I. Fundamental Concepts of
Buddhist Ethics
Ethics in the sense of moral principles appeared very early in the
Buddhist teachings. It may be said that they have been formed ever since the
Buddha had his immediate disciples gathered in one place for the purpose of
studying and practising his teachings. Accordingly, it is evident that Buddhist
ethics originated from the practical needs of Buddhist monks in their pursuit
of the path leading to the ultimate goal: liberation from suffering. Otherwise
stated, ethics were set forth to meet the Sangha’s needs in disciplining its
members and assembling them under common conditions of living and working in a
highly democratic community. In this connection, Buddhist ethics have gradually
grown into an indispensable part in the whole structure of Buddhist education.
Generally
speaking, Buddhist education aims at training human beings how to liberate
themselves out of suffering. This aim is formulated by the Buddha in what is
called the Four Noble Truths in Buddhism. After expounding to his earliest
disciples the gloomy side of life through the First and Second Truths, he
affirmed that there was a path that might help them to overcome that gloomy
side to attain to the ultimate bliss. In order to achieve the aim Buddhist
followers are thus advised to follow nothing other than this path. According to
it there are eight factors or conditions that they must fulfill, of which Right
Speech, Right Action and Right Livelihood are considered the moral basis (sila)
for higher stages of discipline, namely, samadhi and panna.
Apart from
that ethical foundation, various rules of conduct and discipline were
continuously introduced by the Buddha in the course of his preaching. These
rules served as favourable conditions to help his disciples not only to develop
their individual discipline but also to keep their community in its utmost
perfection. Such a community was helpful in many aspects. It facilitated the
Buddha’s task of preaching, provided a favourable seat of learning and
practising for his disciples, and served as the background of their mission of
spreading the Buddha’s teachings among the masses. For such a community to be
maintained and developed it was necessary for all its members to observe
certain regulations. And the history of Buddhist development proves that it is
thanks to such monastic communities, or Sangha in Buddhist terminology,
that the Buddha’s teachings have been preserved and spread to the present. It also
explains why disciplinary rules have been so strongly emphasized in Buddhist
monastic living so far. After the Buddha’s passing away those rules were
collected and systematized in one of the Three “Baskets” of Buddhist
literature, that is, Vinaya-pitaka.
Thus, the Vinaya-pitaka
may be considered the most systematic and voluminous documentary evidence of
Buddhist emphasis on ethics. There is no doubt that such an emphasis may be
found not only in the Vinaya-pitaka but also in the other Baskets since the Buddha’s
teachings are for all beings. In the Sigalo-sutta, for instance, there
are, too, moral conducts for lay followers. These conducts were formulated by
the Buddha to be necessary conditions of producing a lay follower’s perfect
personality, a good family; hence, a peaceful community. They were later
summarized into the five principal precepts, which have been observed by all
Buddhist lay people in the world so far; that is, refraining from killing, not
taking what is not given, refraining from prohibited sexual activity,
refraining from unjust speech, abstaining from intoxicating drinks.
From those fundamental concepts it may be said that Buddhist ethics
cover the three major fields of Buddhist education: (1) individually, they aim
at helping a Sangha member with the process of purifying his body and mind,
serving as a means of developing his wholesome faculties (kusala-indriya) into
favourable conditions of achieving the ultimate liberation; (2) monastically,
they serve as the pivotal foundation for the Sangha’s activities of all kinds,
and as the unique support for any possible preservation and development of
Buddhist Teachings in the world; (3) socially, in lay people’s living they
serve as basic conditions of making a morally perfect personality; hence, a
happy family life and a peacefully developing country.
II. The Practical Value of Buddhist Ethics in
Improving Individual and Community
All the
above-mentioned positive characteristics of Buddhist ethics and their practical
influence on human life may be easily recognized by any reader who has been
interested in the history of Buddhist development inside and outside India.
