Respect for Life - Can Zen Help?
— Zen Buddhism Today, Kyoto 1989

Respect for Life: Can Zen Buddhism Help in Forming an Environmental Ethic? Zen Buddhism Today 7 (September 1989): 11-30. Online at: http://hdl.handle.net/11124/37117

Zen Buddhism has an enviable respect for life. Buddhism promises to chasten human desires and thirsts, to fit humans into their sources, their surrounding world. But there is a series of challenges to Zen Buddhism. Compassion to wild animals? Buddha nature in a lotus flower? Saving endangered species and ecosystems? A challenge to Zen is to use its insights to help form an environmental ethic--East and West.

Annual Report of the Kyoto Zen Symposium, Kyoto Seminar for Religious Philosophy, Institute for Zen Studies, Hanazono College and Kyoto University. Invited paper as distinguished lecturer at the Seventh Annual International Zen Symposium, Kyoto, Japan, March 1989.