Ep. 016: The Five Precepts and the Reduction of Suffering

How Morality can lead to "Happiness"

When I worked as an editor in the translation center of a large Buddhist temple near Los Angeles, one of our supervisors was a real stickler about using Christian language in our final editions. "Salvation," "Heaven," even "Prayer," were to be avoided.

He had a point. When one religion makes contact with another, there is often a great deal of misunderstanding of the "new" religion generated by comparisons--often faulty ones--with the "old" religion.

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Is Buddhism Amoral?

This sort of confusion led, in the early days of contact between Christianity and Buddhism, to the "truism" that "Buddhism is an amoral religion." Despite a couple of centuries of solid contact, that misconception is still not uncommon. And to many, "amoral" equals "immoral."

Nothing could be further from the truth.