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.
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.