The most
obvious evidence may be given by the Buddha himself, his immediate disciples,
and the Buddhist monastic order of the time. Numerous stories of the Buddha’s
former lives recorded in Jataka and of the Buddha’s lifetime in various
Buddhist accounts tell us about what and how he did to save other beings’
lives, to liberate himself out of suffering, to realize the Perfect Enlightenment,
to teach human beings and deities to better themselves and the world in which
they are living. For such a perfect personality as the Buddha’s to be achieved,
the two essential qualities may not be lacking; that is compassion (karuna)
and wisdom (panna).
Since the Buddha’s lifetime it is these two
qualities that have nurtured the Buddhist living, that is, living of a monastic
or lay follower and of a community of Buddhist monks, and also helped to
distinguish a Buddhist follower from the other. After the Buddha passed away,
the Buddhist Sangha went on to preserve and spread his message of compassion
and wisdom. Internally, they continued to train themselves in accordance with
what their Great Master had taught; that is, morality developed parallel with
wisdom. Externally, they tried their best to spread that message in Indian
society at the time. It would not be an exaggeration for us to say that never
before in the history of mankind has there been any message fraught with so
much humanity as the message sent by the Buddha to Indian society at the time.
In social life the message appeals for an immediate abolition of any possible
discrimination of social and racial classes; in individual life, it appeals for
a restoration of human freedom; that is, a total abandonment of any human
bondage of an absolute Creator, a dominating Self, the worship of superhuman
forces, rituals of sacrifice, and so forth. It affirms that man, and man alone,
is responsible for all that he has done. Not any forces, whether natural or
supernatural, can determine and arrange his destiny unless he voluntarily
allows his own life to be conditioned by them. This may be said to be the first
and last freedom that the Buddha’s message is intended for all the human kind.
In the world’s
history such a freedom could be most obviously expressed in the very
personality of the Emperor Asoka in India in the 3rd century B.C.E.
As the supreme sovereign of a vast empire, Asoka possessed rampant power and
authority to make a final decision of which among various contemporary systems
of morality would be carried out for the improvement and development of his
empire. There were then for his selection at least two major moral systems
flourishing in India; that is, traditional morality and Buddhist morality. From
the former there have accrued the submission of man to the Absolute Being (Brahman),
the worship of gods of all kinds, the discrimination of racial and social
classes, the sacrifice of animals, and so on. The latter is, on the contrary,
based totally on the principle of causal dependence. All that creates a
sentient being is what he has done and is doing; in other words, it is the status
quo of all his actions of mind, speech and body that makes him what he is.
Not any God, not any superhuman forces, not any designations, not any social
conventions but all the mental and physical constituent conditions of a human’s
existence decides what he truly is. On this guiding principle Buddhist ethics
are formed to help human beings improve themselves by transforming such
constituent conditions of their existence from evil to good, from imperfect to
perfect. In the Buddhist view it is only with such a transformation that a
perfect personality can be truly made, a good family can be formed, and a
peaceful and prosperous country can be founded. The existent edicts by the
Emperor Asoka, inscribed on rocks and stone pillars, reveal his decision; and
historical accounts tell us about how a bloodthirsty conqueror was transformed
into a benevolent, brilliant emperor as well as an empire in incessant warfare
into a peaceful and prosperous India.
