Tuesday, July 24, 2007

Buddhism and Human Rights

Dear Professor and all,


About the Buddhism and Human Rights, i feel that Buddha advise people to do only good things by avoiding 5 actions such as: lying, intoxicants, killing, sexual missconduct and animal to be slaughter, inorder to live in happiness, even happiness can be achieved if people obey to Human Rights. However, there are some questions which i still doubt in mind:



1. Natural right said that: All men are created free and equal - don't you think it caused unstable to society? if people do not obey to law and human dignity is not applied.



2. General speaking Buddha said: to be successful in life people need to examine a natural law, therefore, could you explain more what's natural law about, beside "created free and equal"?

- What's the connection between Natural Law, Four Noble Truths and Eightfold Noble Path?



Thank you and looking forward to your respond.

4 comments:

Stan Starygin said...

1. As I said in class, the closest Buddhism ever comes to the American Declaration of Independence's principle of "all men are created free and equal" is the Buddha's proclamation of the Buddha-nature which he claims all beings are born with which enables them to potentially achieve Buddhahood.
2. Natural Law is a concept developed to explain away the order of nature and man's position in it outside the functioning of any particular society. There are multiple definitions of natural law. Stanford Dictionary, for example, defines it as "�Natural law theory� is a label that has been applied to theories of ethics, theories of politics, theories of civil law, and theories of religious morality. We will be concerned only with natural law theories of ethics: while such views arguably have some interesting implications for law, politics, and religious morality, these implications will not be our focus here".
3. Natural law developed separately as a concept, whereas the Eightfold Path is a part of the Four Noble Truths

moen savoeun said...

1. Sure, all men are created equal. Because they are equal, they have the rights and duties to file any complain before the law. In the last class we had discussed about the function of the government about the positive action to create law. The law that created by the government, it must be strong and all people must be bound by the law. If anyone commit the case against the law (criminal or civil case), he or she will be punished by the authority of the state, then people have to respect the law. Thus, the law obligates to ensure the freedom and rights of individual(s) and to apply that all people are equal.

2. I’m not quite sure about the natural law, but it perhaps focusing on what is related to the nature of man that bring people to the sufferings, physical body and mental; for instance, diseases, cheating, stealing, and so forth. Moreover, the root cause of these sufferings is from man’s desire. Therefore, the natural law and man’s desire are the foundation to the enlightenment. Then the Buddha found the way to eliminate these sufferings by creating the Four Noble Truths and Eight Fold Paths to teach people. If anyone follows his teaching, he or she will get rid off pains that these pains make life difficult to develop.

Sang morada said...

Evening Pro. and Savoeun,
Thanks to clarify these questions.
I'm now is more clearly understand.
Thanks

Dara said...

Dear all!
Your first question: ALl men are created equal.

Of course, in nature we born with nothing and verybody is equal. This concept want to show that we are equal to all classes of people not even in the law or in the nature. This concept deos not mean make the state instatle at all.

As you mentioned, when we are equal we don't respect the law, and when we don't respect the law make the society instable. In fact, from my view, is not meant like this, it meant we are equal will all ranks of peple in the society. When you are rich and youn commit a crime you will the same punishment as the same as the poor people.
It is not when you are rich you never get punishment when you commit a crime. So this concept is so good when we can apply to Cambodia society.