Talk:Buddhist ethics

Pity
It is a pity that - while so many good articles on Buddhism and vegetarianism are available - articles on Buddhist teachings regarding vegetarianism many times are written by meat eating authors without much knowledge on the subject. Also the part on vegetarianism of this very article is clearly not written by a buddhologist or a Buddhist teacher and is of the mark. It therefore should be deleted or at least ignored.and I love Sam

Please compare the text with the following articles (Deep linking is allowed by the site owner, as mentioned at the bottom of the main page).


 * Buddhism & Vegetarianism by Ajahn Jagaro (John Cianciosi)
 * Meat, Garlic and Onions: An Analysis of Eating Restrictions in Buddhist Culture By Nick Kembel
 * Chatral Rinpoche's Steadfast Commitment to Ethics

For more articles, please see Shabkar.Org.

Pardon?
Buddha himself seems to have died from eating rancid pork.

Im somewhat mythed someone could put that into this article without properley giving references to it? Can someone clear that up please Andrew Chung 21:15, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

This article
Hmmm. While an examination of Buddhist philosophy's take on ethics is certainly an interesting idea, this article is a bit of a hodge-podge at the moment. The broad overview in the intro is interesting, but the way the rest of the article is set out seems to be more reflective of the author's interests than of Buddhist ethics as a whole.

The choice of individual ethical questions seems fairly arbitrary - in particular, the stuff re abortion seems fairly POV to me, and the comments re Buddhism's "lack of a holy war" and sex roles seem incongruous and not really in keeping with the topic of the article. There are also fairly significant omissions - for example, no mention of the Eightfold path, which surely must play a part in any discussion of Buddhism's views on ethical behaviour...? Tpth 03:05, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Sorry, scratch that last bit - Sila does get mentioned, albeit in isolation rather than in the context of the entire Eightfold Path. Tpth 03:13, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Lack of integrity
I dont think this article is upto the standard yet. So many conjectures and opinion. The writer seems to be lacking of profound knowledge in Buddhism himself.

WikiProject class rating
This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot 16:22, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Conflicts of Buddhism?
I'm researching, and very disappointed there are NO conflicts here on Buddhism, and I need at least three, anybody know any?

142.163.133.46 (talk) 01:53, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Buddhist ethics are certainly contested, and the article should take account of this. What is missing at present is any philosophical guide to the sources of knowledge and authority in Buddhist ethics as they relate to the different issues. I have tried to improve this by adding to the existing introduction to raise awareness of the different standpoints from which this topic can be approached.Evenbalance (talk) 14:39, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Mitsube deleted the entire paragraph that I added showing that Buddhist ethics is contested, so I have undone this. If he wants to change it to another paragraph recognising that it is contested, then fair enough, but without something like this we just get an impression of a single dogmatic traditional position. He objected to the website reference, which is still under discussion (see Evenbalance talk - the website contains published material apart from the self-published Ph.D. thesis), but an objection to the reference in any case does not justify deleting the whole paragraph.Evenbalance (talk) 14:26, 15 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Clearly, the introduction to the article on Buddhist ethics should not contain a lengthy summary of the opinion of one person whose unpublished thesis does not describe Buddhist ethics, but describes what it should be. Please read WP:LEAD and WP:RS. Thanks. Mitsube (talk) 19:40, 15 March 2009 (UTC)


 * The summary of ethics in the lead seems an accurate account of the mainstream tradition. The section on abortion, on the other hand, is totally inadequate. From the Pali Canon until very recently the tradition was virtually unanimously against it. Peter jackson (talk) 16:19, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Mitsube, ethics are about what should be, not what is. I think you have misunderstood Buddhist ethics, like any kind of ethics, if you do not understand them as inevitably contested accounts of what should be. I don't want to get into further reversions, and the reference is a side issue here. Since you have rejected my attempt to show that the subject is contested, please could you write something yourself showing recognition of this?Evenbalance (talk) 15:26, 17 June 2009 (UTC)


 * It is contested within the Buddhist world, and that is relevant. The understanding of ethical guidelines according to the various strata of texts is not as contested. I would be interested only in expanding on the nature of ethics according to the early texts but I am not going to do that. Mitsube (talk) 21:01, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Section on Sexuality Needed
The current section on Homosexuality should be a section on Sexuality, with a sub-section on Homosexuality. Not to minimize the ongoing controversy regarding Buddhist ethics and homosexuality, but for the sake of logic, since homosexuality is a type of sexuality. Also because there should be a section on sexuality, since one of the five self-liberation training precepts says "I undertake the training precept to refrain from sexual misconduct". Homosexual acts are claimed by some to be sexual misconduct; but even the people holding this view would not claim that homosexual acts are the only type of sexual misconduct.

So I am going to change the name of the Homosexuality section to Sexuality, create a sub-section on Homosexuality, and re-arrange the content to fit that schema. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jordan Rothstein (talk • contribs) 15:28, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Merge
I think this article ought to be merged with Śīla which is a far better way of looking at Buddhist ethics than this one. Jayarava (talk) 13:59, 13 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Done, I also have been editing this page quite a bit. I've been mostly been using Peter Harvey's An Introduction to Buddhist Ethics. (Javierfv1212 - Sabbe Satta Sukhi Hontu 18:19, 29 November 2015 (UTC))

Assessment comment
Substituted at 10:29, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

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No reason for using Devanagari in Buddhist articles
It seems there are certain users that want to add Devanagari script renditions of terms in numerous articles about Buddhism on Wikipedia. There seems to be no good reason for this, other than perhaps nationalistic or revsionist ones.

Devanagari does not come from the time of the Buddha or from the time of Ashoka (from which date the first Buddhist related inscriptions), as the wki article says it reached regular use by the 7th century CE.

None of the major Buddhist canons (Tibetan, Chinese, Pali) are recorded in Devanagari, they use Chinese, Tibetan script and various South Asian scripts like Sinhala or Burmese. None of the major publications of these canons use Devanagari. Even the Sanskrit Buddhist texts are mostly not published in Devanagari, but use IAST instead. None of the main scholarly publications on Sanskritic Buddhism use Devanagari either, they all use IAST (for example: Siderits and Katsura 's "Nagarjuna's Middle Way: Mulamadhyamakakarika").

It makes absolutely no sense to put Devanagari in Buddhist articles. For these reasons, I am removing any instance of these that I see. Javierfv1212 15:26, 24 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Perhaps this discussion should be held at WP:BUDDHA.-- Farang Rak Tham   (Talk) 10:18, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

This article makes too broad generalizations for all of Buddhism
As with most religions, the diversity within the religion is very broad. One Buddhist tradition that is entirely excluded from the writings in this article is jodoshinshu, and most likely many more. This sentence strikes me as particularly problematic: "The foundation of Buddhist ethics for laypeople is The Five Precepts which are common to all Buddhist schools". Jodoshinshu has since it's foundation during the 13th century been against precepts, based on the presumption that they fill no role in mappo. Jodoshinshu has it's own ideas about ethics which is very different from that of Theravada, which unsurprisingly seems to be the type of Buddhism mainly portrayed here. One may not necessarily write extensively about ethics in all traditions, but one should at least avoid make explicit or implicit claims about "all of buddhism". Sigvid (talk) 11:20, 25 November 2020 (UTC)