Another
illustration we would like to present to the Conference today is also about an
emperor, but not in India. In the 11th century C.E. the Vietnamese
people underwent, for the first time in their national history, the rule of a
king who had been grown up and educated right in Buddhist monasteries; that is,
the Emperor Thai To of Ly Dynasty. Born in 974, Ly was sent to the Co Phap
Temple at the age of three. The temple was then presided by Zen Master Van
Hanh, who had been a special advisor to the previous imperial court. Under the
personal instructions of Master Van Hanh and then of Zen Master Da Bao at the
Kien So Temple, Ly gradually acquired a wide knowledge not only of Buddhist
teachings but also of other branches of learning at the time. It should be
noticed that, since there were not any state-run academic institutions in
Vietnam at that time, most of Buddhist temples and monasteries served as seats
of learning for mostly the intellectual circle across the country. After
leaving the temple Ly worked as Commander of Imperial Guards under the reign of
Le Long Dinh, who was an extremely brutal king. One of this king’s most
favourite recreations was to watch killing. He took pleasure in watching
prisoners or criminals be executed or tortured to death by means of extremely
barbarous instruments. It is recorded in Vietnamese official history books that
the king once had summoned the Supreme Patriarch Quach Mao, ordering him to
kneel down on the ground and hold up his head firmly as a block of wood on
which he could remove the bark of a sugarcane. Owing to the king’s inhuman and
immoral conducts the courtiers, at his death in the fourth year of his reign,
agreed to select Ly as successor to the imperial throne. Just as being
enthroned in 1009, Ly carried out a new policy of reforming and developing the
country. From his own experience of a countryman ever disciplined and educated
in Buddhist monasteries, he knew exactly what had to be done for his nation and
people. On the one hand he maintained Buddhist temples and monasteries as
centers of education and culture, where competent trainees would be supplied as
soon as possible for his court as qualified officials and missionaries; on the
other, he ordered as many temples and monasteries to be built as possible.
Shortly after the capital was removed from Hoa Lu in Ninh Binh to Thang Long in
present-day Hanoi, eight temples were built as educational and cultural
institutions in the Thien Duc Prefecture, hundreds of temples in other parts of
the country were reconstructed, and more than one thousand men in the capital
city were ordained to be Buddhist monks.
No doubt,
various policies concerning other fields of development of the country were
simultaneously carried out by the Emperor Ly; for the dynasty of which he was
the first emperor became well known as one of the most peaceful and prosperous
ages in the history of Vietnam. The above-mentioned events, however, may
suffice to point out the fact that the educational policy employed by the
Emperor Ly was completely based upon the fundamental principles of Buddhist
Teachings. As a well-disciplined Buddhist follower, Ly comprehended that the
so-called ‘nation’ was nothing but a ‘designation’ (pannatti) denoting a
large community of people sharing a common history. Conventionally, there
exists a community as such; yet, the genuine existence of this community is in
essence the existence of its members. And each member participates in the formation
of community through his own actions of speech and body, which are for the most
part motivated by his own volition (cetana), or rather, by his own
states of mind and body. Accordingly, it is the existence of individuals that
determines the essence of the community in which they exist, and not vice
versa. On this principle there is not a peaceful and prosperous country if its
people are not industrious and peace-loving. Even Buddhism cannot go beyond
this principle. There will never be a truly pure Buddhist community,
irrespective of whatsoever holy label put on it, if its members are not pure.
It was from such a view of the true nature of any conditioned existence that Ly
had decided to select the Buddhist teachings in general and Buddhist ethics in
particular as the most crucial condition of educating his people to develop and
protect the country. The reasons for his choice may be summarized as follows:
(1) Of the
three ideologies, Taoism, Confucianism and Buddhism, flourishing in his country
at the time, Ly realized that only the Buddhist ideology could meet the urgent
requirements of his country’s advancement. Taoism is too much interested in the
spontaneity of individual living to boost the development of a country.
Confucianism, in spite of its systematic doctrine of an ideal social structure,
fails to help people to abandon their abiding attachment to individual and
social achievements. For the nation’s advancement to be successfully carried
out, therefore, he needed those
officials who could at the same time be possessed of two qualities: morality
based on altruism and good all-round knowledge, that is, not only knowledge of
administration but also of many other fields of social life. If they had
morality but not knowledge, they would be good for nothing; on the contrary, if
they had good knowledge but not morality, their possession of some authority or
position would become harmful to others and to the whole governing machinery.
Without any system of laws properly established his country’s prosperity and
development had to depend mostly upon personal qualities of officials and
functionaries.
(2) The Vietnamese Sangha at the time comprised a
great number of qualified monks. They were versed not only in the Buddhist
teachings but also in various branches of work and study such as Taoism,
Confucianism, history, geography, astronomy, handicraft, agriculture, and so
on. It may be said that this is one of the characteristics of Buddhism in
Vietnam. Out of the reality that they were living in an agricultural country
frequently threatened by either natural disasters or wars, Vietnamese Buddhist
monks understood clearly that, if they wanted to preserve and introduce the
Buddhist teachings to the people effectively, they had to learn how to carry
out Buddhist activities not in the mountains but just amidst the world.
