Moonpaths: Ethics and Emptiness

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Translation of the BCA Source Texts (Skt-Eng)

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Descriptionངོ་སྤྲོད།

The Mahayana tradition in Buddhist philosophy is defined by its ethical orientation--the adoption of bodhicitta, the aspiration to attain awakening for the benefit of all sentient beings. And indeed, this tradition is known for its literature on ethics, which reflect the Madhyamaka tradition of philosophy, and emphasizes both the imperative to cultivate an attitude of universal care (karuna) grounded in the realization of emptiness, impermanence, independence, and the absence of any self in persons or other phenomena. This position is morally very attractive, but raises an important problem: if all phenomena, including persons and actions, are only conventionally real, can moral injunctions or principles be binding, or does the conventional status of the reality we inhabit condemn us to an ethical relativism or nihilism?
In Moonpaths, the Cowherds address an analogous problem in the domain of epistemology and argues that the Madhyamaka tradition has the resources to develop a robust account of truth and knowledge within the context of conventional reality. The essays explore a variety of ways in which to understand important Buddhist texts on ethics and Mahayana moral theory so as to make sense of the genuine force of morality. (Source: Oxford University Press)

Citation

Cowherds, The. Moonpaths: Ethics and Emptiness. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016.

Publisher Link

https://global.oup.com/academic/product/moonpaths-9780190260507?q=moonshadows&lang=en&cc=us

Table of contents

Acknowledgmentsvii
List of Contributorsix

Introduction: Why Ask about Madhyamaka and Ethics?1
- Jay L. Garfield and Graham Priest

1. The Many Voices of Buddhist Ethics7
- Charles Goodman and Sonam Thakchöe

2. Aiming at Happiness, Aiming at Ultimate Truth—In Practice21
- Amber Carpenter

3. The Dismal Slough43
- Koji Tanaka

4. The Śāntideva Passage: Bodhicaryāvatāra VIII.90-10355
- Jay L Garfield, Stephen Jenkins, and Graham Priest

5. Buddhist Ethics in the Context of Conventional Truth: Path and Transformation77
- Jay L Garfield

6. Waking into Compassion: The Three Ālambana of Karuṇā97
- Stephen Jenkins

7. Does "Buddhist Ethics” Exist?119
- Mark Siderits

8. From Madhyamaka to Consequentialism: A Road Map141
- Charles Goodman

9. The Prāsaṅgika's Ethics of Momentary Disintegration (Vināśa Bhāva): Causally Effective Karmic Moments159
- Sonam Thakchöe

10. How Does Merely Conventional Karma Work?183
- Guy Newland

11. The Connection Between Ontology and Ethics in Madhyamaka Thought203
- Jan Westerhoff

12. Compassion and the Net of Indra221
- Graham Priest

Appendix: Bodhicaryāvatāra-pañjikā VIII.90-103 by Prajñākaramati, Commenting on Śāntideva241
- Translated by Mark Siderits and Charles Goodman

References249
Index261

Interconnections

Works related to this item

8 Contains chapter or part

Siderits, Mark, and Charles Goodman, trans. "Bodhicaryāvatāra-pañjikā VIII.90-103 by Prajñākaramati, Commenting on Śāntideva." In Moonpaths: Ethics and Emptiness, edited by The Cowherds, 241–48 (Appendix). New York: Oxford University Press, 2016.

Articles2016About this item

This is a translation by Mark Siderits and Charles Goodman of Prajñākaramati's Bodhicaryāvatārapañjikā Chapter 8 verses 90-103, which is an appendix to Moonpaths: Ethics and Emptiness.

Garfield, Jay, L. "Buddhist Ethics in the Context of Conventional Truth: Path and Transformation." In Moonpaths: Ethics and Emptiness, edited by The Cowherds, 77–95. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016. https://jaygarfield.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/buddhist-ethics-in-the-context-of-conventional-truth.pdf.

Articles2016About this item

In this article Jay Garfield explores the apparent problem of ethics in the context of conventional truth and the Madhyamaka understanding of the two truths.

Priest, Graham. "Compassion and the Net of Indra." In Moonpaths: Ethics and Emptiness, edited by The Cowherds, 221–39. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016.

Articles2016About this item

In this chapter, Graham Priest discusses why compassion (karuṇā) is a central moral virtue of Buddhism and argues that it is emptiness that grounds the virtue of compassion.

Siderits, Mark. "Does 'Buddhist Ethics' Exist?" In Moonpaths: Ethics and Emptiness, edited by The Cowherds, 119–39. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016.

Articles2016About this item

Mark Siderits inqires into the question of what a Madhyamaka Buddhist ethics might look like, given that Madhyamaka denies there is much that can be said to be ultimately true.

Goodman, Charles. "From Madhyamaka to Consequentialism: A Road Map." In Moonpaths: Ethics and Emptiness, edited by The Cowherds, 141–58. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016.

Articles2016About this item

Charles Goodman articulates one way that Buddhist ethics might be systematized as a coherent metaethical framework—as a family of consequentialist theories.

Westerhoff, Jan. "The Connection between Ontology and Ethics in Madhyamaka Thought." In Moonpaths: Ethics and Emptiness, edited by The Cowherds, 203–20. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016.

Articles2016About this item

In this article Jan Westerhoff focuses in particular on whether the conventional existence of a self is a necessary precondition for Mahāyāna ethical practice.

Garfield, Jay L., Stephen Jenkins, and Graham Priest. "The Śāntideva Passage: Bodhicaryāvatāra VIII.90–103." In Moonpaths: Ethics and Emptiness, edited by The Cowherds, 55–76. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016.

Articles2016About this item

This chapter considers Bodhicaryāvatāra chap 8, verses 90–103 on "exchanging self and other" and discusses three ways in which they might reasonably be interpreted.

Jenkins, Stephen. "Waking into Compassion: The Three Ālambana of Karuṇā." In Moonpaths: Ethics and Emptiness, edited by The Cowherds, 97–117. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016.

Articles2016About this item

This chapter addresses the problem of compassion for sentient beings who are ultimately empty and then investigates how compassion made sense to three Mādhyamika thinkers.

1 Scholarship on

Śāntideva (ཞི་བ་ལྷ་). Bodhicaryāvatāra [बोधिचर्यावतार]. byang chub sems dpa'i spyod pa la 'jug pa [བྱང་ཆུབ་སེམས་དཔའི་སྤྱོད་པ་ལ་འཇུག་པ།]. [The Way of the Bodhisattva]. Tengyur, RKTST 3216 http://www.rkts.org/cat.php?id=3216&typ=2.

Classical WorksAbout this item

An "Introduction to Bodhisattva Practice," the Bodhisattvacaryāvatāra is a poem about the path of a bodhisattva, in ten chapters, written by the Indian Buddhist Śāntideva (fl. c. 685–763). One of the masterpieces of world literature, it is a core text of Mahāyāna Buddhism and continues to be taught, studied, and commented upon in many languages and by many traditions around the world. The main subject of the text is bodhicitta, the altruistic aspiration for enlightenment, and the path and practices of the bodhisattva, the six perfections (pāramitās). The text forms the basis of many contemporary discussions of Buddhist ethics and philosophy.