Buddhist Ethics and Trends in Education

AN ANALYTICAL STUDY OF

Buddhist Ethics and Trends in Education

Dr. Subhadr Panyadeep World Buddhist University, Thailand

Introduction:

Humanity stands at this century’s end in a situation of extraordinary challenge and openness. Scientific and technological advances are creating new opportunities on a scale previously unimagined, even as they threaten to destroy the very foundation of human life. The forces of a globalizing economy are creating great widen the gap between the haves and haves-not within and among societies and nations. Increasing global interdependence gives rise to ever more complex transboundary questions, defying traditional situations.

Ideas and institutions, values and practices that served humanities so well in its endeavor to industrialize and modernize are increasingly called into question. Individualism, rationalism, scientism and teleology of progress, which had been the driving forces of the modern industrial civilization, seem now to be working at cross purposes with the tasks of human survival and flourishing as societies and nations attempt to come to terms with the new historical realities. Yet, no culture is possible without agreement on a foundation of common values and ideas to guide the tasks of governance.

Here then is a common ethical framework within which all Buddhist cultures, societies and individuals are invited to deliberate on the tasks of survival and flourishing. It invites all stakeholders in the ethics of the 21^st Century to take their respective positions. It will lead to a common ethical vision and a process that must be nurtured in an open-ended way through dialogue mutual learning, and, above all, good will, namely¹:

1. Relationship to Nature
2. Human Fulfillment
3. Individual and community
4. justice

As we consider the alternative views on the nature of values, we need to asses the various methods of justifying value judgments. Here, come up the epistemological question: “How does one know?” Now, as we enter the field of axiology [the study of the nature, types, and governing criteria of values and value judgments], we rephrase the question and ask, “what sorts of reasons and what kind of thinking justify a value judgment. Such questions concern the logics of ethics, and, logically speaking, they come first; when you say what you value, you imply a prior stand on how you value. However, psychologically speaking, the process is reversed.   We make all sorts of

¹ OTTO Chang (2002); An Article on “Humanistic BUDDHISM and Knowledge of Ethics   Management, Hshi Lai Journal of Humanistic Buddhism, vol.3 p.227-243

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claims about what is valuable (normative ethics), and only later, if ever, do we examine the grounds for our value-beliefs, their logical foundations (which involves us in the inquiry known as meta-ethics). Can any theory about what is valuable be valid unless the thinking leading to it is itself sound and reliable?

Questions to consider (philosophically)

1. Is lying always wrong?
2. When I want to do something but society says it is wrong, how can one decide
   which course to take?
   1. Why not get fun of life without worrying about long-term consequences?
   2. Is it wrong to try out things, like: cocaine?
   3. Who really has the authority to set up rules about right and wrong?
   4. Is conscience a reliable guide?
   5. Isn’t every act selfish, because even martyrs do what gives them satisfaction?
   6. Don’t we say Thai life is better simply because we’ve been brought up that
      way? In other words, aren’t all values relative?

Value question can be approached in two quite different ways: take the proposition “It is bad to lie”. Why is it lying bad?

One answer would be,

“Because it is morally wrong; it violates a moral law and it is our duty to obey moral law” right or duty (deontological theory)

Another answer might be,

“Because lying has undesirable consequences; it destroys people’s trust in one another, and such trust is an ingredient of a satisfying human life and the second a “consequence” or “good life” (teleological theory)

Conclusion of the manual of ethics – An Ethical continuum²:

-  Utilitarianism                                                    -Situationism

-  Egoism                                                              – Rational choice

-  Cultural Relativism                                          – Objectivism or subjectivism

-  Relativism                                                         -Absolutism
(Feeling, culture, consequences)                    (Law, reason, reality)

In the course of making day-to-day choices involving a value dimension, we must operate in terms of a fundamental ethical decision. Our motives can be either egoistic or altruistic. We can choose or adopt or reject the key principle that each person is to count as one. We can be guided by an ethic of rules or by an ethic of consequences. We must make choices about the kind of people we are to become.