Accordingly, in addition to academic activities in monasteries and missionary
activities among the population, some of them were ever invited to work as
emissaries, or receive foreign emissaries, or serve as special advisors to
imperial courts. It was due to such a great variety of activities that the
Buddhist Sangha together with their lay people came to be the most powerful and
influential force of the Vietnamese people at the time.
(3) Ruling a country
in which the administrative system was not founded on any educational system,
that is, without any academic institutions for training officials and
missionaries for the government, the Emperor Ly could not help employing the
source of human labour supplied by the Buddhist Sangha from their own academic
institutions to meet the urgent requirements of development, particularly when
this source could supply for his court those officials who were qualified in
both morality and ability. Consequently, not only did he go on renovating the
existing Buddhist institutions but he also ordered many other ones to be built
across the country.
III. A Practicable Application of Buddhist Ethics to
Education in the Modern World
The afore-said illustrations may, to some extent,
present the positive and practical influence of Buddhist education upon human
society during the course of its development. For the past decades the Buddhist
Sanghas together with their lay devotees in many different countries have made
their great efforts to preserve and develop this educational tradition. Based
on the universal development of the world today, it may be said that their
efforts aim at not only preserving an educational tradition that was founded
more than two thousand years ago but also making, through this tradition, some
possible contributions to the development of the world. Today, this
development, in spite of its different forms in different countries and regions
of the world, has a common point that the West since the Renaissance and the
East since the past century have been developing along materialistic lines. In
the course of such a development there is no doubt that various things are
being replaced with others in both the environmental and human fields. The
increasing deterioration of our environment along with its global changes of
climate, atmosphere, ecological and geological conditions, and so on, may be
too evident for all of us to be dealt with. The point mentioned here is the
change of moral and spiritual values in human society, which takes its root in
the change of education.
In order to serve the development along the
afore-said lines there have undoubtedly been some changes in the educational
field of modern world, of which the most remarkable is of the objective of
education. Generally speaking, in modern education students are for the most
part trained and educated to become, not free and perfect people,
but specialists in many different branches of work and study as well as in many
different fields of social life. There is little doubt that such a tendency in
education has proceeded from the requirements of development of the world. So
it is taking place as it has to. And we have no idea of giving any remark on
its pragmatic value in modern living. The point we want to mention here is that
such a way of education indicates that a student as a specialist in a certain
field will hardly have a perfect understanding of other fields, including
himself, not as a physical structure or a psychological organism, but as an
extremely complicated individual of mental and physical operations in relation
with others in a community. For that reason, in order to have a rather general
knowledge he has to gather information of various kinds supplied by other
specialists in other fields. Accordingly, most of the information he has
gathered is provided not from his insight into the true essence of things but
either from other sources or from his superficial grasping of the phenomenal
world. Although this information may then be regarded as nothing other than a
description of things, it is extremely necessary for him because all of his
ideas, thoughts, decisions, feelings, sensations can hardly be formed or raised
without it. In this case it would be hard for him to think or feel freely;
instead, his thinking and feeling are raised and restricted within a certain
fixed pattern, logical or psychological, formed in his mind not by his personal
experience but by descriptions alone. In Buddhism, such a process of cognition
is considered to be based on the view of things not “as they are” but “as they
have passed into the past”; hence, as nothing other than delusions. For
everything is in its constant change. In this way, the more knowledge he
gathers, the more he is separated from reality; the more he engages himself in
the phenomenal world, both physical and psychology, the more strongly he is
controlled by “name” (nama) and “form” (rupa) so that he would
come to lose control of himself unconsciously. By “unconsciously” we mean that
he is not aware that his feelings are being controlled not by himself but by
patterns defined by educational and social conventions, his thinking is being
directed not by his personal insight but by descriptions collected from all
that has passed away. So he may be doing something wrong but he thinks it would
be right, he may be doing something harmful to himself and others but he firmly
believes it would be useful.
