AUTHOR
David Bubna-Litic
School of Management
University of Technology
Sydney
D.Bubna-Litic@uts.edu.au
TITLE
Buddhist Ethics and Business Strategy Making
ABSTRACT
This paper will explore the implications of Buddhism (Mahayana perspective) to Business practice. Particularly the assumption behind independence vs interdependence or interbeing. The article will focus on how ethical assumptions are made in the genesis of strategy creation in business organisations, that is how business make fundamental decisions about their activities. Issues relating to the "process" of strategy formulation (as opposed to the content) will also be explored. Strategic decision relate to a wide range of Human rights issues, such as, intervention in the political process, the use of sweat-shop labour, abuse of third-world evironments, manufacture of materialist values and the marginalisation of spiritual values. Many organizations enter into such practices on the basis that they are serving their shareholder's best interests. This paper will question this assumption by deconstructing monolithic views of a)organisations b) agency and c) assumptions about top management's locus of control.
AUTHOR
Santipala Stephen Evans
Director, Theravada Buddhist Ministries
Part Time Faculty, Metropolitan State College of Denver
Software Engineer, US West
tbm@usa.net
TITLE
Buddhist Resignation and Human Rights (Freedom is what I am)
ABSTRACT
Buddhism's first weapon against suffering is acceptance. Demanding one's rights seems to contradict that. A Buddhist articulation of "rights" must address that issue. It must also address the question of authority, and it must be comprehensible to ordinary Buddhists and heads of state.
Buddhist ethics provide the necessary framework or "behavioral grammar," but lacks the ultimate authority implied in the western notion of "rights." The Buddha advises acceptance of the human condition as articulated in the Karma-rebirth mythology, pa.ticcasamuppaada etc.: we are free, responsible and contingent, creators and creatures of our world and of each other. Ruler and ruled, then, have an existential claim on each other.
Moreover, it is not the case that human beings should be free, but that we are. We create our own futures and it is in the state's interest to accommodate that creativity. As a subject, simple honesty may bring me into conflict with authority and the language of rights may be an appropriate weapon. Acceptance of my current situation becomes the basis for action toward a future of my own choosing, a choice which I cannot not make.
As the Buddha was fond of saying: "My teaching leads to happiness in this world as well as the next."
AUTHOR
Jay L. Garfield
Professor of Philosophy, School of Communications and Cultural Studies
Hampshire College
jlgCCS@hamp.hampshire.edu
TITLE
ABSTRACT
Moral frameworks, such as that of Western liberal democracy, which take rights as primary and which give a central role to privacy, are often taken to be incompatible with moral frameworks grounded in compassion, such as that embodied in Mahaayaana Buddhist moral theory. Liberal moral theory has been criticized on just these grounds, and liberals have criticized compassion-based moral theory for being unable to ground rights, or to accord individuals privacy. I argue that while one cannot use liberalism as a basis for a theory of compassion, a moral theory grounded in compassion does indeed generate rights, and even a modified, but morally more desirable, form of privacy. These standpoints are hence compatible, if properly articulated.
AUTHOR
Soraj Hongladarom
Department of Philosophy
Faculty of Arts
Chulalongkorn University
Bangkok 10330, THAILAND
soraj@chulkn.chula.ac.th
TITLE
ABSTRACT
Sulak Sivaraksha and Phra Dhammapidok (Prayudh Prayutto) are two leading Buddhist thinkers in Thailand today. Although both are steeped in the Theravaada tradition, their views on the proper role of Buddhism toward the problems of society, including that of human rights, diverge in a significant way. While Sulak favors a kind of socially engaged Buddhism in which the religion is seen as an instrument toward betterment of the society in terms of justice, democracy and respect for human rights, Phra Dhammapidok tends to be more conservative and text oriented, and for him Buddhism seems to be more concerned with the cessation of suffering at the individual level rather than trying to improve the society at large. This paper will undertake a critical and comparative investigation of the thoughts of these two thinkers, and will show how both thinkers deal with the problem of the relation between Buddhism and human rights, thus bringing to relief the central problem of the proper role of Buddhism toward its social environment.
AUTHOR
Craig K. Ihara
Philosophy Dept.
Cal State, Fullerton
CIHARA@ccvax.fullerton.edu
TITLE
Why There Are No Rights in Buddhism - A Reply to Damien Keown
ABSTRACT
Keown argues that even though there is no word for rights in Pali or Sanskrit that "the concept of rights is implicit in classical Buddhism." This paper argues that there is no concept of rights in classical Buddhism and that introducing it would significantly transform the nature of Buddhist ethics as Keown describes it. The paper begins by discussing Keown's arguments for the view that some concept of rights does exist in classical Buddhism, and then presents the author's view view why there is not. Finally it argues that while rights cannot be added to classical Buddhism without substantially transforming it, it is still possible it should be done.
