Buddhism and the earth : environmental thought in early Buddhist philosophy

Introduction Fundamental to the philosophy of Buddhism, is the insight that there is "unsatisfactohness" (dukkha) in the world and that it can be eliminated through the practice of the Noble Eight Fold Path. Buddhism also maintains that the world as we experience and entities that exist are bereft of any substantiality. Instead existence is manifest through dependent origination. All things are conditional; nothing is permanent. However, inherent in this dependent existence is the interconnectedness of all beings and their subjection to the cosmic law of karma. Part of cultivating the Eight Fold path includes a deep compassion for all other living things, 'trapped' within this cycle of dependent origination. This compassion or empathy (karuna) is crucial to the Buddhist path to enlightenment. It is this emphasis on karuna that shows itself in Mahayana Buddhism with respect to the theory of the boddhisatva (or Buddha-to-be) since the boddhisatva willingly postpones his/her own enlightenment to help others on the same path. One of the ramifications of the theory of dependent origination is that there is no anthropocentric bias placed on humans over the natural world. Paradoxically the doctrine of non-self becomes an ontology within Buddhism, culminating in the Mayahana realization that a common boundary exists between samsara and nirvana. Essential to this ontology is the life of dharma or a moral life. Ethics is not separated from ontology. As my thesis will show, this basic outlook of Buddhism has implications toward our understanding of the Buddhist world-view with respect to the current human predicament concerning the environment. While humans are the only ones who can 4 attain "Buddhahood", it is because of our ability to understand what it means to follow the Eight fold path and act accordingly. Because of the interconnectedness of all entities {dharmas), there is an ontological necessity to eliminate suffering and 'save the earth' because if we allow the earth to suffer, we ALL suffer. This can be understood as an ethical outlook which can be applied to our interaction with and treatment of the natural environment or environment in the broadest sense, not just trees plants rocks etc. It is an approach to samsara and all within it. It has been argued that there is no ontology in Buddhism due to its doctrine of "non-self". However, it is a goal of this thesis to argue that there does exist an original ontology in Buddhism; that according to it, the nature of Being is essentially neither "Being nor non-being nor not non-being" as illustrated by Nagarjuna. Within this ontology is engrained an ethic or 'right path' (samma marga) that is fundamental to our being and this includes a compassionate relationship to our environment. In this dissertation I endeavour to trace the implications that the Buddhist worldview has for the environmental issues that assail us in our age of technology. I will explore questions such as: can the Buddhist way of thinking help us comprehend and possibly resolve the environmental problems of our day and age? Are there any current environmental theories which are comparable to or share common ground with the classical Buddhist doctrines? I will elucidate some fundamental doctrines of early Buddhism from an environmental perspective as well as identify some comparable modern environmental theories such as deep ecology and general systems theory, that seem to share in the wisdom of classical Buddhism and have much to gain from a deeper appreciation of Buddhism.

BUDDHA AND BUDDHIST THOUGHT IN MODERN HINDI POETRY

Hindi

En kristen buddhist i öknen? : En studie av buddhistiska element i Evagrius Ponticus teologi

Vid en första anblick kan buddhismen och kristendomen tyckas utgöra en tydlig dikotomi inom den religiösa sfären, men undersöks saken närmre så märker vi snart att det utöver alla skillnader även finns många likheter. Föreliggande studie har för avsikt att behandla både likheter och skillnader mellan buddhismen och kristendomen i en konkret aspekt – genom att jämföra den kappadokiske asketen Evagrius Ponticus och den indiske buddhistiska tänkaren och författaren Vasubandhu i deras syn på människors upplevelse av världen.För att finna svar i denna fråga har respektive författares behandling av våra sinnen och vår perception undersökts, detta huvudsakligen utifrån Evagrius Kephalaia Gnostika samt Vasubandhus Abhidharma-kosa och Pañcaskandhaka-prakarana. Deras tankar i ämnet presenteras och analyseras var för sig, för att sedan också tas upp i en komparativ diskussion.Resultatet av denna studie visar att tidigare hypoteser om likheter mellan Evagrius och diverse buddhistiska skolor i många fall är tämligen relevanta. Däremot fungerar dessa likheter sällan som bevis för att Evagrius personligen skall ha influerats av indiska lärosystem. De flesta av hans tankar är snarare ett arv av den grekiska kontext i vilken han växte upp. Samtidigt som det alltså finns likheter kan vi också i resultatet se uppenbara skillnader mellan de olika kontexterna.Hypotesen att Evagrius i sitt författande av Kephalaia Gnostika skulle vara direkt påverkad av Vasubandhu eller andra buddhistiska läromästare går alltså utifrån denna studie inte att bekräfta även om likheterna mellan de två många gånger är närvarande.

Hindu temples in the Sri Lankan ethnic conflict : capture and excess

Developing Deleuze and Guattari's concepts of territorialization and the apparatus of capture, this article explores the role that Sri Lankan Hindu temples have played in the formation of ethnicity and ethnic conflict. Analyzing three contemporary events, the article introduces ways in which many different Sri Lankans (Sinhalese and Tamil) interpret their country's predicament and seek to resolve or prolong it. The events also reveal how scholarship becomes entangled in ethnic nationalism. I then examine in greater detail a village in which temple construction was a critical feature of identity formation during the creation of Sri Lanka as a colonialist and capitalist bureaucratic space. Through this account, I argue that the formation of polarized ethnicity in Sri Lanka is the product of multiple refractive forces, of which temples are one, and not the end result of a singular colonialist bureaucratic agency.

The generation of superstructure geometry in latina temples : a hybrid approach

The Nagara tradition of temple building created a rich corpus of Latina (single-spired) temples spread across Northern India between the fifth and thirteenth centuries. Computing methods offer a distinct methodology for reconstructing the genesis and evolution of geometry in this tradition over time. This paper reports a hybrid technique, comprising three distinct computations for recovering and explaining the geometry of temples. The application of the technique enables scholars to bring together fragments of evidence, construe "best-fit" strategies and unearth implicit or hidden relationships. The advantage of this approach is that changes in assumptions and testing of geometric alternatives can be easily simulated from multiple sources of information, such as texts, sacred diagrams and individual temples.