As a student born and grown up in one of the most
powerful countries of the world, for instance, he would feel satisfied with the
pure environment in which he is living, with the academic institution he is
attending, with the modern education he is receiving, with the well-developed
industry and technology whose products he is enjoying. He would be satisfied
with these things; and he would be kind enough to wish that all the
underdeveloped countries in the world may soon be well developed as his
country. But, ironically, he never wishes he could know, not by knowledge
collected from his education and the phenomenal world but by his own insight,
the true cause and state of his country’s development as well as its global
influence in every aspect of life on earth. He knows that his country’s
environment is kept pure, but he never asks himself how it may be kept as such
with so many harmful chemical and industrial wastes thrown away every day by
such a well-developed industry; and so forth. As a student supposedly to have
been educated to love peace and hate war, he would be willing to join a
demonstration to protest a certain war in some place in the world. And after
the demonstration he could feel quite content with himself because he has just
made a small contribution to the movement of making peace in the world, he has
just had some concern about not himself but other peoples in the world; and
with such a thought he would feel quite comfortable to have a rest or a sound
sleep thereafter. He never knows that a war that has already been made can
never be stopped with a demonstration, or a great number of demonstrations, or
a worldwide appeal for peace; he never knows that it can be stopped only by the
stopping of all that has made it, including the so-called modern educational
system in which he has been trained. Certainly he would not and could not
accept the last idea just suggested unless he could get an insight into the
inner relation between this system of education and all the current crises on
earth.
From the Buddhist view the modern education, in
spite of its variety of systems and structures in different countries in the
world, will not and cannot help to stop crises and conflicts caused by the
current development of the world. The single reason for this is that it is
not intended to do this. In this education a student is educated
(1) not to free himself out of his negative states
of mind, which arise from the two abiding, deep-rooted ideas within himself,
that is self-protection and self-preservation. For self-protection he has to
depend upon the force of something else as a safe support, such as a family, a
gathering of friends, a group of colleagues, a community of people sharing the
same race or belief or nationality, and so forth. For self-preservation he has
to seek for wealth and power. From these two ideas there accrue various
volitions, good or bad, which control and direct his actions of thinking,
speaking and acting. Accordingly, when he is educated to love or serve, for
instance, there is no doubt that he must love or serve himself first, then his
relatives, his friends, his colleagues, his native land, his country, etc. Such
a love or service is, of course, quite reasonable because it accords with many
concepts he has been taught concerning the protection and preservation of
himself, of his family, of his organization, of his company, of his nation, and
so on. The noteworthy point is that if his love or service arises from his
consciousness of self-protection and self-preservation, it may inevitably cause
negative frustrations or conflicts, first within himself and then in the world
around. To gratify his unwholesome desires, for instance, he is ready to reject
his good volitions, if any. To preserve himself as a whole he may reject his
relatives. To protect his family he may reject his friends, and so on.
(2) not to be perfect. By “perfect” it means, in
Buddhism, perfect understanding (panna). Perfect understanding is the
understanding of something, not by description of it but by insight into it.
All that may be felt, conceived, or grasped by human beings are viewed in
Buddhism as conditioned; that is to say, they are formed by at least two
conditions. They can arise neither from only one condition nor from no
condition at all. In this connection, a conditioned thing arises in a twofold
existence: its form and its nature. So for a thing to be fully comprehended
both its form and nature must be penetrated. On the absolute level, it does not
have its own nature, or self-nature in Buddhist terms, because it is
conditioned. On the relative level, however, its nature refers to all the
conditions that are being combined with each other to give its form. Thus a
perfect understanding is an insight into the currently changing conditions of a
thing, which manifest themselves under a certain form, and at the same time
into the absence of what is conventionally called its “self-nature.” For such
an understanding to be achieved, a student must be disciplined to get rid of
all kinds of his own experience, psychological, logical and even intellectual,
during the course of his cognition; for it is due to the intervention of his
experience that distorts his true understanding, hinders him from getting an
insight into a thing as it is.
