Learning Center Ethics

Spirituality and ethics are two aspects of the same thing, or even two ways of talking about the same thing. By practicing Buddhism, one is endeavoring to become more and more selfless, more and more capable of higher and higher levels of nonviolence, loving kindness, and altruism. The Buddhist path is all about transforming and developing one's character in a specific way defined by the Buddhist community. Moreover, the Buddha as prototype embodies that perfection of character.

Sallie King, Being Benevolence: The Social Ethics of Engaged Buddhism

The goal of ethics is to become a person who does good or virtuous things freely from the ground of a well-tempered character, supported by a matured, resolute, and reasonable knowledge of what one is doing. The path of Buddhism does not dissolve character (which is different from ego and personality). It awakens and illuminates moral character and establishes a 'noble' selfhood in the wide, deep, expressive freedom of creative forms of life and its perfections.

James Whitehill, Buddhist Ethics in Western Context: The "Virtues" Approach

Journal of Buddhist Ethics

Ethics for the New Millennium
H.H. the Dalai Lama

Being Benevolence: The Social Ethics of Engaged Buddhism
Sallie King

The Ethical Precepts and Philosophical Tenets of Zen Buddhism

The Inner Ecology: Buddhist Ethics and Practice
Ronald Epstein

Everyman's Ethics: Four Discourses of the Buddha
Adapted from the translations of Narada Thera

Buddhist Morality and Practice
Ven. Dr. K. Sri Dhammananda

Buddhist Morality
Dr. C. George Boeree, Shippensburg University

Sometimes Full, Sometimes Half Full
Norman Fischer
All of our actions, however small, can have wondrous effects, but only if we are wholehearted enough in our practice of ethical conduct.

Dogen's "Ceaseless Practice"
Dogen Zenji
A non-authoritarian basis for ethics