Vatican Calls on Buddhists and Christians to Stand Up Against Modern-Day Slavery

From The Christian Times
by Monica Cantilero

"The Vatican is encouraging Buddhists and Christians to work together to end modern-day slavery, maintaining that the latter is an affront to human dignity and basic rights, a statement from the Pontifical Council for Inter-Religious Dialogue of the Roman Curia said.

The Council issued the statement, titled "Buddhists and Christians, together to counter modern slavery," during the Buddhist holy month of Vesakh (April-May) when Buddhists commemorate Gautama Buddha's birth, enlightenment and death.

The Vatican council emphasized the common respect that Buddhists and Christians have toward life.

"As Buddhists and Christians committed to respect for human life, we must cooperate together to end this social plague," the Council said. "Pope Francis invites us to overcome indifference and ignorance by offering assistance to victims, in working for their psychological and educational rehabilitation, and in efforts to reintegrate them into society where they live or from which they come."

The Council recounted that Buddha himself opposed trade using human beings. Citing a section of the "Eightfold Path," the Council said Gautama Buddha regarded trading in live beings such as slaves and prostitutes is one of the five occupations that should not be engaged in. According to Buddhist teachings, possessions should be obtained peacefully, with honesty, and through legal means, not in a way that causes harm or suffering and without coercion, violence or deceit, the Council noted.

The Council also blamed corruption as an impediment to seeing other people as one's equal.

"Human hearts deformed by corruption and ignorance are, according to the Holy Father, the cause of these terrible evils against humanity. When hearts are corrupted, human beings no longer see others as 'beings of equal dignity, as brothers or sisters sharing a common humanity, but rather as objects,'" the Council said.

In his message during this year's World Day of Peace, Pope Francis said historically, slavery causes the "rejection of others, their mistreatment, violations of their dignity and fundamental rights, and institutionalised inequality."

The Pontiff noted that even though the international community has already adopted several measures to end slavery, there are still "millions of people today – children, women and men of all ages – deprived of freedom and forced to live in conditions akin to slavery."

The Pope cited the following instances of modern-day slavery: "Men, women and child laborers; migrants who undergo physical, emotional and sexual abuse while working in shameful working conditions; persons forced into prostitution, many of whom are minors, as well as male and female sex slaves; those kidnapped by terrorists and forced to be combatants, and those who are tortured, mutilated or killed."

The Emptiness of Emptiness

The Two Truths of Buddhism and The Emptiness of Emptiness
From an excellent article by Susan Kahn    

"...Nagarjuna’s doctrine of the emptiness of emptiness involves many reasonings that interrelate in deep and comprehensive ways.  To begin with, to be empty is to be dependently arisen and emptiness is no exception.  Ultimate truth is fully dependent upon conventional phenomena to perceive their emptiness.  And as entities are ultimately unfindable, this absence that is emptiness, cannot be non-empty and findable.  This recognition uncovers the ultimate truth that emptiness is empty.  But there is more to the argument.

It can also be deduced that if the emptiness of inherent existence is ultimately true, then emptiness must also be empty.  If emptiness existed in the independent self-established sense, then emptiness would not be empty but inherently existent.  And since everything is empty, that would make everything inherently existent too.  So if phenomena were empty but emptiness was non-empty, the ultimate truth of the negation of inherent existence would itself be negated.  Instead, the teaching that emptiness is empty is consistent with emptiness as an ultimate truth.

Nagarjuna’s reasoning extends into an eloquent somersault that completes the analysis.  If emptiness is empty, as in an absence, then it can only conventionally exist.  For there is nothing that can be identified about the emptiness of things, as in the example of elephantlessness.  What is not conventionally designated does not exist in any positive sense, is not an object, hence its emptiness. 

Therefore, to be empty is to only conventionally exist and likewise, to conventionally exist is the only way to be empty.  Furthermore, as there are no true objects to know, conventional truth is also the only truth there is.  This is the ultimate truth of emptiness and thus, a conventional truth.  The doctrine of the emptiness of emptiness culminates in the insight that the two truths, the ultimate and conventional are ontologically the same, like two different sides of the same coin.

To recognize emptiness as conventional is to thoroughly refute inherent existence and to underscore the recognition that emptiness is the emptiness of conventional phenomena, nothing more substantive than that.  This insight undermines a contradictory and dualistic reality where emptiness is totally real, while the conventional is totally unreal.  Nagarjuna’s doctrine negates ultimate truth as an independent base from which to assert an objective, non-empty view.  All views can only be conventionally true.

“Therefore it is said that whoever makes a philosophical view out of emptiness is indeed lost.” - Nagarjuna    read it all


Read more at Buddhist Philosophy