This volume challenges the concept of Buddhism as an apolitical religion without implications for law.

Examining Sri Lanka's religious and legal pasts, this is the first extended study of Buddhism and constitutional law.

One of the basic doctrines of the Buddhist teachings is the law of karma. What is the law of karma? Science believes that an animal and a human are the result of the biological evolution theory developed by Charles Darwin. Buddhism believes that the animal and human are the result of reincarnation. In fact, the animals and humans are the result of evolution and reincarnation. In other words, living beings are the result of biological and psychological development, because both the animal and human consist of body and mind. A soul appeared when the sentient beings emerged in the universe and with this information about the actions-karma taken during their life. This information persists in the soul. Even if the karma does not grow in this life, either happiness or suffering, after the death of the animal and human the soul with karma doesn't die or fade away. It is reborn in one of the 6 animal species of the non-eternal universe depending on their karma, and still exists in the universe from one birth to another birth. If people develop their minds and healthy actions , they may arise in rebirth and even reborn as the Buddha or God. If people have an unhealthy mind, the actions that they take can to reduce their rebirth and even be reborn as hell, as a devil.Buddhist teachings describe it as the law of karma. Karma is the seed of mental, physical and verbal actions. Generally speaking, karma covers all the information about the actions committed by the living creatures, in their past and present lifetime.Until now, not only ordinary people but even scientists have not believed and accepted the law of karma. This is the main reason some people say that the Buddhist religion makes people stupid and some religions say that the Buddhist religion is misleading people. This is due to lack of scientific evidence for the law of karma. We have proved and verified the existence of the law of karma in this book with the help of Set theory and quantum physics. The book contains 3 parts and 15 chapters. In the first part, we have proved and verified the law of karma by using Set theory, while the following two conditions: first, the existence of three types of things in a non-eternal universe: matter / body, spirit / mind and imperfect cluster elements (body-mind), second, the occurrence of separation of mind and body when people and animals die.In the second part, we proved and verified the first condition and the soul with karma continues to exist in Samsara as the Wheel of Dharma or exists as the law of motion of animated matter-soul. And we demonstrate that the Buddhist philosophy has a dualist and dialectic character. In the Part 3, we proved and verified the second condition that the body and mind of humans and animals are separated, when they die by using Quantum physics, and it has an empirical testament and its own unique interpretation. Also, we demonstrate that the life is rational combination of evolution and reincarnation. The Buddhist philosophy assumes that there are non-eternal and eternal universes and they have their own objects and phenomena. We demonstrate that there are non-eternal, eternal and neutral universe and describe their facts and phenomena.At the end, we demonstrate the Buddhist teachings about how to reduce the suffering and improve the happiness and rebirth and enlightenment as well as three levels.The Buddha Gautama found the natural law of karma or the origin, development, degradation and death of living creatures through enlightenment over 2,500 years ago. But people have studied it as a religious doctrine in this period due to the lack of scientific evidence. At this time, we have proved the law, therefore, our duty is to extend this knowledge to people regardless of their religion. Learning about the law of karma is not only useful for personal development, but also vital to improve the ethics and morality of human social development.

The Golden Yoke is a remarkable achievement. It is the first elaboration of the legal, cultural, and ideological dimensions of precommunist Tibetan jurisprudence, a unique legal system that maintains its secularism within a thoroughly Buddhist setting. Layer by layer, Rebecca Redwood French reconstructs the daily operation of law in Tibet before the Chinese invasion in 1959. In the Tibetans' own words, French identifies their courts, symbols, and personnel and traces the procedures for petitioning and filing documents. There are stories here from judges, legal conciliators, and lay people about murder, property disputes, and divorce. French shows that Tibetan law is deeply embedded in its Buddhist culture and that the system evolved not from the rules and judgments but from what people actually do and say. In what amounts to a fully developed cosmology, she describes the cultural foundation that informs the system: myths, notions of time and conflux, inner morality, language patterns, rituals, use of space, symbols, and concepts. Based on extensive readings of Tibetan legal documents and codes, interviews with Tibetan scholars, and the reminiscences of Tibetans at home and in exile, this generously illustrated, elegantly written work is a model of outstanding research. French combines the talents of a legal anthropologist with those of a former law practitioner to develop a new field of study that has implications for other judicial systems, including our own.

Throughout the centuries, moral philosophers, both Eastern and Western, considered a permanent and eternal law a necessary requirement for the formulation of a moral principle. If such a law was not empirically given, it had to be determined through reason. In contrast, early Buddhism presented a radical theory of impermanence. Interpreters of early Buddhism have been unable to abandon the presupposition of permanence, however, and hence have persisted in viewing nirvana or freedom as a permanent and eternal state to be contrasted with the impermanent world of sensory experience and bondage. Ethics in Early Buddhism is David J. Kalupahana's balanced and brilliantly concise attempt to place the early Buddhist descriptions of the world of experience, the state of freedom, and the moral principle leading to such freedom within the framework of impermanence.

