Sangharakshita founded the Triratna Buddhist Order and community (formerly WBO and FWBO) in order to make the Dharma known in the modern West. But what kind of Buddhist modernism did this imply? In this article I use the teaching of the ‘five niyamas’ as a case study of Sangharakshita’s commitment to developing a modernist interpretation of the Dharma. Sangharakshita’s teaching of the five niyamas, or ‘orders of conditionality’, are five kinds of cause-effect relationship. The first three correspond to physics, biology and psychology, and represent a commitment to the naturalistic worldview of modern science. The karma-niyama and dharma-niyama further represent naturalistic interpretations of the moral order and the Buddhist path to Awakening. I trace the development of the five niyamas teaching from Mrs Rhys Davids’ creative mis-interpretation of a commentarial teaching through several stages of re-interpretation. The ‘five niyamas’ represent a modernist Buddhist hermeneutics of conditionality.
目次
Abstract 51 Introduction 51 Mrs. Rhys Davids and the five niyamas 53 Buddhaghosa on the fivefold niyama 57 Nārada thera and the scope of karma 63 Sangharakshita and the five niyamas: early stage 66 Sangharakshita and the five niyamas: middle stage 68 Sangharakshita and the five niyamas: mature stage 70 Conclusion 74 References 76
