The ethical principles of Buddhism embrace all the essential facts of life through which man can find an avenue of escape from suffering-the root cause of the trouble in this world. In the course of trans-formation from savagery to this present day, mankind suffered, still suffers and will continue to do so, unless a solution is found. Buddhism offers the best solution. The Four Noble Truths forms the nucleus of Buddhism. They show and prove the exist-ence, the cause, the cure and the nature of the cure of suffering.
The nature of the cure is undertaken by treading the Path of Purity, the Noble Eightfold Path, which leads to the feet of Truth and ultimately to Nirvana. The Noble Eightfold Path leads man to the knowledge and wisdom which when absorbed by the mind, disengages one from worldly things, and to be freed from worldly things, means that all the troubles in the world are automatically brought to an end.
He is attracted only in striving to amass artificial needs upon which he generally bases his efforts and is not interested in discriminating between the transitionary and the real meaning of life or to grow indifferent to the impermanence of life with its manifold worries. With this ignorance the prospects for grasping the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path are remote. If they are too deep for the aver-age man to understand thoroughly, at least, the Five Precepts which form the daily moral code of Buddhists can still play a very effective part in improving a man’s life. A Buddhist in vowing to observe the Five Precepts, abstains from taking life, abstains from taking what is not given, abstains from sensuous misconduct, absta-ins from false speech and abstains from taking intoxicants. These constitute the common evils that corrupt and weaken morality of our every day life. Morality in civilisation is fast decaying. The obser-vance of the Five Precepts serves as an ideal cure.
Buddhism teaches the Law of Kamma or the Law of Cause and Effect where we are plainly shown that every action in life has its corresponding reaction.The doct-rine of Kamma is, therefore that every act-ion has its reaction. Modern science concurs in the idea of the reaction returning to its original source (energy). All beings are subject to this universal law of action and reaction. Every man is today what his past actions have made him. Likewise civiliza-tion is today what the past actions of its architects have made it.
The future depends on what we are doing now? Through wrong desire we are sowing the seeds of misery, greed, hate, passion, discontentment and other evils. Because no one can escape the consequ-ences of one’s own actions, it is inevitable that much suffering has yet to come. It is human to err but man is a self governing being and self governing includes the power to commit errors as well as to put them right as often as they are made. Kamma is a way of learning over and over again with the same mistakes, how not to make these mistakes. Kamma is not a punishment, it is merely a balance of forces set in motion by an individual. There can be no forgiveness of sins - a man forgives his own sins as he causes newer and better forces to operate in his life and affairs. The Law of Kamma has a decisive effect on one who really sees the vision of its mean-ing. The knowledge of it can make us adjust our lives in a manner which will contribute more to the future of civilization with unselfish attitude towards the welfare of all people by tempering our actions with discretion.
Hatred ceaseth not by hatred, but hatred ceaseth only by love ( mettŒ ). Buddhism has taught and proved the power of love (mettŒ) and of how it can work to over-come the adversities that confront us. This was convincingly proved by Buddha’s Eight Successes or Victories. The Law of Kamma holds true here also, for when we radiate out our love ( mettŒ ) towards all beings the same returns to us accordingly. The cultivation of love (mettŒ) for all beings is a daily routine activity of a Buddhist which should be pursued by the average man today. The value of its cultivation needs to be realised. The rewards of love (mettŒ) are as great as the efforts made to give it.
There is much personal freedom in Buddhism. There is of course a correspon-ding responsibility, for when a person is free he must accept the consequences of that freedom. Buddhism thereby teaches utmost self reliance as an inevitable relation of freedom. The basis of progress is self reliance. When man has a centralised power to protect and care for him whether it be a state dictatorship or an ecclesiastical authority, it will of necessity, limit his personal freedom. What is characteristics of Buddhism. It is based upon spiritual liberty, not merely liberty of worship and so seeks to eliminate the world’s slave mentalities, the successful working of which is another step in promoting the progress of civilization.
Buddhism teaches entire racial freedom in a recognition that all peoples are One. Universal brotherhood is not a high sound-ing phrase of moral ideals in Buddhism; it is one of the foundations in it. It states that all are equal and acts accordingly on this premise.Thus Buddhism offers rock bottom foundation for the eradication of Racism, one of the chief ills of civilization today. It adheres to the idea that the abolition of war will come only through human education which acknowledges the Oneness of all life. By accepting Bud-dhism one becomes fitted to become a World Citizen, devoid of racial prejudice, loving all life, free to go forward with all the new progress of an expanding science.
An outstanding example of how Bud-dhism can function in a practical way to bring about a golden age of happy contacts between different races was the reign of Asoka, the great King of India in the third century B.C. By his great enthusiasm for Buddhism to which he was converted, he showed what an international unifying power Buddhism can be. In his reign he made peace with many countries which formerly had been his bitter enemies, and both art and good works flourished throu-ghout India as it has at no other time in Indian history.
Blood had never been spilt in the name of Buddhism, Wherever Buddhism flouris-hed, there we shall find a peaceful, happy, contented people.
The facts that I have shown will reveal that Buddhism supplies the most complete and intellectually sound path that can save civilization. At no historical time has the world known so much suffering and the need to escape from suffering. The stren-uousness of modern life is breaking down human resistance and vitality. By Buddhist methods of meditation or creative mind control, the Buddhist is able to change his pattern of life and create for himself a new world here and now.