In the final analysis, each of us must make a personal decision. However, our decision concerning the nature of values and the methods for justifying value

‘ Honer/Hunt/Okholm: (2002): “Invitation to Philosophy” Thomson Learning, Singapore. P. 162

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judgments need not be made in an arbitrary fashion. We can choose responsibility after a careful examination of the available options (including a check of their claims against the findings of the natural and social sciences) and after an imaginative assessment of the overall way of life within which our preferred option would find its place. Ultimately, perhaps the most precious ingredient in a way of life is not a constellation of “content” values but an open and deeply questioning process for making value commitments.

Education – Introducing, Science, Education and Ethical Values into the Buddhist Classroom and Laboratory:

My most respected Venerable and distinguished guests and Buddhist scholars, this symposium concentrates on the integration of Buddhist ethics with Science and Education, and perhaps little on ethical reflection itself. Had implications for:

• its structure
• the subjects to be discussed
• the speakers and participants to be invited?

The speakers were experts on more theoretical questions, such as:

• moral reasoning,
• collective decision-making
• the methodology of science
• science and Buddhism
• moral development

…or more practical questions such as development, testing of new teaching materials and curriculum developments (ethics, psychology, philosophy of science, Buddhism and education). Please look at these models:

Figure 1 = Models of Science Curriculum and associated STS studies: (STS = Science, Technology and Society):

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Model	Aims	Perceptions of science	Teacher/student relationship	Type of STS course
Product	To impart an unproblematic body of knowledge about the natural world	Empiricist and inductivist; always as common sense	Hierarchical; a transmission belt from both sides.	Utilitarian
Inquiry	To satisfy curiosity about the way the world is. Some times: Knowledge for its own sake and the reproduction of practitioner/science	A methods of enquiry; frequently Poperian and synthesis	A partnership though not an equal one.	Liberal/ humanistic
Relevance	Acquisition of knowledge for the sake of collective liberation and personal development	Problem solving response to human needs	Collaborative inquiry into natters of agreed concern	Reflexive

I have, (as requested), discussed some alternatives to present patterns of science education, and some implications towards being properly integrated into the applied course of Buddhist Ethics in Thailand for the years of B.E. 2552/3. This might be considered as a compromise between the teachers and students from the contexts of differing “texture” and rationale in their appropriate contexts of ethics.

Role of Concern – The situations are as follows:

There is an urgent need for all Buddhists to pay more attention to ethical/moral implications of science in science education at all levels. How do we implement new educational approaching to the Buddhist World University’s curriculum? There are roughly three situations in which you have to deal with adoption and implementation, namely:³

• You wish to innovate your own teaching. (Buddhism);
  • You wish to innovate the teaching of your colleagues in your own institution or
    school;
  • You wish to innovate the teaching of ethics and education outside your own
    institutes or Universities.

The concept of “stages of concern from all various communities in your society, must be called for fixing pattern of concerns to implement an innovation that is essential to know. Those stages of concern are as follows:

³ Ibids; pp. 43, 45, 46, 50.

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• awareness
• information
• personal
• management
• consequence
• refocusing

With the help of a questionnaire, one can measure the extent of the concern. It is possible here to draw from the scores on this questionnaire a profile of a person’s concerns before an implementation process. The concerns of teachers can greatly impact curriculum change. Five dimensions of a teacher are as follows:

• subject matter or materials;
• organizational structure;
• role/behavior;
• knowledge and understanding
• Value internalization.

These dimensions are very fruitful in understanding the complexity of the process, of innovation and competency. However there are also differences between scientific and moral reasoning. In scientific reasoning one explains how things can happen; in moral reasoning one justifies why one is obliged to do what is to be done. In short, both in science and ethics argumentation is a technique for providing reasons for accepting: claims to truth of rightness. However, science resorts to explanatory and ethics to justificatory reasons. The structure of argument shows an explanation as follows:

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Figure 2:

Backing
	r
Warrant
Ground————–	■d►      Modality       —■*———- ►        Claim
	Rebuttal

This claim of argument involved in real life arguments are well-founded only if sufficient grounds of an appropriate and relevant kind can be offered in your support. These grounds must be connected to the claims by reliable, applicable warrants, which are capable in turn of being justified by appeal to sufficient backing of the relevant kind. In moral reasoning the argument concerns justifying reasons:

Figure 3 – Scientific Reasoning:

Laboratory studies on temple problems from closely related species and genera have repeatedly confirmed – that:

Temples from closely related botanical genera may be expected frequently to contain similar substances.

