Humanistic Buddhism The Relevance of Buddhist Ethics
James A . Santucci2000, Hsi Lai Journal of Humanistic Buddhism
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Abstract
Humanistic Buddhism may be viewed as Mahayanist interpretation and understanding of the original teachings of the Buddha and the early teachings of Buddhism, not from a sectarian perspective but from the perspective of a teaching that grows and develops in a manner that is integrative and organic. One may come to the opinion, quite correctly in my view, that Humanistic Buddhism derives both from the Buddhist experience in China - what Jonathan Z. Smith terms locative religion - and from the universal or timeless Buddhist experience as derived in the Pali texts - what Smith terms utopian religion. It is to the universal and timeless portion of Humanistic Buddhism that the rest of the paper turns its attention: ethics. The paper compares Judea-Christian ethics with those of the Buddhist tradition and concludes that although the ethics of both traditions are remarkably similar, there are fundamentally different paths and interpretation s that lead to these similarities . The remainder of the paper will discuss these differences, with special emphasis on the significance of Dependent Origination and karma.
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