Expert: Justin Choo - 10/16/2004

Question
My 13 yr old daughter is doing a project on Buddhism and one of the questions is, what responsibility do Buddhists have to the environment, to each other and themselves?  I have found out a lot of basic information about Buddhism, but cannot seem to find the answer to this.  Would be grateful for your help.

Answer
Hi Jenny,
Thank you for asking me.

The Buddha's teachings are very practical, moderate, and relevant for this day and age.  His teachings are based on universal values which transcends race, nations, time and space.

We first must be responsible to ourselves before we can project our values outwards.  As good Buddhists we follow certain guiding principles which we call precepts, to guide our daily activities.  The Buddha encouraged us to use our human intelligence and common sense to live our daily lives. We do not need any religion to teach us what is good and what is bad. It is up to us to come to terms with realities, that what we don't want others to do to us, we should not do to others. What we want for us should also be given to others. The Buddhist is more concerned with what we call "skilful living". As a practising Buddhists, we observe the 5 basic principles as suggested by the Buddha:
1. To refrain from taking life
2. To refrain from stealing
3. To refrain from indulging in unwholesome sexual
activities
4. To refrain from telling lies
5. To refrain from taking intoxicants
These 5 precepts we undertake to live by, to the best of our ability, everyday.


On our relationship with others, we are taught to practice right speech, right action, and right livelihood.  Right speech means not to tell lies and waste time in useless chatter,and also not to slander others.  Right action means not to hurt all live forms unnecessarily; not to steal; and not to engage in harmful sexual activities.  Right livelihood means we dissociate ourselves with activities that bring miseries to others, such as dealing with weapons, slavery, killing of life, intoxicants, drugs and poisons.

A Buddhist life centres on kindness and harmlessness.  Being kind to others and ourselves; and being harmless to others, a Buddhist is in harmony with himself, with others, and with his environment.

Hope this helps.

Smile from justinchoo :-)