Abstract
I once believed it important to determine the ‘Buddhist view’ on many social and political questions. Today I’m much more circumspect. Buddhist texts offer few coherent views outside of the core doctrinal elements. Consequently, Buddhists, to an even greater degree than most religionists, are required to address contemporary problems in the spirit of their teachings, rather than according to the letter of their law.
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Notes
For an introduction to the range of Buddhist attitudes on abortion see Robert Florida 1991 ‘Buddhist Approaches to Abortion’, Asian Philosophy 1:39–50.
Geoffrey Parrinder, Sex in the World’s Religions (London: Sheldon Press, 1980).
Leonard Zwilling, ‘Homosexuality as seen in Indian Buddhist texts’, Buddhism, Sexuality and Gender ed. José Ignacio Cabezon (NY: SUNY Press, 1992).
Kate Wheeler, ‘Vinaya Vignettes: or, why the buddha had to make some rules’, Tricycle, Summer 1994: 84–89.
On the role of women in Buddhism see Lenore Friedman, Daughters of Lion’s Yawn: Women Teachers of Buddhism in America (Boulder, CO: Shambhala, 1987).
Rita M. Gross, Buddhism after Patriarchy: A Feminist History, Analysis and Reconstruction of Buddhism, (NY: SUNY, 1992);
James Hughes, ‘Buddhist Feminism,’ Spring Wind (Toronto), 1986: 36–45;
Anne Klein, Meeting the Great Bliss Queen: Buddhists, Feminists and the Art of the Self (Boston: Beacon, 1994).
Kenneth Chen, The Chinese Transformation of Buddhism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1973)
Trevor Ling, ‘Buddhist Factors in Population Growth and Control’, Population Studies 23 1969:53–60.
See especially Sallie Tisdale’s essay in Tricycle (Winter 1994: 44–48) ‘Nothing Special: The Buddhist Sex Quandry’.
I refer here to the work of Lawrence Kohlberg, The Philosophy of Moral Development (New York: Harper and Row, 1981), though the ethical logics I discuss do not correspond to his schema directly.
Leonard Price ‘A Buddhist View of Abortion’, Washington Buddhist 16, 4, 1985:3–13.
David Stott, A Circle of Protection for the Unborn. (Bristol: Ganesha Press, 1985).
Julius J. Lipner, ‘The Classical Hindu View on Abortion and the Moral Status of the Unborn,’ in Hindu Ethics, ed. H. G. Coward, J. J. Lipner, and K. K. Young, 41–69. (Albany, New York: State University of New York Press., 1989)
See for instance Luker’s investigation of beliefs about the onset of pregnancy in American history (Kristin, Luker Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood, University of California Press, 1984).
For a discussion of traditional Tibetan embryology, see Yeshe Dhonden ‘Embryology in Tibetan Medicine’, in Tibetan Medicine (Dharamsala: Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, 1980);
and Philip A. Lecso, ‘A Buddhist View of Abortion’, Journal of Religion and Health 26 1987:214–18.
See for instance Michael Tooley, Abortion and Infanticide. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984);
Michael J. Flower ‘Neuromaturation of the human fetus’, Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 10, 1985:237–251;
Michael Bennett, ‘Personhood from a Neuroscientific Perspective’, pp. 83–86 in Abortion Rights and Fetal Personhood, eds. Ed Doer and James Prescott, (Centerline Press, 1989).
On no-self and personhood see Parfit, Derek, Reasons and Persons, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984).
See for instance Stephen Batchelor, ‘Rebirth: A Case for Buddhist Agnosticism’, Tricycle 1992: 16–23;
Winston King, ‘A Buddhist Ethics Without Karmic Rebirth?’ Journal of Buddhist Ethics 1, 1994:33–44.
Damien Keown, The Nature of Buddhist Ethics, (New York: St. Martins Press, 1992).
William LaFleur, ‘The Cult of Jizo: Abortion Practices in Japan and What They Can Teach the West’, Tricycle, Summer 1995: 41–44.
See for instance, Joseph Fletcher, Humanhood: Essays in Biomedical Ethics (Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1979).
See for instance John Seed, Joanna Macy, Pat Fleming, Arne Naess, Thinking Like a Mountain: Towards a Council of All Beings (New Society Publishers, 1988).
Helen Tworkov, ‘Anti-abortion/pro-choice: taking both sides’, Tricycle 1992: 60–69.
Margot Wallach Milliken, Not Mixing Up Buddhism: Essays on Women and Buddhist Practice, eds. Kahawai Collective (Fredonia, NY: White Pine Press, 1986), 74–77.
My thoughts on Buddhist social and political ethics are drawn largely from Trevor Ling’s The Buddha (London: Pelican, 1973).
See especially Robert Thurman’s radical interpretation of the ideal Buddhist state (‘Nagarjuna’s Guidelines for Buddhist Social Activism’, in F. Eppsteiner, ed. The Path of Compassion: writings on socially engaged Buddhism (Berkeley: Parallax Press, 1988).
Also Thurman ‘The Politics of Enlightenment’, Tricycle, Fall 1992: 28–33.
See Stuart Smithers, ‘Freedom’s just another word’, Tricycle, Fall 1992: 34–39 for an interesting discussion of the historical tension between the precepts and antinomian freedom in Buddhism, and the parallel tension between morality and liberalism in the United States.
See for instance, Ryo Imamura, ‘The Shin Buddhist Stance on Abortion,’ Buddhist Peace Fellowship Newsletter 6 1984: 6–7, and Lecso, 1987.
Margot Wallach Milliken, Not Mixing Up Buddhism: Essays on Women and Buddhist Practice. eds. Kahawai Collective (Fredonia, NY: White Pine Press, 1986: 74–77), 76.
Sogyal Rinpoche The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying (Harper Collins, 1992), 376.
William LaFleur, ‘Contestation and Confrontation: The Morality of Abortion in Japan’, Philosophy East and West 40 1990:529–42;
Liquid Life: Abortion and Buddhism in Japan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992);
‘Silences and Censures: Abortion, History, and Buddhism in Japan. A Rejoinder to George Tanabe.’ Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 22/1–2 1995:185–196;
Anne Page Brooks, ‘Mizuko Kuyo and Japanese Buddhism’ Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 8 1991:119–47;
Hoshino Eiki and Takeda Dosho ‘Indebtedness and comfort: the undercurrents of mizuko kuyo in contemporary Japan’, Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 14 1987:305–20;
Bardwell Smith, ‘Buddhism and Abortion in Contemporary Japan: Mizuko Kuyō and the Confrontation with Death’, Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 15 1988:3–24;
Z. Werblowsky, ‘Mizuko Kuyō; Notulae on the most important “New Religion” of Japan’, Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 18 1984: 295–354.
Robert Aitken, The Mind of Clover: Essays on Zen Buddhist Ethics (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1984), 22.
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Hughes, J. (1998). Buddhism and Abortion: A Western Approach. In: Keown, D. (eds) Buddhism and Abortion. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-14178-4_9
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