This panel will examine novel Buddhist responses to the more-than-human world. Over the course of five papers, the critical and constructive sides of both animal and environmental ethics will be explored to demonstrate the breadth of positions in these contemporary Buddhist ethical fields. First, Paul Fuller and William Edelglass approach questions of Buddhist environmental ethics from distinct angles. Fuller explores the ecological relevance of mettā meditation while Edelglass addresses some of the methodological issues present in both critical and constructive eco-Buddhisms. Jeffrey Nicolaisen and Barbra Clayton then look at nonhuman animals in contemporary Buddhisms and assess how Taiwanese nuns and the Indian textual-philosophical tradition navigate some of the barriers to animal rights in Buddhism. Finally, Colin Simonds argues that environmental ethics emerges out of animal ethics in Tibetan Buddhist contexts and investigates how this Buddhist approach can alleviate the usual tension between individualistic animal ethics and holistic environmental ethics.
This paper will articulate an innovative approach to eco-Buddhism in which the key idea of ‘loving-kindness’ (mettā) will be extended to incorporate eco-mettā, an inherently Buddhist response to the climate crises. I will move the debate away from the discussion of whether we can find ideas within Buddhism which directly respond to the climate crises to suggest ways in which Buddhist ideas can be used creatively to alleviate the suffering caused by the eco-crises. Buddhist ethics can be used to tackle ecological issues and can be used innovatively. The foundational Buddhist message to overcome suffering can address the ecological suffering of future generations. There needs to be a greening of compassion and of the precepts, incorporating the notion of rebirth to have compassion for one’s future rebirths. To discover eco-Buddhism there needs to be an innovative interpretation of Buddhist teachings.
First, drawing on theoretical work in environmental pragmatism, urbanism, and agrarianism, I offer a methodological critique of a dominant approach in scholarship on Buddhism and ecology that is shared by many of those who view Buddhism more positively and those who are more critical. This approach, in my view, overemphasizes the role that metaphysical ideas play in forming material socio-ecological practices. Second, I suggest some alternative ways to think about the great diversity of socio-ecological practice in Buddhist traditions, emphasizing a more eco-contextualist approach that is rooted in particular Buddhist communities engaged with the lived environment. Here, I draw on Julia Shaw’s research on the ways in which Buddhist monks developed engineering and administrative expertise to build large scale irrigation systems as well as literature on Buddhist animism and Buddhism and place.
In 1992, the Taiwanese Buddhist nun Shih Chao-hwei and her followers founded the Life Conservationist Association (LCA) and spearheaded the animal protection movement in Taiwan. By 1996, LCA’s collaborators published a Chinese translation of the 1975 book Animal Liberation by the Australian utilitarian philosopher Peter Singer. Singer’s utilitarian ethics are committed to a naturalist ontology that presumes consciousness arises from the complexity of embodied neural networks. On the contrary, Chao-hwei locates consciousness in the constant blending of subject and object as expressed in the concept of no-self. In this presentation, by comparing the philosophy of Chao-hwei to that of Singer, I consider how Chao-hwei uses the concept of dependent origination to arrive at no-self and the ethics of “protecting life” and “equality of life,” concluding with what the non-ontology of no-self and dependent origination may have to contribute to the philosophical discourse on nonhuman welfare.
Despite the promising fact that animals are included within the same moral and ontological sphere as humans, Buddhist doctrine as it has typically been interpreted presents serious barriers to a robust framework for upholding and defending animal rights. Chief among these is the moral hierarchy which dictates that harming animals is significantly less problematic than harming humans, and that only direct, intended killing brings the karmic retribution associated with this act. Drawing on the classical Indian Buddhist textual-philosophical tradition, as well as a contemporary case study of a proposed abattoir in Bhutan, this paper will examine the philosophical arguments marshalled for and against the morality of indirect or unintended harm and killing of animals in order to explore the possible basis for animal rights in Buddhism, and the implications for Buddhist environmental ethics more broadly.
Since their inception, animal ethics and environmental ethics have constantly found themselves at odds with one another. Animal liberation has traditionally centered individual sentient beings in its moral thought whereas environmental ethics has concerned itself with holistic valuations of ecological communities. This tension has created fairly wide rifts between the fields that, in western philosophical settings, have yet to be fully bridged. If, however, we begin from Tibetan Buddhist philosophical principles and articulate a Buddhist approach to the more-than-human world, then this bridge can indeed be built quite naturally. This paper will review this debate and offer a novel way of alleviating the tension between these individualistic and holistic approaches to more-than-human ethics. It will argue that the Buddhist concern for the duḥkha of individual sentient beings necessitates a holistic approach to the environment as a causal factor in pratītyasamutpāda such that environmental ethics emerge out of animal liberation.