CALL FOR PAPERS: Online Conference on Buddhism and Human Rights

[d.keown at gold.ac.uk]

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JOURNAL OF BUDDHIST ETHICS
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GENERAL EDITORS
Damien Keown and Charles S. Prebish

TECHNICAL EDITOR
Wayne Husted

EDITORIAL BOARD
Masao Abe, George Bond, David Chappell, Lance Cousins, Richard
Gombrich, Charles Hallisey, Ian Harris, Peter Harvey, Richard
Hayes, Christopher Ives, Leslie Kawamura, Winston King,
Reginald Ray, Lambert Schmithausen, Robert Thurman, Paul
Williams.

CALL FOR PAPERS

ONLINE CONFERENCE ON BUDDHISM AND HUMAN RIGHTS

1-14th October 1995

Sponsored by The Journal of Buddhist Ethics

The medium of the conference will be email, thus there is no need to be
CONTINUOUSLY available between these dates, although it would be desirable
to have regular access to a terminal for the duration of the conference.

1) Conference Papers

Papers will be published electronically in a special edition of the JBE
in advance of the conference. Plain text (ASCII) and hypertext  (HTML
for the World Wide Web) versions of the papers will be available. It is
hoped that the proceedings of the conference will subsequently be
published in book form. The subject matter of the papers may be of a
social, political, or philosophical nature and deal with contemporary or
historical themes in the general field of Buddhism and Human Rights.
Papers should be around 5,000 words in length and must be received by
August 31st 1995. Please contact the editors if you would like to discuss
a proposal for a paper.

2) Conference Panel

The function of a panelist is to comment on the papers presented and
participate in general discussion about Buddhism and human rights.
Panelists may be academics, politicians, representatives of human rights
organizations, or individuals (lay or clergy) who have knowledge or
experience of human-rights problems and abuses in Buddhist cultures.
Please notify the editors if you would like to participate as a panel
member.

3) Conference Members

The conference will be a public one on the list JBE-L and anyone is
welcome to "attend" free of charge. To attend the conference you
subscribe to the list, and you may unsubscribe when the conference ends.
Comments can be made, and questions put to the authors of the papers and
to the panel. All comments from the "floor" will be moderated.
Subscriptions can be taken out at any time before the conference from now
onwards by sending an email message as follows:

To: Listserv at psuvm.psu.edu
Subject:

-----------------------
SUB JBE-L (Your name here)

Example:
SUB JBE-L MICHAEL FOX

Subscribers to the list will be kept up to date with new developments.



SUMMARY OF CURRENTLY ACCEPTED PAPERS

Paper Number One

AUTHOR

David Bubna-Litic
School of Management
University of Technology
Sydney
D.Bubna-Litic at uts.edu.au

TITLE

Buddhist Ethics and Business Strategy Making

ABSTRACT

This paper will explore the implications of Buddhism (Mahaayaana
perspective) to Business practice. Particularly the assumption
behind independence vs interdependence or interbeing. The article
will focus on how ethical assumptions are made in the genesis
of strategy creation in business organisations, that is how businesses
make fundamental decisions about their activities. Issues relating
to the "process" of strategy formulation (as opposed
to the content) will also be explored. Strategic decisions relate
to a wide range of Human rights issues, such as, intervention
in the political process, the use of sweat-shop labour, abuse
of third-world environments, manufacture of materialist values
and the marginalisation of spiritual values. Many organizations
enter into such practices on the basis that they are serving their
shareholder's best interests. This paper will question this assumption
by deconstructing monolithic views of a) organisations b) agency
and c) assumptions about top management's locus of control.


Paper Number Two

AUTHOR

Soraj Hongladarom
Department of Philosophy
Faculty of Arts
Chulalongkorn University
Bangkok 10330, THAILAND
soraj at chulkn.chula.ac.th

TITLE

Buddhism and Human Rights in the Thought of Sulak Sivaraksha
and Phra Dhammapidok (Prayudh Prayutto)

ABSTRACT

Sulak Sivaraksha and Phra Dhammapidok (Prayudh Prayutto) are two
leading Buddhist thinkers in Thailand today. Although both are
steeped in the Theravaada tradition, their views on the proper
role of Buddhism toward the problems of society, including that
of human rights, diverge in a significant way. While Sulak favors
a kind of socially engaged Buddhism in which the religion is seen
as an instrument toward betterment of the society in terms of
justice, democracy and respect for human rights, Phra Dhammapidok
tends to be more conservative and text oriented, and for him Buddhism
seems to be more concerned with the cessation of suffering at
the individual level rather than trying to improve society
at large. This paper will undertake a critical and comparative
investigation of the thoughts of these two thinkers, and will
show how both thinkers deal with the problem of the relation between
Buddhism and human rights, thus bringing to relief the central
problem of the proper role of Buddhism toward its social environment.



