PARTICIPATORY PEACEMAKING: SOCIO-ETHICAL IMPLICATIONS OF INTERDEPENDENT CO-ARISING AND THEIR RELEVANCE IN THE CONTEMPORARY WORLD

Abstract

This dissertation studies the social and ethical implications of the core Buddhist teaching of Interdependent Co-Arising, which is the logic of Buddhist reasoning and the guiding principle of Buddhist ethics. By appealing to the Nikaya-s, the foundational texts recognized by all Buddhist schools on the one hand, and referencing contemporary socio-economic studies and poststructuralist feminist theories on the other, I revive and theorize about a dynamic sense of Buddhist social ethics, examine its relevance in the contemporary world, and make it acceptable and accessible to the largest number of Buddhists and non-Buddhist scholars and activists. This approach of appropriating non-Buddhist sources in order to make the Buddhist Dhamma relevant in alleviating dukkha is grounded in the Buddha's own teachings and examples. Poststructuralist feminist theories not only offer a much needed critique to the pervasive androcentrism in Buddhist circles, but are also useful in capturing the dynamic complexities that are conveyed by the teaching of Interdependent Co-Arising. In poststructuralist feminist language, any individual subject is a socio-psycho-physical compound shaped and delimited by socio-cultural sedimentations as well as by his/her mental formations, hence the Buddhist teaching of Non-Self. At the same time, it is due to people's repeated actions that socio-cultural sedimentations are formed and dukkha is created and perpetuated in the world. Therefore, in the Buddha's teachings, kamma inevitably has a social dimension and demands attention to the dukkha-producing social norms. Ethics is thus not a set of rigid, inalterable rules, but an ongoing process of striving to be ethical in the midst of ever-changing relations among ever-changing beings. And Sangha, one of the Three Jewels in which all Buddhists take refuge, is not a closed community bound by blood relation or geographical proximity, but an unending effort of building communities and working interconnections with multiple different others. The cessation of dukkha, in this view, is not a static existence where nothing happens, but a dynamic endeavor of working on one's behavioral, emotive, and conceptual transformation in order to alleviate dukkha and continuingly make peace in this world. It requires the participation of everyone entangled in the interconnected web of life.