1. 288p 2. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 277-288)
關鍵詞
方法論=Methodology; 佛教人物=Buddhist; 佛教倫理學=Buddhist Ethics; 修行方法=修行法門=Practice; 慈悲心=Compassion=Metta=Loving Kindness=Maitri; Philosophy; religion and theology; Cambodian; Moral discernment; Narrative ethics
摘要
The scholarly discourse of Buddhist ethics has privileged an interpretation of Buddhist ethics as individual human perfection, emphasizing the practice of compassion, loving-kindness and equanimity, drawn largely from the canonical Pali tradition. My thesis, an analysis of a vernacular Theravadin ethics manual from turn-of-the-century Cambodia, examines a quite different conception of Buddhist ethics. This narrative text, entitled the Gatilok, (“Ways of the World”), composed by the Khmer poet and Pāli scholar Ukn¨a Suttantaprïjā Ind, presents a Theravadin vision of how to live in a world containing evil. Raising the problem of the viability of the moral life in a world in which human beings, through desire and ignorance, generate wickedness, harm and suffering for themselves and other beings, the Gatilok suggests a pragmatic model for human conduct centered on the cultivation of moral discernment.
I argue that the text should be viewed as an on-the-ground effort to reconcile the Buddhist ethical ideal of individual purity with the reality of human experience in a world in which one's ethical choices and actions are constrained by the complexity of interrelatedness with others who may act out of ignorance or malevolence. I demonstrate, first, how the composer of the text tries to enlarge the Theravadin tradition to make it more relevant to what he sees as the experiences and problems of “ordinary persons,” whose situatedness in the social world necessitates the development of discernment as a crucial feature of moral life. Second, I examine the ways in which the text employs narrative as a medium for ethical reflection, drawing on the work of ethicist Martha Nussbaum to inform my understanding of the role of narrative in articulating visions of moral agency. My methodology combines historical analysis with a close reading of the text's ethical content. In presenting the work, I try to recreate to the extent possible, the intended ethical-pedagogical experience of the text through translations, descriptions and analysis of its ethical rhetorical structures.