Paper Number Three

AUTHOR

Peter D.Junger
Professor of Law
Case Western Reserve University Law School
Cleveland, OH
junger at pdj2-ra.f-remote.cwru.edu

TITLE

Why the Buddha Has No Rights

ABSTRACT

One's rights are better things to cling to than one's wrongs,
but the Buddha's teachings are that the cessation of suffering
comes only when one stops clinging to things, even rights. "Human
rights'' is a rhetorical concept of the Western "Enlightenment''
that is used to justify certain values that once would have been
justified by an appeal to Christian authorities and traditions.
(There is, though, a question as to exactly what values are subsumed
under the term "human rights''.) Many, if not all, of these
values--especially those that can be seen as the products of either
tolerance or compassion--are also valued by those who follow the
Buddha Dharma and its traditions, but they do not need to invoke
any concept of rights to do so. On the other hand, there are those,
often well intentioned, souls, who demand as "human rights''
such things as freedom from want, or freedom from suffering, that
the Dharma teaches are not attainable as rights, but only by right
views, right thought. right speech, right action, right livelihood,
right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration. Thus "human
rights'' are at best skillful means, that must be transcended
before they can be obtained.


Paper Number Four

AUTHOR

Damien Keown
Department of Historical & Cultural Studies
University of London, Goldsmiths
d.keown at gold.ac.uk

TITLE

Are there "Human Rights" in Buddhism?

ABSTRACT

If Buddhism wishes to address the issues which are of concern
to today's global community, it must begin to ask itself new
questions alongside the old ones. In the context of human rights
an important preliminary question would seem to be whether
traditional Buddhism has any understanding of what is meant by
"human rights" at all. It may be thought that since the concept
of "rights" is the product of an alien cultural tradition it would
be inappropriate to speak of rights of any kind - "human" or
otherwise - in a Buddhist context. Even if it was felt that
these objections were overstated, and that the issue of human
rights does have a legitimate place on the Buddhist agenda, there
would still remain the separate and no less difficult question
of how human rights were to be grounded in Buddhist doctrine,
particularly in the light of the fact that the tradition itself
provides little precedent or guidance in this area. This paper
offers a preliminary exploration of the above questions. It
concludes that it is legitimate to speak of both "rights" and
"human rights" in Buddhism, and proposes a ground for human rights
in Buddhist doctrine.



Paper Number Five

AUTHOR

John Powers, Australian National University

TITLE

Human Rights and Cultural Values: The Political Philosophies of
the Dalai Lama and the People's Republic of China.

ABSTRACT

 The primary focus of this paper will be the philosophical
disagreement between the Dalai Lama and the government of the
People's Republic of China on the issue of the universality of
human rights. The Chinese authorities contend that the notion
of 'human rights' is a creation of Western governments and an
instrument by which they attempt to foist their culture-specific
values on other countries. Deng Xiaoping has stated that a
government's primary duty is to provide food and other basic
necessities for its people and that Western ideas of 'human
rights' are inappropriate in an Asian context. This notion has
also been endorsed by Western political leaders, including
President Bill Clinton, but the paper will contend that the
moral philosophies of Buddhism and Confucianism - the two most
historically important pan-Asian systems of moral philosophy -
provide significant grounds for conclusions similar to those
outlined in the United Nations' 'Universal Declaration of Human
Rights.'
        The Dalai Lama, one of the most prominent contemporary
Asian religious figures, contends that the Universal Declaration
outlines universal principles applicable to all cultures, Asian
and Western. My paper will examine the document in the light of the
competing claims of both sides, and will discuss how their
respective positions reflect their philosophical and religious
assumptions and political statuses. The key question will be the
issue of whether or not these 'universal principles' are in fact
universal or only culture-specific.


Enquiries about the conference, panels, and papers should be sent to
jbe-ed at psu.edu

NOTE: If you have already notified us of your interest there is no need to
do so again.

The Editors
Journal of Buddhist Ethics