ABSTRACT
It is not too much of an exaggeration to say that the understanding and use of terms in Buddhist ethics is in a frustrating state of divergence and inconsistency. One of the major barriers to any kind of systematic treatment of morality in Indian Buddhism has to be this problem, where there is lack of agreement and uniformity in the translation of important terms. With an eye to such difficulties, and based on the exegesis of Chapter 3, I attempt to define what Fantideva means by certain key moral terms. I focus here on kufala, fila, and pujya, three terms which refer to what are probably the most important moral concepts for Indian Buddhism. In order to get a sense for how moral ideas may have changed over time or between schools of thought, I have contrasted Fantideva’s understanding of these terms with what has been gleaned from previous work on Buddhist ethics. As indicated previously the majority of this work has been based on the Theravada tradition and Pali canonical and commentarial material, so in most cases this will be the basis for comparison.
