Buddhist Attitudes Research Articles

Thailand: Refining Cultural Values

In the second of a set of three articles concerned with "bioethics on the Pacific Rim," Ratanakul, director of a research center for Southeast Asian cultures in Thailand, provides an overview of bioethical issues in his country. He focuses on four issues: health care allocation, AIDS, determination of death, and euthanasia. The introduction of Western medicine into Thailand has brought with it a multitude of ethical problems created in part by tension between Western and Buddhist values. For this reason, Ratanakul concludes that "bioethical enquiry in Thailand must not only examine ethical dilemmas that arise in the actual practice of medicine and research in the life sciences, but must also deal with the refinement and clarification of applicable Thai cultural and moral values."With the advance of industrialization in Thailand, the country's health care sector faces a host of ethical problems that have arisen from the clash between Western medical models and Thai culture. The most prominent of these problems centers on the question of just distribution of health care. While 80% of the population still lives in rural areas, 62% of the doctors practice in the large, modern hospital located in urban centers. While the majority of the population lacks basic health care, the government devotes most of its resources to diseases that affect few people, such as cancer and heart diseases. This distribution imbalance runs counter to traditional Thai morality, based on the Buddhist principle of justice -- "do not harm." Following this principle would require an increase in the number of provincial hospitals and rural health clinics, and perhaps greater incentives for doctors who practice in rural areas. Besides the issue of imbalance, the spread of AIDS has also raised ethical concerns. Initially, the government refused to disclose statistics on the disease, hoping to avoid panic, but public pressure changed the secretive manner of addressing AIDS. The increase in attention has raised the question of voluntary HIV-testing. Because Thai culture does not emphasize respect for individual rights, most people fear reprisals from testing positive. The government needs to pass regulations protecting the interests of these people. Another cultural clash centers around the definition of death. Western standards (whether the traditional hear-lung or the new brain-oriented criteria) run counter to the traditional Buddhist conception of a lifespan. In a related issue, Thai Buddhist attitudes towards killing, understood to be acts of hatred, have led to conclusion that euthanasia is immoral, even when a doctor performs a "mercy- killing," or when the life involved is that of an impaired newborn. In order to sustain the life of an impaired newborn, scarce resources are used up. In Thailand's health care sector, ethical dilemmas are not confined to the actual practice of medicine, but include the country's cultural values.

Buddhist Attitudes towards Christianity during the Edo Period (3)

Buddhist Attitudes towards Christianity during the Edo Period (3)

"Eros" and Intimacy in Edwards

Previous articleNext article No Access"Eros" and Intimacy in EdwardsPaula M. CooeyPaula M. Cooey Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Religion Volume 69, Number 4Oct., 1989 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/488201 Views: 4Total views on this site Citations: 2Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1989 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article: Clarence E. Hardy III Imagine a World: Howard Thurman, Spiritual Perception, and American Calvinism, The Journal of Religion 81, no.11 (Oct 2015): 78–97.https://doi.org/10.1086/490766Michel Clasquin Contemporary Theravāda and Zen Buddhist attitudes to human sexuality: An exercise in comparative ethics, Religion 22, no.11 (Feb 2011): 63–83.https://doi.org/10.1016/0048-721X(92)90037-5

Buddhist Attitudes towards Christianity in the Edo Period (2)

Buddhist Attitudes towards Christianity in the Edo Period (2)

Buddhist attitudes to Hellenism: A review of the issue

Buddhist attitudes to Hellenism: A review of the issue

Buddhist Attitudes toward Women's Bodies

People in the field of religious studies have begun to raise questions about the assumptions made with regard to women cross-culturally. Current research has tended to deal with how these assumptions affect both men and women in three ways: 1. There have been studies on women's authority and power in religious institutions. 2. There have been studies on what women write about their own religious aspirations and practices. 3. There have been studies on images of women and the feminine, that is, how symbols affect women's and men's self-concepts. My own recent work belongs to the last category. I began to look at generalizations about women's position in the Buddhist tradition in the summer of 1974 after completing my dissertation. I decided to take a closer look at the generally held academic views about women in Buddhism, namely: 1. Women were of secondary importance in Theravadin and other early primitive Buddhist societies. This was due to the importance of monastic institutions and the inferiority accorded to the institution of nuns. 2. Women were elevated to equal (or near equal) status in Mahayana societies because of less importance placed on monastic institutions. More attention was given to lay-oriented Buddhism and to the doctrine of universal Buddhahood-or the One Vehicle (Ekayana). Hence, with emphasis on participation among the laity together with the claim that all beings are potential Buddhas, women would be viewed as equal in their capacity for religious fulfillment. My study of the texts, however, does not support such a generalization about the Mahayana Buddhist tradition. And I suspect that the generalization about Theravada as wholly antagonistic towards women, or at least more antagonistic than Mahayana, also is overstating the case. This present study focuses only on

Early Buddhist Attitudes Toward the Art of Painting

Early Buddhist Attitudes Toward the Art of Painting

Early Buddhist Attitudes toward the Art of Painting

To the best of my knowledge, no attempt has been made to assemble and render into any European language the passages dealing with painting that may be found scattered through the Chinese translations of early Buddhist literature. Students of Indian art have turned to Pāli, Sanskrit, or Tibetan texts with profit, but their contributions have necessarily been limited. The Pāli books, bound to the Hīnayāna, in general show a less lively interest in the possibilities of the representational arts than is proper to the Northern School. Sanskrit remains are late, or non-Buddhist; the Tibetan literature is still doubly inaccessible behind physical and language barriers. In contrast, the Chinese translations cover the whole of Buddhist writings with unique completeness. At the same time they offer the most readily available collection of texts from the area and the period when sculpture and painting were first being granted high importance as a religious instrument: i.e. North India in the first two or three centu...