AUTHOR
Peter D.Junger
Professor of Law
Case Western Reserve University Law School
Cleveland, OH
junger@pdj2-ra.f-remote.cwru.edu
TITLE
ABSTRACT
One's rights are better things to cling to than one's wrongs, but the Buddha's teachings are that the cessation of suffering comes only when one stops clinging to things, even rights. "Human rights'' is a rhetorical concept of the Western "Enlightenment'' that is used to justify certain values that once would have been justified by an appeal to Christian authorities and traditions. (There is, though, a question as to exactly what values are subsumed under the term "human rights''.) Many, if not all, of these values--especially those that can be seen as the products of either tolerance or compassion--are also valued by those who follow the Buddha Dharma and its traditions, but they do not need to invoke any concept of rights to do so. On the other hand, there are those, often well intentioned, souls, who demand as ``human rights'' such things as freedom form want, or freedom from suffering, that the Dharma teaches are not attainable as rights, but only by right views, right thought. right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration. Thus "human rights'' are at best skillful means, that must be transcended before they can be obtained.
AUTHOR
Damien Keown
Department of Historical & Cultural Studies
University of London, Goldsmiths
d.keown@gold.ac.uk
TITLE
Are there "Human Rights" in Buddhism?
ABSTRACT
If Buddhism wishes to address the issues which are of concern to today's
global community, it must begin to ask itself new questions alongside the
old ones. In the context of human rights an important preliminary question
would seem to be whether traditional Buddhism has any understanding of
what is meant by "human rights" at all. Indeed, it may be thought that
since the concept of "rights" is the product of an alien cultural tradition
it would be utterly inappropriate to speak of rights of any kind - "human"
or otherwise - in a Buddhist context. Even if it was felt that these objections
were overstated, and that the issue of human rights does have a legitimate
place on the Buddhist agenda, there would still remain the separate and
no less difficult question of how human rights were to be grounded in Buddhist
doctrine, particularly in the light of the fact that the tradition itself
provides little precedent or guidance in this area. This paper offers a
preliminary exploration of the questions raised in the paragraph above.
It concludes that it is legitimate to speak of both "rights" and "human
rights" in Buddhism, and proposes a ground for human rights in Buddhist
doctrine.
Also published in the Journal of Buddhist Ethics, Vol. 2
AUTHOR
John Powers
Australian National University
TITLE
ABSTRACT
The primary focus of this paper will be the philosophical disagreement between the Dalai Lama and the government of the People's Republic of China on the issue of the universality of human rights. The Chinese authorities contend that the notion of 'human rights' is a creation of Western governments and an instrument by which they attempt to foist their culture-specific values on other countries. Deng Xiaoping has stated that a government's primary duty is to provide food and other basic necessities for its people and that Western ideas of 'human rights' are inappropriate in an Asian context. This notion has also been endorsed by Western political leaders, including President Bill Clinton, but the paper will contend that the moral philosophies of Buddhism and Confucianism - the two most historically important pan-Asian systems of moral philosophy - provide significant grounds for conclusions similar to those outlined in the United Nations' 'Universal Declaration of Human Rights.'
The Dalai Lama, one of the most prominent contemporary Asian religious figures, contends that the Universal Declaration outlines universal principles applicable to all cultures, Asian and Western. My paper will examine the document in the light of the competing claims of both sides, and will discuss how their respective positions reflect their philosophical and religious assumptions and political statuses. The key question will be the issue of whether or not these 'universal principles' are in fact universal or only culture-specific.
AUTHOR
Charles R. Strain
Professor of Religious Studies
DePaul University
cstrain@wppost.depaul.edu
TITLE
ABSTRACT
Challenges to human rights theories have come from communitarian philosophers who criticize the roots of those theories in the world view of Western individualism and from cultural relativists who deny the universality of moral claims made by human rights advocates. My thesis is that religious traditions advocating human rights provide an important corrective to Western liberal interpretations of human rights by situating rights within a larger understanding of the common good and of ultimate purpose. Secondly, religious traditions by forging alliances across cultural and religious divides using such "bridge concepts" as human rights are the key to meeting the challenges of cultural relativists. We seek not an abstract but a dialectical universality arising out of the mutual transformation of religious reflections on human rights.
I will discuss this thesis not abstractly but concretely by showing how the approaches to human rights by contemporary socially engaged Buddhists, with specific attention to their formulation of the teaching of dependent co arising, can lead Catholic thinkers and activists to reconsider and reformulate a series of central principles underlying Catholic social teachings on human rights. In developing this case I will draw on the writings of Buddhist thinkers like Maseo Abe and Taitetsu Unno and the engaged reflections of activists like Thich Nhat Hanh and Sulak Sivaraksa. For Catholic social teachings I will draw on papal encyclicals and the pastoral letters of North American bishops.
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