ABSTRACT
Dealing with questions concerning the nature and description of an environmental ethics in early Buddhism is a complicated task. Early Buddhism does not contain a defined environmental ethics.1 Its central concern was suffering or dukkha that penetrated every aspect of life and the ultimate culmination of Buddhist teachings was in the attainment of liberation or nibba¯na which spelt the end of suffering. Direct concerns related to the natural world and environmental devastation got little mention in early Buddhist texts. This can be attributed to the cultural context and mood of early Buddhism. Environmental ethics, on the other hand, is a relatively new area of study that became popular approximately four or so decades ago with the awareness that environmental resources were rapidly diminishing due to unsustainable overuse by human beings. There was a dire need to address issues related to environmental devastation and to understand in depth their implications for the fate of present and future generations of organisms and objects on this planet. Thus environmental ethics as well as other areas of environmental studies gained much attention. Not faced with such issues it is hardly surprising that Buddhist scriptures contain scant or no ideas that even faintly resemble a contemporary environmental ethics.