The People’s Republic of Bangladesh is centrally located in South Asia and is one of the eight countries that constitute the South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation (SAARC). In 2010, the South Asian Institute of Legal and Human Rights Studies in Dhaka (SAILS) initiated the ‘Combating Gender Injustice’ research study to investigate how the Christian, Hindu and Muslim communities in the country are affected by the laws and customs governing their personal lives. The aim was to engage in a dialogue with the stakeholders the results of which would provide a basis to formulate recommendations for law, policy and procedural reform. These reports have been reproduced in this volume in updated and revised form. Moreover, in order to offer a more complete overview of the ethnic and religious minorities concerned, a chapter has been added on the personal laws of the Buddhist community, the third largest religious community in Bangladesh. Finally, the volume offers much needed information on the laws and customs of the indigenous peoples of the Chittagong Hill Tracts, communities following traditional rules and customs in the remote and hilly region of the country. The gender-insensitive personal laws prevalent in South Asian societies will continue to be debated for generations to come. This unique volume gives a voice to the different religious and ethnic communities affected by the current laws and practices in force in Bangladesh. The reader will find an overview and gain understanding of the legal issues that need to be addressed in each case.

This book offers a comparative analysis of traditional Asian legal systems. It combines methods from legal history, legal anthropology, legal philosophy, and substantive law, pursuing a comprehensive approach that offers readers a broad perspective on the topic. The geographic regions covered include the Near East, Middle East, Central Asia, India, China, Japan, and Southeast Asia. For each region, the book first provides historical and political context. Next, it discusses major milestones in the region’s legal history and political institutions, as well as its forms of government. Readers are then presented with fundamental principles and terms needed to understand the legal arguments discussed. The book begins with the Ancient Near East and important topics such as Jewish law. The next part considers Islamic law, while also exploring modern issues. The third part focuses on Hindu and Buddhist law, while the fourth part covers China and Japan. The book’s closing section examines tribal societies, e.g. Mongols, Pashtuns and Malays. Topics covered include the interaction of legal systems within a legal circle, inter-systemic interactions, reasons for the failure and success of legal modernization, legal pluralism, and its effects on Asian societies. Family law, law of obligation, criminal law, and procedural law are also explored.

The latter half of the twentieth century witnessed a growing interest in Buddhism, and it continues to capture the imagination of many in the West who see it as either an alternative or a supplement to their own religious beliefs. Numerous introductory books have appeared in recent years to cater for this growing interest, but almost none devotes attention to the specifically ethical dimension of the tradition. For complex cultural and historical reasons, ethics has not received as much attention in traditional Buddhist thought as it has in the West, and publications on the subject are few and far between. Here, Damien Keown, author of Buddhism: A Very Short Introduction , illustrates how Buddhism might approach a range of fascinating moral issues ranging from abortion and suicide to cloning. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Nation, Constitutionalism and Buddhism in Sri Lanka offers a new perspective on contemporary debates about Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism in Sri Lanka. In this book de Silva Wijeyeratne argues forcefully that ‘Sinhalese Buddhism’ in the period prior to its engagement with the British colonial State signified a relatively unbounded (although at times boundary forming) set of practices that facilitated both the inclusion and exclusion of non-‘Buddhist’ concepts and people within a particular cosmological frame. Juxtaposing the premodern against the backdrop of colonial modernity, de Silva Wijeyeratne tells us that in contrast modern 'Sinhalese Buddhism/nationalism' is a much more reified and bounded concept, one imagined through a 19th century epistemology whose purpose was not so much inclusion, but a much more radical exclusion of non-‘Buddhist’ ideas and people. In this insightful analysis modern Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism, then, emerges through the conjunction of discourse, power and knowledge at a distinct moment in the trajectory of the colonial State. An intrinsic feature of this modernist moment is that premodern categories (such as the cosmic order) were subject to a bureaucratic re-valuation that generated profound consequences for State-society relations and the wider constitutional/legal imaginary. This book goes onto explore how key constitutional and nation-building moments were framed within the cultural milieu of modern Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism – a nationalism that reveals the power of a re-valued Buddhist cosmic order to still inform the present. Given the intensification of the Sinhalese Buddhist nationalist project following the defeat of the Tamil Tigers in 2009, this book is of interest to scholars of nationalism, South Asian studies, the anthropology of ritual, and comparative legal history.