Buddhism can save civilization, but I will not commit myself to say that it will do it, for Buddhism only shows the way. It teaches that there can be peace, happiness and contentment when men forget them-selves in something greater than their own selfish longings. By itself Buddhism cannot save civilization. No man can save another. To be saved, civilization through its own efforts must work out its own salvation through knowledge of Buddhism with a sincere practical devotion to it, for it assu-mes meaning and provides results only when it is properly understood, practiced and lived.
I have attempted a short account of the teachings of Buddha and tried to make a sketch of meditation which constitutes the very core of Buddhist approach to life with the intention of finding out how they will be helpful in providing us with some guidelines on how to make our world more peaceful and congenial place to live in.
Owing to the tremendous advances that mankind has made in science and tech-nology living conditions improved dramati-cally in so many ways. At the same time we are confronted with many serious problems such as the problem of environ-mental pollution, the depletion of sources of energy and wastage of natural resources. There are also social problems such as those relating to health. We have problems associated with disregard for human rights; the widening gap between the rich and the poor and the explosive regional tensions.
If we examine these problems as a whole we could say that despite the outward diversity, we can trace manifestation of a common root associated with our social organism. We could say this common root is characterised as placing narrow, short term self interests above that of the long –range good of the broader human comm-unity. The multitude of social ills that we are encountering today may be traced to the powerful human drives that lie behind them.
The Buddha’s teaching offers us two tools to extricate ourselves from these ills. One is analysing the hidden springs of human suffering and the other is the path of moral and mental training that holds out a solution. The Buddha explains that the hidden springs, in both the personal and social parts of our lives, are the three mental factors called the unwholesome roots, namely; greed, hatred and Delusion. Traditional Buddhist teachings depict these unwholesome roots as the causes of per-sonal suffering, and we could take a wider view and say that they are equally respon-sible for and are the source of social, economic and political suffering. Through the prevalence of greed the world is being transformed into a global market place where people are being reduced to the status of mere consumers, even commodi-ties and our planet’s vital resources are being pillaged, without concern for future generations. Through the prevalence of hatred, national and ethnic differences become the breeding ground for suspicion and enmity, exploding in violence and end-less cycles of revenge.Delusion bolsters the other two unwholesome roots with false beliefs and political ideologies put forward to justify policies motivated by greed and hatred.
With the many forms of violence and injustice so widespread in today’s world, there is much need for true peace and social stability. What is needed is a univer-sal consciousness that can enable us to regard others as essentially as ourselves. We must learn to detach ourselves from the insistent voice of self-interest and rise up to a universal perspective from which the welfare of all appears as important as one’s own good. That is we must outgrow self interest and embrace interests of the broader human community.
To enable our efforts to achieve the goal of striving to embrace the interests of the broader human community we should be guided by the antidotes to the three un-wholesome roots: (1) We must overcome exploitative greed with global generosity, helpfulness, and cooperation (2) We must replace hatred and revenge with a policy of kindness, tolerance and forgive-ness and (3) We must recognize that our world is an interdependent, interwoven whole such that irresponsible behavior anywhere has potentially harmful reper-cussions everywhere. These guidelines, drawn from the Buddha’s teaching may be considered as the nucleus of a global ethic which would attract world wide interest for translation into action.
Underlying the specific contents of a global ethic are certain attitudes of heart that we must try to introduce and develop in our personal lives and social dealings. The chief of these are mettΠ(loving kind-ness) and karun. Π( compassion ). Through mettΠwe recognize that just as we each wish to live happily and peacefully, so would the wish of all our fellow beings to live happily and peacefully. Through karun.Πwe realise that just as each of us is averse to pain and suffering, so too would all others be adverse to pain and pain and suffering. When we have under-stood this common core of feeling that we share with everyone else, we will treat others with the same kindness and care that we would expect them to treat us. This must apply at a communal level as much as in our personal relations. We must learn to see other communities as essentially similar to our own, entitled to the same benefits as we wish for the group to which we belong.
This call for a global ethic does not spring from ethical idealism of wishful thinking, but rests on a solid pragmatic foundation. In the long run, to pursue our narrow self-interest in ever widening circles would be to undermine our real long term interest; for by adopting such an approach we would be contributing to social disintegration and ecological devast-ation, thus it would be like sawing away the branch on which we are sitting. To subordinate narrow self-interest to the common good is, in the end, to further our own good, which depends so much upon social harmony, economic justice and a sustainable environment.
The Buddha has pointed out that of all things in the world, the one with the most powerful influence for both good and bad is the mind. Genuine peace between peoples and nations grow out of peace and goodwill in the hearts of human beings. Such peace cannot be won merely by material progress, by economic develop-ment and technical innovation, but de-mands moral and mental development. It is only by transforming our world in the direction of peace and amity. This means that for the human race to live together peacefully on this earth, the inescapable challenge facing us is to understand and master ourselves.
It is here that Buddha's teaching be-comes timely. In its diagnosis of the mental defilement as the underlying causes of human suffering, the teaching shows us the hidden roots of our personnel and collective problems. By proposing a pra-ctical path of moral and mental training, the teaching offers effective remedy for tackling the problems of the world in the one place where they are directly access-ible to us in our own minds. The Buddha's teaching provides us with the guidelines to enable us to make our world a more peaceful place to live in.