recorded teachings of the Buddha through the present day. It also discusses the relevant secondary literature on Buddhism and political theory, as well as the literatures on particular issues addressed in the argument. Moore argues that Buddhist political thought rests on three core premises--that there is no self, that politics is of very limited importance in human life, and that normative beliefs and judgments represent practical advice about how to live a certain way, rather than being obligatory commands about how all persons must act. He compares Buddhist political theory to what he sees as Western analogues--Nietzsche's similar but crucially different theory of the self, Western theories of limited citizenship from Epicurus to John Howard Yoder, and to the Western tradition of immanence theories in ethics. This will be the first comprehensive treatment of Buddhism as political theory. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BUDDHISM AND MIMETIC THEORY: A RESPONSE TO CHRISTOPHER IVES Leo D. Lefebure Fordham University ChristopherIves offers avery clearandthoughtful exploration ofthe relation between Dharma and Destruction. His discussion helps us to understand the historical relation between institutions and violence in various Buddhist traditions. His overview of the historical record is quite compelling, offering us an important counterpoint and corrective to the widespread images of Buddhist peacemakers in the (...) popular media. From the beginning, the Buddhist tradition has had a mixed record in its understanding and practice of the first moral precept, nonviolence. The encounter between Buddhist perspectives and mimetic theory poses interesting challenges for both partners to the discussion. Mimetic theory offers Buddhists an analysis ofthe construction ofdesire and the self that in many ways complements traditional Buddhist perspectives. It also offers a naming ofthe mechanisms of violence in the formation of societies that may be helpful for Buddhists' social analyses. Buddhism for its part offers mimetic theory a centuries-old tradition of reflection on the role of desire in the construction of an illusory self as well as a body of practical wisdom on non-violence that, even if it has not always been put into practice, challenges and instructs the human community today. The popular images of Buddhist peacemakers are, after all, deeply rooted in the early Buddhist tradition and powerfully represented by contemporary figures such as the Dalai Lama, Mahaghosananda (the Patriarch of Cambodian Buddhism and Thich Nhat Hanh (a Vietnamese Zen Buddhist leader who has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize). 176Leo D. Lefebure I approach this discussion not as a professional scholar of Buddhism but as a Christian theologian who has been involved in Buddhist-Christian dialogue and who is interested in both Buddhism and mimetic theory, as well as in the relations between these two trajectories today. One model for further discussion would be to take the historical data that Ives has set forth and then apply mimetic theory, asking to what degree mimetic theory can illumine the dynamics and developments of Buddhist history. Using Bernard Lonergan's image of the scissors, which Charles Heflingmentionedin his discussion inthis conference, this approach would cast Buddhism in the role of providing the lower blade of the scissors, the data to be understood, and mimetic theory would provide the upper blade of the scissors, the analytic concepts to understand the data and to make judgments and decisions. In this method, Buddhism would be relatively passive and mimetic theory would be more active. I am sure that there is ample material in Buddhist history that lends itselfto mimetic analysis (one can think ofthe traditional treatment ofthe so-called "outcasts" in Japanese society). One could, as James Alison noted in his opening address, go on endlessly, even obsessively applyingmimetic concepts to different areas of human experience. I am not sure this qualifies as true dialogue, however. It risks continuing the older Orientalist assumption that only Western concepts are capable of understanding Asia's experience and that Asians themselves have relatively little to contribute.1 For a true dialogue, the voices ofboth traditions must play a rather more active role. Both traditions can furnish material for both the upper and the lower blades of the scissors. In Lonergan's terminology, we aremovingbeyondinterpretation, which seeks understanding, and beyond history, which for Lonergan asks what is going forward in history, to the distinct functional specialization of dialectic (Lonergan 125?30). This discipline reflects upon the underlying values at work in historical processes and the assumptions behind these values. In this inquiry we ask about the status of differences of perspective: to what degree are they complementary and where are they contradictory? I would like to organize the discussion between Buddhist perspectives and mimetic theory around the three central points of mimetic theory, which René Girard himself has described as his three most important discoveries: (1) the mimetic construction of desire as the source of human identity, (2) the surrogate victim mechanism as the central dynamic of 1 On Orientalism, see Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1979). A Response to Christopher Ives177 primal religion and culture, and (3) biblical revelation as the unique, unparalleled unmasking of the surrogate victim mechanism... (shrink)