ABSTRACT
This chapter relates the materials necessary for addressing the notion and place of the virtues in Buddhist ethics, and their role in Buddhist attitudes towards the natural environment. It provides some of the context – social, religious and so on – in which Buddhism emerged: for, as the Buddha himself emphasized, his teachings both continued and reacted against ways of thinking current in the India of his times. The chapter offers a resume of his central teachings: the Four Noble truths, for example, and the doctrine of 'not-self' (anatta). Having challenged one familiar understanding of the Buddhist conception of morality, it proceeds to argue against those commentators who grant only a modest or subordinate place to morality within the wider Buddhist dispensation. Finally, the chapter discusses the place of ethics within Buddhist thought and soteriology, and considers later developments in moral thought that took place in certain Mahayana schools of Buddhism.