Very possible

Temples belong to the botanical genus solanum. Many living things of the same genus and others closely related genera have poisonous foliage and barriers.

Temples may have poisonous foliage and berries.

Unless after all the foliage of living things in the temples bio-chemically resemble that of Phra Keo Temple rather than that of nightshade

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Figure 4 – Moral Reasoning:

	Given the universal pre-moral preference to world of institutionalized truth-telling above a world of institutionalized lying.
Given the universal validity of the basic principle of truth-telling.

It is wrong to lie.

The prisoner lied under interrogation.

presumably

The prisoner acted wrongly.

Unless he did so to prevent innocent people from being killed by criminals. criminals.

Since the principle of not killing innocent people over rules the principle of truth telling in cases of conflict.

Since a world of institutionalized killing is even worse than a world of in institutionalized lying.

In scientific reasoning, if you can stay within the limits of the same story, a contradiction between the pro-evidence (the backing) and the con-evidence (the rebuttal) says that at least one of them cannot be true, whereas a contradiction between the two pro-and con-in moral reasoning does not say that, but obliges you to choose which of the two principles involved over-rules the other.

In scientific reasoning you normally stay within the limits of backing and rebuttal (if you cannot give a satisfactory explanation in that way you switch over to an alternative theory) where as in moral reasoning you always can go beyond the basic principles of backing and rebuttal into the domain of the pre-moral preferences for a certain concept of human well-being.

In the next example, certain domains indicate going reliant on the limit of the moral argument into a domain of pre-moral preferences for a certain concept of human oral being. This going-beyond is necessary to point out the non-arbitrariness of the moral basic rules.  It demonstrates that choosing these basic rules is a rational act

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from a rational person.

Now there are two questions to be answered. The first one is what are the basic principles used in a moral argument and they mutually related. The second is how is scientific reasoning related to moral reasoning in those cases (as is normal) in which scientific and moral arguments are both in question? These questions will be considered in the next article at this great Assembly-Hall of the Most Venerables and the Buddhist scholars, the world Buddhist University. For example:

Figure 5 – Proposed Science Education & Buddhist Ethics in Curriculum Meeting:

The Historical Survey in World Buddhism

1)      Subj ects or Contents:

History of Buddhism

Science Education

Ethics of the World Buddhism

Humanistic Buddhism and Environmental Ethics

Field-works and Study-Tours.

2)     Methodology:

Induction Deduction Reconstruction. Analysis – Synthesis Application Appreciation Service and Competency

3)     Science Education.

Science- Laboratory

Theories of Learning and education (Learning by doing)

Workshops.

4)     Competency based Recruitment and selection, namely:
Company and organization, i.e.:

Fit the right job Fit the right man

5)     Under a model for Effective Performance with:

Motive

Trait

Self-Image and social role.

Skills (Buddhism and Science).⁴

The current environmental crisis we are facing brings to our attention the critical need for some kind of individual and collective change of outlook and behavior for human survival as well as the survival of other species. This process of ethical performances includes-creating-constructing a positive, sustainable lifestyle for the future requiring healthy mental and behavioral transformation.  What are the possible future scenarios

⁴ eimtu mnoirair (2550): Competency based interview/Questions; H.R. Center Company; Bangkok.

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based on our current behavior? “Stasis, Change, or Crash” – which one is most likely?

1. Stabilize but still not solve the issues-hope of extending our time.
2. Change and simplify-transform and create sustainable numbers.
   1. Crash-like all other biological organism (most are destroyed but some
      survive) as “the seeds for the new” when the population/resource ratio is non-
      sustainable.⁵

Conclusion:

Most humans are still in the “island mentality” of destruction, we may “know” but don’t change. However, always be the optimist. It is said that “We can transform bad into good, just as we can also transcend impermanence and enter into the permanent Dhamma/Dharma realm of Thusness/Suchness.” We know what is happening to it and have the “tools”, including Ethics and abilities needed to make transformations. The choice is ours: change or extinction. We hold our own survival and evolution in our hands, and minds! Thanks for your attention and co-operation. We need your performance and metta to germinate the seeds of Buddhist Ethics in Science Education.