A human being viewed in such a light is, therefore,
nothing other than a series of physically and mentally changing conditions, which
bears a certain name and a certain form which help to distinguish him from
others. Thus, in appearance he exists as an independent being from others; yet,
in essence he is not different from others because he has no self-nature. As a
result, a true understanding of him means an insight into the operation of his
mental and physical conditions moment after moment. This points out the fact
that most of our understanding of ourselves and the world around is quite
relative, and thus not perfect, since it arises not from our direct experience
but from our experience of what has passed away.
We have discussed in brief the two characteristic
features, i.e., freedom and perfection, of the Buddhist educational tradition,
in which an individual is considered an inseparable part of the world. From
this fundamental standpoint, the preliminary requirement for a Buddhist student
is that he has to learn how to control himself first. That is to say, he has to
get knowledge of the general operation of physical and, particularly, mental
factors within himself. Upon this knowledge he disciplines himself to weaken
step by step and then abandon his unwholesome states of mind, which may affect
and thus distort his true understanding of himself and the world around, and at
the same time, to arouse and strengthen his wholesome states of mind, which may
overcome his own frustrations and conflicts caused by unwholesome states. In
such a process of discipline, his mind is gradually kept calm enough for him to
have a rather deep penetration into the phenomenal world including all that is
taking place within himself and the world. This penetrating view is absolutely
important to him; for it is only with it that he can understand the true nature
of a phenomenon, its causes and conditions, its mutual relation with others,
and the way of treating or dealing with it. In addition, it is the ground of a
Buddhist student’s activities in every aspect of individual life and social
life. If he could understand that there is not a so-called “evil person” but
only evil volitions, evil actions which are arising within that person, his
love for him then would arise as easily and naturally as that for other
so-called “good people.” If he could understand the causal dependence of all
the so-called “nations” in the world, the conventional values of geographical
boundaries, the living and working
conditions of mankind on the same planet, he would never accept the idea that
war must be made somewhere else on earth to help preserve peace in his country,
that conflicts in every aspect of social life must be activated in some
countries to help preserve the economic development of his country, that the
pure environment of some nations must be sacrificed for the pure environment of
his country, and so forth.
IV. Conclusion
The presentations above concerning the way of
understanding and activity of a Buddhist student with regard to himself and the
world around are only some factual illustrations of the objective of a Buddhist
tradition of education. For more than two thousand and five hundred years those
who have been educated and disciplined in this educational system have never
made a war of any kind in any place on this planet. Instead, what they have
done are all the time for the benefit not only of the human kind but also of
deities, exactly in accordance with the advice of their Compassionate Teacher.
The reason for this may now be no longer misunderstood by those who would have
thought that Buddhist teachings might be purely individualistic, pessimistic,
nihilistic, etc. A question may, however, be raised here as to what may be
contributed to the current development of the world by those teachings.
Before giving the answer, let us confirm a fact
that Buddhism in general has never aimed at changing the whole world. The world
as it is arises and disappears owing to the arising and disappearing of its own
conditions, including mankind and its activities. So it is not any God, not any
superhuman force but the human kind that decides the destiny of this world.
Upon this principle, the only thing Buddhism can do is to show to mankind how
and what they have to do to preserve the world and all kinds of living on it as
well as possible. So far as human beings cannot understand the true nature of
the world and the true cause of the world, they will never find out an
appropriate way to change the world. All these things were already introduced
to mankind over twenty five centuries by Buddha Sakyamuni. Yet, how many people
of the world have attempted to study and apply them to the development of
themselves and the world? From the Buddhist view, development in the true sense
of the term does not and cannot mean the increase of delusions, selfish
desires, hatred, jealousy, pride, impurity, frustrations, conflicts, warfare,
terrors, famine, natural disasters, and the like. If all of these things may be
regarded as part of the whole current development of the world, Buddhism will
not and cannot contribute anything to it. Instead, Buddhism is making its
greatest efforts to preserve and develop its educational tradition in many
different forms, a temple, a monastery, a school, a college, a university, a
center of Buddhist culture, a meditation institution, and so on, for the
purpose not of contributing to but attempting to balance the world’s
development, that is, to become a constructive condition among numerous
destructive conditions of the world itself. For that reason, it must not be
misunderstood that those Buddhist institutions of all kinds have been built to
introduce Buddhist teachings as branches of learning such as philosophy,
religion, theology, psychology, ethics, educational methodology, etc., to the
world, just as it was ever suggested that techniques of Buddhist meditation
might be applied to the increase of production labour in factories. Buddhist
education is characterized by the consistent combination of learning and
discipline. Therefore, it is no use to think that the Buddhist teaching, the
whole or some part of it, should be chosen as a branch of learning, or as a department,
or as a faculty among the others of a certain college or university. For it
will then provide for the world, not free and perfect beings, but specialists
in Buddhist Philosophy, Buddhist Psychology, etc., even in Buddhist Ethics.
