Engaged Buddhist Practice and Ecological Ethics

Abstract

Engaged Buddhist approaches to an ecological ethics can be read as a case study of the reinvention of Buddhism within the matrix of Western cultures. Three challenges have been raised to these efforts: first, engaged Buddhists have projected back onto the early Buddhist tradition modern formulations of ancient teachings in particular that of dependent co-arising (pratitya samutpada); second, Buddhists associated with the deep ecology movement have offered a form of holism that is “ethically vacuous;” third, while Buddhist virtue ethics are immune to some of these criticisms, they fail in face of the urgency of the challenge presented by climate change and do not offer a way of addressing entrenched power that impedes action. The article takes up each of these challenges and argues that these Buddhist “Eco-constructivists” perform a midrash on the Buddhist tradition that is geared towards praxis; it offers forms of practice that are hardly ethically vacuous.