Buddhist peace practice

Abstract

Buddhist ethics searches out the nature of suffering, its arising, and the paths to resolution of that suffering. This is radical, not remedial, ethics. Christopher Ives argues that the experience that is śūnyatā ("emptiness") has a profound effect on the resources ethical imagination utilizes in confronting the chaotic disorder of modern human life. Śūnyatā negates "the entanglement with dualistic subjectivity" that assumes an existent subject who is wholly independent of the process of exterior impermanent reality. In our lived experience, this negation is the activity of progressively emptying "the narrowly selfish concern and the deceit, manipulation, domination and violence that may accompany such entanglements." As Buddhists have developed the social analytical tools necessary for critiquing modern political and economic systems, many Buddhists have become compassionate activists challenging political and economic oppression and exploitation in the name of mutual interdependence, non-violence, universal loving concern, compassion, Buddha, and the environment and its myriad dharmas. Sivaraksa insists that Buddhism must spend less time on ritual and tradition, and more time on living what the Buddha taught.