These specialists may acquire an excellent knowledge of Buddhism in every
aspect of it; yet, they will surely go on to contribute to numerous crises of
the world since their existence among mankind remains being founded on their
self-protection and self-preservation.
After all it may be, we think, rather obvious for
us to seek for some practicable solution to what has just been presented so
far. Based upon the fact that
(1) Buddhist ethics, or rather, Buddhist moral
principles, can maintain their intrinsic worth and have their practical
functions only in those who have achieved some level of positive transformation
in their states of mind,
(2) only those who have achieved some level of such
a transformation can apply these principles effectively,
(3) for some level of such a transformation to be
achieved, the study and practice of meditation (vipassana) in some
measure are indispensable,
(4) To attend and maintain the above course of
discipline, a philosophical passion for Buddhism, that is, a new view of human
life and the world, must be aroused and kept alive in each member of the
course,
it may prove that Buddhist ethics cannot be
separably employed as an independent subject from others in a certain
curriculum. Instead, it must be applied in connection with Buddhist philosophy,
with Buddhist meditation in the sense of a practice of insight, and with the
discipline of transforming physical and mental conditions individually. All
these applications, therefore, must be carried out in one and the same course,
which is opened not parallel with other courses, but as the fundamental course
for all the other ones. Naturally, for such a system of education to be
effectively carried out, it is to require, in the first place, much more effort
from the very Buddhist Sanghas in different countries. For, on the one hand
they have to preserve their current monastic academic institutions so as to be
able to provide expert instructors for those ‘Buddhist’ courses; on the other
hand, they have to found by themselves Buddhist colleges and universities for
both Buddhist and non-Buddhist students who want to be trained in such an
educational system. In these new institutions, of course, students may have to
choose, apart from the Buddhist course, as many other courses as possible. In
reality, it is hard for the educationists in non-Buddhist academic institutions
of the world to expect some prospects for such a model of education. Yet, they
will undoubtedly wait and see. By the time they suddenly get awakened that
their current systems of education may, in some respects, have been one of the
destructive conditions of the world itself, and that great efforts to reduce
and weaken partly the destruction of the world caused by human beings have been
silently and incessantly made in many different Buddhist academic institutions
of the world so far, then they have certainly to reflect upon what they have
been doing, not by means of the great knowledge they have acquired but of their
own insight.
In summary, it should be once again affirmed that
the Buddhist teachings in general and Buddhist ethics in particular, which have
existed on earth for more than two millennia, are not intended to present to
the human kind some utopian system of education or society; nor are they
intended to become the greatest religion or philosophy that would dominate the
whole human world. The message of Buddha Sakyamuni sent to the human kind
conveys for ever the significance of Compassion and Wisdom. A decision to
choose the Kingdom or the Darkness depends completely upon all the human kind
of the world.
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Presented by Most Ven.
Dhammavamso, Rector of Vietnam Theravada Buddhist College of Hue City, at the
First Ever Summit of the International Association of Buddhist Universities
(IABU) & International Academic Seminar on Buddhism and Ethics held in
Bangkok, Thailand on 13-15th September, 2008.
The End
edit @ 27 Nov 2009 10:03:18 by forever
