- The Oxford Handbook of Buddhist Ethics
- Dedication
- List of Abbreviations
- List of Contributors
- Introduction
- Karma
- The Bodhisattva Precepts
- Ethics, Meditation, and Wisdom
- Moral Development in the <i>Jātaka</i>s, <i>Avadāna</i>s, and Pāli <i>Nikāya</i>s
- The <i>Vinaya</i>
- <i>Bhikṣuṇī</i> Ordination
- The Changing Way of the Bodhisattva: Superheroes, Saints, and Social Workers
- Madhyamaka Ethics
- Ethics in Pure Land Schools
- A Perspective on Ethics in the <i>Lotus Sūtra</i>
- Ethics in Zen
- Tantric Ethics
- Buddhist Ethics in South and Southeast Asia
- East Asian Buddhist Ethics
- Buddhist Ethics in Contemporary Tibet
- Buddhist Ethics Compared to Western Ethics
- The Psychology of Moral Judgment and Perception in Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Ethics
- Ethics without Norms?: Buddhist Reductionism and the Logical Space of Reasons
- The Buddhist Just Society
- Buddhist Economics: Problems and Possibilities
- Buddhist Environmental Ethics: An Emergent and Contextual Approach
- Buddhism, War, and Violence
- The Ethics of Engaged Buddhism in Asia
- The Ethics of Engaged Buddhism in the West
- Human Rights
- Buddhism and Women
- Buddhism and Sexuality
- Buddhist Perspectives on Abortion and Reproduction
- Euthanasia
- Being and Its Other: Suicide in Buddhist Ethics
- Buddhism and Animal Rights
- Index
Abstract and Keywords
Buddhism was transmitted to China around the beginning of the Common Era and from there spread to the other societies in East Asia. The Mahāyāna tradition eventually became embedded in the ordinary life of those societies, closely intertwined with Confucian and Daoist ethics. Popular Buddhist ethics were basically utilitarian, a means to produce desirable consequences. In the twentieth century, reformers like Taixu (1890–1947) tried to purify this popular Buddhism and make it relevant to the challenges of modernity. The result was a ‘Buddhism in the Human Realm’ expressed as a virtue ethic that teaches its followers to develop the capacities to follow a bodhisattva path of creating a Pure Land on earth. This chapter explores the implications of this for the family, public life, politics and war, economic inequality, sexuality, and environmental ethics.
Keywords: Buddhism in the Human Realm, Taixu, family, public life, politics, war, inequality, sexuality, environmental ethics
Richard Madsen is Distinguished Professor of Sociology Emeritus, adjunct professor of the Graduate School of Global Policy and Strategy, and Director of the UC-Fudan Center for Contemporary Chinese Studies at the University of California, San Diego. He is a co-author (with Robert Bellah et al.) of the The Good Society and Habits of the Heart, which received the Los Angeles Times Book Award and was jury nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. He has authored or co-authored seven books on China, including Morality and Power in a Chinese Village (1984) for which he received the C. Wright Mills Award; China’s Catholics: Tragedy and Hope in an Emerging Civil Society (1998); and China and the American Dream (1995). His latest single-authored book is Democracy’s Dharma: Religious Renaissance and Political Development in Taiwan (2007).
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- The Oxford Handbook of Buddhist Ethics
- Dedication
- List of Abbreviations
- List of Contributors
- Introduction
- Karma
- The Bodhisattva Precepts
- Ethics, Meditation, and Wisdom
- Moral Development in the <i>Jātaka</i>s, <i>Avadāna</i>s, and Pāli <i>Nikāya</i>s
- The <i>Vinaya</i>
- <i>Bhikṣuṇī</i> Ordination
- The Changing Way of the Bodhisattva: Superheroes, Saints, and Social Workers
- Madhyamaka Ethics
- Ethics in Pure Land Schools
- A Perspective on Ethics in the <i>Lotus Sūtra</i>
- Ethics in Zen
- Tantric Ethics
- Buddhist Ethics in South and Southeast Asia
- East Asian Buddhist Ethics
- Buddhist Ethics in Contemporary Tibet
- Buddhist Ethics Compared to Western Ethics
- The Psychology of Moral Judgment and Perception in Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Ethics
- Ethics without Norms?: Buddhist Reductionism and the Logical Space of Reasons
- The Buddhist Just Society
- Buddhist Economics: Problems and Possibilities
- Buddhist Environmental Ethics: An Emergent and Contextual Approach
- Buddhism, War, and Violence
- The Ethics of Engaged Buddhism in Asia
- The Ethics of Engaged Buddhism in the West
- Human Rights
- Buddhism and Women
- Buddhism and Sexuality
- Buddhist Perspectives on Abortion and Reproduction
- Euthanasia
- Being and Its Other: Suicide in Buddhist Ethics
- Buddhism and Animal Rights
- Index
